Amy Snow

by Tracy Rees

  ‘As it happens, I know the answer to your other question too, and that I can tell you. The reason she brought you here, Amy, is not about happiness, it is about choice.’ She can read my mind. I knew it. ‘That is why I am not to release you yet. Whether you approve of it or not, society, money, a fashionable life, are things that the majority of people in our world covet fiercely. She wanted you to have that choice.’

  Now it is my turn to scoff. The proposition seems outlandish. ‘But Aurelia knew me better than that. Aurelia loved flirting and being fêted. That is not my way.’

  Mrs Riverthorpe’s face is, as ever, rascally. She reaches out a bony arm and takes my hand. ‘Don’t dismiss it so fast and sit there feeling superior. You have been here only two days – you know nothing! It wasn’t your way, for how could it be? Aurelia wanted you to make an educated choice. Don’t tell me you weren’t flattered at being singled out by that shimmerer Garland tonight. Is he your true love, d’you suppose? Do his attentions confer upon you a distinction you never had before – and which you like?’

  I stutter a little, wanting to defend myself, but she rolls on, still gripping my hand. ‘Did you not see the jealous glances cast your way by the other young ladies tonight? If you did, then perhaps you are not averse to being fêted at all costs after all. If you did not, you must be a little stupid.’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t,’ I murmer. Clearly, then, I am a little stupid. She appears unsurprised.

  ‘Well, there we are then. But consider this, Amy: with Aurelia’s fortune and my introduction, if you wanted to stay here and live the life of a great lady, you could. No doubt you could marry some elegant buck like Quentin Garland and have elegant babies.

  ‘Now, I am sure you will not choose thus; nevertheless it remains a possibility for you until you walk away from it. Aurelia knew she had deprived you of choice by keeping you with her. All that is changed now. You can have anything you want.’

  She releases my hand at last. I think the late hour and the high drama of the evening have overwhelmed me. ‘But I cannot! I cannot have Aurelia back from the dead. I cannot return to Twickenham unless I betray her trust. I cannot leave here tomorrow. So no, I cannot have anything I want.’

  She curls her lip in disgust. ‘Very well, dear, woe is you.’

  We lapse back into silence. The fire has dwindled again and it is very cold. I should like to go and fetch something warmer but I’m loath to turn my back on Mrs Riverthorpe in case she vanishes in a puff of smoke. Something else has occurred to me. I take a vain poke at the fire but it promises to expire any minute.

  ‘Mrs Riverthorpe, I find it bewildering that Aurelia would send me here of all places when she has been at such great pains to protect her secret. A treasure hunt! Letters strung across the land! Me travelling hither and thither in complete ignorance of my purpose! But it renders all my efforts at secrecy completely superfluous if everyone I ever met along the way is to converge in Bath.’

  ‘You’re quite right. That was a miscalculation on her part. And vastly inconvenient besides.’

  ‘Then why on earth did she do it? Why insist on such stringent measures if only to bring me to the most public place imaginable?’

  ‘Because she did not know.’

  ‘But Aurelia was not stupid. She must have realized there was a good chance that I would cross paths here with at least someone I had known elsewhere.’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘However so?’

  ‘Because, my dear, she never was in Bath.’

  I wrap my shawl closer. The hairs stand up on my arms. ‘Of course she was! I had letters from her. Do you mean she did not stay in this house? Did she have other friends here? Unfashionable friends . . . servants perhaps? It would be like her. Might that be why you have never heard of Frederic Meredith? Is that why no one tonight seemed to know Aurelia?’

  Mrs Riverthorpe stands up stiffly and leans heavily on her cane. I realize with a sinking heart that I have lost her for tonight. ‘No, Amy. I was not in Bath when I met Aurelia. I shall say this, then go to bed, for I have more evil-doing to enjoy tomorrow and I need my rest. Aurelia did not know what it is like here in Bath because she never came here. And as for Frederic Meredith, I very much doubt that he even exists.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  I wake early on Saturday morning, recent events cavorting into my mind like unruly ponies. It feels as though this should be happening to some other girl; the spirited girl in red I glimpsed in the mirror last night perhaps. No, I cannot deny it; she is me.

