She raised her eyebrows so that they nearly disappeared into her helmet of sprayed hair. ‘Never heard of him.’
‘Really? He’s a close friend of the Hartreve children, practically grew up with them I think.’
‘Well clearly not in my presence then! I would have known him, we were often in the house.’
‘Oh...’
‘Look,’ she said, with an agitated shake of the head. ‘I don’t believe in small talk. You came here for a reason, which you have so far failed to explain, and I will not permit you to waste too much of my time discussing those people.’
I felt myself getting smaller and smaller in my chair. ‘Of course. This is all very awkward for me but I suppose I came to tell you that I don’t believe your husband is the father of Eva Hartreve’s child.’
She seemed to freeze, stock still, so noiseless that my thumping heart echoed even louder and then she threw back her head and unleashed a shrill laugh.
‘Is that all?’ she cried out. ‘I could have told you that my dear. Martin only left the country because he’d swindled one too many people out of their life savings. And besides, he was too busy bedding Arabella at the time even to notice her precocious pain of a daughter. You seem shocked, didn’t you know? Oh yes, Arabella Hartreve was so bored and frustrated by her marriage that she must have slept with half the House of Lords by the time that ghastly little Russian academic came along.’
‘Sasha?’
‘Yes! That was his name. He seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect over her, goodness knows why. We called him her Rasputin.’
‘Did she ever explain why she let him into their home, what he was doing there, apart from... well, you know?’
‘Only once, although it was a load of old rubbish if you ask me.’
‘No, please tell me. I desperately want to know.’
Lady Burnside drew her brows together. Her face was softer now, tired-looking, as if just the mere effort of talking about the Hartreves exhausted her.
‘Oh...’ she shook her head. ‘If you must know, but then you really should leave.’
‘Of course I will. I promise.’
She clenched her hands back together again.
‘Arabella had had too much to drink one night. We’d been playing cards and she’d lost badly, which never went down well with her. I took her off to bed but she kept on calling out for the man, Sasha.
‘“Be quiet, Edward will hear!” I kept telling her.
‘But she didn’t seem to care less: “Sasha’s going to take the ghosts away,” she kept saying. “He’s going to heal us!”
‘Oh the gibberish that came out of that woman’s mouth! All sorts about how she could never be mistress of her own home, that it was destroying their lives... I don’t know. But what I do know is that that man, Sasha, was a nasty piece of work who had no intention of helping Arabella Hartreve with whatever her problems were. He had ambition stamped all across his face that fellow. Ugh, covers me with goose bumps just to think of him.’
She stopped talking. I felt her eyes on me but I couldn’t meet them. Beyond her shoulder through the conservatory windows the river pondered on, slowly heaving itself towards London. The seagulls had abandoned it now; there wasn’t even a boat in sight.
‘I know that look. They’ve got under your skin, haven’t they?’ she said quietly and her gaze drifted somewhere far away. ‘They’re a cruel bunch. Edward helped Martin, but for what price? All that money, just to prop their crumbling old house up... And still they keep that rumour about the child alive without him being around to defend himself! Martin might have been a crook and an adulterer, but he would never have touched a young girl like that. A word of advice: get out of that house before things turn nasty.’
The tears filled my eyes and the looping river suddenly sprung up into a tight concertina.
‘Ah yes, I forgot! Lover boy. What was his name again?’
‘Sebastian White,’ I whispered.
By the time I got back from Richmond it was early evening and a haze of drizzle met me outside the tube station. I turned my collar up and ploughed on through it. Close to Marguerite Avenue an area of the pavement had been cordoned off with yellow tape. There were flashing lights and several policemen stepping gingerly through smashed glass on a shop floor.
It was a small antiques shop that sold old maps and globes. The frazzled looking owner was standing in the middle of it all, wringing his hands, shaking his head, trying to answer the policeman’s questions. I fled to the other side of the road, my pulse beating time to my quickened pace.
‘Hey, I was beginning to get worried about you. Where have you been?’ Seb pulled my coat off as soon as I got inside, brushing the rain from my cheeks with his hands. ‘Guess who’s here.’
‘Raphael?’
‘Yes! How did you know?’
‘Oh, just a hunch.’
He smiled, tenderly pressing his fingers against the base of my spine to urge me towards the drawing room.
The lights in there were dim, the carpet warm and soft against my feet after the harsh winter pavement. Raphael was stretched in one of the sofas, a glass of whisky cupped in his hand, and Beth was curled up as usual in her favourite chair, like a small cat.
‘Hello you, have a good day?’ he asked. His tone was so familiar. It was as if I’d seen him just that morning, maybe shared a pot of coffee and read the morning papers over the kitchen table. But his face told another story. It was full of secrets, our secrets.
‘Umm, sort of,’ I replied.
‘Serena guessed you were back,’ said Seb.
‘Really? How did you do that?’
‘It wasn’t hard. You left your calling card.’
His dark eyes seemed to hesitate on my face. ‘Where?’
‘At that small antiques shop down the road.’
‘Right, she’s clearly lost it,’ laughed Seb. ‘Come on Beth, there’s nothing for it but to tickle the insanity out of her!’
