by Kate Morton
When she left the V&A, Cassandra went in search of a delayed lunch. She figured the last meal she’d eaten must have been the aeroplane supper, a handful of Ruby’s liquorice allsorts and a cup of tea: little wonder her stomach was shouting at her. Nell’s notebook had a pocket map of central London glued inside the front cover, and as far as Cassandra could tell, no matter which direction she took she was bound to find something to eat and drink. As she peered at the map she noticed a faint biro cross, somewhere on the other side of the river, a street in Battersea. Excitement brushed like feathers on her skin. X marked the spot, but which spot exactly?
Twenty minutes later, she bought a tuna sandwich and a bottle of water at a café on the Kings Road, then continued down Flood Street towards the river. On the other side, the four smokestacks of Battersea power station stood tall and bold. Cassandra felt an odd thrill as she traced Nell’s footsteps.
The autumnal sun had come out from hiding and was tossing silver flecks along the surface of the river. The Thames. What a lot the river had seen: innumerable lives spent along its banks, countless deaths. And it was from this river that a boat had left, all those years ago, with little Nell on board. Taking her away from the life she’d known, towards an uncertain future. A future that was now past, a life that was over. And yet it still mattered, it had mattered to Nell and it mattered now to Cassandra. This puzzle was her inheritance. More than that, it was her responsibility.
18
London, 1975
Nell tilted her head to get a better view. She had hoped that by seeing the house in which Eliza had lived she might somehow recognise it, feel instinctively that it was important to her past, but she did not. The house at number thirty-five Battersea Church Road was utterly unfamiliar. It was plain, and for the most part looked like every other house on the street: three storeys, sash windows, thin drainpipes snaking up rough brick walls that time and grime were turning black. The only thing that set it apart was an odd addition at the top of the house. From the outside it appeared that part of the roof had been bricked in to create an extra room, though without seeing it from inside it was difficult to know.
The road itself ran parallel to the Thames. This dirty street with rubbish in its gutters and snotty children playing on its pavement certainly didn’t seem the type of place to spawn a writer of fairytales. Silly, romantic notions, of course, but when Nell had imagined Eliza her thoughts had been fleshed out with images of JM Barrie’s Kensington Gardens, the magical charm of Lewis Carroll’s Oxford.
But this was the address listed in the book she’d bought from Mr Snelgrove. This was the house where Eliza Makepeace had been born. Where she’d spent her early years.
Nell went closer. There didn’t seem to be any activity inside the house so she dared to lean right up against the front window. A tiny room, a brick fireplace, and a poky kitchen. A narrow flight of stairs that clung to the wall by the door.
Nell stepped back, almost tripping over a dead pot plant.
A face at the window next door made her jump, a pale face framed by a corona of frizzled white hair. Nell blinked, and when she looked back the face was gone. A ghost? She blinked again. She did not believe in ghosts, not the sort that went bump in the night.
Sure enough, the door to number thirty-seven Battersea Church Road swung open with mighty force. Standing on the other side was a miniature woman, about four foot tall with pipe-cleaner legs and a walking stick. From a raised mound on the left of her chin came one long silver hair. ‘Who’re you, girlie?’ she said in a muddy cockney voice.
It had been forty years at least since anyone had called her girlie. ‘Nell Andrews,’ she said, stepping back from the wizened plant. ‘I’m just visiting. Just looking. Just trying to—’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Australian.’
‘Australian?’ said the woman, pale lips drawing back at the sides in a gummy smile. ‘Why didn’t you say so? My niece’s husband is Australian. They live in Sydney, you might know of ’em? Desmond and Nancy Parker?’
‘Afraid not,’ said Nell. The old woman’s countenance began to sour. ‘I don’t live in Sydney.’
‘Ah well,’ said the woman somewhat sceptically. ‘P’haps if you ever get there you’ll run into them.’
‘Desmond and Nancy. I’ll be sure to remember.’
‘He don’t get in till late most times.’
Nell frowned. The niece’s husband in Sydney?
