Voices in a Haunted Room

by Philippa Carr

  But Jeanne had brought her impeccable French taste to the house. She had subtly changed the furnishings. She had made discoveries in the house and changed it a little. And Aunt Sophie had been happier here than she had since her disfigurement when she had lost her fiancé and the happy future to which she had looked forward.

  But Aunt Sophie was doomed. Those she had loved, she said, were taken from her. Her fiancé was lost to her, although it was she who had refused to marry him, so my mother told me. He would have gone on with the wedding; but he had married my mother instead. Then there was Alberic, the French spy who had come into her life and whom she had loved—so Jeanne told me—as her son. He had died—murdered, said Aunt Sophie; meeting his just deserts, said my father; it was Jonathan, my father’s own son, who had killed him and lost his own life in similar fashion.

  So many tragedies! Yes, there was something about the house, I could feel it… in this very room.

  A disembodied voice floated up to me.

  “Is Mademoiselle all right?”

  It was Jeanne speaking through the tube in the kitchen—a weird device, I had always thought it, connecting the two rooms. It always sounded odd to me, unnatural, even though I understood how it came through.

  Aunt Sophie stirred a little.

  “Am I all right?” she said. “I shall never be all right. Life is too cruel. Jessica, why do you sit there? Why don’t you go away. Just leave me in my misery.”

  “Oh, Aunt Sophie, we are all so anxious about you. We all want you to be well.”

  “I lose all those I have loved. There is something fatal about my loving. I just have to love and they are taken from me.”

  “Oh no, it is not so, Aunt Sophie.”

  She raised herself a little. “Yes, yes,” she cried vehemently. “There was Charles. He was so handsome. And he is long since dead. He married your mother. Charlot and Claudine were the result. I loved Charlot. Where is Charlot now?”

  “He has his vineyard in Burgundy. My mother longs for the end of the war so that she can visit him … or perhaps he will soon come to us.”

  “Oh, the war will be over. Your mother will see her son. Everything works well for her … whereas for me …”

  “Oh, Aunt Sophie, you are here with your family. You escaped with Jeanne. No one could have a more devoted friend than Jeanne. She at least is something to be grateful for.”

  “She is a good woman. I am devoted to her… but she is here with me in my prison. Charlot… Claudine … they might have been my children. But life is always against me. True, I escaped. I came here. I found this house. I thought life would be a little kinder to me … at last. Alberic came. He was a beautiful young man… always so eager to please me. And … they murdered him. I was fond of Dolly and she went with that gypsy and she died. But she gave me Tamarisk. I thought then I could be happy. I had this little girl to bring up as my own … mine at last. And now … she is gone. You see, whatever I do, whatever I touch, brings desolation. It is time I gave up the struggle, Jessica.”

  “You must not say such things. You have been so brave.”

  “Brave? I? Crouching in my prison … shutting myself away … afraid to see anyone … living like a hermit! You call that brave?”

  I said: “It is brave in a way.”

  She laughed. “No, it is cowardice. I was always a coward. Afraid of life. I never grasped firmly as your mother did. Perhaps I should have married Charles. He would have married me. Gentleman’s honour, you understand. I knew that he did not want me. I suspected even before the accident that it was your mother whom he wanted. I could have made him marry me. Perhaps I should have done so. I might have had children. After all, it was an obligation on his part. How different everything might have been if I had married him! Sometimes one has a choice in life. Two ways loom before one. Which should one take? And the decision makes all the difference to one’s life.”

  I was thoughtful. Was that not what Leah, the gypsy, had said to me?

  I sat there thinking of Aunt Sophie’s decision. Which would I have taken had I been in her place?

  There was silence for a while, then Aunt Sophie said: “Jessica, I sometimes feel there is no reason why I should go on. It would be so easy to let go …”

  I said: “Tamarisk will come back. I feel it in my bones.”

  She shook her head. “I shall never see Tamarisk again.”

  There was nothing I could say or do to comfort her. I kissed her forehead and took my leave.

  The weeks were passing. There was no news of Tamarisk. My father had done everything possible to trace the gypsies, but there was no sign of them. Enquiries were made and it was learned that they had not visited their usual haunts that year.

  There were whole days when no one mentioned Tamarisk which was a sign that we were all beginning to accept the evidence that she had gone with the gypsies. She was not, after all, related to us. My father said: “The child is merely Dolly Mather’s bastard by a wandering gypsy. If it wasn’t for Sophie’s preoccupation with her it would be no concern of ours that she is taken back to her father’s people. It might be said that they have more right to her than Sophie.”

  I tried to explain to him what Tamarisk had meant to Sophie, but my father was apt to be impatient of the weaknesses of others. The only two people he cared about were my mother and myself. He had a certain pride in David who was a model son and as unlike Dickon as a son could be from his father. He regretted the death of Jonathan; he had a fondness for Claudine and for Amaryllis. But they were immediate family. Outside that he had little concern. So he shrugged his shoulders. Tamarisk had gone and that was the end of the matter for him.

  How different was my mother. She was warm-hearted, making other people’s troubles her concern; and particularly so in the case of Aunt Sophie, for whom she always had had this very special obligation to help.

