‘Yes, I wish I’d listened. I... I don’t know what to say.’
He looked away for a moment, squinting into the cold air. ‘My father’s very angry,’ he murmured, his voice wavering. ‘He’s blaming everyone at the moment. Sorry. Can I help you?’
I raised myself to my feet and we glanced up at the house together. A curtain twitched in an upstairs window, Eva’s room.
‘Yes you can,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s one small thing that I can do for your family, if you’ll let me. I need you to get something for me first though, from Raphael’s room. Would it be possible, do you think?’
The card Sasha had given me was for an address in Bloomsbury called The Machen Institute. I plunged headlong between the buses along Tottenham Court Road and then into the quieter back streets.
The Machen Institute was an austere thirties building squashed between two much nicer Victorian ones. I hurried up the three flights of stairs to Sasha’s office. His door was at the end of a musty corridor: Sasha Apostol it said on a yellowing piece of card in a metal frame.
When I knocked his face appeared from behind the door with a clinical little smile.
‘Ah, you’ve made it. Come in. I have to say that your phone call was most unexpected in light of recent fascinating events. I thought you would be needed by the family. Please, take a seat if you can find one.’
He was wearing his usual tweed suit and a mismatched checked shirt underneath which had seen better days. He’d also oiled his hair into thick shiny strands across his head.
‘I’ve stopped working for the Hartreves. You won’t be seeing me at the house again.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘That surprises and saddens me. I have much to tell you that you would find interesting, I think.’
‘And for what in return?’
He didn’t reply but turned instead to a pile of papers on his desk, rifling through them with purposeful fingers.
The office was crammed with bookshelves on all sides. I squeezed myself between two piles of dictionaries onto a small sofa by the window and scoured the room for a hiding place.
The bookcase to my right jutted out from the wall quite a bit. I craned my neck and discovered a good three inch gap above the old skirting board between the bookcase and the wall.
‘Here, take a look at this,’ he said, suddenly brandishing a piece of paper and thrusting it into my hand. ‘Walter Balanchine, shortly before his death in 1939. This image actually appeared alongside his obituary. He was in his mid-eighties.’
It was a photocopy of a black and white photograph. The man in it had little more than a skull of a face and long wispy white hair. His deep-set eyes were fixed far away, as if he were peering at the horizon. It was an ugly, yet perversely beautiful face, something from a different world or an ancient era even.
‘Who was he, exactly?’ I asked.
‘A mystic, a visionary, a madman. At the age of seven he was arrested by the police for purportedly turning a local publican into a rat; at twelve years old he had a stall in Limehouse selling miraculous cures for anything from gout to gangrene. In adulthood he acquired clients from across the country and, indeed, from all over the world: pitiful and lonely souls who leaned upon him like children and lived in awe of his miraculous abilities. Lord Stephen Hartreve was one of them.’
‘Was Balanchine famous?’
‘In a sense. The Victorians craved spirituality in many forms as the nineteenth century wore on. Darwin, among others, had done his best to upend religion and men like Balanchine offered hope to the disenchanted... But now,’ and he paused, dragging his palm across his oily head. ‘Enough of my chattering and time for you to tell me something.’
He sat down and pulled his chair up close.
‘What do you want to know?’ I asked.
‘Why don’t we start with that book you found in Druid Manor? Where did you come across it exactly?’
‘In the library.’
He breathed deeply. ‘The great library itself! And who took you there?’
‘No one.’
‘I don’t believe you. You would never have found it on your own. Was it young Beth? It must have been, tell me.’
‘Why are you so interested in Beth?’
He strummed his fingers slowly across his thigh. ‘Surely over these past months you’ve come to realize that Beth is... not quite normal for a child of her age?’
‘That sounds a little dramatic. She’s very bright of course, her head is bursting with thoughts and ideas like any young child.’
‘Thoughts and ideas! Ha! Listen to me. I know everything there is to know about the Hartreve family and that child has told me things that...’ he stopped himself.
‘That what? What are you trying to say?’
He gave a low laugh. ‘Things that she couldn’t possibly have invented.’
The air hung between us like a heavy velvet curtain.
‘You know, the introduction to Balanchine’s book was very interesting,’ I said, breaking the silence. ‘Haunting really. It was about a little girl called Miranda.’
‘Miranda? Really? What did it say about her?’
‘Oh, she had a terrible childhood. She poisoned her mother by mistake and was punished for it for so long that an awful thing began to happen to her.’
‘And what was that? Tell me.’
‘No, not yet. You tell me about Beth first.’
He jumped from his chair, frustration flexing through his fingers. ‘This is a silly game, a stupid game that you are playing!’ he snapped, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. ‘Alright... She sees things, hears voices.’
‘What sort of voices?’
‘Voices of the past, if you must know.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t believe me?’ he laughed loudly.
‘No. Why should I?’
I glared at him and his nose flared up into a snarl. He snatched at a file on his desk and tore another piece of paper from it.
‘Take a look at this. You’ll recognize Balanchine to the right. It’s a satirized image of him with a young companion, drawn around 1910.’
