The Secrets of Castle Du Rêve

by Hannah Emery

‘Here you go.’ Tom hands Beatrice over to Isobel. The baby’s head wobbles next to Isobel’s shoulder and Isobel lifts her hand higher up to give it some support.

  Don’t forget to support her head, love, the midwife or one of the nurses, or somebody, said to Isobel this morning in the hospital. Isobel had burned with humiliation as she scooped up Beatrice’s lolling head in her arms. How had she forgotten to support the baby’s head? Everybody knows you have to do that.

  ‘Did you get some sleep before?’ Tom asks as Isobel unclips her bra and begins to feed Beatrice.

  ‘Not really. But it doesn’t matter. I had a rest.’

  ‘Iris called. She’s going to come round later. Is that okay?’

  ‘Of course. I want to see her.’ At the thought of Iris, Isobel wants to cry. She shakes her head. What’s wrong with her? If this is how she’s going to be as a mother, then she isn’t going to do a very good job.

  Tom puts a hand on Isobel’s shoulder. ‘Isobel, is something bothering you? Or are you just a bit overwhelmed by everything?’

  Isobel smiles, her lips cracking again, her face hurting, everything seeming to be such hard work. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Do you want me to run you a bath before Iris comes?’

  Beatrice has stopped feeding, so Isobel stands up and pats her on the back like the nurses showed her, and then puts her back in the crib. She’s asleep again now, her little face frowning with the effort. ‘Thank you. I’d love that.’

  Tom puts lavender in the bath, and the woody, soapy smell rises up in the steam of the bathroom as Isobel enters. Daphne’s main bathroom is painted a deep blue. Seahorses and shells adorn the walls and a blue wicker chair sits in the corner. Tom perches on it for a moment.

  ‘You will feel like yourself again soon,’ he says, although it isn’t clear if he’s trying to convince Isobel or himself.

  ‘I hope so.’ Isobel peels her clothes from her strange, baggy body, stepping carefully into the oily bathwater. She brings up her knees to her chest. ‘I keep panicking that I’m going to be no good as a mum,’ she blurts out. Tom springs up and moves over to Isobel. His shirt is wet as he leans against the cool ceramic side.

  ‘You mustn’t think that. It’s rubbish.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’ Isobel’s voice cracks like glass, and tears mingle with the water on her face. ‘I just don’t feel ready. And I won’t be a good mum, because I keep thinking horrible things,’ Isobel says, unable to stop the torrent of quiet words spilling from her lips. ‘I keep thinking that there’s so much I was going to do. I keep thinking of the dream box at Iris’s, and how I need to throw all my things in there away.’

  ‘What dream box?’

  ‘We have a box. We had a box,’ Isobel says, correcting herself carefully. ‘And in it was all the things we were going to do. Like places we wanted to go. I told you about it. Or I told you that Iris and me were planning to go to Paris and Vienna together. I had maps and pictures of Vienna. And Iris had things about Paris. And I’ve just had a beautiful baby girl, and I can’t seem to focus on her at all. Yet I can focus on that box and what was in it! What’s wrong with me?’ her words are high and loud, and she wonders if Daphne might hear her.

  ‘Isobel, that’s not horrible. It’s probably normal. It’ll just take some time to adjust, that’s all. But we’ll manage it.’

  There’s a knock on the bathroom door: quiet, reluctant.

  ‘Isobel? Are you both in there? Beatrice is awake. She needs you.’

  Tom hands Isobel a towel and she stands slowly, the cooled water dripping down from her distorted body, suds sliding over her stretched skin. She catches sight of herself in the mirror.

  Somebody’s mother.

  Beatrice’s mother.

  The reflection is ghostly with fatigue, blotchy with upset, somebody Isobel cannot recognise.

  Iris brings with her a bunch of magenta peonies and the smell of fresh air and freedom. She sets them down on Daphne’s coffee table and then moves to the crib, where Beatrice is still sleeping.

  ‘Oh!’ She covers her mouth with her slim, freckled hand. ‘Isobel, she’s so beautiful! How are you feeling? How’s it all going?’ She looks around furtively and then lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘I hope Daphne isn’t interfering too much?’

  Isobel shakes her head. ‘No. Actually, she’s having very little to do with us. She’s barely even held Beatrice. She’s out at the moment. She’s walking the dog a lot since we got home. It’s like she doesn’t want to be here with us.’