‘Fellow what lives next door. Quiet for the most part.’ The woman dropped her voice to a stage whisper. ‘Might be a darkie, but he works hard.’ She shook her head. ‘Fancy that! An African man living here at number thirty-five. Did I ever think I’d see the day? My ma’d roll in her grave if she knew there was blacks living in the old house.’
Nell’s interest was piqued. ‘Your mother lived here too?’
‘That she did,’ said the old woman proudly. ‘I was born here, that very house what you’re so interested in, matter of fact.’
‘Born here?’ Nell raised her eyebrows. There weren’t many people who could say they’d lived their entire life in the one street. ‘What’s that, sixty, seventy years ago?’
‘Nearly seventy-eight, I’ll have you know.’ The woman jutted her chin so that the silver hair caught the light. ‘Not a day less.’
‘Seventy-eight years,’ said Nell slowly. ‘And you’ve been here all that time. Since . . .’ a quick calculation, ‘since 1897?’
‘I ’ave, December 1897. Christmas baby, I was.’
‘Do you have many memories? From childhood, I mean?’
She cackled. ‘Sometimes I think they’re the only memories I got.’
‘It must have been a different place back then.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the old woman sagely, ‘and that’s a fact.’
‘The woman I’m interested in lived on this street too. Here at this house apparently. Perhaps you remember her?’ Nell unzipped her bag and withdrew the picture she’d had photostatted from the frontispiece of the fairytale book. Noticed that her fingers were trembling slightly. ‘She’s drawn to look like a fairytale illustration, but if you look closely at her face . . .’
The old woman extended a gnarled hand and took the proffered image, squinted so that rows of wrinkles gathered around each eye. Then she started to cackle.
‘You know her?’ Nell held her breath.
‘I know ’er all right, I’ll remember ’er to me dying days. Used to frighten the bejesus out of me when I was a littl’un. Told me all sorts of wicked stories when she knew my ma weren’t around to give ’er a pounding and send ’er scuttling.’ She looked up at Nell, frowning so that her forehead concertinaed. ‘Elizabeth? Ellen?’
‘Eliza,’ Nell said quickly. ‘Eliza Makepeace. She became a writer.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, not much of a reader m’self. Can’t see the point of all them pages. All’s I know is that the girl there in your picture told stories to make your hair stand on end. Kept most of us local kids frightened of the dark, though we was always coming back for more. Don’t know where she learned the likes of ’em herself.’
Nell looked again at the house, tried to get a sense of this young Eliza. An inveterate storyteller, scaring the younger children with her tales of terror.
‘We missed her when she were taken.’ The old woman was shaking her head sadly.
‘I’d have thought you’d be pleased not to be frightened any more.’
‘Not likely,’ said the old woman, lips moving as though she were chewing her own gums. ‘There ain’t a child alive what don’t enjoy a good scare now and then.’ She dug her walking stick into a spot on the stairs where the render was crumbling. Squinted up at Nell. ‘That girl herself got the worst sort of scare though, far worse than any of her tall tales. Lost her brother, you know, one day in the fog. Nothing she could tell us was as ghastly as what happened to him. It was a big black horse, trod right through his heart.’ She shook her head. ‘The girl, she were never the same after that. W
ent a bit batty, you ask me, cut off all her hair and started wearing breeches if I remembers properly!’
Nell felt a rush of excitement. This was new.
The old woman cleared her throat, withdrew a tissue and spat into it. Continued as if nothing had happened. ‘There was a rumour going around she were taken to the workhouse.’
‘She wasn’t,’ said Nell. ‘She was sent to live with family in Cornwall.’
‘Cornwall.’ A kettle began to whistle from inside. ‘That’s nice then, isn’t it?’
‘I imagine it was.’
‘Well then,’ the old woman said with a nod towards the kitchen, ‘that’s teatime.’ The pronouncement was so matter of fact that for a brief, hopeful moment Nell thought she might be being invited inside, offered tea and countless other anecdotes about Eliza Makepeace. But when the door began to close, the old lady on one side and Nell on the other, the fond fancy passed.
‘Wait,’ she said, pushing her hand out to hold off the closing door.
The old woman held the door ajar as the kettle continued to shrill.
