The Secrets of Castle Du Rêve

by Hannah Emery

  H

  The day after her due date, Isobel stands in front of the mirror in the front bedroom at Broadsands. Her ruby ring lies on the carpet where she’s just dropped it, staring up at her helplessly.

  Why is it that now she can’t bend down, she drops things so often?

  As she’s bracing herself for the almost impossible task of retrieving the ring, she hears Daphne on the landing outside her room.

  ‘Isobel? Everything okay?’ she asks. Her voice is the same as always: too small and quiet for such a tall woman.

  Since Isobel finished work to begin her maternity leave a few weeks ago, she and Daphne have lived relatively peacefully together. Isobel has joined Daphne on some walks along the promenade, Hugh bounding ahead of them, the women walking quietly. Daphne is mostly silent and cool. But the companionship is fairly peaceful and sometimes even pleasant. Maternity leave from the school has crept up suddenly on Isobel, and because the baby isn’t here yet, she feels like she’s straddling old life and new.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Isobel says to Daphne. ‘I’ve dropped my ring, though.’

  Daphne swoops down and picks up the ring, handing it to Isobel, the red stone twinkling as she does. Then she bends again, retrieving a hairbrush from under the bed.

  ‘Oh thanks, I was wondering where that’d gone. I never would have found it.’

  Daphne smiles and stands at the door, but doesn’t reply.

  ‘I feel like this last part of my pregnancy seems never-ending,’ Isobel continues as she pulls the brush through her thick hair. Her good hairbrush is packed in her hospital bag, which waits in her wardrobe. This brush is plastic and static-inducing, and snags her coarse hair, pulling at her scalp.

  Daphne nods, moving over to the window, staring outside.

  ‘I’m going for a walk with Iris. It’s her day off,’ Isobel says. ‘The midwife says I should keep active.’

  Daphne nods again, still watching something outside.

  ‘Where’s Tom? Is he at work?’ she asks sharply, not turning to Isobel as she speaks.

  Without thinking, Isobel moves over to Daphne and places a hand on the woman’s bony shoulder. She looks down through the window. The street is deserted. A hearse is pulled up across the road and Isobel wonders if Daphne is thinking of Tom’s dad, of the day when a somber black car pulled up outside Broadsands.

  ‘Yes. Tom’s doing the early shift today. He’ll be back at about three o’clock. Are you alright?’ she asks.

  Daphne swings around suddenly, her eyes wide, the yellowing whites giving her a ghoulish look for a moment that passes as quickly as it arrives.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she snaps. ‘Have a nice walk,’ she says as she leaves the room, her face pale.

  ‘No twinges?’ Iris asks an hour or so later as she and Isobel pick their way over pebbles on Silenshore beach. The air has changed from sharp to smooth as spring has gently taken a hold of the town. The tide crashes in the distance, dark and frothing, as though the sea is trapped in another season to the beach altogether, an eternal winter.

  Isobel breathes in the salty, golden air. ‘Nothing yet. I had a few pains in the night, but they didn’t amount to anything. I’m desperate for the baby to just come now. I’m too impatient to be overdue,’ she grins, pulling her hair back from her face. ‘I’m so glad you’re off work today. It’s lovely to be with you. Daphne’s nice enough, but she makes me feel a bit awkward sometimes.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘She just acts a bit oddly sometimes. Tom thinks she’s overwhelmed by the idea of a baby, which does makes sense.’

  Isobel looks away from the sea, up to the top of Silenshore, where the castle looms above the town. She imagines the lessons going on inside the turrets, the secrets being whispered about in the staffroom, the echoes of shouts from pupils in the courtyard. It’s not even a year since she stood in the courtyard behind her bookstall at the school fair, since she met Tom and her life suddenly bloomed into full colour.

  ‘How’s it going with Seth?’ she asks Iris. ‘Is he still lovely?’

  Iris grabs Isobel’s hand in hers excitedly. They walk hand in hand along the beach for a second. Isobel is transported back to their childhood, when she used to run along the uneven sands with Iris, their red hair streaming behind them both like two bright kites.