  Iris frowns but she says nothing, just puts her hand to her mouth again as Beatrice wriggles and stretches in her loosely swaddled blankets.

  ‘She’s a little dream.’

  ‘Iris,’ Isobel begins. Iris looks up, her green eyes expectant, her face open, ready to accept anything.

  What is it that Isobel wants Iris to accept? That she doesn’t feel like herself any more? That her mind is moving more slowly than it used to, that her words have all gone? It doesn’t even make any sense.

  ‘Thanks for my peonies.’

  Iris grins, her face relaxing. ‘You’re welcome. I’ve not bought Beatrice anything yet. I wanted to get to know her first.’

  ‘I feel like I need to get to know her, too,’ Isobel says carefully.

  Iris sits down next to Isobel on the sofa. The scent of outdoors has faded, and now she smells just like Iris again: lemony and familiar.

  ‘You need to give yourself time,’ she says firmly, taking hold of Isobel’s hand. Isobel looks down at their hands. Iris’s have always been delicate, china-like. Isobel’s are stockier, with sturdier fingers that Iris’s rings won’t fit on. Iris’s fingernails are glossy, painted dark red, almost black. Isobel’s are bright red and chipped. She wonders where her ruby-coloured ring is that she was wearing when she went into hospital to have Beatrice. There’s so much she doesn’t know. So much she can’t remember.

  ‘That’s what Tom said. I’m just a bit worried about it all,’ Isobel says, and then stops. She’s read about the baby blues, fleetingly glanced over websites and NHS leaflets that talked about day three: crying, fearing, fretting. But this doesn’t bear any relation to those websites. It’s darker and bigger, and feels like more than just a few hormonal tears.

  ‘Isobel, this is all huge. You have just had a baby. You will adjust soon, in your own time. Tom will help you, and so will I. Okay?’

  Isobel looks at Iris, at the face she has known for so long: watched as it has changed from gap-toothed and freckled to slender and expertly made up with delicate kohl and highlighter. Iris knows Isobel more than anyone. If Iris thinks everything will be fine, then Isobel has to believe her.

  ‘Okay,’ she says, smiling and standing up. She peers into the basket and tries to summon her strongest feelings of love. She thinks about her mother, and how much she loved her, and tries to reverse the feeling inside of her, so that it’s flipped on its head: mother to daughter.

  Iris makes them tea and brings it in on one of Daphne’s floral trays. They sip and dunk in some elaborate chocolate and ginger biscuits that Tom finds in the cupboard behind the teabags and jars of expensive coffee.

  ‘I’d better get going,’ Iris says after about an hour, standing up and brushing some gold biscuit crumbs from her floral tea dress. ‘I’ve got another exhibition to organise.’ Iris leans down and kisses the air next to Beatrice’s cheek, then gives Isobel a tight hug.

  ‘I’ll see you out, Iris,’ Tom says, gesturing for Isobel to sit back down on the sofa. She obeys and waves as Iris leaves the room. It’s only after, when she hears the hissing of Iris and Tom whispering from the hall, and Tom disappears straight upstairs after the front door bangs shut, that Isobel wonders why she didn’t see Iris out herself.

  Beatrice’s first days blur past like the view from a train. Isobel can’t sleep when Beatrice does. Tom closes his eyes whenever it’s quiet, and appears to fall asleep promptly and efficiently. A midwife sits in the lounge with Isobel and asks h
er questions about how she feels and ticks and scribbles in a file and offers a concerned expression of well-practiced sympathy to Isobel. A health visitor comes and does the same, her head inclined, her brows low with textbook concern, which Isobel finds unbearable, and so she finds herself telling them both that she is doing very well, all things considered, and managing to feed Beatrice well, and sleep well, and is looking forward to getting out and about a bit.

  By the time Beatrice is a week old, Isobel is fractured with exhaustion. Everything she touches seems to fall to the floor. Her skin aches and her head pounds with each sound she hears: the wail of Beatrice, the clearing of Tom’s throat, the clatter of pans from the kitchen in the rare moments when Daphne is home.

  ‘I have to pop out,’ Tom says. He’s been off work for a week and isn’t due back there for another few days.

  ‘Not to the restaurant?’

  ‘No. I just need to pick something up.’

