‘Well, he won’t be much good over there, will he?’
‘I don’t have a signal, remember?’
‘You will where I picked you up – maybe even before. It’s the house that’s the black hole.’ He scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it to her; she tucked it in her pocket. Then he climbed in and gunned the engine, escaping in a cloud of gravel.
All the way back to Winterbourne, Rachel considered Jack’s description of the house as a ‘black hole’. He meant of connectivity, of course, but the words seemed laden with another, more serious, meaning. Winterbourne was its own rock, cut off from civilisation as much as it was from time. It could be a house in any era, belonging to any family, which in a way was how Rachel had arrived at it.
She’d been wrong about the rain. It started steadily and then settled into a lashing, determined stride, slicing at her from the sea and blasting her cheeks with freezing cold. As she chugged up the hill towards Winterbourne, lungs burning and calves straining, she cursed herself for turning down Jack’s ride for nothing more than pride, and now she was soaked from head to toe and everywhere in between. At points she had to close her eyes because the downpour was blinding, catching the road beneath her in staccato frames that made progress slow and unstable. Her knuckles whitened on the handlebars, the clouds above her looming and dark, and when she saw the south gate come into view she almost cried with relief.
Twenty minutes later, she was drying off by the fire. Never had the heat and light of a few burning logs been the source of such bliss, and Rachel wrapped herself in a sweater, poured a big mug of coffee, pulled a chair up to the flames and warmed her hands. She could hear the ongoing lash of the rain against the windows, amplified by Winterbourne’s lofty vaults and giant panes of stained glass.
Next she knew she was awake, the rain had stopped and the sky outside was darkening. The fire had reduced to blushing embers, which she stoked until they sparked encouragement, then she threw on more wood, which quickly caught. Rachel wasn’t the sort to sleep during the day, as a rule she didn’t just ‘nod off’, so it was surprising to discover that several hours had passed since she’d returned.
She switched on a few lights – enough to make a home of the small region of Winterbourne she preferred to reside in – and cooked herself a light supper. Afterwards, she headed to the study to try and find a landline: yesterday she’d poked her head round the door and seen a pile of boxes, which she hoped contained a point of contact with the outside world. It was all very well Jack Wyatt giving her his number, but she’d rather not have to venture half a mile away in order to use it. Not that she would be using it – but anyway.
There was a cluster of candles on the windowsill, which she met with a match. The room shivered to half-life, half awake and part of the world she knew, half asleep and belonging to some other, distant state beyond her reach.
It took the best part of an hour to find it, an antiquated contraption with an old-fashioned number dial and heavy receiver. When Rachel at last located the wall socket, she didn’t for a moment expect it to work, but after a few uncertain pips she detected the reassuring monotone of a connection. She fished Jack’s number out of her pocket and put it next to the phone. For some reason, she felt better with it there.
Night was encroaching on the windows, capturing her in its cloak. Shadows lengthened and deepened. Rachel wondered, when the time came to part with Winterbourne, what the new buyers would make of it. Doubtless they would waste no time in modernising, gutting the bedrooms for lush en suites and demolishing walls for open-plan living. The thought made her sad but she pushed sentimentality away. There was no option but to sell. She couldn’t stay here for ever, closeted away like Rapunzel in the tower with only Jack and his crowd at the Landogger Inn for company. She had to return to America and real life, her career, her home.
Even so, the thought of letting Winterbourne go filled her with grief. The house was in her blood, yes, but it was more than that. Already it had cast her under a rich and heady spell, as if it had been waiting for her, as if it had been calling to her, whispering at night of secrets yet to be found, caressing her skin as she slept, tapping on the glass to be let in, and the more time she spent here the deeper she fell…
As a habit Rachel didn’t like to become attached. It was all the more reason to move as quickly as she could, and her email exchange with Aaron had been the prompt she needed. Tomorrow she would set the ball rolling. Get someone out to value Winterbourne and its contents, and then pass it into their safekeeping until a sale was agreed. It would be good to return to New York. Rachel thought of her gleaming desk at home and the view of Manhattan from her window. Soon she would be back, and for the first time she would know her roots, the place she came from, the people who were her family. Finally, she had done it: she had found the missing piece. And if all Winterbourne could give her was what it had already given – its dusty shelves, its creaky beds, its ancient floorboards – then that was enough. She could fill in the rest, in the years to come. She could imagine it.
