Dreams That Veil

by Dominic Luke

  ‘It is time to go back,’ said Dorothea. ‘We don’t want to be late for luncheon.’

  They let themselves out of the churchyard by the side gate, set off across the fields taking the short cut to Clifton.

  Eliza ventured to say, ‘Were . . . were you talking to Richard, Doro?’

  ‘Yes. Sometimes I do. I feel that he can hear me.’

  ‘Does he ever . . . talk to you?’

  ‘Not with words, of course, but. . . .’

  Eliza shuddered. The thought of talking to the dead – the thought of the dead answering – made her come up in goose pimples. It seemed to her that a shadow had fallen: the brightness of the morning had suddenly dimmed.

  Dorothea seemed to feel it too. ‘There must be a storm on the way. We shall get home just in time.’

  But when Eliza looked at the sky there wasn’t a cloud in sight. All the same, her feeling of unease grew as they climbed the last stile and made their way through the Pheasantry. It was decidedly gloomy beneath the trees but it did not seem much brighter as they emerged into the open once more. There before them was the great grey facade of the house with the wide space of gravel in front encircling the tall cedar tree in the middle. The gloom was now so intense it was like seeing the house through a film of dust. The tree cast deep shadows. The air had grown decidedly cool.

  Eliza’s heart raced. What did it mean? Had the day of resurrection come? The thought of all the graves opening and the dead people climbing out filled her with horror. She felt giddy.

  ‘Hello, you two!’ Roderick was standing on the gravel in his shirt and waistcoat. He had a piece of glass in his hand. ‘What do you think of this? Isn’t it extraordinary!’

  Eliza ran to him. ‘Oh, Roddy, what is it? Why is it going so dark? Is it the end of the world? I don’t like it!’

  ‘Of course it’s not the end of the world, you goose. It’s an eclipse. Didn’t you read about it in the newspaper? I thought Doro made you read the newspaper every day for your edification.’

  ‘Well, yes, we always read the paper.’ Usually they read it together. But that morning Dorothea had been more preoccupied than ever. Eliza had skimmed through The Times to show willing. There had been a report about the first woman to fly across the Channel. Eliza took a great interest in flying machines though to her chagrin she had never seen one. But in the next column, impossible to ignore, had been the latest news about the sunken liner. Eliza did not like to think about the sunken liner, all those unfortunate people drowned in the cold Atlantic. She had quickly folded the newspaper and put it away in a drawer. Dorothea had not noticed.

  To be reminded now of the sunken liner only added to her feeling of doom.

  ‘Roddy, what’s an eclipse?’

  ‘It’s when the moon passes in front of the sun and blocks out the light. Here, you can see for yourself, but you must use this piece of smoked glass or you will go blind.’

  Eliza looked. ‘It’s . . . it’s horrible! The sun is being eaten! Will it be dark forever now?’

  ‘Not forever.’ Roderick leaned across to re-appropriate his piece of glass. ‘It only lasts a few minutes.’

  ‘It’s a sign,’ said Eliza solemnly.

  ‘Yes: a sign for you to sharpen your wits.’

  ‘But Roddy, don’t you feel it too, that something terrible is about to happen?’

  ‘I feel nothing of the sort. Nor do you. You really must learn to rein in that unbridled imagination of yours.’

  Dorothea joined them. She was looking up at the darkling sky in wonder. ‘Just imagine if it was the end of the world,’ she murmured. ‘Just imagine all the things one would regret never having done.’

  Roderick looked at her in disgust. ‘Not you as well, Doro, going off on these flights of fancy. Honestly, the female mind! This is a remarkable natural phenomenon, not a portent from the gods. Nothing terrible will happen. Nothing will happen at all. Nothing ever does at Clifton.’

  Roderick was right. Nothing exciting ever happened at Clifton. The house seemed even more dull and common-place than ever after the disturbing experience of the eclipse. And then:

  ‘Daisy says that Mr Antipov is coming! He’s coming today! He’s due this evening!’

  Dorothea looked up in some surprise from the letter she was writing in the day room. ‘Well, yes, of course he’s coming. You must have known.’