  Despite all I am learning about myself, what I am learning about Aurelia is yet more perplexing. Since I left London, only weeks ago, I have discovered so much about Aurelia that I never knew. But that is nothing compared with last night’s discovery. I am in Bath and she never was. And Frederic Meredith does not exist? Not only did Aurelia withhold a number of truths from me, then, she also lied. Is Mrs Riverthorpe making mischief? Is it she who is somehow wrong? And if she is telling the truth, then where did they meet? In what circumstances did a lonely heiress from Surrey encounter – and apparently form a great bond with – an elderly eccentric from Bath? The possibilities are endless and somewhat overwhelming.

  I climb out of bed and ring for coffee. I wrap a shawl around my shoulders and take out Aurelia’s letters, not her recent letters, the ones from years ago. I return to bed and decide I will not leave it until I have re-read every last one. Thoroughly.

  The letters begin as I remember them, full of exuberance about her time in London. She also sounded homesick for me and for the countryside. There is no mention of her parents. None of this strikes me amiss.

  Then she went to Twickenham. The letters are plentiful, detailed, happy. I looked through these old letters just recently, when I was in Twickenham – already I am re-reading with an altered awareness. Different details jump out at me.

  In the heatwave of 1844, I read these letters and worried that her adventures would prove too much for her, that she would sicken and die and I would never see her again. Today, with those fears consigned to the past, I read with new eyes. I try to imagine how it really was for Aurelia, after finding love in Robin’s arms, after a bitter betrayal by her parents, after fleeing from home. How she must have longed to be well, to relish every chance to enjoy herself without her mother’s constant cold-eyed vigilance. How it must have angered and frightened her when her health compromised the freedom for which she had fought so hard.

  I find myself returning again and again to certain passages.

  May 31st, 1844:

  This morning I did not feel strong and felt sure I should have to miss out on the picnic in Whitton, but I was able to eat a little soup at noon and I rallied after all!

  June 5th, 1844:

  Lady Caulton’s dance was highly amusing – the assorted great and good endeavouring to be less serious for an evening. I danced almost every dance, impressive considering how weak and downright shoddy I had felt only that same morning.

  June 17th, 1844:

  For once my obstinacy failed me. I forced myself to dress only to be overcome with giddy spirals. I passed out, Amy, and lucky I did so with the bedroom door open for apparently Hollis spied my prone form and summoned his sisters with a great many yells. I recovered swiftly, but dear Madeleine would not leave me, not for all my entreating . . .

  A strong suspicion comes upon me then, one which makes my own head spin. I wonder if Aurelia suspected it also. I think not, or I do not believe she would have written of her symptoms so frankly. Of course, such references are brief, lost amongst the many passages describing happy times. And all the while she sounded like Aurelia.

  Then suddenly, she is in Derby. Here is the never-forgotten warning that the journey would mean a break in our correspondence:

  The journey will be a long one, dear, and there is a great deal to prepare . . . Please do not be alarmed at this delay.

  Here is the break in the letters: only three brief notes throughout
July, all sent from Derby. As an insecure thirteen-year-old, I was bored by the accounts of this gentleman with fifteen thousand a year and that young baronet with twenty. Today they bore me still but for a different reason: it is because they are not vivid or warm or real.

  She may have been trying to submerge her doomed feelings for Robin by searching for a replacement. Or perhaps she felt bitter that they had no future, and tried to assuage this by flirting with anything in a cravat. But however I explain it, these pale accounts do not sound like the Aurelia I knew.

  In the light of what Mrs Riverthorpe told me last night, I find myself wondering, abruptly, if she was ever there at all.

  Surely this is an insane thought. Here is a letter from the August, and another, and another, all written from Derby. But . . . not that many letters, all told, considering how long she was there.

