And then suddenly I heard a quiet step behind me. Two cool hands swept around my face and covered my eyes. I knew their touch instantly.
‘Seb.’
‘We’re alone. Edwards’s taken them all out to cheer Beth up.’
‘I thought I’d lost you.’
‘Come with me.’
My body tingled at the thought of him standing behind me. He coaxed me forward and I walked blindly into what felt like the direction of the dining room.
‘OK, ready?’ he asked.
‘Ready for what?’
‘For this.’
He took his hands away and I gasped out loud. The room was full of coloured paper lanterns, and the candles inside them cast kaleidoscopic rays of light across the walls of the room.
‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s magical. A real fairyland.’
His face was pink and blue and yellow in the light.
‘I feel like Alice in Wonderland.’
‘Does that make me the White Rabbit?’
‘No, more of a Mad Hatter.’
I pulled his arms around me and kissed him. The touch of his lips after so long brought tears to my eyes.
‘Come on let me pour you some champagne. And look there are smoked salmon sandwiches and chocolate cake. All your favourite things!’
My head was spinning with happiness.
‘I’ve got a present for you as well,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking hard over the past weeks about what I can do to prove how much I love you. It’s silly really but here we go.’
He retrieved a flat leather pouch from his pocket and emptied it onto the table. A few old coins and two photographs slid out face down.
‘Ah, here it is!’ he said, flipping one of the pictures over. It was a photograph of Eva and Raphael.
‘I don’t understand,’ I muttered.
‘I’ve carried this photo around with me for years. These people are very special to me, like a family,’ he said thoughtfully. He gazed at their faces, a deep groove forming between his eyes. He looked haggard again, just like on the night of our argument, as if he’d suddenly gained fifteen years in as many seconds. Then, with a sudden fluid movement, he whipped away a nearby lantern and held the photograph to the exposed flame until it had burned and smouldered into nothing but a curl of ash.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘The other week, when we argued, you said that you wanted me to take your side. Well, I have now. You’re the most sensational thing that could have happened to me.’
The lanterns flickered and their glow felt like treacle against my skin.
‘You didn’t have to burn the picture for me.’
‘Well it’s done now,’ and all the light flooded back into his face again. ‘Right, is there anything else you’d like to discuss before I rip all the clothes off that fabulous body of yours?’
‘What about the sandwiches? Could get messy.’
‘Bugger the sandwiches.’
‘Actually there is something else.’
‘Damn.’
‘It’s OK, won’t take a second. I just wondered who that other picture was of?’ and I nodded my head at the other photo that had fallen out of the leather pouch.
He handed it to me. It was a black and white portrait of a woman and extremely old judging by the austere, high-necked gown she was wearing. She looked middle-aged, not particularly attractive with a rather weak chin, but she had soft, benevolent looking eyes and there was something pleasant about her smile and the agreeable way she confronted the camera.
‘Who is she?’ I asked.
‘Her name was Miranda White. A rather special person in my family once.’
‘Why do you carry it around with you?’
‘Because I’ve always admired her. She has a lovely face, don’t you agree?’
‘Yes, I know what you mean.’
‘Don’t ever stop loving me. Don’t ever lose faith in me,’ Seb implored when our bodies came together that night.
‘No, of course not. Why do you sound so scared?’
‘I never want to let you go, that’s all.’
We held each other so tightly that it hurt and I made a silent promise to myself to stop prying. Stop bothering him with questions.
I fell into a groggy champagne-fuelled sleep, although at first I kept trying to wake myself up, over and over again, just to check he was still there. When at last sleep took hold of me properly, I dreamt of jasmine and piano music and the smell of home. But then, just like a house of cards tumbling to ruin, my dreams suddenly fell apart and turned into a painful nightmare. It started at my throat, a dead-weight pressing down relentlessly. It seemed as if I was drowning and I tried to push myself up to the surface, my arms frantically thrashing about. And then it moved down to my chest, so heavy that my lungs seem to shrivel up beneath it.
I heard wheezing, sleep fell away and all at once I found myself choking and spluttering, flat on my back in my bed. And yet somewhere through my noise I could hear voices. I rolled onto my side hugging my chest, lapping the air back into my lungs. My eyes were streaming but through the tears I thought I could see Seb talking, no arguing, with someone: a figure at the end of my bed. The room was so dark, but Seb’s movements seemed jerky and agitated.
‘Seb?’ I gasped.
Two pairs of luminous eyes fell on me, like cats in the night and a scream rose up in my throat. The figure dissolved into darkness but I’d seen enough to know that it was him: the same man who’d watched me in my bed when Seb and I had first slept together. There was no mistaking the shadowy, grimacing subject of Raphael’s paintings.
And then Seb was sitting on the bed again, stroking my face.
‘Are you alright?’
‘That man, was it him? I think... I think he was trying to strangle me. It must have been him, where is he?’ I clutched my hands around my sore neck.
