by Michael Ford
I realised what it was that troubled me.
‘You said this was 1838, though. Are you sure?’
‘I think we’ve used enough of the constable’s time,’ said Mr Lock. ‘Gentlemen, I’ll see you out.’
‘Oh, quite sure,’ said the constable. ‘Not every day you hear of a chase by boat, is it?’
Mr Lock finally succeeded in showing Constable Evans and Dr Reinhardt out of the door and Mrs Cotton left me on my own. It couldn’t be true. There had to be some mistake. My father couldn’t have been arrested in 1838 for one very good reason: I wasn’t born until February 1840.
Either the constable’s memory was at fault, or there was only one other conclusion.
James Tamper wasn’t my father.
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Chapter 32
As soon as the thought lodged in my mind, I couldn’t dismiss it. I think I knew straight away that it was true. Why else had my mother hardly ever spoken of my father? Why hadn’t she visited his grave? And, strangely, even Dr Reinhardt had assumed he was alive. For some reason, after all that had happened it was the doctor’s words I trusted most of all.
I suddenly felt very sad – not just for myself, and the shadow of a father who had now vanished, but for my poor mother too. To be married to a rascal like that, and to be left alone! No wonder she had gone into service for Eleanor Greave. Without a husband to support her, she must have been desperate for money.
I could barely think of what must have happened. Had my mother made the same mistake as Lizzy, falling for a follower and then being deserted? She seemed so level-headed, so sensible. How it must have angered Mrs Cotton that my mother – a mere member of staff – was allowed to stay on with the disgrace of a fatherless child. How it must have maddened her to see me grow up in the house that she thought hers by right through her dead sister. The fury must have ripened and fermented over the years, until one day she had snapped and taken her revenge.
I stood up, and found my hands were balled into fists. I made up my mind then to tell Samuel as soon as he got back. Until then I would avoid Mrs Cotton as well as I could. She had not reappeared to question me further about Dr Reinhardt, and I knew why. It was guilt. She might not know it for sure, but she at least suspected that I was on to her. She dared not challenge me for fear that I would tell everyone her secret.
Well, I shall, I promised myself. And that will be the end of you.
On my way back down to the laundry, I heard muffled voices from the library. I pressed my ear against the door. It was Mrs Cotton talking. Her tone was barely a hiss, and I could tell immediately that I was the subject being discussed.
‘She must not know,’ said Mrs Cotton.
‘But . . .’ It was Mr Lock, his voice plaintive. ‘His Lordship –’
‘My brother-in-law doesn’t know whether it’s day or night,’ she snapped. ‘Just burn them! Or I will.’
I heard them moving towards the door and quickly darted along the corridor and into the drawing room. Mrs Cotton emerged first and strode towards the servants’ stairs. Mr Lock came more slowly behind, his sagging shoulders seeming to bear an extra weight. He had been asked to do something of which he didn’t approve – something involving me.
As he went to the main stairs, I went to the back ones.
He continued past the first floor, slowly approaching Lord Greave’s chamber. Now things were awkward. If I were caught here, there’d be trouble. I planned an excuse that I was coming to check what clean bed linen was needed. It wasn’t convincing, but neither was it ridiculous.
As soon as he rounded the corner to Lord Greave’s room, I trod lightly after him. I hovered at the end of the corridor leading to Lord Greave’s private rooms. I could hear Mr Lock breathing heavily.
I crept along the corridor after him.
I had to know.
At the door, I peered in. He was bent over, rifling through the contents of Lord Greave’s little desk. He pulled out a sheaf of documents secured with a piece of string, untied them quickly and leafed through them, removing a few sheets of paper, then disappeared from my line of sight towards the other side of the room.
Towards the fire.
I looked further in. Sure enough, he was crouched beside the grate and feeding the pieces of paper into the small dying fire. I wanted nothing more than to stop him, to run in and tear them out, but it was unthinkable to go in there without permission.
So, hating myself every step of the way, I retreated back down the main stairs. Whatever was in those documents, I would never know.
A cry came from the bedroom – a howl of terror. I quickly scampered out of the way to the back stairs as Mr Lock shuffled into sight. His eyes were wide with fear, his skin pale. He didn’t see me as he half-fell, half-stumbled down the steps, supporting himself with the banister. He looked like he’d had a terrible fright.
He ran past as rapidly as his old legs would carry him, and down the next stairs to the ground floor. I realised this would be my only chance, and sprinted back up along the corridor and into His Lordship’s room. In the grate, the papers were blazing. A wail escaped my lips when I saw that most were already in ashes. I grabbed the poker and pushed them out of the fire. A fringe of orange was creeping across the pages, so I picked up an edge and blew out the flames, shaking the embers off. I ran quickly back to the door and down the stairs, clutching the papers to my stomach.
What was written on them, I couldn’t know. Something important enough to burn. Something to do with me.
I couldn’t help feeling that I was holding my past in my hands.
