by Nicola Upson
There was a pile of something in the corner of the room, covered with a dust sheet. Deaves had left a note on top, explaining that he had found a box boarded into the old window seat; they had removed it as instructed, but he did not want to take it away or dispose of any of the wood until she had had a chance to look at it. Intrigued, she pulled back the sheet and found a chest similar to the one that Walter had bought for Hester, except that this one was older and in better condition. The chest was plainly made – solid oak with iron bands and a heavy padlock – but of a quality not to need adornment, and she felt a mixture of excitement and fear when she saw it. It was not beyond all possibility that Maria Marten’s clothes chest had passed to her best friend after her death and, if so, that Lucy might have kept her own treasures inside – some later diaries, perhaps, or other things that would help Josephine to piece together the rest of her life. She held the padlock in her hand for a moment, tempted to break it open straight away, but reason got the better of her: if its contents proved exciting, then she would prefer to share them with Marta; if they testified to more pain for Lucy or for Maria, she would rather not be alone with them. She and Marta had planned to spend some time together at the cottage between Christmas and New Year; they could explore the trunk then. In the mean time, she saw with a heavy heart that she had still not managed to rid the cottage of the scarred wood that so disturbed her; the old window seat rested against the chest, and rather than try to wrestle it down the stairs on her own, she threw the sheet back over it and hoped that out of sight, out of mind would do.
It felt strange to be away from Scotland during the festive season. She had always spent Christmas with her family, and, as she looked ahead to Christmas Day, she half-wished that she had accepted her sister Moire’s invitation to go to London; Lydia’s parties were never restful, and the thought of sitting down to lunch with Dodie Smith and John Terry – joining in the gossip and trying not to look at Marta in the wrong way – filled her with dread. But she would not have missed the beauty of December in Suffolk for the world; the magic of the countryside, the remoteness of her rural life, made everything about the season somehow more real, and Josephine entered into the Christmas spirit as she never had before. She unpacked the cottage again and cleaned until it sparkled, went Christmas shopping in Bury and stocked up with every seasonal treat she could find, and – like a modern-day Scrooge with her own ghosts laid to rest – began to make amends with the villagers whom her concerns for Hester had kept at arm’s length. She delivered a compendium of plays to Bert’s children, knowing he would value that more than a gift for himself, thawed Elsie Gladding’s heart with a Christmas card and a large order for mincemeat, and finally accepted a dinner invitation from Hilary and Stephen.
The days grew colder, and by Christmas Eve the trees around the cottage sparkled with a sharp, metallic crispness. Josephine took a pair of secateurs and a basket, and walked to Flaggy Pond to collect some greenery for the cottage. The air was exhilarating, the woods quiet and still, and she picked her way over winter-blackened brambles and pungent‚ dark leaf-mould, collecting armfuls of age-old scarlet. As she came out into the open fields again, her basket full of holly, she felt the ice on her face and marvelled at how the temperature had dropped, even in the short time she had been out. The sky was a sheet of pale greys and yellows, the surface of the pond frozen and expressionless. Sheep huddled against the fence, out of the cold, and she could hear the uneasy call of rooks overhead. The world was bracing itself for the weather to come, it seemed, and Josephine hurried back to the cottage to join it.
After lunch, she baked mince pies to take with her the next day, heavily laced with the brandy she thought she might need, then switched the wireless on and settled down in front of the fire to wrap some presents: a nice‚ ordinary book as her public gift to Marta; sherry, wine or whisky for the guests she knew less well; and a framed drawing of Ellen Terry as Juliet for Lydia – thoughtful, she hoped, but not extravagant enough to look like the product of a guilty conscience. The first few notes of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ drifted across the room from the beautiful candlelit chapel in Cambridge, bringing a lump to her throat as they always did – not from any particular spiritual conviction, but from an emotional response to the words and music that she sometimes found easy to confuse with a belief in God. As she listened to the lessons and carols, she thought about the people closest to her and felt connected to them through this shared celebration – then laughed at her own sentimentality: Archie would still be at his desk in Scotland Yard; her father, who was staying with his middle daughter, was far more likely to be sharing a single malt with his son-in-law than listening to the wireless; and Marta – well, Marta would have left her shopping until the last possible moment and was probably still having things gift-wrapped in Selfridge’s. But for Josephine, isolated from the world and spending her first Christmas Eve alone, the familiarity of the service held a warmth and a solace that she cherished.
The choir was halfway through ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ when she noticed the snow, although it had obviously been falling for some time. She opened the front door and stood in the garden, just beyond the square of lamplight that followed her out from the house, and stared in wonder at the mournful, quiet beauty. Inside, the final notes of the organ died away, and she was left with the peculiar stillness of a silent land. The thatch was already swathed in a blanket of gleaming white, the bushes curled more sharply to the ground, and Josephine sensed that the sky was leaden with the weight of what was still to come. It would be a miracle if she could venture as far as the gate tomorrow, let alone the Essex borders, and she could not decide if she should bless or curse the prospect of a solitary Christmas. The snow was still falling at midnight, when she welcomed the day in and went up to bed. She blew out the lamp and drew the curtains back as wide as they would go. Outside, the landscape was a cacophony of blues, deep indigo for the sky and a pale, shimmering cyan where the moonlight hit the snow. Everything, it seemed, had been suspended, as though nature had deliberately chosen the most haunting and emotive night of the year to bring the world to a halt for a moment, to reflect on what really mattered.