The two of them pounced on me, tickling until I fell squirming under them onto the carpet. Raphael looked on with a faint smile, but something that looked like fear tugged at the corners of his face and I saw that familiar tension tighten in his eyes.
I ate in the kitchen as usual that evening with Gladys. When Beth finally came in from the family meal she scrambled onto my lap, yawning loudly.
‘I’ll put her to bed tonight,’ I said.
‘Are you sure, it’s your day off isn’t it?’
‘I don’t mind. You must be exhausted and they’re all so excited about Raphael coming back.’
The laughing voices were echoing all the way to us in the kitchen.
‘They’re setting up a card game already,’ she tutted.
She rested her little head against me on our way up the stairs and I wound my arm around her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. I’ve just been bothered a lot today.’
‘By what?’
‘Voices. They’ve given me a headache. You see that lady?’ she came to a halt. ‘She lived here once.’
‘What lady?’
‘That one there, can’t you see her face?’
Her finger was pointing high up into the cornices, just beneath the place where the wall met the hallway ceiling, and a moulded bust peered back at us with a disdainful smile that I’d have recognized anywhere.
‘That’s Lucinda Hartreve, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, although she became Lucinda Eden. Her husband’s face is over there.’
In the cornice behind us another bust gazed down. He had a large, avuncular face, almost broken in two by his widespread grin.
‘He left her alone here,’ continued Beth. ‘She’s the one I hear crying sometimes.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘You need some sleep young lady.’
I ruffled my fingers through her blonde mop, half dragging her up the rest of the way.
Why hadn’t I noticed the face
s before? Lucinda had been smirking down at me the entire time and I’d never even thought to look up to find her there. They were everywhere I went, those two women: Lucinda and Miranda. Almost as if they were barely dead at all. Ghosts.
By the time I got back down the card game was in full swing and the drawing room thick with smoke.
‘Come on boy!’ hollered Edward, poking Robert in the ribs with the mouthpiece of his pipe. ‘A three? Surely you can do better than that!’ The brandy he was drinking slurred in his voice.
Seb wasn’t there, but Sasha was. He cornered me instantly.
‘We haven’t had our conversation yet,’ he murmured hotly in my ear.
‘We have nothing to say to each other.’
‘You will speak to me or...’
‘Or what? Are you going to start threatening me too, as you do with this family? I know all your dirty tricks, just to serve your own interests. Walter Balanchine’s dead and buried, just leave it alone.’
He gaped at me with surprise.
‘You know about Balanchine? You, the nanny?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, my blood rising with a sudden urge to hit this man where it really hurt. ‘I found a book of his at Druid Manor. Something about disappearance and hypnosis.’
‘You found this?’
‘Yes I did.’
He brushed some beads of sweat from his brow. The fine veins in the whites of his eyes throbbed with excitement.
‘I have spent much of my professional life studying this man,’ he whispered hurriedly. ‘He was a genius, you have been very fortunate to come across this book. Nevertheless, I cannot believe that you just found it.’
‘Sasha!’ It was Arabella. ‘Come and help me out darling, I’m losing miserably!’
‘Yes my dear!’ He rearranged his features into a smile and offered her a small salute across the room. ‘Here is my card,’ he whispered hurriedly. ‘Come to my office. I’ll make it worth your time.’
‘Sasha!’
The whole table had stopped playing now. They were all staring at us.
‘I am coming! Ah yes, I see you are in a lot of trouble.’
It was impossible to sleep that night. Instead I listened to the soft whispering of Seb’s breath and watched on as old memories flooded towards me through the darkness; bolder and brighter and larger than ever before.
She was there almost every time I closed my eyes: her curved back, straining beneath the old T-shirt, her hands so busy patting down fresh black soil.
‘Mum!’
She’d pause, begin to turn, just a hint of a profile coming into view and then the image would start to crack up, blurring the colours until they ran in muddy, stinging streaks.
Long after midnight a sudden beam of light came rushing in from under my bedroom door: it was the single lamp that lit the narrow staircase up to my room. Beth most probably, wandering around half asleep and looking for some company. I crept downstairs, but she was safely huddled up in her bed, her face still and tranquil in the throes of sleep.
‘Hello.’
I jumped, my hands flying to my mouth. Raphael was standing right behind me.
‘I’m sorry; you didn’t hear me coming?’
‘Oh my God, you scared the life out of me! How could I have heard you coming when you don’t make any noise at all?’
He was wearing black trousers and an old shirt with the sleeves rolled up; fully-dressed as if night and sleep mattered little to him. I noticed for the first time how slim his arms were, all sinew and muscle, the blue veins like streaks of lightning in his skin. Those thin arms had grabbed me once; how surprisingly strong they were.
‘Can I have a word with you, in my room?’ he murmured.
‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’
‘No.’
‘Alright then... Did you switch that light on to get me up?’
‘Yes.’
I’d never been in Raphael’s room before. It looked out towards the back of the house and had very little in it apart from a bed, a small table cluttered with objects, an antique wooden wardrobe and numerous paintings propped up against the walls all around the floor. In the dim light some of them just looked like canvases painted jet black, presumably his own stark creations, but there were many more: portraits, pictures of buildings, even a humble impression of a jug of wild flowers.