As Rachel was closing the last box, something caught her eye. Perhaps it was the single loop of red string around the letter – it was romantic, like an ancient scroll sealed with candle wax. She lifted it out and unfurled it. The letter was written in a ragged hand, so ragged, in fact, it was alarming, a bloodcurdling scrawl blotched with ink, the paper spiked where the pen had driven through it, and was addressed to Captain Jonathan de Grey of Winterbourne Hall, Polcreath. It was signed by a name she hadn’t heard before: Alice Miller. Rachel read it, her unease rising.
How could you send me away? the letter read. You know the truth about me. You know the secret I carry. How could you, Jonathan – how could you?
Chapter 16
Cornwall, 1947
Sunday morning and we are getting ready for church. The children are recovered, at least the boy is, and he is compensating for the past days’ torpor with a show of riotousness. All throughout breakfast he was kicking the underside of the table, despite my admonishments, and refused to touch his porridge.
My patience runs thin today because of the previous night’s lack of sleep. At a little before three I woke to the sound of footsteps outside my door, which strangely enough I first imagined to be furniture being dragged across the landing. It wasn’t until I greeted the sight in the passage that my addled brain caught up.
Constance was sleepwalking – a habitual pursuit, I’ve since learned – and had somehow managed to pass down the stairs from her floor to mine without accident. The girl’s slippers were scraping the boards as she advanced to a point in the hallway and then, curiously, she stopped to look up at the ceiling. There was something undeniably sinister about our wordless encounter, and Constance made quite a sight, her nightdress bathed in moonlight and her ringlets curled on the nape of her neck. I gently held her shoulders, steering her round: I had heard that one should never rouse a sleepwalker, and though I had never questioned why, I wasn’t about to start then. We returned upstairs to the bed she’d left empty next to Edmund. The boy was alert when we appeared, but unconcerned. ‘Connie’s always done it,’ he told me, with the childish satisfaction of knowing better than an adult. ‘She’s done it since our mother died. I’m tired of going to fetch her.’ I tucked the girl back in and kissed her brow.
‘Will she sleep peacefully now?’
‘It depends,’ said Edmund.
‘On what?’
‘On whether she’s called,’ he said. ‘If she’s called, she’ll go.’
‘Called?’ I was perplexed. ‘By whom?’
But he had rolled over and pulled his sheets tight. I decided the boy must have been half asleep. Even so, by the time I returned to my own chamber I could not shake a feeling of discomfiture, which continued throughout a restless night.
One thought bothered me, and continues to bother me now. I checked my watch when I first heard Constance outside my room. The time read twenty-five minutes to three, the same time as Lau
ra’s stopped clock – L. Until the end of time. Nothing but a coincidence, I’m sure, but I cannot forget the oddity of the detail.
Tom is waiting outside with the car. I stifle my yawn, helping the twins with their coats and then putting on my own. We follow Mrs Yarrow through the door.
‘Is the captain joining us?’ I ask, trying to keep the hope from my voice.
‘Oh, no,’ murmurs Mrs Yarrow, ‘the captain doesn’t go to church.’
I trust my disappointment doesn’t show. ‘Did he once?’
‘Indeed, before the war. He hasn’t been since Laura.’
As the car advances down the rutted drive, I remember what the captain said to me at the stables. He certainly sounded, then, like a man who had lost his faith.