‘What man? What are you talking about?’ Seb drew his brows together with a confused look.
‘The man you were talking to just now, at the end of my bed.’
‘You’ve had too much to drink darling, and look, you’ve been a bit sick in your sleep. That’s what you were choking on. Have some water, does your head hurt?’
‘Yes, it aches,’ I fell back against the pillow.
‘Don’t worry my love, there’s no one here, apart from me of course. You must have been dreaming. Look, lie here, where it’s clean, and go back to sleep.’
1892
Backwards and forwards, slipping and sliding. A little scrape at the crust to brush off the excess left on the knife. Then smooth out the excess, slipping and sliding again. Eyes locked in concentration, hand jerking yet determined.
‘Gracious, soon the layer of butter will be thicker than the toast itself.’
‘Yes.’
Tristan dropped the knife as if it were a hot coal, snatching up his cup of tea instead. But half its contents was already slopping about in the saucer and some began to dribble down onto his lap.
She looked over at the clock. ‘It’s half past nine dear. You should have left for work half an hour ago.’
‘Absolutely.’
He sprang up from his seat but then hovered in the middle of the room scraping his unkempt hair back with his fingers and looking lost.
‘Did you hear a voice?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll go right now. Wouldn’t want to be late!’
His abandoned teacup tremored in its mucky puddle as he slammed the door behind him.
‘Have a lovely day.’
The orchids on the windowsill had started to bloom. Miranda stroked their petals to try and steady her nerves. He’d be here soon.
One of the corners of the letter in her pocket prodded at her thigh like a stern finger.
My Darling Lucinda, I am writing this letter with such heaviness and concern for you...
Those lines were beginning to plague her.
You see I have heard
more news...
No, it was ... some more news... surely?
Her fingers sneaked down towards the envelope; its edges were beginning to feel rather fuzzy.
Read me! It begged constantly. Read me again, just to make sure!
‘Oh very well. But this is the last time today and then I’m shoving you in the fire!’
My Darling Lucinda,
I am writing this letter with such heaviness and concern for you. You see I have heard more news about this man Tristan Whitestone, news which has alarmed your old Alfonso immensely.
But first and foremost WHERE HAVE YOU GONE my dear Lucinda? No one has seen nor heard from you in these past months. The house is dark... empty I think. I am sick with worry for you my darling, sick with worry. And now I shall explain why.
It took some digging to find him, a man by the name of Hughes living in a quiet spot out by Epsom. A newly retired policeman, still deeply tanned and accustoming himself to the cold life back at home. He’d been in India for the best part of twenty years and he knew our man out there, Tristan Whitestone, only too well.
‘I’d never seen anything like it, in all my professional life,’ he told me, with a sombre shake of the head. But it took several bottles of rum to get him going, not that he drank them then and there. Oh no. ‘Keeping them for my missus,’ he said. ‘When her chest plays up in the winter.’
Clementine Mandeville. Has your Mr Whitestone ever mentioned this name to you my Lucinda? She was a high ranking Bombay wife, auburn haired, extremely beautiful and a woman with a ‘playful eye,’ according to Hughes. Read what you will into that.
Her affair with Whitestone caused nothing short of an earthquake in that tight colonial circle. ‘I’d known him for going for the local girls many a time but never one of his own, and certainly not another man’s wife! Thought he was cleverer than that,’ were Hughes’s precise words on the subject.
But people’s fury, it seemed, gradually withered to a mild concern when reports of Mrs Mandeville’s condition and whereabouts became more and more hazy. Eventually news began to circulate that an English woman was being kept in one of the slums. This was when Hughes was brought in in a professional manner.
‘I found her all locked up in a filthy hovel. Had to break the door down to get in. Oh it was a dreadful sight, she was that thin! Delirious with something in her blood and a tiny baby by her side.’
I could detect paleness even beneath his ruddy tan as he recounted the story.
Mrs Mandeville died Lucinda! And Whitestone escaped without her testimony or a trace of evidence holding him accountable. A clever fellow after all. Oh this man is not safe. Where are you now? I will make one last attempt at delivering this letter and then, if I have not heard from you within a week, I too will turn to the police. Please forgive me, but you are and always will be at the forefront of my concern.
Alfonso.
‘There’s a man at the door asking for you,’ said Mrs Hubbard. ‘A very peculiar looking individual, I’m not sure if he...’
‘It’s alright, I’ve had a note from him. He’s a sort of doctor. Please don’t be alarmed.’
Walter Balanchine swept into the room, his broad-brimmed hat tucked beneath his arm. He looked even taller indoors, like a circus character on stilts. He eyed the letter in her hand and she slid it back into her pocket.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me Miranda and my apologies for it having taken me so long. The potion you gave me was a rare one but I think I can tell you something about it now.’
‘Oh no, I must apologize for handing it to you in the first place. I’m rather embarrassed... I was very tired that day. Exhausted in fact.’