  Her sketches are unconvincing too. I do not mean that artistic merit is lacking, but Aurelia’s drawings always included deeply personal or whimsical touches. The sketches from Derby are all of the hills, none of people, or animals, or quaint corners. They do not match the letters and they do not contain any little details that had captured Aurelia’s attention and that she wanted to share with me. They could as easily have been copied from a book as drawn from life.

  I remember what Michael told me the morning I left Twickenham.

  ‘She went away too soon as well, disappeared all sudden, just like you.’

  Why should it have seemed sudden to him? She was always due to leave them in June – and come home to Hatville. If she decided to travel for longer, why should that have meant cutting short her time in Twickenham?

  I try out a new theory, just for size. What if Aurelia conceived a child with Robin?

  They would have guarded against it, I am certain, but surely these things cannot be an exact science? It stands to reason that if it could be so easily controlled there would be no unwanted babies. And even though the woman is most often disgraced, men too can be ruined by such a thing.

  I am put in mind of Mr Templeton and the maid with the strawberry-blonde curls. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the matter, Mr Templeton’s standing in the community was compromised along with hers. Their liaison only ever came to light because she fell pregnant. If it had been within Mr Templeton’s full control to avoid this, why would he not have done so?

  If Aurelia was pregnant – if she was – what then? When might she have realized it? What happened to her? It would certainly explain her reluctance to commit to paper anything of what she was really experiencing in a letter to me.

  And afterwards? During those last years of her life, when I felt we enjoyed a new, mature friendship as two young women rather than small child and big sister, could she really have kept such a vast secret from me then? I grit my teeth. They are the same old questions in a new context.

  Perhaps, like her mother before her, she miscarried. Perhaps the Vennaway women do not easily bring a baby to term. I do not really know how these things work, I am thinking wildly. But it seems more likely than Aurelia having a child and never telling me. It seems more likely than Aurelia giving birth at all, given her condition. The risks of such a course, Dr Jacobs had told us, were not slight. And she had not come together with Robin just once, in the heat of grief, but repeatedly. Surely she would not have done so if she were not sure it was safe? The old Amy cannot think that Aurelia – my clever, bright big sister – could make a mistake so great. The new Amy, who appears to be developing swiftly, can see all too well that Aurelia was fallible and flawed and a little desperate, which does not foster sound judgement. Even so, there is little sense to be found . . .

  I continue reading. She stayed in Derby, if the letters are to be believed, into August before travelling yet further north to Manchester and Leeds, promising to return to us by Christmas. Here her letters regain a little of their natural colour and conviction:

  You should have seen the cotton mill at Hatby, outside Manchester, dear: like a never-ending Christmas the white flakes whirl and dance perpetually. But there are no snowmen and there is no cheer; the factory workers – men, women and children too, some as young as six – are red-eyed from concentration and cough insistently, though no one can hear it over the sound of the machines.

  I cannot help but recall an article that Aurelia and I had read about this industry some years ago. Was that before her trip or after it? I think it was before. I wonder whether there is a town called Hatby, and whether Aurelia ever really saw the inside of a mill.

  Amy, the countryside of the north makes Surrey look like a pale imitation of the concept ‘rural’! Great fells that fall away as if the very winds had cut out great hunks of land, deep bluey-green rolling moors scattered with white rivers that bound over rocks and skip into cascades that come to rest in glassy pools and fairy glades. Yes! I saw fairies – everywhere – no one can tell me I didn’t.

  Yesterday, Amy, I went to York! Such a pretty city.

  Last week I saw the sea at Scarborough. How you would love to go, dear.

  I try to imagine that she is pregnant and understandably preoccupied. Or else that, having miscarried a child, she was weakened and grieving. I try to imagine her moving from place to place to place, throughout the summer, throughout a heatwave. Even if she were never pregnant, with her heart condition it smacks of lunacy. There is no answer that satisfies. After July there is no further reference to her health.