‘Children, behave!’ I chide, as Edmund and Constance squirm and giggle next to me. They are pinching each other’s knees, little nails twisting, half laughing and half complaining at the sting. They exchange an impish glance then collect their hands in their laps, gazing out of the window in what appears a mockery of good conduct. I think again of the marks on my elbow and cover my arm.
*
Polcreath Church is a sweet building, positioned on a mount overlooking the sea and surrounded by a protective shelter of cedars. Unlike at Winterbourne, the cliff position seems peaceful and undisturbed, hopeful as it perches against the horizon.
‘I hate coming here,’ says Edmund, as we exit the car.
‘Edmund!’
‘I do. Why should I lie? God says not to lie – so there.’
Constance snickers. I frown at her and she stops.
‘You must be Miss Miller.’ The reverend steps out to greet us before I can complete my rebuke. ‘It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Polcreath.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Quite different from London, I should think?’
‘I must confess this is my first trip in. I’ve been occupied at Winterbourne.’
‘Of course you have.’ The reverend takes my hands; his are soft and warm, like rising bread dough. ‘It’s big enough to be its own town, up there.’
‘Indeed it is.’
‘But if you need anything, Miss Miller, the church is here for you.’ He holds my hand a little longer, as if there is more he wishes to say, but then releases it.
Inside, we file into pews at the front. I ensure the children are positioned between Mrs Yarrow and me because I will not abide them showing me up. The sea of captivated faces suggests the entire Polcreath population knows about the new governess arriving from the city, and no doubt rumours and gossip abound about my experience and appointment. I wonder if the town knows about my predecessor. Is that why they watch me with fascination? Do they know about that poor woman’s death? Do they know that her mind was sick and her spirit in distress? Do they know that she threw herself on to the Landogger rocks because she saw no other escape?
Since Mrs Yarrow’s confidence, I have tried to come to terms with the tragedy – but perhaps there are no terms to be found. That woman was senseless, driven mad by a creeping rot in her system, and who knew what her private circumstances were? I confess that I, too, have visited the brink of that strange landscape, a land of brittle trees and arid soil, a world turned on its head and turned inside out and is it any wonder, with the hurts of my past? But there is no point in thinking about it now. The difference between us is that I pulled myself back. How awful that she could not.
‘It’s a blessing to see so many of you here,’ the reverend begins, ‘fortifying our community, pulling together as one, as is needed in these fragile, fractured years. We open our arms to old friends and likewise embrace our new. Let us pray.’
The congregation bows its head. I follow suit but the prayer skims off me like water, its words hollow and meaningless. Is this how Captain de Grey felt, before he turned his back on God? I am not sure if I have turned my back, or if I was facing the right way to begin with. It strikes me that we learn not to turn away from points of danger but to always keep them in sight. Is this what faith has become to the captain? Is this what it has become to me? And yet I can trace it right back to the start, attending church with my parents in an ironed frock. I would see the altar, the body of Christ, and feel not as I ought, not as the dozens of worshippers around me felt, in awe and reverence, blindly following. I felt detached. An outsider.
We are strangers, He and I. We always have been. Seeing the children next to me, their misbehaviour elapsed in the presence of the Lord, I wonder that I was never like them. Their angelic bearing puts me to shame. The weight of their loss humiliates me, for my own, when set against theirs, is trifling. After all, I engineered my own fate. I brought despair to my own door. Not like them, the innocents.
I wish to clasp the children to me, to cherish and protect them. In the same moment I fear for their corruption, that I might tarnish them in some way and the bad thing I did will find its way beneath their flawless skin and ruin them for ever.
Meanwhile they, in return, remind me of everything that is guilt- and grief-stricken in my own life, their purity gleaming against my sin.
My parents sent me to Burstead for religious education as well as academic. That their daughter should have wound up transgressing in the most despicable way was a bitter pill they could not swallow. And even then they did not see the full picture: the true, atrocious, unsalvageable depths of my crime. How were they to know that if the devil is in the child already, no degree of edification can wring it out?