Nell pulled a piece of paper from her handbag and began to scribble on it. ‘If I write down the address and phone number of the hotel I’m staying at, will you contact me if you remember anything else about Eliza? Anything at all?’
The old woman cocked a silvery eyebrow. She paused briefly, as if sizing Nell up, then took the piece of paper. Her voice when she spoke was slightly changed. ‘If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you, Mrs . . .’
‘Swindell,’ said the old woman. ‘Miss Harriet Swindell. Never met a man I’d let make me his own.’
Nell lifted a hand to wave farewell, but old Miss Swindell’s door was already closed. As the kettle finally stopped shouting inside, Nell glanced at her watch. If she hurried, there was still enough time to get to the Tate Gallery. There she could see Nathaniel Walker’s portrait of Eliza, the one he’d called The Authoress. She pulled the little tourist map of London from her bag and ran her finger up the river until she found Millbank. With a final glance down Battersea Church Road, as a red London bus shuddered past the banks of Victorian houses that had played host to Eliza’s childhood, Nell set off.
And there she was, The Authoress, hanging on the gallery wall. Just as Nell remembered her. Thick braid slung over one shoulder, frilly white collar buttoned to her chin so that her fine neck was encased, hat on her head. Quite different from the sorts of hats usually worn by Edwardian ladies. Its lines were more masculine, its pitch more jaunty, its wearer irreverent somehow, though Nell wasn’t sure how she knew that. She closed her eyes. If she tried hard enough she could almost remember a voice. It came to mind at times, a silvery voice, full of magic and mystery and secrets. But it always slipped away before she could clasp the memory to her, make it her own to command and recall.
People were moving behind her and Nell opened her eyes again. The Authoress came once more into frame and Nell walked closer. The portrait was unusual: for one thing, it was a charcoal sketch, more a study than a portrait. The framing was interesting, too. The subject wasn’t facing the artist, but had been drawn as if walking away, as if she’d turned back her gaze only at the last minute and been frozen in that moment. There was something engaging in her wide eyes, her lips parted as if to speak; and something uncomfortable, too. It was the absence of even the hint of a smile, as if she’d been surprised. Observed. Caught.
If only you could speak, Nell thought. Then perhaps you could tell me who I am, what I was doing with you. Why we boarded that boat together and why you didn’t come back for me.
Nell felt set upon by the dull weight of disappointment, though what revelations she’d imagined might be gleaned from Eliza’s portrait, she didn’t know. Not imagined, she corrected herself, hoped. Her entire quest was based on hope. The world was an awfully large place and it wasn’t easy to find a person who’d gone missing sixty years earlier, even if that person was oneself.
The room was beginning to empty and Nell found herself surrounded on all four sides by the silent gazes of the long-dead. All observing her in that strange, heavy way the portrait subject has: eyes, eternally watchful, following the voyeur around the room. She shivered and slipped on her coat.
The other portrait caught her eye when she was almost at the door. As her gaze fell upon the painting of the dark-haired woman with pale skin and plump red lips, Nell knew exactly who she was. A thousand snatches of long-forgotten memories combined in an instant, certainty flooded every cell. It wasn’t that she recognised the name printed beneath the portrait, Rose Elizabeth Mountrachet—the words themselves meant very little. It was more and it was less. Nell’s lips began to quiver and something deep inside her chest clenched. Breathing was difficult. ‘Mamma,’ she whispered, feeling stupid and elated and vulnerable all at once.
Thank god the Central Reference Library was open late, for there was no way Nell could have waited until morning. Finally she knew her mother’s name, Rose Elizabeth Mountrachet. Later, she would look back on that moment in the Tate Gallery as a birth of sorts. Swiftly, with neither warning nor fuss, she was someone’s child, she knew her mother’s name. She said the words over and over as she scurried along the darkening streets.
It was not the first time she’d heard them. The book she’d bought from Mr Snelgrove with its entry on Eliza had mentioned the Mountrachet family. Eliza’s maternal uncle, minor member of the aristocracy, owner of the grand estate in Cornwall. Blackhurst, where Eliza had been sent after her mother’s death. It was the link she’d been looking for. The thread that tied the Authoress of Nell’s memory to the face she now recognised as her mother’s.