‘Would you like to sit down?’ he said.
‘Oh yes please! Although shouldn’t I be asking you to do that? Um, do you drink tea?’
‘Generally not.’
He had an appealing voice. Rather soft, with a vaguely effeminate London slur, but there was something foreign mixed up in it as well. Hard to tell from where. Green was clearly his choice of colour today: green suit, green sweeping cloak and a green emerald pinned into his tie. When he sat down even an expanse of green stocking poked out from beneath one of his trouser legs. He wasn’t really a man at all; more an exotic sort of bird, ugly and beautiful at the same time.
‘May I ask you a personal question?’ she said.
He raised his eyebrows in response.
‘Why do you dress like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like... well. And where exactly do you come from?’
‘From East London. Limehouse. But my family were immigrants, from the other side of Europe.’
‘Limehouse. I’ve never been there, although I have never been anywhere much.’
‘Then let me take you. You will find it very different; people from all over the world land-up there.’
‘I hear there are opium dens.’
‘Yes. I could take you to one of those as well if you prefer.’
‘Oh goodness gracious no!’
If only they could drink tea or eat cake or something. It would take the emphasis away from his eyes a little which were so intense that she felt quite stripped to her bones.
‘You will find nothing in an opium den half so noxious as the substance in this bottle,’ he murmured. And as if by magic the bottle of poison she’d handed to him on her return from Dover appeared in his palm. It made her start to see the thing again.
‘What is it, a poison I assume?’
He placed it carefully down on the table with long white fingers.
‘Before I tell you would you mind me asking how it fell into your possession?’
‘I’m afraid that’s a private matter.’
‘Did it belong to your husband?’
‘I...’ She had to look away.
‘Don’t worry. The reason I ask is because this bottle contains a barbiturate from India; a place your husband knows well. Its ingredients are awfully rare. You call it a poison and I suppose you are correct. In small doses it stimulates the brain causing drowsiness and compliance. But in an experiment I conducted only three small drops of the concoction managed to kill a rat. I daresay a couple more would kill a human.’
‘How do you know about my husband Mr Balanchine?’
‘Walter, please.’
‘How do you know about my husband Walter?’
‘I have been observing him for the past three weeks since your return. He leaves the house in the morning, shaking and hollow eyed and returns in the evening half conscious.’
‘You’ve been spying on us!’
‘I have no real interest in your husband apart from any involvement he might have had with Lucinda Eden. This routine of his seemed to have started with her disappearance. She is still missing and although I am striving hard to find her, her father is dying with grief. He is my dear dear friend; quite a damaged soul, rather like you in a way. Yes, I see the pain inside you! You try to make it invisible, make yourself invisible, but I see it there, smouldering away.’
He leaned towards her, his eyes heavy on her face.
‘Has something awful happened in your life? I see so much sadness in your lovely face.’
Suddenly her hand was in his and their faces were barely an inch apart. Was he going to... to kiss her?
‘Please don’t. This is hardly fair, please,’ she stammered.
‘You’re not ready to speak yet, I can tell that.’
‘Tristan has an awful lot of problems... It’s alright though, his father is travelling back to England and he’s going to bring some sort of specialist to make him better.’
‘But you’re not so sure that anyone can help him.’
‘I didn’t say that, did I?’
‘Do you feel in any sort of danger?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Promise that you’ll come to me, when the time is right?
‘But why would I...?’
‘Promise.’
‘I promise.’
He cupped her chin, so caressing, as if he could read her mind through the blood vessels in his hands.
‘Here is your bottle. You know what it contains now. Be brave with it.’
All afternoon the bottle and the letter brushed against each other in her pocket. The two of them jolted and rustled and antagonized each other so much at the fortnightly church hall meeting, that she could barely string a sentence together. And, rather like two unruly children, she felt the need to check on them constantly: to twist the rim of the bottle with her fingers, just to make sure that it was still closed, to stroke the furred edges of the letter during her stroll home.
And to make matters worse the extraordinary Walter Balanchine now simply refused to leave her thoughts. She’d watched him for so long and now the portrait had miraculously come to life, leaving her with both a yearning and a deep bubbling fear that ran hot and cold though her body at the same time.
As she approached her house a young couple appeared before her outside number 32; their new neighbours presumably. They were closely pressed up together on the threshold, furniture and boxes cluttering up the pavement. The vision made her pause for a moment. He was young and handsome, quite tall, and he was looking down at his small wife with eyes that seemed to say, Look at our new life together. Look at our new home! In return she raised her hand and brushed his cheek with the edge of her glove. Such a small gesture but enough to reveal what was in her heart.
‘Oh thank you for feeding Minerva.’
Mrs Hubbard let the cat slide down from her lap to the kitchen floor and Miranda pretended to look away. It had become an unspoken rule not to acknowledge how fond the cook and the animal had become of each other.
The Room Beyond Page 18