  ‘From where?’ She’s interrogating him. She can see he doesn’t want her to. His eyes flicker, a rare instant of uneasiness.

  ‘From Lucas, the guy who lives below my old flat. He kept a few of my things stored at his for me. You just try and get some rest while Beatrice is asleep. I won’t be long. Mum might be back soon too.’

  Daphne doesn’t return while Tom is out. Isobel lies on the sofa, pulls the blanket over her, closes her eyes. But the strange, animal snorts and grunts that rise from Beatrice’s crib and hang in the air make it impossible for Isobel to drift away into her own sleep. She sits up and stares across the room. She could do all sorts of things while Beatrice sleeps. All the things she hasn’t done since her life cracked like an egg. She could read something, or watch television, or cook something so that Daphne doesn’t have to bother later. But she can’t make herself do anything, except stay in the room and listen tensely to Beatrice’s foreign sounds.

  Eventually, Tom comes home.

  ‘Everything alright?’ he asks.

  Isobel nods. She has no idea how long he has been out for. But her muscles ache, rigid with remaining in one position on the sofa.

  ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she says, slowly getting to her feet. She’s still doing everything slowly. She forces herself to make the tea at a pace more like her own. She darts about the kitchen, filling the kettle, squashing teabags down into the mugs, pouring the steaming water and the milk. But in her haste, somehow, she drops one of the cups of tea, gasping as the hot water hits her leg.

  ‘You must have a sleep,’ Tom says, appearing suddenly behind her. Hot brown liquid scalds Isobel’s knees, clinging to her jeans. She takes them off while she’s still in the kitchen to reveal angry red skin on her thighs. It’s the second time she’s burned herself in two days.

  ‘You’re not functioning properly,’ he continues, taking hold of her hand and pulling her up. ‘You’re not sleeping at all, are you? You didn’t sleep while I was out?’

  Isobel shakes her head. Whenever Beatrice wakes up, Isobel is waiting for her with an intensity she’s never felt before. When Beatrice goes back to sleep, Isobel lies stiffly next to the crib, tensing with every snuffle and creak of the darkened wood.

  Tom eases Isobel up gently from the sofa. ‘Come on. You have to sleep.’

  Isobel says nothing, but lets herself be taken upstairs by Tom. Once she’s in their bedroom, she pulls on some pyjama trousers and climbs into bed. Tom kisses her forehead and strokes a strand of auburn hair from her eyes.

  ‘Sleep,’ he commands. ‘You’ll feel so much better for it.’ His phone rings from his pocket as he leaves the room and Isobel sits up in bed. Tom’s words creep into her bedroom, but they are blurred together and she can’t hear what they are.

  Who is he talking to? She wants to get up and ask him, but Daphne is downstairs, and Isobel doesn’t want Daphne to know about any of the worry that is coursing through her. Yesterday Tom left his phone on the sofa next to Isobel and when it began to ring, he launched himself across her to grab it, fumbled with the keys to cancel the call. She raised her eyebrows at him, but he slipped the phone into his pocket and left the room, and when he returned Daphne was there and Isobel stayed silent.

  Now, Isobel closes her eyes and waits for sleep to wash over her. She feels as though a part of her has been asleep for days and days. That part of her lies dormant, oblivious, but doesn’t make her any less tired.

  Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. The word loses meaning and she turns over in bed. Her thoughts drift by like clouds: thoughts of Beatrice and her mother, images of Tom and Iris and Daphne and midwives and doctors. The beeping and wailing and dizzy blur of the labour floats in her mind. New scenes that she hasn’t seen before somehow emerge. Beatrice is handed to her, slippery and purple. Tom leans down and kisses her, his lips pressing down on her slick, sweating forehead. Iris asks Tom about the name for the baby. And Daphne weeps, muttering a string of broken words about Tom not being who Isobel thinks he is.

  Isobel sits up in bed. The room spins around her. Downstairs Beatrice starts to cry.

  ‘Was your mum there when I was in labour?’ Isobel asks Tom as she stands at the door of the sitting room.

  He looks up from Beatrice. She is on his knee, her pink scaly fingers gripping his thumb.

  ‘Yes, I thought you knew? Iris was there too. It was all quite frantic.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Isobel says, seeing worry dart over Tom’s face. ‘It’s just that I’m having these sort of flashbacks about it all. I’m remembering things I didn’t really take in at the time. I’ve remembered that your mum was crying.’