Back in my room I examined the papers carefully. It was a letter – two sheets, written in uneven lines. Both had been mostly eaten away or blackened by the fire, so only a little of the writing was left at the top of the pages, but it was addressed to ‘Darling Nathan, my love.’ Nathan? His Lordship’s first name was Nathaniel. This was his private correspondence. A love letter? I knew that I should stop reading there and then.
The letter had a date at the top: ‘3.viii.39’. The third of August. On the second page, only a few lines remained. The signature caught my eye at once.
‘All my love, Susan’.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, but it was until my backside was numb and long after. My mother had been in love with Lord Greave! I felt like a ship unmoored and floating over a misty lake, the banks nowhere in sight.
I suppose I knew what the letter would say before I started reading, but read it I did, many times over. What came across most strongly was my mother’s voice: kind, loving, a hint of a smile even when what she spoke of was serious.
.
Little Sammy is sure to pick up on it; you would be surprised how perceptive youngsters can be. I thought today that Trevor had seen us share a kiss on the stairs. We must be more careful from now on, Nathan. Do not despair though. With our secret way—
A patch was burned from the middle of the letter and only a few more sentences remained.
.
I don’t expect any of them will understand, least of all Lillian. You say you are happy for all to know. Well, I am not, and I expressly forbid it. For a man of your—
Then just a fraction more:
.
You scoff at appearances, but they are everything. What matters is our love. Our child. Nothing more—
‘Our child’.
Me.
The product of an affair between the master and the servant, the celebrated naval lord and his son’s nurse. Had they really thought it was easier for me to grow up thinking my father was dead? I felt a sadness, a deep ache in my heart that my mother and I had never shared the truth.
In a single day I had lost one father and found another. The dates fitted perfectly. She had learned that she was pregnant with me some time in June, 1839.
‘You could have told me before,’ I said aloud.
Everything had to adjust, but it was like a jigsaw puzzle thrown into the air. I knew the pieces would somehow fi
t together again, but the picture would be different. I caught glimpses of it though, like a landscape illuminated under lightning.
Samuel, who’d always been like an older brother to me, was indeed my real half-brother. My mother had been happy all along; she’d found love again after James Tamper had left.
There were more bitter realisations as well and they led me on to a darker train of thought. Mrs Cotton was actually my aunt. She had known her brother-in-law’s secret all along. She feared that my mother would supplant her, that Lord Greave would elevate her within the household, that she, Lillian Cotton, would have to answer to the nursemaid.
Had she known from the start though, or was it the discovery of the affair that had driven her to murder? When had Mr Lock – or Trevor, as my mother called him – found out? They both knew of the letters, but had been willing to let them gather dust in a drawer until now. As long as they were safely out of the way in the attic desk.
I felt like confronting them there and then, but what good would it do? I’d seen with what a heavy heart Mr Lock had carried out his duties. He’d done it to protect his master, not through any spite harboured in his own breast. No, I had only one enemy in this house and it seemed she would stop at nothing to keep me in my place.
I gathered up the letter carefully and placed it in my chest. Now at least I had an advantage over her. I knew the secret that she’d tried her hardest to destroy.
I felt like my drifting boat had finally bumped against the shore.
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Chapter 33
Even the house seemed different. Finishing the laundry and cleaning the rooms, I noticed things I never had before: the beauty of the seascapes in the sitting room, the patches of wear on the chairs around the dining table, the fine carvings on the mantel in the library. The garden outside seemed to glow in the late afternoon winter light. It was as if I were a different person inhabiting the new space.
I saw Lord Greave only once, shuffling in through the front door before dinner. Suddenly even the thought of addressing him seemed an impossibility. But fate intervened.
When it was time to take up His Lordship’s brandy, Mr Lock refused point blank to go, claiming his legs were bad. I suspected the real reason was that he feared whatever he had encountered earlier that day. I was happy, though, to carry up the tray.
Lord Greave sat in his chair beside the window, with a blanket over his knees.
My father.
I placed his decanter and glass on the low table beside him, then went to stoke his fire, which was smouldering weakly. From the corner of my eye, I watched him, searching his face to see something of myself. We both had blue eyes and slightly upturned noses, but that was all.
Observing him discreetly, I realised there was more to His Lordship’s silence than mere age. Now I fancied I could see deeper into his vacant sadness. There was loneliness too, wrapping itself around him like a shroud. I’d always dated his decline to the time when Samuel left for war, but now I saw it was not then at all. It dated from seventeen minutes past four, one day just over a year ago.
He was mourning for a woman whom he’d never been able to publicly acknowledge. There were no others to share his grief, so it was locked within him, carried in fading memories.
From the corner of my eye, beside the fireplace where the letters had almost been destroyed, I saw through the open door of his dressing room. Almost at once a phrase from the letters jumped into my mind and two pieces of the puzzle slotted together.
‘Our secret way . . .’
I felt a flush of heat, and it wasn’t from the coals. The handprint on the hatch. My mother’s handprint. What else could the ‘secret way’ have been, if not a way for them to see each other secretly without the rest of the house knowing? She must have used the hatch rather than the main stairs, where housekeeper or butler might have seen her.
As I stood up from the fire, trying to contain my excitement, Lord Greave spoke and his voice was bitter.