The cartoon depicted the two men walking shoulder to shoulder along an urban street. There was a caption underneath: Beauty and the Beast. Balanchine had been sketched with a grimacing scowl, devil horns and the pointed end of a serpent’s tale poking out from beneath his cloak. His companion was a young sharp-suited man about town, with fashionably floppy hair and a face I knew better than my own.
The image swam before my eyes. I wanted to touch it, draw my finger across the lovely face and yet my hand flinched back at the same time. Sasha leaned in close; the acrid smell of his sweaty skin in my nostrils.
‘That young man you see in the picture was believed to be the illegitimate grandson of Lord Stephen Hartreve. He was brought up almost in seclusion at Druid Manor, but as a young adult returned to what was once his mother’s home, by then resided in by some cousins: 36 Marguerite Avenue. London loved him of course and soon the idle tongues of friends and family told the world that this was the son of the notorious beauty Lucinda Hartreve.’
‘What happened to him?’
My voice sounded small and bruised.
‘Ah, now I was hoping that this was something you could tell me!’
He waited but I made no answer.
‘One day,’ he continued. ‘Not a year after the young man’s arrival in London, he simply vanished and no one has seen him for a hundred years until I showed this picture to young Beth. She must have been three at the time, no more. “That’s Sebastian,” she told me in that little voice of hers. “He’s always here. He’s funny!” I already had my suspicions of course; Arabella, stupid miserable woman that she is, was simply a treasure trove of information in those early days, but it was the child who confirmed it all. Oh! And when she looked deep into my eyes, such a sweet innocent voice came out of her.’
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and then his eyes sparkled. ‘Bu
t now, now, I have something even more!’ he said, unfolding a piece of paper. It was the torn envelope from Jess with my drawing of Seb’s face scribbled onto it. He dropped it into my lap, padded softly over to his office door and locked it with a small key which he then dropped into his pocket. ‘Speak.’
I held the picture of my lover tightly in my hands. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
‘Beth didn’t take me to the library on the first occasion, Raphael did,’ I murmured eventually. ‘The second time, when I found the book, I really was alone. I seem to be able to find and see things which I shouldn’t... As I’ve already told you, I read the introduction about Miranda. Her family chose to ignore her as a punishment and gradually she disappeared, just like the house I think.’
‘What house?’
‘34.’
‘So you noticed.’
‘Of course. The missing house fascinated me right from the start...’
‘Yes!’ his excited tongue flicked out as he sat down again. ‘That house is the key to it all. Balanchine’s greatest feat. And every day I feel, I know, I am closer to discovering it!’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘It baffled me for a long long time. How could it have disappeared? What happened to the couple who once lived there?’
‘Miranda and Tristan Whitestone.’
‘You even know about them, as well?’ his face filled with something that looked almost like admiration.
‘I do. Miranda changed her name, brought Lucinda’s child to Druid Manor.’
‘Yes yes,’ he said hurriedly, suddenly gripping my hand. ‘But Tristan... where did he go? When and where did he die? I’ll tell you! Just last year, about the time that you joined the household, I finally unearthed the truth.
‘I was reading the newly-discovered journals of a fascinating Scottish psychiatrist of the time by the name of Blythe. In a chapter dedicated to the causes of suicide, Blythe wrote about the case of a man called Tristan Whitestone of Marguerite Avenue. He describes the man’s hideous decline, his wild ramblings regarding the loss of his mistress, his despicable treatment of his wife and finally the eventual discovery of his body in the kitchen larder of their house.
‘The date given to the commencement of Whitestone’s mental decline closely coincides with the secret disappearance of his neighbour Lucinda. As soon as I put these dates together I knew that I had found the true father of Lucinda’s child. Lord Hartreve would not have enjoyed being associated with such a scandal and that’s where Balanchine wove his magic. The man eliminated it all: birth and death certificates, legal correspondence, even the house itself.’
He sat back and loosened his collar, breathless with his own brilliance.
‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I uttered.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Walter Balanchine might have eliminated many things to save the Hartreves from scandal, but he didn’t make that house disappear. When I read the story about Miranda’s childhood, there was nothing contrived about her invisibility. People just couldn’t stand seeing her misery anymore, her loneliness. I think the same thing happened to the house. Goodness me, in spite of all your delving you really don’t know that much about Walter Balanchine after all, do you? 34 Marguerite Avenue is still very much there, disguised by nothing but its own cloud of sadness.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’ve been there myself.’
‘You’ve been there? It really does still exist?’
‘Yes.’
His face went rigid. ‘Then take me there. Take me to the house.’
‘Why would you want to go to such a place?’
He jumped from his seat, every sinew and muscle so taut that he looked ready to climb out of his own skin. ‘Do you have any idea what I... we... could gain from such a discovery? We could tell the world!’
‘And what would that do to the family, to Beth?’
‘No harm would come of Beth! She’s my prodigy, practically my own child. I would turn her into a sensation.’
‘I wonder what Eva would think of that.’
He drew his tongue across his lower lip. ‘She’ll learn her place, eventually. You just leave Eva to me.’
‘That’s what I’m most afraid of.’
He threw me the same look as when we first met on the threshold of Arabella’s office: his face crunched like a fist but this time ready to punch.