  Aunt Sophie was shrinking into a decline. She seemed to have shrivelled; she was constantly talking of Tamarisk, and Jeanne told me that she had gone into her room at midnight to find her at the window looking out because she had thought she heard someone in the garden and wondered if Tamarisk had come home.

  The talk at Eversleigh now was all about Napoleon’s advance on Russia. My mother always listened eagerly to news of the war. She was longing for the day when it would be over and she would be reunited with Charlot.

  There was no fresh news about him but since she had heard that he and Louis Charles had a vineyard in Burgundy, she had been hopeful. She confided in me that it had been heart-rending when she had believed he was fighting in Napoleon’s army. “Fighting against us,” she said. “It seemed so terrible. Now I can think of him in his vineyard. He will find that so interesting. And Louis Charles with him. He was always his shadow. I wonder what his wife is like. I might have grandchildren. It is maddening to be in the dark. But I must thank God that he is safe.”

  She did not try to bring a halt to the conversation at the table when it was about the war now as she had done in the past. She encouraged it, listening avidly for some indication that there might be peace.

  My father watched events with great interest. He said that if Napoleon succeeded in conquering Russia the whole of Europe would be in his hands.

  “Then,” he went on, “he would turn his attention to us.”

  “But there is the sea to protect us,” said my mother.

  “If he could find a way of bringing his armies over …”

  “The Navy would never allow it.”

  “If he does succeed in conquering Russia,” said David, “he will believe he cannot fail.”

  “He failed at Trafalgar,” pointed out Claudine.

  “And by God, he is going to fail again,” added my father. “But at the moment the Russians are in full retreat. Napoleon is after Moscow. If he succeeds in taking it the Russians will lose heart.”

  “Will that be the end of the war?” asked my mother.

  “My dear Lottie, what do you think the mighty co
nqueror of Europe will do if he beats the Russians? He will have come to the conclusion that he is invincible. Nothing will deter him from an attack on our island.”

  My mother shivered. “It is all so stupid, so pointless. What does it matter to the people who is king or emperor?”

  “Unfortunately, my love, it matters to the kings and most certainly to this particular emperor. Napoleon wants to see himself astride the world.”

  “He will never conquer us,” said David firmly.

  “Never!” agreed my father. “But there might be certain troubles to be faced first.”

  We visited Aunt Sophie regularly. Sometimes I went; sometimes Amaryllis did. Always Sophie talked of Tamarisk, her beauty, her charm. I said to Amaryllis: “She is fast turning the child into an angel of virtue.” And she agreed.

  Jeanne was very worried. “She eats scarcely anything; and does not rest at night. Often I hear her moving about. I went in last night. She was sitting at the window looking out. She said she thought she had heard Tamarisk in the garden, calling to her. She was icily cold. I got her back to bed and although I covered her with several blankets she lay there shivering for a full hour. She can’t go on like this.”

  “I wish we could get some news of Tamarisk,” I said.

  It was a balmy September day when we heard that Napoleon had entered Moscow.

  “This is the end,” said David. “The effect of Moscow’s surrender will be devastating for the Russian army. It will collapse.”

  David was a shrewd observer of the political field, I had always thought. He approached all subjects with logic. My father was apt to have preconceived notions and a certain amount of emotion crept into his judgements.

  But for once David was wrong. We waited for news with the utmost eagerness. Moscow was burning. It was first thought that the French had set fire to it; but that would have been folly. Napoleon did not want a destroyed city. He had his army to house and feed. It was a last desperate manoeuvre by the Russians—an example of what they called the scorched earth policy. They had tried it out consistently during the war and Napoleon’s advancing armies, far from home, found nothing ahead of them but burning towns.

  “He has to make a decision now,” said David. “To stay the winter in a burned-out city or to withdraw. He is hesitating. If he waits much longer it will be too late.”

  “What we must pray for now is his retreat from Moscow and an early Russian winter,” said my father. “That will be better than an avenging army.”

  “Those poor soldiers,” murmured my mother, and I knew she was giving up a prayer of thanksgiving because Charlot was no longer one of Napoleon’s soldiers, but snug, she hoped, in his vineyard.

  “Those poor soldiers, Lottie,” retorted my father, “are the very gentlemen who would be over-running this land and bringing their accursed emperor here to rule over us.”

  “I know. I know. But it is always sad when men … whose quarrel it is not… have to risk their lives. I do hope it will be over soon. Oh, if only it could be.”

  “Then you should pray for a hard winter.”

  I have no doubt that the Russians prayed for the same—and those prayers were answered. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow decimated his army. However well drilled, well disciplined those men, they could not stand up to the terrible climatic conditions.

  There were many to rejoice—ourselves among them—when Napoleon returned to Paris, and of the army of six hundred thousand only one hundred thousand had survived.

  We were dining with the Barringtons when the news came.

  “Perhaps he will make peace now,” said my mother hopefully.

  “Not him,” said my father.

  “Nothing short of capture and the complete destruction of his armies will silence Napoleon,” added Edward Barrington.

  “You are right,” added his father. “Nothing will subdue him but complete defeat.”

