Angel of Ruin

by Kim Wilkins

  I spread out my books and papers. First to hand were all the photocopies Neal had provided, with lists of correspondences which had to be committed to memory. I put them to one side and picked up the notebook in which I had scribbled the stories I had heard so far about miraculous healings, finding lost objects, communion with spirits. I was more sceptical than I can adequately express. My own experience of the Lodge meetings offered me no insight more astonishing than the fact that grown people could act so foolishly without embarrassment. The previous Friday’s meeting had not even enabled me to talk once again of the Wanderer and her story. Whenever I brought the subject up, Deirdre would stonewall me and Neal would tell me to make sure I did my LBRPs and forget about it. Forgetting about it, though, was almost impossible. It was the most interesting lead that this magic ritual business had provided me with so far. I took out a fresh sheet of paper and played around with chapter titles and organising my ideas. As I pondered I doodled in the corner of the page, surprised when I looked down to see that I had drawn an old woman’s face. I scribbled it out and reached for a new sheet of paper. I wrote a few paragraphs, experimented with styles and voices. I drank one coffee, then another, and another, stopping after three for financial reasons. I looked at my notes, at my writings. What I had was obviously far too little information for a book, and far too much for a standard-length article. How much longer would I have to keep attending those bloody meetings? They were already becoming tedious, and with Neal turning into an octopus the whole situation had lost its charm. The only thing of any interest at all was the old woman with the story which I was simply supposed to forget about.

  I rummaged in my bag for my mini London A-Z. Deirdre had mentioned a cemetery on Bunhill Row, and I found it quite easily. Bunhill Fields Burial Ground. It wasn’t far from the Old Street tube. It wouldn’t hurt to see if I could find the old woman’s place, just as an intellectual exercise. Or just to see if she looked like the woman I had dreamed of. That would be worth writing about; not that I’d believe it was something supernatural even if I saw it with my own eyes, I supposed. Still, I packed up my things and left.

  Outside, hot midday had taken hold of the streets. I shrugged out of my jacket and tied it around my waist. I walked to Leicester Square and made my way by the Underground to Old Street.

  Bunhill Fields was a very pretty, very green graveyard; a little sanctuary of quiet from the screaming traffic on City Road. But even this sacred place was not free from the scourge of tourists, a group of whom asked me if I would take their photograph congregated around William Blake’s headstone. It all seemed in poor taste to me, but I complied anyway. They offered to take my photograph and post it to me, but I declined. I walked through to Bunhill Row, unsure whether to head right or left. On a hunch I went left, and took the first side street. Deirdre had mentioned an old building marked for demolition. The whole area was peppered with construction sites, so I stood for a moment at the top of the street, surveying its length. One building about halfway down the block had a scaffolding and yellow tape decorating it. I walked up to it and stood out front, wondering if it was the right place. Something up high in a window caught my eye. I glanced up, thought I saw a brief flash of an old face moving away from the glass. I didn’t know why, but I felt frightened, and for a few moments I was rooted to the spot. I even considered turning around and going home and forgetting about the old woman. But I don’t like to be beaten by fear, so I pushed it aside and checked in my bag for my tape recorder, then went to the front door. It wasn’t locked. Inside was very dark. I crept up the stairs, testing each one with my weight first. I saw many rooms without doors, where all the fittings inside had been torn out. At the top of the stairs I called out, “Hello?”

  “In here,” she answered.

  I pushed open the door and found myself in an empty room. Empty except for a single bookshelf with a half dozen books on it, and a chair where an elderly woman sat, close to a grimy window. It was very stuffy and quite dark.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Sophie.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sophie,” she said. She was thin, dressed in black, and her face was very pale with very soft features. Not too much like the woman in the dream, really, unless you were energetically looking for similarities.

  “Look, this may sound a little strange,” I said, “but an acquaintance of mine told me about you. She said you had an interesting story to tell.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m a journalist. I collect interesting stories.”

  “I’m happy to tell you my story, but it may be dangerous for you to hear it.”