‘You like her, don’t you?’ I said slowly. ‘All that aristocratic beauty: those long legs, that youthful body. You can barely keep your hands off her. Do you really think she’d give in to you?’
He broke into a small laugh. ‘How naïve you are. There are ways of persuading people into doing things, didn’t you know? And the Hartreves can be bought. I have proof of that.’
‘Your plans would destroy them.’
‘Oh they’re already destroyed, you don’t need to worry about that. And even so, what does it matter at the end of the day? Eh? A few casualties at the expense of such an extraordinary, momentous find?’
‘Even if you do tell the world, you might just be laughed at. They’ll call you a crank.’
‘Absolutely not! I have too much evidence and enough credibility to make myself heard. All you have to do is take me to the house.’
I stared back at him, into that sweaty covetous face and thought of Eva. I saw those little hands of his fondling her white skin, his breath heavy, panting even. I saw the tears in her eyelashes as they closed together.
‘Take me to the house!’ he commanded, urging me from the depths of his eyes.
‘Alright, yes I will,’ I heard my voice say. ‘Now unlock that door please.’
‘Do I have your word?’
‘Yes, but I want to go back alone first, just to say goodbye to Beth, to Gladys...’
‘Gladys? Who is she?’
I drew in a deep breath. ‘Meet me in two hours on Marguerite Avenue.’
‘Do you swear? I’ll find you if you let me down.’
‘I swear that I’ll be there in two hours. Unlock that door.’
He turned to the lock, fumbling with the key and in one swift movement I did it. I drew the small package from my pocket and slipped it behind the bookcase, balanced quite comfortably on the thick skirting board. Sasha opened the door and I brushed past him without another word, my legs trying not to run.
Outside the air was thick with fumes and clouds. I wiped my hand against my top, the memory of Sasha’s sweaty palm still engrained in my skin.
There was an empty phone box up ahead, littered with cigarette butts and exotic dancers’ calling cards. I pulled the door open.
‘Hello... yes, I’d like to report the discovery of a stolen item... a Celtic cross with a red stone, from the Victoria and Albert Museum... you’ll find it in the office of Sasha Apostol in the Machen Institute in London... he’s there right now. No, I don’t want to give my name.’
My shadow was long and lean by the time I was back on Marguerite Avenue. The houses had turned grey against the sky, their blinds pulled down, their curtains drawn, the climbing rose on the wall at the end nothing but a naked brown rope. I hunched my shoulders up against the cold. A gust of wind swept the leaves and dust up from the road.
I was ten years old again, my grubby school shoes slipping on damp leaves. My mother was at home in the warm glow, worrying why I was a little late, poised to tell me off whilst hugging me at the same time as soon as I stepped in through the door. And we were all ignorant of what was waiting for us around the corner. The minibus sleeping its last night in the big hollow coach station. Three tickets to a London show sitting in my mother’s handbag.
I stopped abruptly, my hand pressed firmly against my scar.
‘Leave me alone,’ I whispered through clenched jaws.
But as I began to move cautiously again, the glint of gold shimmered in the corner of my eye. When I turned towards it two brass numbers smirked back at me: 34.
I am here. I’ve always been h
ere, they seemed to say.
And somewhere, perhaps deep inside myself although I wasn’t quite sure, I felt the beginning of a beat. It sounded like a distant drum or the rhythmic pounding of a heart.
As I walked up to the house the beat seemed to pause for a moment, as if unsure of something, and then it started up again, a little louder this time. The door fell open with the softest touch and closed behind me. I could hear my breathing quicken, my eyes adjusting to the gloom as the final rays of light teased the dank air with small white prongs.
I wandered through the hallway and the sound grew stronger again. I stopped abruptly, turning to look around me. Where was it coming from? Something had changed in its rhythm as well. Listening carefully I realized that a second beat had joined in; a second pounding heart echoing the first. And, almost as an accompaniment, my own pulse quickened as my knuckles clenched and I carried on.
In the dining room the table was set as before with plates and glasses, as if awaiting a dinner party. I looked up at the portrait of Tristan and Miranda and scooped up one of the wine glasses from the table. It looked so delicate, its pattern woven around the bowl like frost on a spider’s web.
In a sudden flash an image swept through me, the two beats strengthening yet again. I saw skin: a woman’s neck, a fine bead of sweat trickling down between her breasts. I felt myself gasp and clutched the glass tighter.
‘Would you like a drink?’
I jumped at the voice. Cold fear sliced through me as my eyes scanned the room for its owner. At the end of the table sat a lone figure in black.
‘Raphael!’
He peered back at me, the handsome poetic face I’d first seen in the black and white photograph now barely recognizable. There were jagged tears up one side of his face and his hair was matted with blood. He seemed to have diminished, hunched and hollow now, the loneliest creature I’d ever seen.
‘So you live here now, as well,’ I murmured, trying to control my voice.
He smiled sadly, his lips etched with cracked purple lines. ‘You saw it just now, didn’t you?’ he answered. ‘You can hear it too.’
‘Hear what? What do you mean?’
The Room Beyond Page 30
