by Jem Poster
I sat on the edge of my bed, hearing the sounds of other lives beyond my window – the piping of small finches in the shrubbery, the clang of a pail set down on a stone surface, a faraway lowing of cattle – and watching the lozenges of sunlight lapse slowly across the floor and walls. In a moment, I kept telling myself, I shall rise to my feet, wash, change my clothing and go downstairs; but the moments passed and I barely moved. Just once, hearing Eleanor’s voice drift up from the garden, I was stirred into action: I leaped up, crossed to the window and looked out. She was out of sight beyond the corner of the house, and too distant for me to be able to distinguish more than the occasional phrase of what was evidently a slightly irritable conversation with her father. ‘You should have called me,’ I heard her say at one point, her voice sharp with accusation; and then Vane’s light bass cut in, cool and placatory, and the two of them moved away.
A little before sundown I heard footsteps approaching along the corridor, and then a gentle rapping at my door. I sat tight, said nothing.
‘Charles?’ Eleanor’s voice again, very soft and close now. I imagined her out there listening for my reply, her cheek resting against the varnished wood. I held my breath. My heart lurched in my chest.
‘Charles, shall you be dining with us? Mrs Denham needs to know.’
The mundane detail – that casual reminder of a world in which meals are served at set hours by capable domestics – steadied me a little. ‘I’m afraid not,’ I called. ‘I’m rather indisposed.’
There was a long silence before she spoke again, urgently now, dropping her voice to a low whisper. ‘Come to the door, Charles. I want to see you.’
I eased myself back and laid my head on the pillows. ‘I’m in bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Another pause and then, so quietly I could barely hear her: ‘I’m glad you’re back.’ She turned, the fabric of her dress brushing the door, and I raised my head and strained forward to listen as her footsteps died away down the corridor.
As darkness began to fall, the rapping and whispering began again: Open the door – the words repeated two or three times as I rolled over on to my side, burying my face in the pillows. Yes, she breathed, and an instant later, her voice so close behind me that there could be no doubt of it, I’m with you now. A little sigh, and then the pressure of her body against my back, the warmth of her mouth at my ear. There’s nothing to be afraid of, she said, and because it was my mother’s voice I heard then, my mother’s reassurance echoing back to me across the years, I turned, whimpering, and let her draw my head to her breast. Hush, she whispered, rocking me gently in her arms, and the sound stirred me and set my hands working at the soft fabric of her garments, peeling back layer after layer. Easily at first, and with a subdued excitement; but as I worked on, I felt the stuff disintegrating beneath my probing fingers, clumps of feathers breaking away and drifting across the bed in smothering clouds so dense that I struggled for breath and, crying out, startled myself from sleep.
Is it possible, I wonder, to convey any sense of what followed? Not a night punctuated by terrifying dreams, such as I had experienced under Preece’s roof, but a night of unalleviated terror in which I slipped confusedly between sleep and waking without finding even momentary respite from the images and sensations that stormed round or through me. It’s the landscapes I remember best, and this most clearly and terribly of all: a vast tract viewed at first as though from a great height or through the wrong end of a telescope – rock and forest, swamp and river, the sunlight thickening in a brooding sky. As I stare – and I know already that something frightful is about to happen – I see below me, dead centre of my field of vision, a lick of orange flame springing up like a flower. I raise my head and another starts up towards the horizon and, further still, a third. I clap my hands over my eyes to protect the land from my own incendiary gaze but I can see clean through my palms, and the fires continue to break out wherever I look. And then – it’s the same landscape, but in some sombre aftermath, and I’m down there now, stumbling across the hot earth – the drifts of ash, the blackened, skeletal trees, the light draining remorselessly away; and in the choking air, little tatters of soot or darkness swirling around me as I wake, sweating, and reach for my pocket watch.
If, indeed, I did wake. I looked at the dial and saw that it was a few minutes past midnight; but how, I asked myself later, could I possibly have seen what I thought I’d seen? Not just the watch, but the entire room in daylight detail – washstand and writing table, ewer, basin and oil-lamp, all in essence as I knew them to be, but twitching and quivering with a horrible, restless energy. And something twitching, too, at the corner of my left eye, a sooty flake from the smoking waste I’d just passed through. I reached for my handkerchief and dabbed frantically at the shadow, but it slid sideways across my vision like a shutter and I was back among the blackened tree-trunks again, staring helplessly into the deepening gloom.
Beneath the confusion ran an inarticulate longing for daybreak but, in the event, I missed the moment and the sun was well up when I woke to Vane’s voice, low and insistent, calling my name. I sat bolt upright in a kind of panic, clutching at the damp cloth of my shirt.
‘What is it?’ My pulse was racing, my mouth dry. I heard him try the handle.
‘Are you all right, Redbourne?’
A simple enough question, but the answer seemed beyond me. I made my way unsteadily to the door, unlocked it and let him in. It struck me, as his eyes met mine, that he was reading the answer to his question in my face; and at the same moment I lost my balance and lurched sideways against the door-edge.