‘Take a seat,’ he said, offering me the edge of his bed. ‘Would you like a cigarette?’
‘Thanks.’
I could see even more of the paintings from this angle. One of them looked like a portrait of Beth set on its side. The edge of another small painting poked out from behind it, chipped and old, embellished in shades of gold and brown. Raphael was watching me; his pale face lingered in the corner of my eye.
‘Why do you want me here?’
He didn’t move.
‘I’d like to know what you meant earlier, about me leaving a calling card.’
The gold and brown painting caught my eye again. I could just about see the edge of a man painted in the middle of it, his head crowned by a halo.
‘Every time I see you, your arrival miraculously coincides with news of a robbery: Habsburg gems, Celtic jewellery not dissimilar to the necklace that you gave Beth, the painting in the church, the small antiques shop. And who knows where that bike came from! It’s what you do, isn’t it? You’re not an artist at all; you’re a thief.’
He laughed gently, a sad laugh. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you look like an elf? Actually in this light you’re more like a beautiful slender fairy. You’re not quite real, are you Serena? And you’re lonely, really lonely. We’re so alike in that way. Let me take care of you.’
I turned my face away from him. The haloed figure was holding something silver in his right hand: a fish. And the figure was Jesus, feeding the five thousand. I swallowed hard, summoning up the strength to carry on, willing myself not to look him in the eye.
‘I could threaten to tell your parents, but they already know don’t they?’ I said.
‘How well you’ve come to understand my family.’
‘Why do you do it?’
‘Because I can. You found the book in the library? Read the introduction about poor little Miranda? I’ve read the whole thing. I’ve been studying it all my life. Balanchine was a genius you know. He understood the susceptibility of the human mind and he harnessed it! That little man in the antiques shop earlier, he was there the whole time, never even saw any of his stuff go until it was too late.’
‘I don’t think that Walter Balanchine wrote that book to train thieves.’
He pulled something from out of his pocket and cupped it in his hand. I raised my chin to see. A cross, similar but larger than the one he’d given Beth nestled there in the coils of its chain. It was intricately engraved and a red stone glinted like a dark, knowing eye from its centre. Raphael drew a tender finger across it.
‘I’m not a thief. I just like to have beautiful things about me.’
‘I could call the police right now.’
‘But you’re not going to, are you? You want something else.’
‘Yes.’
He let the cross slide gently from his hand onto the table and then moved closer. His expression was calm, measured, and I raised my eyes to meet his.
‘Take me there,’ I whispered and his gaze rushed through me like an electric charge. My fingers twitched, I raised my arms towards him. ‘Take me to the house next door.’
I could barely feel the pavement beneath my naked feet. Raphael’s arm was around my shoulders, propelling me softly on, turning me to face back towards the row of houses. Something had changed.
It felt so subtle, like the smallest adjustment to a much loved face or an old family photograph; barely discernible at all but enough to turn the familiar into something entirely alien. Number 36 was just as it was, nestled at the end of the row against the old brick wall. But the house before it was whiter than the one I knew. It had pots of orchids growing b
ehind the drawing room windows and on the door two brass numbers shone out proudly in the moonlight: 34.
The arm around my shoulders tightened. ‘Come on.’
The door wasn’t locked; it fell open with a single stroke and inside the air tasted of wretchedness. Its putrid haze filled the rooms like a grey cloud, smothering the antique furniture, the chandeliers, the threadbare curtains and moth-eaten carpets. It stung my eyes so that they filled with tears but Raphael’s arm drew me on and I floated through it all, mouth agape, a century of dust clinging to the soles of my feet.
The walls felt cool and firm against my fingers, no less real than the house I lived in right next door. He lead me to the dining room, its table set with plates and glasses, as if awaiting a dinner party. And on the wall there hung a portrait of a young couple. The woman gazed out of it with anxious eyes, her mouth and chin slightly askew as if she might have needed some convincing to sit for the painter. Miranda.
But the man next to her. Oh God, I knew those eyes so well.
‘Tristan Whitestone,’ came Raphael’s voice.
‘Miranda’s husband.’
‘Yes. He had an affair with Lucinda Hartreve, Mrs Eden. And then he imprisoned her up in that room where you sleep now, pregnant with his child.’
‘Did she survive?’
‘Only just. Miranda saved her, helped her escape. But childbirth finished her off. She left the baby, a boy, in Miranda’s care and they went away.’
‘What happened to Tristan Whitestone?’
His breath quickened into small gasps. ‘Tristan Whitestone has never really left.’
We glided up the stairs, passing gaping corridors filled with closed doors, the grey air washing around our limbs. Raphael’s touch kept me hostage; we moved as one and when his heart began to beat faster and his body began to tremble a little, then mine followed suit. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe without him.
Right at the top of the house there was a room like my own; a lonely little turret with nothing more than an empty desk inside and glass doors leading out onto a balcony.
‘Just like your bedroom next door, isn’t it?’
‘Yes it is,’ I whispered.
The Room Beyond Page 27
