Return to Paradise

by Erica Brown

  Tom was already in the dining room when she arrived, leaning on a lengthy sideboard where the handles dripped like chandeliers from drawers and cupboards of shiny satinwood. Each door was inlaid with a porcelain panel, hand-painted with shepherds and shepherdesses reclining amidst flowers and delicately outlined bluebirds.

  The decanter was half empty. Tom eyed his wife over his glass as he swallowed another rum.

  She smiled provocatively and stroked her waist as though inviting him to stroke it, too. Though her smile persisted, disapproval clouded her eyes. ‘Thomas, haven’t you had enough, my darling?’

  All his compassion, his determination to be the perfect, honourable husband, seemed now a foolish dream. Nothing could change matters, but for now at least, he’d drown his sorrows in drink. His jaw was like iron as he slammed the glass down onto a silver tray where it shattered in myriad pieces.

  ‘That’s best Waterford crystal,’ she said as though she really valued it. The truth was there were cabinets full of all manner of crystal, in all colours, from glassworks all over the world.

  ‘You,’ he said, his expression reflecting his anger, ‘you drive me to drink. You drive me to do many things.’

  He tried to remember why he’d married her in the first place. The drink made his brain fuzzy, but his anger remained solid.

  She turned away from him. ‘The death of Martin Lodge was not my fault.’

  ‘If you had assured him that his job was secure, he would never have done it. And Emerald? How do you think it’s going to affect her?’

  She turned away, then seemed to rethink her strategy and face him again. ‘If she had eaten her meal in the nursery, she would not have been a witness to his stupidity. It was you who encouraged her to disobey me.’

  Tom smacked the palm of his hand against his head. ‘Of course, of course! If Emerald has nightmares following a man’s suicide, it’s my fault. My fault she was there, but not my fault he killed himself,’ he shouted, his finger stabbing at her naked shoulder.

  She stared at his finger, at his stance and at his face.

  He read her thoughts, and knew they were his own. The fact that he actually felt violent towards her appalled him. Never before had he laid a hand on her; never before had he felt as angry as he did now. For a brief moment, he saw panic in her eyes; her complexion, silky smooth and as white as porcelain, now turned even paler.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and turned away.

  ‘Sorry?’ Her voice was like cut glass. ‘Oh yes! I know you’re sorry. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me. Sometimes I wish I were Emerald. There’s a different look in your eyes for your daughter. But me? You can’t even bear to touch me, can you? You wish it was just you and Emerald, and if it wasn’t for her, you would probably wish that you’d never married me.’

  He stared at the thick net curtains that hid the parkland from view as though he were looking through their heavy pattern of roses and vines and lupins. He saw none of it. His blurred thoughts had cleared. A vision appeared: Blanche happily married to Conrad Heinkel. He felt again the pain of losing her.

  ‘Disappointment,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  When he turned, she was frowning deeply, and looked confused. ‘Disappointment,’ he said again. ‘That’s why I married you. I was disappointed, and there seemed no better option.’

  It startled him to see pain in her eyes. He’d actually hurt her and he found himself immediately regretting it. He had Emerald to think of, but he also had Horatia. She had never had a forgiving nature. She bore grudges, her mind was sharp and he knew it wouldn’t end there. Although she rarely lost her temper in the way her stepmother, Lady Verity, used to do, she was vengeful. She didn’t throw things or stamp her foot, or shout obscenities at the top of her voice. But at some point in the future she would find a way of getting even, of being as cruel to him as he’d just been to her.

  Her glare was as cold as the marble statues holding up the mantelpiece and the sound of her skirts leaving the room was like a cold draught of air.

  He would be alone in his own room tonight, but once the household had retired, the candles and oil lamps snuffed out, their pungent aroma still lingering in the air, she would knock softly at his door. He would not answer. She would creep in, softly calling him as if nothing had happened between them.

  That was how his son had been conceived. They had argued just over a fortnight before. Horatia had made arrangements to send Emerald away to school without consulting him. Single-handedly, he had unpacked Emerald’s trunks, called his wife a heartless bitch in front of the servants, and had then sat cuddling Emerald until dawn as she sobbed gratefully in his arms.