  ‘I didn’t. Nobody told me. Nobody tells me anything.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite true. But why are you so interested in Mr Antipov?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m not interested at all.’ Eliza feigned indifference, not sure if it was seemly – not sure if it was sensible – to show such enthusiasm for the Russian. She could not decide if the shiver of anticipation was entirely pleasant. Perhaps if she was to see him, to speak to him, she might be able to make up her mind about him. ‘Couldn’t I eat dinner downstairs just this once? Oh please say I can, Doro!’

  Dorothea worked her magic with Mama. Permission was granted. Eliza was soon hopping up and down with impatience. When the gong finally sounded, she couldn’t contain herself.

  ‘You go down,’ said Dorothea. ‘I think I’ll just change my blouse.’

  She had already changed it twice. Anyone would have thought it was her first grown-up dinner at Clifton. What was wrong with her? There was no time to puzzle it out: Eliza was too eager to get downstairs.

  She raced down the stairs and burst breathlessly into the drawing room. She skidded to a halt. Roderick and Mr Antipov were already there dressed for dinner, standing by the French windows. They both turned to look at her. Eliza was overcome with confusion. She felt her cheeks burning. Oh treacherous, treacherous cheeks!

  ‘Dobry vecher, Miss Brannan. We meet again.’

  She had forgotten quite what he was like, slim and flaxen-haired with the surprisingly low-pitched voice and the strange Russian accent. His eyes, too: she had forgotten his eyes. He gave her one of his little bows, very formal yet somehow subtly mocking. Mocking her? Or himself? Or could it be that he was mocking it all, dressing for dinner and making polite conversation in the dull Clifton drawing room where nothing ever happened? He upset the balance of things. It was deeply perturbing.

  She forced herself to speak. She was determined not to be a wallflower. ‘How do you do, Mr Antipov. Please carry on, don’t let me interrupt.’ It sounded polite. It sounded like something Mama might have said. Eliza was pleased with herself. ‘May I have one of those drinks, Roddy?’

  ‘No, you may not. You’re enough of a handful as it is. Heaven knows what you’d be like intoxicated.’ He turned back to the Russian. ‘Now look, Antipov, what you’re saying is complete rot—’

  They’d obviously been in the middle of a heated discussion which now resumed. Eliza sank down onto the settee happy not to be the centre of attention any more.

  ‘What I say is truth!’ cried Mr Antipov. ‘Englishman is dyed-in-the-wool, is blinkered like a horse. When subject races rise in rebellion, Englishman will honestly believe them ungrateful!’

  ‘There won’t be any rebellions, don’t be absurd.’

  ‘What about Ireland?’

  ‘Ireland’s different. It’s a special case. The Irish aren’t a subject race, they’re British. Besides, it’s only the Catholics who make trouble.’

  ‘In Russia we have our Ireland too: is called Poland. Poles also are Catholic. But these sects, these factions, they are not important. Religion is not important. It is opium for the people.’

  ‘Poppycock! The Church provides moral guidance, it keeps up standards of behaviour, it—’

  ‘It keeps people in their place. This is the hymn you sing, yes? The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. You tell poor, “Accept your lot. You will be rewarded in heaven.” Is a fraud! There is no heaven! Only heaven we can have is what we build for ourselves, here and now!’

  ‘Heaven on earth?’ scoffed Roderick. ‘Now who’s being fraudulent? You can’t change—’

&nb
sp; He broke off as the door opened and Mama came in, soon followed by Dorothea. The conversation at once took a different turn. It became ordinary. The eclipse was discussed and the sunken liner. Dorothea talked of the Keech baby in the village who’d nearly been lost. Mama reported on a visit to Newbolt Hall where there was much excitement over the forthcoming marriage of Colonel Harding’s younger son. Eliza stifled a yawn. She found herself thinking about heaven on earth. Impossible, Roderick had said. But Mr Antipov thought differently. Eliza’s mind galloped. She pictured golden sunshine and silver fountains. She pictured people dressed in togas holding heroic poses. Was this what heaven on earth would be like?

  Mr Ordish appeared. It was time to go through.

  Sometime later, Mama got to her feet. Dinner was over already. Eliza reluctantly followed her into the passage with Dorothea bringing up the rear, leaving Roderick and Mr Antipov to their cigars or whatever it was gentlemen did when the ladies left the room (what did they do?).