  ‘Oh Isobel, he’s brilliant. I’ve got something to tell you!’ There’s excitement in Iris’s voice: a freedom and lightness that tells Isobel her news isn’t pregnancy or even marriage. She knows what it is before Iris says it. She thinks of the dream box that she left behind at the flat.

  ‘Seth’s taking me to Paris!’ Iris says eventually. She squeezes Isobel’s hand as she says it. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you. But he’s surprised me. We’re going in June. He’s spoken to the gallery and booked time off for me and everything. He’s visiting a gallery whilst we’re there, because they are considering exhibiting his work.’ She drops Isobel’s hand and stops, pulling Isobel to face her. ‘I know we were going to go to Paris together. And we still can at some point. Vienna too. But with your baby and everything, it just seems…’ she stops talking, searching Isobel’s face, concerned.

  Isobel reaches out to hug Iris. ‘Of course you should go. I’m so happy for you.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re not upset,’ Iris says. ‘I was looking in our dream box last night. I found all my Paris things. My map is probably out of date now, but I’m going to take it anyway.’

  ‘You should definitely take your map. I’m sure most places will be the same. Just keep my Vienna things safe and I will come and get them when I can.’

  ‘I will. Vienna will always be there, Isobel. You still need to go. But you have a more pressing concern first.’ Iris grins, and reaches out to touch Isobel’s large, firm belly.

  They turn back and walk towards the promenade. There’s very little there, and hasn’t been since the 1980s, when the prosperity and popularity of Silenshore began slipping away like the tide itself.

  ‘So tell me all your Paris plans,’ Isobel says, her breath tight with the effort of walking and talking. Iris begins chattering quickly and excitedly. But the flow of words about the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and Arc de Triomphe are suddenly drowned by a flood of pain that rips through Isobel’s body as they climb up the steps to the promenade path. She bends over, the concrete glittering beneath her, dangerously near as she sways towards the ground. The tearing pain soars through her again, and she moans, unable to formulate anything other than sounds. She feels Iris’s arm around her, hears vague sounds that merge together: her own groaning, Iris’s calm voice, seagulls crying overhead, and the faint sound of sirens becoming louder and louder, and then nothing at all.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 14

  Victoria: 1964

  ‘Are you alright?’ Harry asked Victoria in early October, when glowing orange leaves lined Silenshore’s pavements, blowing into Lace Antiques every time the door opened. ‘You’re very quiet.’

  ‘Of course I’m alright. It’s the cold. It makes me feel a little gloomy, that’s all,’ Victoria said. That morning had been a dreadful one. Harry had bought her a new green shift dress about three weeks before as a surprise. She’d gone to try it on today, only to find that the zip at the back wouldn’t do up. She had tugged at it, red-faced and hot, until there was a frightening snap and the zip pull broke off in her hands.

  ‘I wanted you to have this,’ Harry had said when he gave the dress to her. She’d admired it the day he had taken her to London in a window on Carnaby Street.

  ‘I don’t know if green would suit me,’ she’d said when she had first seen it, staring up at the stiff mannequin, who was modeling it indifferently.

  ‘Green for a Queen,’ Harry smiled. ‘Shall I buy it for you?’

  Victoria moved towards the window, then shrank back. ‘It’s ten pounds! Come on, let’s go. I don’t want it.’

  But of course she did want it, and when Harry arrived at
Lace Antiques with a shiny cream gift box a few days after they’d been to London, a bubble of excitement had popped inside her. She’d known exactly what was in the box. When she lifted the lid and saw the bright-green material she jumped up and down and hugged Harry.

  ‘We’ll go to London again and you can wear it,’ he’d said.

  But they hadn’t gone to London yet because the new term had started and Harry became busy with new students and marking and muttering things about grammatical errors and attendance. Then, when he began to emerge from the chaos of the new term and mentioned London, Victoria was busy trying to cover up the scent of vomit and hide from Harry the fact that she couldn’t go a day without throwing up or having to sit down every ten minutes.

  And now the dress was too small.

  Victoria folded it up and placed it in the dustbin, dry-eyed and numb with panic.

  Now, Harry glanced behind him at the door to check that nobody was there, then hugged Victoria. She could barely breathe, he squeezed her that tightly, but that didn’t matter.