  ‘You won’t let her send me away? Promise,’ Emerald had whimpered.

  ‘I won’t,’ he’d said. ‘I promise.’

  Furious that he’d disagreed with her plans and called her names in front of the servants, Horatia had gone away to lick her wounds. The carriage had been brought round to the gravel drive at the front of the house in double-quick time.

  She came back a week later and they had made up in the privacy of their shared room. He’d never asked her where she had gone.

  Horatia sometimes needed solitude. He didn’t begrudge her that, and had fully expected her to order the carriage round to the front door now. But he didn’t hear it.

  The clock on the mantelpiece made a whirring sound before striking ten, the gilt cherubs crouched against its marble sides hitting miniature hammers against miniature gongs, as if they were making the sound rather than the mechanism within. He looked at it despairingly, wishing he could turn back time and do things differently.

  Catching a glimpse of himself in the gilt-framed mirror, he saw that nothing had changed. In the past he had sailed the oceans, relishing the freedom and the adventure of visiting many different countries and cultures. Along with his freedom, sailing was no more and the prospect of a lifetime with Horatia stretched ahead of him.

  * * *

  Emerald’s resilience surprised him. So did Horatia’s good humour, even though they had not shared a bed since their row.

  I have to make an effort for my daughter’s sake, he told himself and smiled as another thought entered his head unheralded. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and marriage more endurable.

  Emerald recovered from her ordeal, but fell moody a few days later when her pet canary died.

  ‘Will he go to heaven?’ she asked her father with sorrow-filled eyes.

  Tom smiled and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. ‘Of course he will,’ he replied.

  ‘Miss Potter says that the man who shot himself wouldn’t go to heaven,’ the little girl said, a worried frown beetling her brows.

  Tom made a mental note to have a word with the nurse. He didn’t hold with children being indoctrinated with ideas that worried their souls. He’d long ago decided that it was best to leave religion until they were old enough to understand the options.

  ‘Everyone good goes to heaven,’ he said.

  She looked up at him, her pert nose twitching as she thought it through. At last she said, ‘Miss Potter says the good only go to heaven if they’re buried in a proper churchyard – in consequential ground, I think she said.’

  Tom smiled. ‘I think you mean consecrated ground.’

  ‘Will you take me there so we can bury Percy?’

  He said that he would.

  The day was bright, sunlight dappling the churchyard through the whispering branches of the poplars. The grass had been scythed around the family tomb. Tom lingered, his gaze drifting from one name to another:

  THE REVEREND JEBEDIAH SAMSON STRONG

  LADY VERITY ROSELLIA CRISPIN-STRONG

  ISAIAH THOMAS STRONG

  His eyes lingered on the last name. Thoughts of what might have been were as sharp and cutting as the glass he’d broken on the night he’d rowed with Horatia.

  Emerald was running through the grass, and turned when she realize
d her father had stopped. ‘Father? Come along. We have to bury Percy and say a prayer.’

  Tom dragged his gaze away from the etched names and smiled at his pink-faced daughter.

  ‘Over here?’ she asked, coming to a sudden halt and pointing her towel at a shady place close to the hedge.

  His first inclination was to dissuade her, to have her choose a sunnier spot unsullied by the sadness of past tragedies. But he changed his mind. Perhaps it was perfect that his daughter should pick a place between Isaiah’s last resting place and the grave of Jasper Strong, the Reverend Jebediah’s son.

  Yes. It was perfect.

  He managed to smile. ‘Yes.’

  Emerald began digging the hole and Tom bent to help with his hands, the dampness of the earth penetrating the good cloth of his trousers. As he did so, he watched his daughter, her pretty pink face screwed up in concentration. The thought of losing her terrified him. Yet if he didn’t make amends with Horatia, she might use Emerald to hurt him, perhaps carrying out her threat to send her to a girl’s school. He resolved to make amends, to eat humble pie, even to charm her into bed.

  ‘Is that deep enough?’ Emerald interrupted his thoughts.

