by Tracy Rees
I am flooded with horror. How have they found me? Have all my precautions been for nothing? Have I let Aurelia down before I am even close to completing the trail? At least it is just a letter. At least they are not here, before me, sneering. I drop to my knees and fish the pages from under the sofa. I do not have the strength to get up again. I read the letter sitting on the floor with my skirts puffed around me in a great cloud.
Amy Snow,
It is with mixed feelings that I write to you, yet conscience dictates that I must. I do not even know if this letter will reach you and I confess a part of me hopes it will not. We ordered you to disappear and you have obeyed. I have been glad of this.
I have questioned the staff thoroughly in case any of them have received any communication from you. They swear they have not. I have gone through Aurelia’s old correspondence, seeking the names and addresses of friends she visited that year. She has been extremely vague. She did, however, mention a Wister family in Twickenham and through a tenuous chain of acquaintance I have discovered their address. It is my hope that, even if you are not with these people, they may be in communication with you and forward this letter – or else return it to me. Perhaps it may find you.
I write with a simple request. I wish to speak with you. You may return to Hatville just once more for the purpose. Or, if you prefer, I can meet you in London, at a locale of your choosing. I would require, at most, an hour of your time. If you are unable to comply with my request, then I ask you to write to me, giving an address where a letter will be certain to find you. There are things I wish to say and I shall not confide them to paper if there is any doubt at all that it will reach you.
I had not thought there should be any cause to see you again. However, these are things better said in person, no matter how distasteful such an interview might be.
Sincerely,
Celestina Vennaway
My head is a tumbling, collapsing darkness. Even with all the unpredictability and strangeness of my recent life, I had not imagined this.
For an awful moment I worry that this is the prompt to move on. Is Lady Vennaway – knowingly or not – the contact to whom Aurelia has entrusted the next clue? I cannot believe it. Surely this letter from her mother is something unrelated, arrived with uncanny timing. What on earth could she want with me? Nothing pleasant, of that I am certain.
Perhaps the secret is that there was some great reconciliation between Aurelia and her mother before she died. Is the trail to lead me in a loop back to Hatville? I cannot believe it and I do not want to believe it. For all that I dread the prospect of any number of unfamiliar places Aurelia might send me, Hatville is where I should wish to go least of all. I should rather Africa!
I stuff the letter deep into my pocket and scramble to my feet. At least she does not know where I am. There will be another clue. It will appear shortly. There must be another clue.
Chapter Thirty-Six
And yet the days pass and no further clue arrives. April has come. The meadows of Petersham and Ham across the river begin to blossom; cattle doze hock-deep in clouds of green and budding white. The Thames is greener than ever and there is even a sunny day or two for strolling in the garden, taking tea on the lawns and sitting under the willows at the riverbank, sketching herons and boats.
I wish with all my heart that I could stay. I have never wished so fervently for anything, except that Aurelia might be spared. I daydream, passionately, intensely, as though dreaming might make it so, that the letter comes and tells me the journey is at an end after all, that in fact all the answers are here.
I have spoken to Edwin and explained what I can of my plight. Deeply unsettled by Lady Vennaway’s letter, I have asked him if he knows anything of Aurelia’s plan for me, of the treasure hunt. I know that in acting thus I am not doing exactly as Aurelia has asked, but the tension of not knowing what is to become of me is unbearable. He knows nothing.
But now he knows that I am soon to leave, that I could be sent almost anywhere when I go. He is deeply concerned.
‘I do not like to think of it, Amy! Going off into the world on your own, to who knows where! No one knowing where you are! What was she thinking? This is not what you need. ’Tis a tragedy that she is gone from us, for you more than anyone, but what you need now is a good life of your own. We had hoped that you might stay here. Why not? What’s one more woman when I already have five? I should be honoured to count you amongst them, Amy – make it a round half-dozen, why don’t you?’
I cry, and he embraces me. For a moment I pretend I am Priscilla and that he is my father and imagine what life would have been with such a man to watch over me. I wonder about my own father, where he is now and whether he ever knew of my existence. I rather hope he did not.
Then I compose myself and tell Edwin that while it seems exceeding strange I must keep faith with Aurelia and trust that there is a very good reason for all this intrigue.
‘She had a flair for the dramatic, it’s true, but she truly loved me and wanted the best for me, Edwin. After all, she brought me here, did she not? Wherever could I have found better people by myself? I do not want to leave, I want nothing less, but I do believe that wherever I go next will be for good reason.’
‘But will it be safe? I suppose I cannot stop you if you are bent on following her wishes, and I can understand that you are. But if you wish me to accompany you, I will. I would ask no questions.’
‘I am overcome. That is the kindest offer anyone has ever made me. But I do not know where this quest will take me, nor how long it will be before it is fulfilled. It could be months! It could be years, I suppose, though I hope it will not. Besides, she has sworn me to secrecy. I cannot betray her.’
He sighs, looking deeply uncomfortable. ‘Then I must insist on two promises from you, Miss Amy Snow, since you are so very good at keeping them.’
I feel quite burdened down by promises already – they are a heavy sea chain pulling me under – but of course I ask what they are.