The woman at the library desk remembered Nell from the day before, when she’d come searching for information on Eliza.
‘Did you find Mr Snelgrove then?’ she said with a grin.
‘I did,’ said Nell, rather breathlessly.
‘And you lived to tell the tale.’
‘He sold me a book that was very helpful.’
‘That’s our Mr Snelgrove, always manages to make a sale.’ She shook her head fondly.
‘I wonder,’ said Nell, ‘if you could help me again. I need to find some information on a woman.’
The librarian blinked. ‘I’m going to need a little more to go on than that.’
‘Of course. A woman born sometime in the late nineteenth century.’
‘Was she a writer too?’
‘No, at least I don’t think so.’ Nell exhaled, collected her thoughts. ‘Her name was Rose Mountrachet and her family were aristocrats of some kind. I thought perhaps I might find something in one of those books, you know the sort, with details of members of the peerage.’
‘Like Debrett’s. Or Who’s Who.’
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘Worth a look,’ said the librarian. ‘We’ve got both publications here, but Who’s Who is probably the easier to read. Hereditary peers are automatically invited for inclusion. She might not have an entry of her own but if you’re lucky she’ll be mentioned in someone else’s, her father’s perhaps, or her husband’s. Don’t s’pose you know when she died?’
‘No, why?’
‘Given that you don’t know when she was entered, if at all, it might save you time if you just looked her up in Who Was Who first. Need to know when she died for that, though.’
Nell shook her head. ‘I couldn’t even guess. If you point me in the general direction I’ll just check through the Who’s Who—start this year and work backwards until I find mention of her.’
‘Might take a while, and the library’s closing soon.’
‘I’ll be quick.’
The woman shrugged. ‘Take the stairs to the first floor and you’ll find the backfiles at the enquiry desk. The listings are alphabetical.’
Finally, in 1934, Nell struck gold. It wasn’t Rose Mountrachet, but it was a Mountrachet nonetheless. Linus, the uncle who’d claimed Eliza Makepeace after Georgiana’
s death. She scanned the entry:
MOUNTRACHET, Lord, Linus St John Henry. b. 11 January 1860, s. of late Lord St John Luke Mountrachet and late Margaret Elizabeth Mountrachet, m. 31 August 1888 Adeline Langley. One d. late Rose Elizabeth Mountrachet, m. late Nathaniel Walker.
Rose had married Nathaniel Walker. That meant, didn’t it, that he was her father? She read the entry again. The late Rose and Nathaniel. So they’d both died earlier than 1934. Was that why she’d been with Eliza? Had Eliza been appointed her guardian because her parents were both dead?
Her father—that is, Hugh—had found her on the Maryborough wharf in late 1913. If Eliza had been appointed guardian after Rose and Nathaniel were killed, that meant, didn’t it, that they must have died before then?
Suppose she were to look up Nathaniel Walker in Who’s Who for that year? He was sure to have an entry. Better yet, if her theory was correct and he was no longer alive in 1913, she should go straight to Who Was Who. She hurried along the line of shelves and plucked out Who Was Who 1897–1915. Fingers trembling, she flicked through from the back, Z, Y, X, W. There he was.
WALKER, Nathaniel James, b. 22 July 1883, d. 2 September 1913. s. of Anthony Sebastian Walker and Mary Walker, m. the late Hon. Rose Elizabeth Mountrachet, 3 March 1908. One d. the late Ivory Walker.
Nell stopped short. One daughter was correct, but what did they mean by late? She wasn’t dead, she was very much alive.
Nell was aware suddenly of the library heating, felt she couldn’t breathe. She fanned her face and looked back at the entry.
What could it possibly mean? Could they have got it wrong?
‘Found her?’
Nell looked up. The woman from the front desk. ‘Are these ever wrong?’ she said. ‘Do they ever get things wrong?’
The woman pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘They’re not the most reliable sources, I suppose. They’re put together with information supplied by the subjects themselves.’
‘What about when the entry is dead?’