‘I shall have to sit down,’ I said.
He helped me back to the bed and sat beside me, eyeing my crumpled clothes. ‘You’re in no condition to be on your feet,’ he said. ‘I’ll have your breakfast sent up to you.’
‘I’ve little appetite at the moment.’
‘Would you like me to send for Dr Barton?’
‘It’s not necessary. I shall feel better when I’m properly rested.’
He rose to his feet. ‘Whatever you need,’ he said with a formal inclination of his head, ‘is at your disposal. You’ve only to ask.’
‘Thank you, Vane.’ I swung my legs on to the bed and sank back against the pillows as the door clicked shut.
Towards midday, as I lay staring listlessly at the ceiling, Eleanor entered bearing a bowl of broth on a lacquer tray. ‘You’re to drink this,’ she said, without preamble, as I struggled upright. ‘I’ve had it made specially for you.’ She was brisk and businesslike, studiously avoiding my eyes, but I saw, as she handed me the tray, that her arms were trembling. She drew up a chair and perched on the edge of the seat, emphatically present but poised as if ready for retreat, her hands braced on her thighs.
‘How are you, Nell?’
She glanced away, flushing faintly. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said simply. ‘Since you went I’ve been …’ She raised both hands palm upward in a delicate, hesitant gesture and let them drop again. I felt a tremor pass through me, head to heel, a swift shock of pleasure and apprehension.
‘I was afraid,’ she continued, ‘that you wouldn’t come back. Just a vague worry at first, the kind of feeling you might have about anyone you care for when they’re away from you. But then the dreams began, and it came to me that you were in danger. I thought you were going to die out there.’
‘Dreams about me?’
‘Dreams of disaster. I thought they concerned you, but I could never get close enough to see the faces. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Has your father told you about Bullen?’
She nodded. ‘Drink up your broth,’ she said, ‘while it’s still hot.’
I dipped my spoon obediently and took a mouthful. ‘You’re terribly thin,’ she said. ‘Your face is different. Sharper and harder. If I didn’t know you, you’d frighten me.’
‘I’ve not had sight of my own reflection for days.’
She ste
pped over to the washstand and picked up the looking-glass. I reached out to take it from her.
‘Finish that first,’ she said.
I supped the broth quickly but without relish. She stood over me until the bowl was empty, then handed me the mirror.
I could see at once what she meant. In part it was the beard, still at the stage at which it accentuated rather than concealed my jawline and the hollow contours of my cheeks, that gave my face its forbidding appearance; but there was something in the eyes, too, a look I didn’t recognise as my own. It was as though the wilderness I’d walked through, or some essential element of it, had lodged in me, giving my gaze an unfamiliar depth and darkness. I wiped the glass nervously against the counterpane and handed it back. ‘I need a shave,’ I said.
‘You need a bath.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Have you been sleeping in those clothes?’
‘Is it so obvious?’
‘I’ll ask Mrs Denham to arrange it.’ She returned the mirror to the washstand and picked up the tray. I could feel her drawing off, slipping away from me into a world I wasn’t yet fit to face, and I leaned anxiously after her as she moved towards the door. ‘Will you come back?’ I asked.
‘Later. I’m working on something out in the barn. I want to keep at it while the idea’s still clear in my mind.’
‘A painting?’
She shook her head. ‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘When you’re ready.’
I had expected to feel better for my bath and change of clothes, but in fact I returned to my room in a deeper state of exhaustion. Not only that, but the fluttering tag of darkness was back, dancing away at the margin of my vision. I strained to take it in, swivelling my eyes or turning my head to find it always just out of range, a faint shadow flickering in sunlight like an inverse will-o’-the-wisp, simultaneously elusive and insistent. I spent the afternoon in a state of morbid anxiety, and though I heard Eleanor’s knock I didn’t respond immediately.
‘Charles, it’s Nell.’
I rose to my feet and let her in. Another bowl of broth; a slice of buttered bread on a white porcelain plate. ‘I’m not hungry,’ I said, scanning the tray.
‘You must keep your strength up. How can you get better if you don’t eat?’ She stepped past me into the room and motioned me towards the bedside chair. It seemed pointless to resist.
‘Does your father know you’re looking after me like this?’ I asked.
She handed me the tray and drew up the other chair, setting it directly in front of my own, a little closer than seemed necessary. ‘Of course,’ she said.
‘Has he no objection?’
She glanced towards the door, silent for a moment, her lips compressed. ‘I don’t need my father’s permission to visit a sick friend,’ she said at last. Something in her words, or perhaps in her defiant tone, caught me off guard: the room blurred suddenly, and I set the heels of both hands to my eyes in a vain attempt to stem the tears.
‘Do you have many friends?’ she asked. ‘In England, I mean.’ She was watching me closely, I sensed, but her voice gave no hint of distaste or embarrassment. I shook my head, still fighting for self-control.
‘Suppose you were ill at home,’ she continued. ‘Who would visit you there?’
I shrugged, fumbled for my handkerchief. ‘I have a manservant,’ I said.