‘Firstly that you will write to me once a month, even a brief note, even if you cannot write to the others, so I know that you are safe. Even if you will not give an address for me to write back, I must know that you are well. And secondly, that if you need anything at all, even if you are at the furthest end of the earth, you will tell me so I might help you. Promise me, Amy!’
I promise willingly.
‘You know,’ he adds, ‘if you cannot keep contact, Madeleine will be devastated. All of them, of course, but Madeleine in particular. I think you know you will not be the first friend she has lost. She does not deserve it. I confess I feel a little annoyed at Aurelia. Has she not thought of the impact this will have on others? Did she not think how we would feel at losing you? Have you thought of it?’
‘Dear Edwin, only very lately. Before then it never occurred to me that anyone could ever miss me at all, save Aurelia, of course. But no, I never understood that I might inspire the loyalty, consideration and affection you have all shown me, not until the night of the Lowbridge ball.’
He nods gravely. ‘That is unutterably sad, my dear.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
For all that I am comforted that Edwin knows something of my circumstances, I am jumpy as a cat as the days crawl by. It is almost a week since I received Lady Vennaway’s letter – and still no clue. I worry and fret at the question of what it is she might want with me.
However, there is a consolation. April fifth is Michael’s fifteenth birthday and he has decreed that we must celebrate with a boating party to Eel Pie Island. I had not thought I would share this happy event. Usually the good folk of Twickenham save the island for summer, but Michael is resolved – whatever the weather. In the event it is fine, unusually warm for the time of year, and Michael is as smug as if he had arranged the conditions himself.
I know I should have received Aurelia’s next letter by now and been on my way; I worry that something has gone awry. Yet I cannot help but rejoice that
I am still here after all! I am here to step, giggling and shrieking, into a boat with the girls. I am with them as they float across the water . . . I am with them as we tumble to the daisied grass. Almost at once Madeleine catches my hand and tows me around the island, pointing out the family’s favourite landmarks: the preferred spot on the shore where the picnic blanket must be spread; the hotel where summer parties achieve elevated levels of merriment; the oak tree from which Hollis once fell and broke his arm; the willow under which Edwin proposed to Constance.
I am with them as we feast heartily and play boules and cricket and collapse in laughter over family jokes, which I now understand and share. After the picnic, the adults and little Louisa doze; Madeleine and Priscilla make daisy chains. The boys play at being savages on the far side of the island. Their yells can probably be heard in Twickenham. I take myself off to sit quietly for a few minutes beneath the beautiful and romantic willow tree, thinking that here, this very spot, is where the family life of the Wisters began. I think of Henry, of course, and imagine him talking and laughing with me here. How I wish he could meet my friends. The thought forms, again: this is what I want. For the first time it forms itself into spoken words and I speak it aloud, in a strong voice, though there is no one but a nodding black moorhen to hear me: ‘This is what I want.’ The wanting of it curls through my stomach like smoke. I have no idea how I might achieve it and still less when I might be free to pursue such a dream, but nevertheless, I have thought it and I have spoken it and it lodges inside me now.
I am with them as we reluctantly pack up and sail home again, tired and happy, breathing chill river air under a waxing moon. I am here when I should not be . . .
*
And the following day, I wake to find a letter on my pillow next to my face. It is not addressed. The envelope merely bears my initials. Someone at Mulberry Lodge has put it there.
My dearest Amy,
I pray this finds you well, little dove. I trust you are rested and restored, that you are learning your own worth outside of the slanted world that is Hatville. The Wisters love you, do they not? Come along, admit it.
And admit that you like the clothes too. Oh, Amy, that I will never see you wear them. That you and I will never dress for a dance together. Imagine if we had been part of that family, instead of growing up in Hatville. Imagine.
Do you know what we did today, Amy? We went to the stream. It is some time since we did for I have not been able to leave my bed for a long while now and besides, we are too sophisticated now to dangle over fences. But you wheeled me there today and we sat amongst the bluebells, enjoying a small picnic of lemonade – oh Lord, how I love lemonade – and chocolate soufflé – one of Cook’s rejected creations. We thought it perfectly delicious but for Cook it was not light enough. She would have thrown it away if we had not saved it from that egregious fate! It was good of us, was it not?
I remember that day. Extraordinary to imagine that after I had gone to bed, unsuspecting, Aurelia had penned these very lines.
But you remember our happy days together well enough, I feel sure. There are other things to say. I have confided in you my parents’ glorious plan to wed me to Bailor Dunthorne. Now that you have gathered your strength, or so I hope, I shall shock you further and tell you the rest.
Oh, Amy, this is hard. The forced engagement was not the only secret I was keeping from you in those days. The other goes back even further. It began when I was nineteen and my weak heart was discovered. No, it began when I was eighteen and my parents truly began to insist that I marry. Or perhaps it was even before that! Indeed, I cannot truly tell now when it began.
Heavens, dearest, this is hard to write. Amy, you remember Robin, of course. Dear, gentle, good, handsome Robin. Well, I had always fancied that he was a little in love with me. (Of course, being incomprehensibly vain, I fancied most men were a little in love with me.) The truth is I was right. And as time went by I think I fell in love with him too.