When she woke on Christmas morning, the fields seemed to stretch for ever under the snow’s gentle grace, a scene so different from the dramatic winter landscapes she was used to. The sun glistened on the ridges, the trees stood quiet under their burden of white and, in the distance, she could hear the peal of church bells, punctuated occasionally by the scraping of a shovel on tarmac or the chipping away of ice from the animals’ water troughs. Josephine knew that she must try to let Marta and Lydia know that she was snowed in, so she dressed hurriedly and set out for the rectory to ask if she could use the telephone; if she went now, while the morning service was under way, she would not intrude on Hilary and Stephen’s family Christmas, or be invited to stay and celebrate with them. The depth of the snow made for a punishing scramble to the top of the slope, and she looked back at her own footprints, struck by how – after delivering its initial blanket of concealment – snow stripped the earth of any right to secrecy; every movement of every creature was written on the fields and in the lanes, and they stood exposed and in sharp silhouette against an alien backcloth, robbed for the moment of their camouflage. When she reached the end of the track, at the junction with Marten’s Lane, Josephine could see that even the short distance to the rectory was too ambitious: the roads were now rivers of snow, with drifts thrown like frozen waves against the hedgerows, and nothing in any direction looked passable. Reluctantly, she turned back, hoping that the snow would be widespread enough for Marta not to worry when she didn’t arrive.
She stamped the snow off her boots in the porch and removed her outdoor clothes. Inside, the cottage was warm and welcoming, and she paused at the door, delighted by the image that greeted her, by the holly pinned to the beams and the presents piled expectantly onto the table. It wasn’t quite the Christmas she had planned, but she was by her own
fireside and determined to make the best of it. She stoked up the range, took a hammer to the water butt outside the back door, filling the air with a sound like breaking china, and prepared a pheasant to roast for lunch, along with bread sauce and all the trimmings. Before long, the cottage was filled with steam and with all the familiar smells and textures of past Christmases, evoked as a substitute for the company she would dearly have preferred. She switched the wireless on while she ate her lunch, hoping that the battery would outlast the snow, and listened as a strange, hesitant voice delivered his first seasonal message; how many of his subjects, Josephine wondered, would raise their glass to the King’s health this Christmas, still thinking of the man who was now overseas?
Darkness came early, and with it the dancing of new snow against old. Her adventurous spirit faded a little more as she looked out of the window and saw the charcoal branches disappearing once again behind a soft gauze of white. She could only guess at how long her enforced solitude would last, and the evening brought with it a melancholy curiosity about the people she loved and what they might be doing; in her mind’s eye, she watched them all without her, visiting each home with a Marleyesque knowing, and when she got to the fireside at Lydia’s cottage, she knew she needed a distraction more compelling than an anonymous voice over the airwaves. She finished her drink and took a selection of candles and lamps upstairs, then went back to fetch the sturdiest knife she could find and the hammer she had used to break the ice. The room could be forgiven for its chill on a night like this, and she shivered as she looked at the trunk in the corner and the sheet that had slipped down to the floor. Shadows from the candlelight flickered playfully across the discarded window seat, bringing the words to life again in a shifting, staccato dance of regret, and Josephine hesitated, wondering if venturing up here really was the best way of entertaining herself when there was a whole bookshelf downstairs. But curiosity spurred her on – curiosity and, if she were honest, guilt: she still felt that she had failed Hester by not securing any form of justice for her death, and she was tired of loose ends; if the trunk offered the smallest insight into the rest of Lucy’s life – the life Hester had so badly wanted to bring out into the open – something at least would have been achieved.
She slid the blade of her knife behind the rusted clasp and struck the handle hard with the hammer, surprised when the whole fitting came away in a single blow. The padlock clattered to the floor, absurdly loud in the silence of the room, and the now defenceless chest seemed to dare Josephine to violate it still further. She put her hand on the lid and raised it a few inches, and a stale, musty smell rose up to greet her, the scent of mould and damp and years of neglect. It was easy to see why: the trunk seemed to be packed with rotted clothes and linen that had failed the test of time, but her initial disappointment gave way to excitement when she saw what was resting on the very top of the pile. The book was a leather-bound journal, purpose-made and far grander than the makeshift volumes in which Lucy had recorded her earlier years, but filled with the same familiar handwriting. The pages were stained and fragile, but still legible, and Josephine felt a rush of excitement when she turned to the beginning and saw that it picked up again not long after the last diary had ended, at Lucy’s Boxing Day wedding. There might be more books inside, but this would do for now and she took it downstairs, clutching it as tightly as a child with a favourite present.
She put a log on the fire, unwrapped the wine meant for Dodie and stood the bottle to warm, then settled down with the diary, just as she had a couple of months earlier.