  Mama hesitated, one hand on the drawing room door. ‘You may return to the nursery now, Elizabeth. It’s quite late enough.’

  The door was shut in her face.

  Eliza was nettled. Late enough? It wasn’t much after nine! Why was she treated like a baby? Why did she always miss out? She wouldn’t stand for it any more! She wouldn’t meekly accept her lot like the poor waiting for heaven.

  In a spirit of mutiny, she walked back into the dining room. Roderick was pouring something from a decanter. He paused, staring at her. Her mutinous spirit drained away. She had just enough aplomb to take her seat. She would only go if he told her.

  He didn’t tell her. He finished pouring (wine? port?), filling Mr Antipov’s glass then his own.

  The Russian put his cigar aside and raised his glass. ‘A toast. Down with the Emperor of All Russia!’

  Roderick rolled his eyes as he put the stopper back in the decanter. ‘Honestly, Antipov, you’re impossible.’

  The Russian looked pleased. ‘I offend your royalist soul, yes?’

  ‘What’s the Emperor ever done to you?’

  ‘Perhaps you do not know of atrocities – that is good word, I think, atrocity: perhaps you do not know of atrocities committed in Emperor’s name? When I was fifteen years old, one thousand men, women, children were shot dead by Emperor’s soldiers outside Winter Palace. This happened in city where I live, in Petersburg.’

  There was a sudden steeliness in the Russian’s eyes that made Eliza shiver. The Winter Palace: it sounded like something out of Hans Christian Andersen but the thought of all those dead people disturbed her. What would happen to them all on the day of resurrection? It was one thing for Maria Adnitt to wake up in sleepy Hayton where nothing much had changed in half a thousand years; it would be quite different if you’d been shot by the Emperor’s soldiers. Would you still have the hole where the bullet went in? Might you not be angry? Might you want revenge?

  Roderick glanced at her in a way that made her feel he knew very well what she was thinking (he was all too aware of her vivid imagination). ‘You will give the child nightmares, Antipov, with all your gruesome—’ He stopped abruptly, cocking his head. ‘Hark. What’s that?’

  It was the sound of raised voices coming from the drawing room. But it couldn’t be Mama and Dorothea. Mama never raised her voice and Dorothea was the most even-tempered girl in the whole world.

  Eliza found that Roderick was looking at her with suspicion, reading her mind again. ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea what this is about?’

  Eliza shook her head. But even as she did so, everything seemed to slot into place: the letter from Germany and the proposal, the visit to Richard’s grave, Dorothea saying to Mrs Turner how much she’d miss everyone if she went away. Even the dreadful portent of the eclipse took on a new meaning now. Dorothea must have made up her mind. That letter she had been writing before dinner: could it be a letter of acceptance?

  Roderick’s eyes narrowed. ‘So you do know something! Well, out with it!’

  ‘It’s . . .’ Eliza hesitated. Had she not promised to keep Dorothea’s secret? But her resolution crumbled under Roderick’s stern gaze. ‘It’s the letter!’

  ‘Letter? What letter?’

  ‘The letter from Germany.’

  ‘Ah. I see. Another missive from that Teuton, the pasty-faced convalescent we met in Switzerland. What did he have to say for himself this time? You must know, Eliza: you and Doro are as thick as thieves.’

  Eliza wished now that she’d obeyed Mama and gone up to the nursery. Instead, faced with Roderick at his most implacable, she knew she had no choice but to betray Dorothea.

  ‘He . . . he . . . the German boy . . . he asked Doro to . . . to marry him.’

  ‘He did what? Are you sure you’ve got this right, Eliza? You’re not making your usual muddle?’

  ‘It’s true, all true,’ Eliza gabbled. ‘The German wants to marry Doro but Doro didn’t know what to do, “plain old Doro”, she said, but then today she changed, she was different, she talked to Richard and—’

  ‘What on earth are you blithering about? Richard is dead. The dead don’t hold conversations.’ Roderick got to his feet. He seemed taller and more intimidating than ever. ‘I see I shall have to get to the bottom of this myself.’