  He peered into the hole, which was only about six inches deep. ‘A little more, I think. Here, let me.’

  As he took the trowel, a cloud of rooks rose from the tops of the elms, cawing their warning cries. Tom looked up, wondering what had scared them.

  Emerald was picking flowers. ‘For his grave,’ she said solemnly.

  Tom placed the cigar box containing Percy into the hole and covered it. Emerald placed the flowers on the turned earth.

  ‘There,’ said Tom, presuming the funeral was over and brushing the earth off his knees. ‘Percy is gone to heaven.’

  Emerald looked up at him round-eyed. ‘You haven’t said a prayer.’

  Tom searched his brain for something appropriate; certainly not any part of the burial service, just something light and right for the occasion. He cleared his throat and stood straight.

  Emerald stood next to him, her hands clasped in prayer. She looked up at him pointedly, bringing her hands up so that he knew she wanted him to do the same. Resigned that he wasn’t going to get away without doing things properly, he too joined his hands.

  ‘Right,’ he murmured under his breath. ‘Dear Lord, we hereby commend our much loved Percy to your tender loving care. May he fly freely in heavenly skies for ever. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ echoed Emerald, her voice drowned by the resumed cawing of the rooks, as yet again they rose into the sky in a black mass. ‘Why are they making all that noise?’ she asked her father, her eyes as round as pennies.

  Tom frowned. Perhaps a buzzard, he thought. ‘They’re calling for Percy,’ he said. ‘They’re showing him how to fly very high so he can reach heaven.’

  Head thrown back, her face bright with wonder, Emerald looked up at them; no doubt trying to locate the bright yellow of Percy’s wings among the black of the rooks.

  ‘There you are, Miss Emerald!’

  Rustling like a flurry of autumn leaves, Miss Potter bustled towards them, the hem of her sweeping skirt leaving a trail of flattened grass. She dipped a brief curtsey to Tom. ‘It’s time for Miss Emerald’s tea, Mr Strong.’

  ‘Ah! The rooks,’ he said, lifting his eyes to the high branches of the elm trees where dots of black squawked contentedly behind the leaves.

  ‘You disturbed the birds,’ he explained in response to Miss Potter’s puzzled expression.

  ‘Oh. Yes, sir. Of course.’

  She didn’t look up at the trees. He very much doubted that Miss Potter was ever in thrall to the wonders of nature. She was doting and disciplined, her mind totally focused on her charge. He doubted whether anything outside the nursery was of any interest to her.

  As she fussed over his daughter, straightening her hair and brushing twigs and dirt from her dress, he found himself wondering whether the tight-faced woman had ever had a sweetheart. For a split instant, he thought about asking her.

  Miss Potter’s blue eyes, which seemed out of place with her dark hair and pale complexion, fixed on him. ‘Are you coming back to the house with us, sir?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘No. I have done what I had to do, and I think the fresh air may have made my daughter feel hungry.’ Purposefully, he took a cigarillo from the silver case he kept in the inside pocket of his jacket. He would smoke while contemplating his thoughts.

  ‘We buried Percy and said a prayer,’ Emerald explained excitedly to Miss Potter.

  ‘And very proper too, Miss Emerald. You can tell me all about it on our way back to the house.’

  Tom parked himself on a tree stump, one foot braced against a gnarled root. The tree had been felled many years ago to make room for the family mausoleum.

  Everything changes, he thought, then raised his eyes to the tree-tops. Except for the rooks. They’d always been here. And the Strongs? Would they always be here?

  He eyed the ornate columns, the gold lettering, the softly hued stone that was slowly turning grey and mossy. In time it would lose all its borrowed splendour and nature would return it to a mound of stone.

  That will be when my bones are inside it, he thought, and found himself frowning. Somehow the prospect of lying beside Horatia for eternity was very disquieting. He couldn’t see eternal rest with her as being very peaceful.

  Suddenly he felt cold. He rolled his shoulders as if to shake the feeling off, but it persisted. Too many old ghosts, he thought.