  ‘Warm enough now?’ he asked, his voice in her ear.

  She nodded into the rough tweed of his suit. The truth was, she was boiling hot, even though the air was crisp with the lurking winter. He took her hand and looked at her, making her want to cry.

  ‘Victoria, I am so sorry that we’re living like this. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for you. I want it to change so much. I do wish I wasn’t stuck.’

  Stuck. Like the zip. Force it, and it will break.

  ‘I know,’ Victoria said.

  Harry took Victoria’s hands, his features tight with frustration. ‘I have practically begged Sarah. She still won’t agree to a divorce. But I won’t give up.’

  ‘You’re cold too,’ Victoria said, feeling the cool skin of Harry’s hand. ‘You could have come upstairs, but my mother’s up there in bed.’

  Harry looked at his watch and sighed. ‘I should get back to work. Will you walk with me a little way or do you have to stay here?’

  Tiredness weighed Victoria down. She thought of her bed, the house silent around her, heavy, sleeping dreams of when everything was simple. ‘I have to stay,’ she said.

  As she watched Harry’s tall figure disappear from view, Victoria gripped the counter and fought the tears that threatened to spill out. If she started, she would never stop.

  ‘Victoria, where’s this dress from and why is it in the dustbin?’

  Victoria swung around. Her mother stood behind her in a white cotton nightdress that hung down to the floor. In her hands was the folded green dress. How long had her mother been standing there? Victoria quickly recalled everything she’d said to Harry before he had left. He had kissed her: how long ago had that been? Her mind whirred, slow and tangled with secrets.

  ‘It was Sally’s dress. It doesn’t fit her any more. She’s put on some weight since she bought it. But it doesn’t fit me either.’

  ‘It’s brand new. It still has the tags.’

  Then there was a silence, big enough to fall into and never return from.

  ‘Victoria? I want to know what’s happening to you. Please, darling, speak to me.’

  A black eye and a week in bed. Victoria’s mother knew what it was like to be snapped in half by life. Victoria, overcome by an urge she hadn’t had for so many years, leaned forward and hugged her mother. Her skin was cool, her nightdress soft from being slept in. Stale Chanel mixed with skin, and a faint smell of apples and wine, sour and sweet. She held onto Victoria weakly but determinedly, like a child.

  ‘Darling, oh darling, what’s the matter? What’s the matter? Tell me, tell me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Victoria said, pulling away, her black hair tangling with her mother’s and her tears, hot and stinging, leaking oily black mascara onto the white cotton nightdress.

  Victoria’s mother took hold of her hands, and the green shift dress dropped to the floor in a heap.

  ‘The dress isn’t Sally’s. It’s mine. But it doesn’t fit me,’ Victoria wailed suddenly. ‘It’s too small.’

  Mrs Lace’s blue eyes darting over her daughter’s body, seeing everything.

  ‘Was it the university man?’ she asked, still holding Victoria’s hands.

  Victoria nodded, dizzy with the release of her secret.

  ‘We will go to the doctor.’

  Victoria wailed again, a howl of fear bursting from her soul.

  ‘We must. He will give you advice. You mustn’t tell your father. He can’t ever know.’

  ‘How on earth will we keep it from him? I’m already getting too big for my clothes!’

  Mrs Lace brought her fingers to her mouth and began chewing ferociously on her nails. Victoria had never seen her mother bite her nails, and seeing it now made everything worse, made her mother seem like a frightened animal.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘We will go to Dr Bright, and then we will decide what to do.’

  What to do, what to do. The words circled in Victoria’s mind like rooks over a ruined castle. The cawing sound of the words followed Victoria around, but it was only when she was sitting beside her mother, in the hot, cramped doctor’s office that smelt of germs, that their meaning screamed out at her.

  ‘Sixteen years old, and unmarried. I see,’ Dr Bright said after a few silent, staring moments. ‘Do you have stairs in your house?’ His pen was poised carefully over his notepad, making no contact with the paper. The room seemed to contract with his words. Mrs Lace inhaled sharply. And that’s when the screaming began in Victoria’s head. She didn’t know if she was actually doing the screaming, or if it was only in her mind. She focused on the doctor’s pen. It quivered slightly in his hand.