  “Yes, yes, so I’ve heard. I’m afraid I don’t hold much with such superstitions.”

  “Even so, I have cautioned you.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  I pulled my tape recorder out of my bag, inserted a fresh tape. “Do you mind if I tape you?”

  “Not at all. What you do with the story once I’ve told it does not concern me.”

  Copyright presented no problem, then. I nodded. “So, what’s it all about?”

  “Can you see the blue book over there on the shelf?”

  I moved to the bookshelf, reached for the book.

  “No, no,” she said, “don’t touch it.”

  I peered at the spine. “Paradise Lost,” I read, “by John Milton.”

  “Have you read it?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, wondering where this was going. “I’m not particularly well-read in the classics.”

  “Never read it?” She seemed appalled. “But it’s the greatest poem in the English language.”

  I’d always been rather fond of the lyrics to “Across the Universe”, but I didn’t tell her that. “It’s very famous,” I said.

  “It’s a first edition,” she told me, nodding towards the book. “I’ve had it rebound, though. The old cover fell apart a long time ago.” She frowned as if remembering something unpleasant.

  “A first edition?” My gaze turned once more to the book, my fingers itching to pick it up. “You’d get a small fortune if you wanted to sell it.”

  “I doubt it’s worth much, really,” she said, glancing towards the window.

  “It’s stuffy in here,” I said. “Can I open the window for you?”

  “No, I’ll never be able to get it closed again,” she said. “I’m too weak.”

  “I can close it before I go.”

  “You might forget.”

  I shrugged. “What do you want to tell me about Paradise Lost?” I was starting to think she might just be crazy, not interesting, and it was growing very warm in the room. My breath felt compressed in my lungs.

  “I want to tell you a story about three sisters,” she said. “Do you have sisters?”

  “I’m an only child,” I said.

  “Then it may be hard for you to understand the bonds of loyalty and love, and how they may be broken.”

  I was just about to ask if she was one of the sisters, when she said, “This is an old story. It starts in the 1660s. The eldest sisters are young women, the youngest on the threshold of adulthood.”

  I hesitated, then decided to stay and listen. In fact, I had a feeling I was meant to listen. I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t explain it now. All I knew was that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lower myself to the floor, sit cross-legged, stand my tape recorder on the bare floorboards in front of me, and say, “Go on. I’m listening.”

  And this is what she told me that first day. I’ve edited it for clarity, of course, but it’s almost word for word.

  1

  Daughters Grow About the Mother Tree

  The most disruptive events sometimes occur on the most peaceful of days, and Anne Milton knew this. She had known it since she was a child.

  Yet, so far, it was a peaceful day. She lay on her back in the ocean of long grass. Up above her, the sky was blue and infinite. The grass waved in t
he spring breeze, and the sun was pale on her face. She closed her eyes and entered the familiar world of her imagination. Heaven smiled on her, cherubs beckoned. She breathed great lungfuls of spring, felt herself drifting off on a tide …

  “Anne! Anne!” Her youngest sister Deborah was calling her from far away.

  Anne blinked her eyes open and was dazzled by the sky.

  “Anne! Come to the house.” The voice drifted awry on the breeze. “There’s news of Father.”

  She sat up. Deborah stood on the edge of the field, scanning for her.

  “Here,” Anne called.

  Deborah, dressed in her usual sober grey, beckoned grandly. “Come. Liza’s here.”

  Liza was Father’s maidservant. Anne hadn’t seen her since they left London three years ago. When the King had been restored to his throne, Father had been imprisoned briefly, and Anne and her sisters had been sent to live with their maternal grandmother here in Forest Hill. The distance had suited Anne well. He was a terrifyingly brilliant man with an unforgiving tongue, and he reserved his cruellest barbs for Anne. Dullard. Cripple. Simpleton.

  She pulled herself up and made her way towards the house, her left leg dragging slightly as it always did, refusing to heed her will. Deborah waited patiently at the edge of the field for her.