  I read on. I read of her decision to extend her trip a little longer and return via Shrewsbury and Bath, in both cases invited by friends of people I had never heard of.

  I did not imagine the letters from Bath. They are in my hands, postmarked and full of platitudes about the handsome features of Frederic Meredith, whom Mrs Riverthorpe claims does not exist.

  Here the letters end. She did not notify me in advance of her return. It was like Aurelia to make it a surprise.

  I look at the pages scattered over my bedcovers. Here is a new puzzle, a treasure hunt within the treasure hunt. I gather what I know for certain. Aurelia was definitely in Twickenham. I know this because I have been there, and they knew her, and her letters are convincing and frequent. Aurelia was not in Bath, according to Mrs Riverthorpe, and her letters are uncharacteristic and few. Her letters from all the places in between are also uncharacteristic and few, calling the majority of her journey into question. So where was she? And what was she doing?

  The idea that there might have been a child is preposterous. If there was, then where is he or she now? It is, however, the only explanation that could conceivably justify her obsession with secrecy, the only secret important enough to warrant sending me hither and thither across the country, although I still do not understand the exact mechanics of her thinking.

  And yet Aurelia was not always reasonable. She was not always thoughtful. She was anything but predictable. Maybe she had no good reason. It is like all the old mysteries – insoluble and cyclical.

  I feel close to knowing, so close, and yet I still have to wait nearly three weeks! I only hope that the rest of my time in Bath will not be quite so eventful as last night.

  Chapter Fifty

  The rest of the morning, at least, is decidedly uneventful. Or, more accurate to say, it does not bring the one event I long for: Henry’s promised visit. He does not call, he does not leave his card, he does not send a note.

  As morning melts into afternoon, I forget my preoccupation with Aurelia’s secret and my new, outrageous suspicions. All I can think of is Henry. His absence sits in my stomach like a heavy stone at the bottom of a deep well. I pace the corridors, I slump in my room. I look at every clock a thousand times. At eleven o’clock, noon, luncheon, I tell myself that he has commitments this morning and that the afternoon will bring him, belated and brimming with apologies and smiles.

  Although April offers her finest, most convincing sunshine of the year, I willingly confine myself to the grey chambers of Hades House. At three o’clock I worry that Henry�
��s forgotten commitments might keep him busy all day and that I might not see him until tomorrow – or Monday . . . I truly don’t know how I might wait so long. At half past the hour, when an almighty knocking thunders at the door, my heart leaps out of my chest. I jump out of my seat before remembering that it is not my place to answer. I force myself to lurk sedately on the stairs while Ambrose goes to the door – did she always walk this slowly? My disappointment knows no bounds when she announces Mr Garland.

  He seems to make a habit of finding out where I am staying and arriving unannounced. So I reflect churlishly, in my despondency that he is not Henry. Ambrose shows him into the drawing room and Mrs Riverthorpe appears, garbed in purple, a mischievous gleam in her eye. I do not trust that gleam.

  He has come, it seems, to establish that I will be at the archery meet tomorrow afternoon and to ask Mrs Riverthorpe and me if we would like to see a new pair of horses he has just acquired. Perhaps we might fancy a bowl around the city in his carriage, he suggests.

  Mrs Riverthorpe, already on her feet and halfway out of the door, agrees that she might. ‘Was there ever such a boring day?’ she demands, glaring at me as though it were my responsibility to brighten it, though I have seen no sign of her all day.

  In contrast I linger reluctantly by the fire. ‘I . . . I . . . cannot, though I thank you for the invitation,’ I stammer, rigid with awkwardness. I will not leave this house and risk missing Henry, but I am well aware I have no good excuse to give.

  ‘Why not?’ demands Mrs Riverthorpe, and I am put in mind of a heron’s jabbing beak, skewering a fish. ‘Exhausted by the demands of the huge social circle you’ve acquired in the last three days?’