  ‘We do,’ Victoria’s mother said quietly. ‘But we won’t be using them.’

  Dr Bright dropped his pen abruptly. It bounced off his pad and landed on the floor. He didn’t move: made no attempt to pick it up. He would, it seemed, be making no note of this meeting.

  ‘There are homes for this sort of thing, as far as I’m aware,’ he said next, standing and opening the door. ‘Good day,’ he said loudly as the door swung open.

  The walk back downhill was cold and grey. Victoria closed her eyes as they walked, knowing the Silenshore streets so well that she didn’t need them open. The cobbles didn’t trip her, the slope didn’t force her forward. She opened her eyes again when she heard her mother speak next to her. She had forgotten her mother was with her; she had forgotten everything apart from the feel of the ground under her feet and the slicing cold air on her face.

  ‘You’ll have to marry him,’ Victoria’s mother was saying, her breathy voice being swirled around in the autumn breeze.

  Victoria walked a little longer, then stopped and faced her mother. Time stilled. People passed them, talking about things they thought mattered, but didn’t, because nothing mattered at all, nothing but this.

  ‘He’s already married,’ she whispered, looking into her mother’s watering eyes. The whisper was lost in the blur of the breeze and the street and other people’s sounds, but Victoria’s mother heard. Her eyes flooded, tears drenching her pale face, turning it to melting wax. Her hand, trembling, reached out and took Victoria’s.

  ‘Oh, darling. My darling, darling girl.’

  Victoria’s mother told Jack about Victoria’s situation on the evening of the first day of December. Victoria lay in bed, her bedroom door locked by her mother. She heard shouts and the ugly thud of something heavy being thrown across the room. Her door rattled then, her father shouting through it that she’d ruined them all and ruined the business, that Lace Antiques was down the drain, that she’d have to come up with some other way of housing them and putting food on the table.

  And then the worst came. The quiet was always the worst. Victoria lay under her eiderdown, a hand on her swollen belly. She could feel the baby move. It flipped around haphazardly, stretching her skin like rubber. Victoria rolled over onto her side and listened again for the soun
ds of her parents. None came. Her mother might be asleep, and her father would be out at the Smuggler’s. A tight wire of anxiety pulled through Victoria’s body as she pulled the eiderdown up to her chin. Jack would be home just after 11pm, reeking of beer and anger. It was about eight o’clock now. Three hours of waiting, of lying stiffly as a corpse until he came back. Impossible.

  She threw off the cover and heaved herself out of bed, trembling in the sharp, cold air. She tried her bedroom door, but it was still locked. She tapped on it lightly, pressing her head to the bright wood to listen for her mother. When no sound came, Victoria tapped again. If Jack was out, then her mother might rescue her. She might take her to Harry, or to Sally, or to anybody who understood that Victoria never meant for this to happen and would take her in and keep her warm and safe until the baby came. Once the baby had come, her father might prove himself different to how they had all thought. A baby might soften him. And something might be done about Harry’s marriage to Sarah. Victoria stood shivering at the door, waiting and listening, urging her mother to come. But there was no sound except her own juddering breaths. When she was too cold to stand there any longer, she returned to bed and squeezed her eyes shut, praying for sleep to wrap itself around her, and when it did, dreaming strange, mixed-up dreams of prams and horror and love.

  It was when the dreams had stopped, and Victoria was deep in a blank, heavy sleep that the crash of her father through the house woke her up. She shuffled up and propped herself up against her headboard, vaguely aware that she’d been waiting for him to return. His boots thudded up the stairs at the back of the shop, the thuds uneven as he stumbled closer. When he reached Victoria’s bedroom door, she held her breath. He tried to open it, but it stuck fast, still locked.

  She heard him shout to her mother, the rumble of a drawer opening and closing. And then her door was opened.

  Jack wasn’t a tall man. He was wide, his black hair and skin both coarse with years of alcohol. His tie was loose around his neck tonight, and for a horrible moment Victoria imagined leaping out of bed and tugging on it harder and harder until his neck cracked and his head hung forward like a broken flower.