  He crossed the room, flung open the door. Eliza had her back to it. She didn’t dare look round. She sat rigid, watching the smoke curl up from Roderick’s abandoned cigar.

  After a moment, Roderick’s voice was added to the heated discussion in the drawing room.

  ‘Mother? Doro? What on earth. . . ?’

  ‘. . . I do wish you’d make her see sense, Roderick. . . .’

  ‘. . . feel that it’s right – I know that it’s right. . . .’

  Eliza became aware that Mr Antipov was watching her as he slowly smoked his cigar. What right did he have – a stranger – to sit there listening?

  Eliza slipped from her chair. She wanted to run and hide – to hide from the Russian’s curious eyes, to hide from the raised voices in the drawing room that were tearing her to pieces. In the passage, however, she hesitated. She didn’t want to hear the voices but she couldn’t help it. She was rooted to the spot, her stomach clenched in knots. The drawing room door was ajar. She could hear everything clearly.

  ‘. . . And after all we have done for you, Dorothea!’ Mama’s displeasure was plain to hear. ‘To throw yourself away like this! To even think of accepting a proposal made in a letter! We don’t even know this young man. He’s a foreigner, too. Why won’t you listen to sense? Why must you be so stubborn?’

  ‘Mother’s right, Doro.’ Roderick sounded calmer: persuasive, apologetic. ‘You’ve only ever met him once. You can’t make a decision based on that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Roddy,’ said Dorothea. ‘You didn’t like Johann. You took against him from the start. But don’t you see, it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve met him; what matters is to do the right thing.’

  ‘Foolishness!’ cried Mama. ‘Albert must be turning in his grave!’

  ‘At least Uncle Albert would have listened to me! Uncle Albert always listened!’

  ‘But he would never have allowed you to make a mistake like this! He always did everything he could to look after you, to take care of you. That is why he took you in when your father abandoned you. That is why he had you live with us here at Clifton. That is why he burned those letters—’

  Mama broke off. There was a sudden awful silence. Eliza trembled. She pressed herself against the passage wall, holding her breath.

  At length Dorothea spoke. Her voice was quiet, barely audible. ‘What letters?’ There was no reply. ‘I wrote letters,’ she continued, as if talking to herself. ‘I wrote lots of letters to Papa. He never wrote back.’

  ‘Mother?’ Roderick’s voice was questioning, also a little unsure. ‘Are those the letters you’re talking about?’

  ‘Those letters were never sent—’

  ‘Nev
er sent!’ exclaimed Dorothea. ‘What do you mean, they were never sent?’

  ‘You’d best explain, Mother.’

  ‘It was for the best. Your father, Roderick, decided. He made his mind up that Dorothea would stay with us. And when letters came from Frank Ryan—’

  ‘Letters from Papa? Letters for me? But why did I never see them?’

  ‘Albert burnt them.’

  ‘Uncle Albert burnt them? He burnt letters that were meant for me? He burnt letters from Papa?’

  ‘You were living with us. It had all been decided. There was no going back, Albert said.’

  ‘But what was in those letters, Mother? What did Frank Ryan have to say for himself?’

  ‘I don’t know, Roderick. I never read them. All I know is that your father burnt them. He did what was necessary, what was right. He always did what was right. I am only sorry that I mentioned them after all this time. They are best forgotten.’

  ‘Doro, you do see I hope that Mother is—’

  ‘How could you! How could you – all of you! How could you lie to me all these years! Papa didn’t abandon me. He wrote to me. But he must have thought that I’d abandoned him when he didn’t receive a reply! Oh, I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!’

  Without warning, the drawing room door was flung wide open. Dorothea came running out. Eliza, flattened against the wall, had a brief glimpse of her cousin’s wild eyes and pale, tear-stained face; her head of curls seemed almost preternaturally black just then.

  In an instant she was gone. Footsteps sounded on the stairs then faded.

  Mama and Roderick began to talk in low voices in the drawing room. Eliza did not want to hear. She stumbled to the foot of the stairs. Here her strength failed her. She sank down onto the bottom step. She held her head in her hands. What had happened? She tried to piece it all together.

  It had started with the German boy: the German boy and his proposal. But the German boy had been overtaken by events. Something to do with letters. Something to do with Dorothea’s papa.