‘Samuel used to bring me up my drink, you know,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘But he can’t now.’
I wondered if, in the depths of his madness, he’d already forgotten about Sammy’s leg.
He looked out of the window again. I filled his glass and placed it in front of him. He didn’t even acknowledge me.
It’s too late for us, I thought. I could see that now. He might have been a father to me once, but that time had passed.
‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ I asked.
He continued to look out of the window.
‘Thank you, Abigail,’ he said.
It was the first time he’d used my name in a year.
I slept soundly that night until a dream shook me awake.
I was drifting high above the park on a cushion of warm cloud, approaching Greave Hall. All the windows were open as though the house was being aired, but I couldn’t see any people until I came closer. Then I made out Lizzy in her window, high on the side of the house. She waved to me happily, and I felt so glad that she was back home.
I saw a dark shape behind her in the room. From its outline, I knew it was Mrs Cotton. She approached stealthily, and Lizzy had no idea she was there. I shouted and shouted until my voice was hoarse, but the sound didn’t carry. I knew for a certainty that the housekeeper meant to push Elizabeth out, and she would fall three floors to her death.
There was nothing I could do. I was too far away. Mrs Cotton’s eyes glinted like a cat’s in the moonlight.
I woke breathing heavily.
I washed and dressed carefully. Today was going to be a very special day and I wanted to look my best.
After breakfast, I found Samuel in the sitting room reading The Times. He was smartly dressed in a grey suit with waistcoat. Even with the trouser leg stitched up beneath his right knee, he looked every inch the gentleman around town.
‘Hello, Abi,’ he said.
‘Morning, Sammy,’ I said. ‘You going out today?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I have some appointments here actually.’
I paused at the door, trying to find the right words to begin. But I was tongue-tied.
It was now or never.
‘Sammy, do you remember ever meeting my father?’
He hardly looked up from his newspaper.
‘Hmm, I don’t think he ever came here, did he? I must have been, what, three or four when he died.’
‘He’s not dead,’ I said.
Samuel looked up properly now and lowered the pages.
‘Say again?’
‘My father isn’t dead,’ I said. ‘My father wasn’t called Tamper at all.’
He put down the newspaper carefully and stood up. Leaning on his single crutch, he crossed the room slowly to the window, and looked out towards the Park. It wasn’t the reaction I expected. ‘Sammy?’ I said, walking a few steps closer, then hesitating once more. The words were there now, waiting in my throat. They emerged in a whisper. ‘My father is Lord Greave.’
Samuel didn’t move for several seconds, and I heard the ticking of the clock in the hall. I could never have guessed what he would say next. He sighed heavily and nodded his head a fraction, still facing away from me.
‘So now you know.’
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Chapter 34
At first I thought I must have misheard. ‘You knew?’
He turned slowly from the window. ‘I suspected.’
My breath was coming in gasps as I struggled to understand what he was telling me. ‘But – but why did you never say?’
Sammy watched me with large, sad eyes. ‘I didn’t know for sure. I could hardly ask my father, and I didn’t want to upset you without first knowing that I was right. What a mess families are, eh, Abi?’
He was smiling now, and held out his arms to me. I walked across the room and fell into them, hugging him tightly. ‘Shall I call you my little sister?’ he said, laughing.
I realised I was crying. Never in my dreams had I i
magined he would be so . . . well, so easy about it. I knew he’d always cared for me, of course, but this was too, too good of him.
‘You can call me what you wish,’ I said through the tears. ‘Oh, I’ve wet your clothes.’
He held me at arm’s length and looked down at me. ‘Well, little sister, how did you find out?’
‘I found a letter, half-burned in the grate. It was from my mother to your father. Here . . .’ I fished the pages out of my apron and handed them to him.
He read them closely, chuckling. I don’t know what made me tell a white lie. I suppose there was so much to say, I didn’t want to rush things.
‘I know I shouldn’t have looked,’ I said, ‘but I saw her name and, well . . .’
‘I understand,’ he said, nodding. He put the letters down on the window sill. ‘And have you told my – our father?’
I shook my head. ‘I saw him last night, when I took his drink up. I’m afraid he – he was –’
‘Mad?’ said Samuel matter-of-factly. ‘There’s no need to skirt around it, Abi. The man’s lost his mind.’ He grimaced. ‘If only I’d been here more, perhaps we could have helped him together.’
‘We can help him now,’ I suggested.
‘It’s too late for that, I fear,’ said Samuel. ‘He can’t look after himself any more – barely eats a thing. The only thing we can do for him now is make him comfortable, take away the few remaining stresses in his life. In fact, I’ve got Doctor Ingle coming to take a look. See if there’s some specialist help we can get for him.’
He lowered his gaze sadly. I thought how brave Sammy was then, taking on such responsibility. It must have been so hard to watch his father slip away like that. He dragged my attention back to more pressing matters. ‘I take it you haven’t told anyone else yet?’ he said, sounding tired now. He cocked his head. ‘Elizabeth, maybe?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you heard? Mrs Cotton sacked Lizzy. Sent her away because of the burglary.’