27 December, 1828
This is the first day of my new life, and I will try to write down the joys as they come in this special book that Samuel gave me this mornin’, my first in wakin’ at Red Barn Cottage. He says he hopes I will need many more to hold all the happy days that are to come. Everyone has been kind, and Samuel is a sweet and gentle man. The Missis sent the most beautiful present of Irish linen. Samuel’s new master provided a side of beef and more beer than we c’d drink for our weddin’ party, and Molly was the prettiest girl at the weddin’. The Martins have given me Maria’s clothes chest for a weddin’ gift. Her father said she w’d have wanted me to have it, and that she c’d not have had a better friend. I shall treasure it all my days, but his words mean more. How I wish Maria had been there.
The first snow is startin’, and Samuel has gone to fetch Molly from his sister, where she stay’d last night. Hannah filled the cottage with holly and mistletoe for our weddin’ night. It has never look’d finer, but perhaps that is because it is now my home.
Josephine smiled to herself when she remembered her own pleasure at decorating the rooms, and the pride she had felt in how beautiful everywhere looked; it might be a century later, but life at Red Barn Cottage didn’t seem to have changed very much, and the sense of tradition and continuity was satisfying. She moved on to the next entry, noticing that this was not a regular diary like its predecessors, but a more occasional record of a busy and happy life; as Samuel had said – a book for recording special days.
12 February, 1829
My birthday, and Samuel brought me snowdrops early this mornin’. Molly made me give her my book so that she c’d draw a picture of us all together, and I will treasure it. She has drawn us in the garden, which she loves. I have promis’d her that when the spring comes we will make a garden together. Samuel is away at market with the master’s cattle. While he is gone, I am sewin’ a quilt for our bed, which I will give him when it is finish’d.
As far as Josephine could remember, Lucy’s needlework skills left a lot to be desired, but it was a moving gesture and, having learned in the churchyard that neither Samuel nor Molly were long-lived, she was glad to know that family life had been happy for Lucy while it lasted. She looked at Molly’s drawing, saddened to think that she had died so young, and wondered how Lucy had borne the sorrow of it all.
25 March
Took Molly for a walk by Flaggy Pond. Spring is finally here, and everywhere I look the world is alive with somethin’ new. I hope soon we will be bless’d with a brother or sister for Molly. Samuel says I must be patient. I am teachin’ Molly her letters, and she is learnin’ the names of the flowers in the garden. She is quick to learn and always askin’ me questions, and she fills the house with laughter.
3 July
Nan Martin told me today that they have taken William’s bones to a hospital in Bury, where people can see them for a few pennies. She said her father went yesterday to look, and put a shillin’ in the box. It made me think of Maria, and I know she will come to me again tonight in my dreams. I have promis’d Samuel to try to forget, and I will not speak to him of Maria any longer, but I will not turn my back on my friend like the rest of the village has.
So the journal was not to be simply for special days, Josephine thought; even now, although Lucy’s life was so different, the memory of Maria obviously threatened her relationship with Samuel. She remembered the cherry trees and the rose; it must have been hard for a husband to live in the shadow of that murder, to know that – whatever he did – he could never entirely dispel his wife’s grief, or fill the hole left by the loss of her closest friend.
11 August
It is a year since they hang’d William. Some of the village folk say they have seen his ghost near Maria’s cottage. They say he came in a dark shadow in the cloak he wore at his trial, but if anyone has the right to walk this earth, it is Maria’s spirit they sh’d fear. She comes to me when I least expect her. The parson has agreed that she may have a stone on her grave at last, so folk will not forget her.
15 September
Took some of Maria’s roses up to the churchyard, and c’d have wept. People have chipp’d and broken her stone. Samuel says strangers have done it to make money, like they did with the barn. So the Reverend Whitmore is right, and it will not be long before he tells us so. Still they come to the field, dress’d in their Sunday finest, to see the barn where she lay. They will not let he
r rest.
Josephine didn’t doubt that anyone living so close to the scene of a notorious murder would tire of the constant attention, but how much worse it must have been for someone who had loved Maria, who still missed her so desperately. The agricultural unrest that had led to the burning of the barn – while difficult for a farmer like Samuel – was surely a blessing for Lucy.
31 May, 1832
There is joy in our house. At last the day has come when I can write in my book that I am with child. Samuel will not say it, but I know he hopes for a boy. I am so happy that I do not mind as long as he or she is well.
The next few entries recorded Lucy’s growing excitement over her pregnancy, and Josephine could barely read them, knowing as she did that Lucy and Samuel were to lose two daughters. She did not know, of course, if other children had survived, but by November her fears seemed justified.
25 November
Never have I known a winter to be so hard. Samuel works all the hours God sends to put food on the table and I try to help as I can but the child is a heavy burden and I am not as strong as I might be. Molly runs wild with no one to watch her and Samuel will not scold her when she disobeys me. I am so tired, and I fear our child will come before its time.
19 December
Hannah has come to help with my lyin’ in, and has made a bed for me in Molly’s old room so that Samuel can get his rest. It is strange to be away from him, and to see them all carry on without me and have another woman runnin’ my home. I will be glad when the child is here and I can take my place again. I try not look out at the barn, but there is no help for it in this room.