  “It will come, depend upon it,” said my father. “And when it does we shall be free of this threat which has been hanging over us for so long. The French have a lot to answer for.”

  “Yes… all this unrest stems from them,” added Mr. Barrington.

  “You mean your trouble at the works?”

  “It is really getting serious,” Edward explained. “The mob is getting more and more violent. We have to have all-night guards on the machines.”

  “Idiots,” said my father. “The law is not harsh enough.”

  “I think they are going to tighten it up,” said Edward. “They’ll have to. We can’t go on like this.”

  Then they talked once more of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow and speculated as to what his next plans would be.

  When we returned home one of the grooms from Enderby was waiting for us. He said that Mademoiselle Fougére was very anxious about Mademoiselle Sophie and she thought we should go over to see her as soon as possible.

  My mother said we would go at once, so with my father, David, Claudine and Amaryllis, I went to Enderby.

  I could never enter that house without a little shiver of expectation. I never knew what it was. Amaryllis did not feel it. She said it was my imagination; but I did really feel that so many strange events had taken place there that somehow they had been caught up, captured and become part of the house.

  I was certain as soon as I entered it that night that I sensed the presence of Death.

  Jeanne came down to the hall to greet us; her hair was awry which was unusual for Jeanne, who always believed that one’s coiffure was of the utmost importance. Her face was white and the misery in her eyes was apparent.

  “I am afraid,” she said, “terribly afraid that she is slipping away from me.”

  We went up to Aunt Sophie’s bedroom. We stood round her bed. I am not sure whether she recognized us. She lay with her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “I wish I could have got a priest,” said Jeanne.

  My mother said: “Perhaps she will recover.”

  “No, Madame, not this time. This is the end.”

  As though to confirm this, Aunt Sophie’s breathing became stertorous. After a while she was quiet.

  “My poor Jeanne,” said my mother, putting an arm about her.

  “I knew,” said Jeanne. “For the last days I have known. This last blow … It was too much.”

  My father said he would send one of the servants for the doctor.

  “I have already done so,” said Jeanne. “He will be here shortly. Ah … I believe now. But there is nothing he can do. Yesterday he told me. There is nothing, he said.”

  My mother gently led Jeanne out of the bedroom.

  My father took the doctor into the bedroom and the rest of us went downstairs. As we sat in the hall with its high vaulted ceiling and its haunted minstrels’ gallery I had the feeling that the house was listening, waiting. And I thought: Who will live here now?

  Jeanne was saying that Aunt Sophie had never recovered from her grief over the loss of Tamarisk.

  “It’s a pity that child was ever born,” said my mother.

  “Poor Dolly,” I said. “She would have loved her.”

  Claudine put her hand to her head and said irrelevantly: “I don’t like this house. There’s always trouble in it. I believe it is something to do with the house.”

  If I let my imagination stray I was sure I would have heard the house laughing, mockingly.

  “She grieved for Tamarisk,” mused Jeanne. “If only the child had not gone. She did so much for her. She was her life. She could see no wrong in her. To go like this without a word. The gypsy in her I suppose. And what it did to my poor lady!”

  “What she would have done without you, Jeanne, I can’t imagine,” said my mother.

  “She brooded on her misfortunes,” said Jeanne. “She always did. I used to think she revelled in them. But not this one … not losing the child.”

  “I should like a little brandy,” said my mother. “Something to warm us up. I think we all need something.”

 
; Jeanne went away to get it.

  “It gives her something to do,” said my mother. “Poor soul. This is a terrible grief for her.”

  When Jeanne came back the men joined us.

  The doctor said Aunt Sophie had died of a congestion of the lungs.

  “And a surfeit of sorrow,” added my mother.

  Claudine looked over her shoulder at the minstrels’ gallery and shivered.

  “Are you cold, Mamma?” asked Amaryllis. “Here. Have my shawl.”

  “No, my darling. I’m not cold.” She looked with infinite fondness at her daughter.

  The doctor was saying that Aunt Sophie had not wished to live. It sometimes happened when people had this death wish that death came to them. There was nothing which could have saved her—not all the devoted nursing possible. She was just tired of living, tired of fighting.

  “She beckoned to death and it came,” I said.

  My father looked impatient and said it was getting late and there was nothing we could do tonight.

  We went back to Eversleigh leaving Jeanne with her desolation.

  On a dark and dismal day, Aunt Sophie was laid to rest. Tamarisk’s disappearance had ceased to be a subject for contemplation among the servants.

  There were a number of mourners at the graveside and even more spectators. Aunt Sophie had always been something of an oddity in the neighbourhood. Now she had died—or rather faded away—that was the end of her sad story.

  The cortege had left Enderby and the mourners would come back to Eversleigh where they would be given food and drink; and after that the family would assemble for the reading of Aunt Sophie’s will.

  We had discussed the possibilities of what it might contain.

  “Enderby would be a problem,” said my father. He thought the wisest thing would be to sell. “The whole lot,” he said. “Lock, stock and barrel. Get rid of the place. The problem would be to find a likely buyer.”

  “It’s improved a lot since Sophie took over,” said my mother. “Jeanne has stamped her impeccable taste on it and the blending of colours in some of the rooms is really exquisite.”