  Tom shrugs. ‘Of course she was. It’s her first grandchild.’

  ‘I know, but it was more than that. She was saying strange things.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About you. How you’re not who I think you are, or something.’ Isobel tries to wrench the accusatory note from the words, but they are inseparable. The tone and the words hang in the air like a sour smell and she wishes she hadn’t said anything.

  Tom shakes his head. He’s tired too: his skin is pale with dry patches around the chin. Normally he moisturises and Isobel mocks him affectionately for it. He must have forgotten, or not wanted to bother, or perhaps the cream just isn’t good enough to balance out all the broken sleep.

  ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you just remembered this?’

  Isobel nods.

  ‘Well, then, isn’t there a chance you drifted off to sleep and just dreamt it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It seems so real.’

  Tom stands up and passes Beatrice to Isobel. She smells of sour milk, of sickly sweet baby-friendly washing powder, of another world completely.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Isobel asks him.

  ‘I’m going to pack Beatrice some things. I think we need to go out. We need a change of scenery.’

  Isobel nods. She carries Beatrice upstairs with her and lays her on the middle of the bed before opening her wardrobe. She’s worn only jeans and pyjamas for the last few days. Today, she’s going to dress like Isobel. She takes one of her favourite outfits from before she had the baby, an olive-green dress from Topshop. It skims her protruding belly kindly.

  She rifles through her makeup bag. She hasn’t looked in there since bringing Beatrice home from hospital. She rubs some foundation into her cheeks, across her nose and forehead. Already she looks better. She picks through the rest of the bag and finds her mascara. Her lashes aren’t quite black, but cocoa brown. Black makes her eyes look rounder and bigger, and she strokes the wand over her lashes again and again. As she’s zipping her makeup bag up again, she sees a gold tube of lipstick. She picks it out. She collects red lipsticks. Her mum had a thing for red lips.

  People say red is a no-go for us redheads. But that makes me want to wear it more.

  Isobel was about five when her mother told her this. Us redheads had stuck in her mind. She was the same as her glamorous, grown-up mother? She’d hugged the words close to her,
never forgetting them. As an adult, she’d admired the punch of the words, the determination to go against sober advice. Brick, Pillarbox, Rose, Crimson, Blood. Isobel has all the reds. This one is called Scarlett Kiss. She slicks it onto her lips and then stares at herself in the mirror until Tom appears in the en suite.

  ‘You look lovely,’ he says.

  They walk through the narrow streets to the main stretch of Silenshore. Beatrice is impeccable in her pram, sleeping gracefully as they wheel her over uneven cobbles. It feels good being outside. The air is warm and golden, the salt from the sea tangy on Isobel’s lips. She walks slowly beside Tom, still sore and stiff from the labour. They head uphill, towards the castle. Its turrets glow with the sunlight behind them, the stone glinting gold.

  ‘Let’s sit down for a minute,’ Isobel says when they reach the bench outside Harpers. She rocks the pram gently with one hand as she sits down, and Tom nods towards Beatrice and smiles.

  ‘Look, you’re a natural, rocking her like that.’

  Isobel sighs. ‘I’m not sure.’ She stares into the pram, where Beatrice is lost in white blankets. A pale-pink rabbit toy rests next to her cheek, bigger than her head.

  My daughter.

  She looks over to Tom, to try and gauge whether his expression betrays a better understanding of having a daughter than Isobel’s. But he’s turned away, rooting in Beatrice’s changing bag.

  ‘I love her,’ Isobel says. She listens to the words before they drift away down Silenshore Hill, tries them on like a dress she’s not sure suits her. Beatrice doesn’t show any sign of hearing, or caring. Her full strawberry-coloured pout and her miniature nose, her tuft of dark hair like Tom’s, her tiny fingers, peep from the depths of the pram.

  ‘I love her,’ she repeats. ‘My daughter.’

  The words won’t penetrate Isobel’s mind. They float on the surface, like leaves on a lake.

  Chapter 16

  Evelyn: 1948

  The day that her daughter was born, Evelyn gazed down at her, a fireball of love forming rapidly in her chest. The baby had shining black hair and a tiny pink scrunched-up face. Evelyn could see Jack in her new baby, but she could also see her mother and father. She was a true du Rêve. She was special, beautiful. And to prove it, Evelyn gave her the name of a queen.