I find it necessary not only to put down the letter but also to get out of bed and stride several times around the perimeter of my room before I can resume reading. Aurelia and Robin? Robin? She thinks she fell in love with him? I remember the kindly older boy who toted me around like a sack of fertilizer, now recast as ‘dear, gentle good, handsome Robin’! Was he handsome? Certainly, only I never thought of it before.
I have always thought of Robin as older – he looked after me when I was a little one, he was always so capable and responsible. The truth was that he and Aurelia were the same age, I realize with a shock. I never could quite believe that she was eight years older than me – she was so unruly and fanciful and always seemed to exist outside the normal rules of time.
I get back into bed, pummel my pillows into shape with an energy I cannot quite understand, and return to the letter.
At first, of course, he was just Robin who worked in the gardens. When we were children, before you came, I suppose he was the nearest thing I had to a friend. We both loved the birds and animals and plants. We both felt far happier out of doors. I felt a peace in nature that I could never find in the human world, as you know. He helped me mend and tend things. He didn’t say much, as I’m sure you recall, but when he did it was worth hearing. When my mother lost the babies, when she argued with my father, when she told me I had to do something I didn’t want to do, I would go and spend time with Robin. But I never thought of him as a boy, we were but children.
Then you came along, Amy! You took all my time and attention and I quite forgot poor Robin. I tended you and spoiled you and it felt quite wonderful to be needed and looked up to. As you grew older, you became the person who soothed and cheered me. When I wanted company, I could play with you. You grew older still and your company was a great deal more satisfying than Robin’s, for you were talkative and curious and lively, and those traits are not amongst his attributes!
When I was eighteen, and my parents made it clear that I must marry sooner rather than later, you know how hurt and angry I was. One night, when the pain was too much to bear, I went outside. I sat on the old swing in the rose garden and wept bitterly. I was all outside my body and did not know what would become of me. I was discovered in this tragic state by Robin.
I had not seen him, properly, for a long time. We had not talked for a long time. When he found me crying, he did not say a word – and how wonderful that was, after all those words, those charged, hateful words that my parents and I used to fling at each other. He simply lifted me from the swing, sat down in my place and gathered me onto his lap, held me close to him. We were no longer children.
What I am about to tell you (and I am sure you have guessed it already) would be nothing anyone would commit to paper in the usual way of things. Even if I could tell you in person, how would I choose my words? We are not given a language for it, in our chaste society. But Amy, I will tell you true.
I cried a long time in his arms, my head against his chest, and, Amy, it felt good. With all the talk of marriage and duty, men had started to feel like the enemy to me! How sweet and healing to realize it didn’t have to be this way.
He took me to the orchard so that we might be private, hidden by trees. We sat on the grass and he held me again and I found myself smiling, even from the depths of my unhappiness.
Our holding turned to kissing. He looked at me as though I were a rare and precious doll he could not quite believe was his to handle, as though he feared I would break under his fingertips. I felt as though a lifetime’s hunger were quenched in me, just by that look.
It was the same for me, the marvelling. His cheek was so soft, despite his toasted skin from working outside every day. On his jaw I learned the feeling of a beginning beard, so alien to me. I felt I were drinking him in through my fingers, palms, absorbing every inch to store in my memory.
Fear not, little bird, I shall not be so detailed about every part of him! I do not wish to embarrass you! I quite embarrass myself! The words look so bald on the paper like
that, though what they express was not bald. It was like liquid. It was soft and silky as twilight and luminous as the stars. It felt as though the whole world was reordering itself around me.
I pray for you that you might experience what I felt that night, when you are ready and when the time is right. There was a fever to it, Amy, that was greater than I could have imagined. It felt ancient. It felt sacred. I am still marvelling, years later, at the wonder of it, and that it is so forbidden. Even so, I do not regret it, not for one moment.
There was, of course, never any question of a match between us. In those early days we used to dream wistfully of it – I never heard him talk so much as when he was telling me all he wished for us. But we knew that the dreaming was like our love – an impossible, secret pleasure. We knew we were soothing ourselves with fictions. Stolen moments: those strange times of night when no one else is abroad, the gaps between reality and dreaming, those were the dimensions in which our love could be. If love it was. It makes me sad that all the truly beautiful things in my life, the things I have chosen for myself – your friendship and Robin’s touch beyond anything – have had to be snatched and secret.
I lay down the letter again and sink into a reverie for some time. What a confidence to receive! I struggle to adjust my memories to accommodate this new reality. Aurelia was in love, all those years, and did not tell me. In all the times that we giggled about her beaux or fretted about the future, she was omitting something – someone – very significant. Robin was her lover! I could not be more surprised if she had told me Cook was her mother or Dora her long-lost twin. Robin? I think no worse of her for the act, indeed I do not. But that she did not tell me when I had thought us so very close . . . that hurts. Although I was very young then. I suppose I cannot blame her for not telling a ten-year-old about such experiences. Still, when I was older, in her last years, why did she not confide in me then?