  “What d-do you think has happened?” Anne said. Her words, even more than her legs, would not behave as she willed them. “Is he d-dead?” Although the thought brought a sense of relief, the guilt bit ten times more acutely.

  “Don’t say such a thing! I’m sure he is fine, but Liza won’t tell until we’re all together. Grandmamma’s trying to find Mary.”

  Anne pushed open the door to the little wooden house. Inside was crammed with people and cats and a jumble of old and new furniture. The smell of boiling meat arose from the fireplace where Ruthie was cooking dinner. Liza, Father’s skinny maidservant, waited by the window, keeping well out of the way of Uncle William and cousin Hugh. They were chasing Madam Cat around and around the room, trying to step on her tail. Great-uncle George dozed and dribbled on himself by the fire. The two sisters sat obediently on the long wooden seat adjacent to the hearth, and Anne folded her hands in her lap, trying to be as composed as Deborah. She had imagined she may never hear from Father again, never have to confront those old memories of London.

  With a rustle of crimson silk Mary flounced in, her little dog Max held tight in her arms. Uncle William ate Mary with his gaze as he always did, his lascivious interest carelessly displayed. Mary rolled her eyes at him, then plonked herself on the seat and leaned in eagerly, her dark curls bouncing. “Do you think the old bore has finally given up the ghost?”

  “Mary!” Deborah admonished. “You sound as though you relish the thought. ’Tis abominable.”

  Max whimpered and wriggled in Mary’s arms. She feigned innocence. “’Twasn’t me that said it, sister. ’Twas Mad Mary.” This was one of the middle sister’s favourite jokes. When she said or did something outrageous she liked to pretend that she had been seized by a sudden, brief fit of insanity.

  “Where’s G-G—” Anne started.

  “Grandmamma? She’s coming.” Mary turned her attention to Liza. “Well, what’s going on?”

  “I have to wait until Mrs Powell is here.”

  Mary muttered grimly under her breath, something about “stupid servants” but Anne couldn’t entirely make it out.

  “Grandmamma!” Mary called, her voice sharp in Anne’s ear. “We’re waiting for you.”

  “Yes, yes, here I am.” Grandmamma thundered in on her enormous legs. She was a fat old gossip, and Anne mistrusted her, though Mary adored her. The old woman shooed Hugh and Will away and approached Liza at the window, her eyes gleaming. She, too, suspected that Father had passed on. Maybe she even imagined there would be an inheritance. “What’s this news, then, Liza?”

  Liza straightened her back and announced, “Ma’ams, your father is lately married.”

  “Married, Liza!” Mary exclaimed. “Why, that is not news. If he were dead, that would be news.”

  Grandmamma laughed loudly. “Never mind, Mary,” she joked. “He will die in his own good time.”

  Liza drew her eyebrows down in disapproval, then continued. “Mr Milton has asked that you return immediately to London, to live with him and his new wife.”

  Anne felt as though she had been struck. Return to London? No, no, no. Every nerve shook loose at the idea. She opened her mouth to speak, felt her lips moving, but no words would come. Just the stupid stuttering beginnings of consonants.

  Deborah turned to her and waited patiently. “What is it, Annie?”

  “N-not —”

  “Not what, Anne?” Mary asked.

  She could see their pretty faces turned towards her — fair Deborah and dark Mary — expectant eyes upon her. She struggled to make the words leave her mouth. “N-not the house in … P-Petty France. Say we’re n-not returning to the house in Petty France.” The image came unbidden as it always did: a tiny boy, lying as though asleep. But not sleeping. Cold and pallid, his chill limbs flung limp across the bed.

  “Why no, Miss Milton,” Liza said. “For we have lately moved to a new house on the Artillery Walk to Bunhill Fields.”

  The warm thread of Anne’s relief was almost lost among the icy guilt that memories of Petty France had awoken. Though she may never return to that room again, she feared she would never stop seeing it in her imagination.

  “When are we to leave?” Deborah asked. She sounded bright and excited. Father’s youngest daughter was his favourite.