  Anyone who saw him would presume he was just a man enjoying a quiet smoke. He looked calm, at peace with the world. But he felt uneasy. Shadows thrown by the leaning tombstones ivy-covered walls and dense yew trees lengthened out of all proportion to their actual size. A silence descended.

  Then something moved to his right, a shadow falling out from behind the family tomb. Raising his eyes to the treetops, he considered the rooks. Twice they’d cried out their warning. He’d presumed Miss Potter had disturbed them on both occasions. Now he knew he’d been wrong. Someone was watching him.

  He continued to smoke, appearing to observe the façade of the tomb and keeping very still, waiting for whoever it was to show themselves. There’d been rumours of an escaped convict on the outskirts of Bristol, but surely he’d been captured by now?

  Once, twice more he drew on the sweet-tasting tobacco. Only his eyes moved as he watched for the shadow to creep across the mossy mound around the tomb. When it did, the person it belonged to would step out.

  The shadow lengthened, shrank, lengthened, shrank again. Whoever was there was undecided about whether to proceed.

  Tom made up his mind to take the first step. Carefully, so that its sweet smell would not be snuffed out, he balanced the cigarillo on the tree trunk.

  Stealthily but swiftly, he made his way around the opposite side of the tomb to the shadow. The grass was damp and clung to the hem of his trousers, and the moss around the mausoleum was slippery beneath his quick-moving feet. He flattened himself against the wall of the tomb and reached the corner. His fingers strayed around the stout quoins, the stone warm beneath his touch. A few more inches, a single glance and he would see who it was.

  One step, two…

  She had her back to him and was wearing a brown dress, a straw bonnet and clasped a shawl around her shoulders.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The woman started. ‘Ow, me God!’ With the rush of her words came the smell of gin.

  ‘Definitely not a ghost,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’ She looked shocked, but then appeared to collect herself. ‘You gave me a fright, you did.’

  ‘You gave me one. I’m not used to being spied on when I’m having a quiet smoke.’

  ‘I was just making sure.’

  Tom raised one eyebrow. ‘Making sure?’

  ‘That you were by yurself. I don’t want to make a scene.’

  Tom scrutinized the ruddy complexion, the pale eyes a
nd the way she shifted from one foot to another, as if she were excited – or having trouble standing up. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to make a scene?’ he asked. ‘Are you sure it was me you wanted to see? Do you know who I am?’

  Her expression altered. Due perhaps to the serenity of his voice, his courtesy and friendly manner, she blinked as if she were having second thoughts. At last, she nodded. ‘You’re Mr Thomas Strong. It was you I wanted to see. I weren’t going to say anything, even when she refused to see me, but then something terrible happened, and I know it was ‘er at the bottom of it! I knows it was…’

  Tom’s frown deepened. ‘You have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.’

  ‘Me name’s Daisy Draper, and I know all about that baby your wife had.’

  The cold he’d earlier felt around his shoulders now coursed through his veins. ‘What are you talking about, woman?’

  ‘See this?’ she said, suddenly a flurry of activity, her arms waving and redressing her falling shawl as she charged around to the side of the tomb. ‘See this?’

  Tom followed.

  ‘See this?’ she said again, her voice shrill and her eyes glittering as she pointed at the inscription to his dead son. ‘It’s all a lie, and that woman,’ she spat, her finger jabbing in the direction of Marstone Court, ‘has a heart of solid stone!’

  Beyond the lych-gate and the yew trees, the road meandered up to the house. His daughter and her nanny had disappeared from sight. Was there something to fear?

  ‘Miss Potter? What do you mean?’

  As she shook her head, a dozen iron-grey curls escaped from beneath her bonnet. ‘Your wife! Mrs Strong! That’s who I mean!’ Tom’s feeling of foreboding was like a lump of lead in his stomach now. He saw by the look in her eyes that she was relishing the moment. ‘Explain yourself.’

  ‘He ain’t here,’ she said, jabbing her finger at the inscription to his baby son. ‘She had that done, all nicely engraved as though the little mite was dead and put in ‘is tomb. But the baby ain’t here.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs Draper?’