*
I am relieved when the service concludes and we are released into fresh air. Mrs Yarrow takes the children back to the car while I linger in the graveyard to greet Henry Marsh, the captain’s physician, whose face I noticed as we filed out.
‘I was hoping to see you today,’ says Henry, with his friendly smile. ‘How’s Jonathan?’
The use of the captain’s first name arrests me as much as last time. It seems a violation to use it, but, I confess, a thrilling one. I turn away from the church.
‘The captain remains the captain.’ I am not bold enough to use it myself, but Henry appears to find my response pleasing, and droll, because he laughs.
‘And Tipper?’ I ask, returning his smile. ‘Has he recovered from his visit?’
Henry shakes his head. ‘I am sorry about that. It was a mistake to bring him, in hindsight. He’s too old. I suppose I’m yearning for the days when he was a pup.’
‘There’s no need to apologise. I enjoyed meeting you both.’
Henry straightens a little, as if emboldened by that. ‘Miss Miller, this might seem terribly forthright, but would you like to have supper with me one night?’
It is surprise more than anything that compels me to answer, ‘I’d be delighted.’ His smile widens and he takes off his cap, then puts it on again.
‘How about tomorrow evening?’ he says. ‘I can collect you when I finish my rounds, at, say, eight o’clock?’
‘I’ll see you at eight.’ The children will be in bed by then, and my evenings are my own, so how I choose to spend them is a private matter. ‘One thing, Doctor,’ I say regardless, ‘but I would prefer it if the captain weren’t to know.’
‘I quite agree.’
‘While I’m in his employment—’
‘As am I—’
‘It would seem appropriate—’
‘Miss Miller,’ he touches my arm, ‘I quite agree.’
‘Good day, Doctor.’
‘Good day, Miss Miller.’
I walk down the path towards Tom and the car, holding my hat against the flipping breeze. The wind picks up, blowing clouds across the sky. The sea churns grey, frothing at its surface. We had better get back and light the fires.
*
The following afternoon, the children and I are studying in the drawing room. I have asked them to complete a writing assignment and am trying, as I mark last week’s papers, to ignore the incessant tapping of Edmund’s pencil on his notebook.
‘Is there
a problem?’ I ask him.
The boy watches me. The pencil keeps tapping.
‘Have you managed any work at all?’
Next to him, Constance lifts her head and shoots her brother a glance.
‘You’re distracting Constance,’ I say, though as the girl returns to her learning, this patently isn’t true. ‘May I see what you’ve done?’
Edmund lifts his paper and predictably it is blank. ‘I haven’t any ideas,’ he says. His copper hair is smoothed around his pale complexion, and his eyes are wide and imploring. ‘I can’t think of anything to say.’
‘I’ve asked you to write about your happiest memory at Winterbourne.’
‘I haven’t any.’
‘Nonsense.’
But clearly the boy has had the same problem fulfilling his prep. As I turn over his submission, expecting to find the essay I asked for, instead I discover an empty page, save for the scribbled words: Hello, Alice…
Then, a little further down:
It’s me, Alice.
Are you there?
Do you remember?
For a moment I am unsettled, before I see it for the silliness it is, the pointless rebellion. I can only surmise Edmund’s insolence to be a legacy of his illness. Perhaps he has not quite recovered. I bite my tongue, reassemble my patience and go to him.
‘You mustn’t neglect your schoolwork, Edmund,’ I say.
‘This isn’t school.’
‘It very well is.’
‘There’s a school in town, but Father won’t allow us there. Isn’t that right, Connie?’ The sister looks up, then away. ‘He wants to keep us at Winterbourne so we never get out. Whoever heard of a school for two? Father’s a coward, that’s all.’
‘Your father is anything but.’
Edmund regards me again with that look of satisfaction, older than his years, making fun of me. ‘We told him he should make friends with it. It’s nice to you, if you make friends with it. If you don’t… Well, I wouldn’t know, because it likes me.’
The Woman in the Mirror: Page 12