  “He has given orders that I return with you in not more than three days,” Liza said.

  Grandmamma threw her hands in the air. “Three days! Why, that’s barely enough time to pack.”

  “London!” Mary said. “How thrilling! I shall see all the fine ladies and the cavaliers, and I shall take my new scarlet dress, Grandmamma.” She laughed. “Father’s too blind to see how low it is at the front.”

  Deborah leaped to her feet. “And I shall take my Hebrew grammar, and Father will be so proud to hear how much I’ve learned.”

  Mary sniffed. “Father won’t even notice, Deborah.”

  “He shall, of course he shall.”

  “Come, I’ll race you to the top of the stairs,” Mary said. They dashed off together, leaving Anne rooted to the couch. One of the cats yowled with pain as Hugh got a foot on its tail, and Great-uncle George woke with a snort. Grandmamma made plans with Liza, and Ruthie admonished Uncle William for tasting the soup. But Anne was aware of nothing but the churning of her stomach, and the guilty horror of remembering her baby brother’s death.

  “Mistress Mary, say you won’t go.”

  Mary sat up, brushed the hay from her hair. “Sir Adworth, we have discussed this.”

  “But some other worthy will catch your eye in London. Some young, handsome man.”

  She carefully began lacing her bodice, plucking hay from her clothes. The stable had been cleaned that morning, and smelled of fresh hay and horses. “You know I’m not interested in young men.”

  He reached out and pulled her down beside him, forcing his hand inside her bodice to squeeze her breast. She assessed him coolly: his age-spotted skin, his grey hair, the sagging flesh on his chest. Yes, he was ugly and tiresome, but he was the wealthiest man in eight miles and he adored her. Grandmamma had always said, find a wealthy man who adores you and you’ll never want for trinkets. It had proved sound advice. Sir Adworth had already provided silk for four dresses and dozens of strings of beads for her hair.

  She smiled and shook her head coyly. “Come, Sir Adworth, you know you won’t manage again so soon.”

  “Mary, what am I to do without you?”

  “You’ll find somebody else. Or haply your wife may open her legs to you again.”

  “I’m sure she has cobwebs growing between them.”

  Mary laughed, pushed him away firmly and straightened her clothes. “I must go. My
sisters will be waiting.” She stood, then helped him up. His knee joints cracked loudly, making her wince. He was the oldest lover she had ever had, at sixty years of age, and it alarmed her how quickly he could lose his breath or become pained in the joints.

  “I have a parting gift for you,” he said, recovering his balance and reaching into the purse under his cloak. He pulled out a delicate bracelet, silver and amber stones.

  “Oh, ’tis lovely,” she said, snatching it from his fingers.

  “When you come back,” he said, “you’ll come to see me again?”

  She looked him over, doubting he’d live another summer. “Of course. But Father may want us to stay in London.”

  Sir Adworth frowned at mention of her father. “I suppose you must do as he says.”

  “I must go,” she said. “The carriage will be here already.”

  “Take care,” he said, touching her cheek. “You shall always be the prettiest girl in the world.”

  She kissed him quickly on the mouth, then pulled the stable door open and ran out into the sunshine. She lifted her skirts so she wouldn’t trip and dashed across the open fields. She saw Grandmamma’s house in the distance, and caught sight of the large silhouette of Grandmamma walking towards her.

  “Gran!” she called.

  “Hurry, Mary, the coach is about to leave.”

  She kicked off her shoes and scooped them into her right hand, kept running towards the lone, dark-clad figure in the sunny field. Grandmamma caught her with a laugh. “You’ve been with Adworth?”

  “Look what he gave me!” Mary exclaimed breathlessly, holding out her wrist.

  Grandmamma inspected the bracelet eagerly. “Oh, good girl, Mary. But you should hurry. The coach is waiting.”

  Grandmamma enclosed her in a claustrophobic hug. She smelled of old wool and boiled ham. She whispered close to Mary’s hair. “You’re the only one I shall miss.”