‘That’s not what I meant.’ She leaned forward in her chair, her head tilted to one side. ‘What’s the matter with your eye?’ she asked.
‘The darkness?’
An absurd question. She frowned, visibly puzzled. ‘The twitching,’ she said. ‘At the corner.’ She reached tentatively towards my face, her hand raised in the air before me as though in blessing.
‘I don’t know.’ It crossed my mind that I might tell her about my dreams – about the burning and the desolation – but I couldn’t think how to begin. ‘It’s been troubling me since last night.’
It was the simplest thing – just a continuation of that interrupted forward momentum, the fingertips coming to rest lightly against the outer edge of my eyelid, the side of the palm against my cheek – but I think I knew even then that there was power enough in that touch to alter the course of a life. I stiffened, froze.
‘Does it hurt?’
I felt the tears well up again and, as I struggled to speak, the tray tilted on my lap and slid forward and the whole lot crashed to the floor. I sat in a kind of stupor, staring at the debris – the plate broken into half a dozen angular shards, the bowl spinning on its side, the thin broth spreading out across the polished boards; and then, as though the accident had given me permission, I began to cry without restraint.
She made no move to rise. Instead, she leaned closer and pressed my head to her shoulder, slipping her other arm around my own shoulders. She held me to her as my sobbing intensified; continued to hold me as it subsided. I felt myself drift on the rise and fall of her breathing, light as a leaf on a tidal swell. ‘No,’ I murmured, drawing away a little, breaking her hold.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
I gestured weakly towards the debris. ‘All this,’ I whispered. ‘This mess. This damage.’
‘But not only this?’ She was gazing into my eyes with an expression of such searching intensity that I began to tremble. ‘Tell me,’ she said.
I have never talked to anyone as I talked to Eleanor that afternoon. I spoke with desperate eloquence, hearing the words spill out as though from someone else’s lips, mapping out a world of irreparable hurt and loss. I recognised the element of confusion in my breakneck narrative, but I could see at the same time how everything was linked: the heron flapping helplessly in the dust, Billy stumbling sideways before dropping from sight over the cliff edge, the slender arms of the dead wallabies spread wide in mute entreaty, Daniel walking out into the pelting night, the black girl’s averted gaze as I pocketed her bracelet, the flames spreading outward from beneath my hands to consume a fragile, extravagant wilderness. Each thread seemed to lead ineluctably to another, and I was still talking when the gong sounded for dinner.
‘I must go,’ she said, rising from her chair.
‘Nell, I’m sorry. Your clothing …’ She followed my gaze, holding the skirt wide to inspect the damage: a long, greasy stain running diagonally from knee-level to hemline.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing that soap and water won’t remedy.’ I bent forward awkwardly, making to gather up the fragments of porcelain at her feet, but she prevented me. ‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘I’ll send one of the girls up to attend to it.’
‘I’ve taken up so much of your time. It was good of you to listen to me.’
‘I listened because I wanted to listen.’ She crossed to the window and raised the sash a couple of inches. ‘A little air,’ she said, putting her palm to the aperture, ‘now that it’s growing cooler.’
A faint breeze rustling the leaves, the hum of insect life from the flowerbeds below. She turned to face me, framed against the softening light. ‘You’re not to worry,’ she said quietly. ‘There’s no cause.’
I remember her words precisely, but the words were only part of it. Standing there in front of the window, her cropped hair forming a jagged aureole about her head, she seemed at once abstracted and concentrated, as though she were communing with a world beyond our own; and fanciful as it might appear, I saw her at that moment as something more than herself – a priestess, perhaps, called upon to interpret some profound insight for the benefit of suffering humanity – and heard her simple words as a form of absolution. I felt my breathing ease, my spirits lighten and lift.
I should have been glad to prolong the moment, but she turned abruptly and made for the door. ‘Shall I get the girl to bring you some fresh broth?’ she asked. I was silent, caught off balance, trembling between worlds.
‘Charles?’
‘That would be nice. Will you come back later?’
‘Tomorrow.’
The tremor was starting up again at the corner of my
eye, the flickering wisp of darkness re-insinuating itself. ‘Nell,’ I called.
‘What is it?’
‘Did you understand what I was trying to tell you about Daniel?’
She paused, one hand on the door-knob. ‘You loved him,’ she said, ‘in your own way. The harm wasn’t in the loving.’ She threw the door wide and the curtains billowed inward from the windowsill, lifted on a draught so sweet it might have come fresh from Eden’s fields.
28
Vane came to my room several times over the next few days, but on each occasion his demeanour suggested that the visit was little more than a courtesy, while I, for my own part, must have made it plain enough that I had no interest in prolonging our stilted exchanges. I was vague and easily distracted – by the creak of a floorboard in the corridor, the murmur of voices from the hallway – and Vane, who was, after all, no fool, could hardly have failed to realise that it was Eleanor I wanted to speak to.
I don’t think I was capable of such insights at the time, but I see clearly now how strangely our roles had changed. Excitable, irreticent and prone to fits of weeping, I clamoured incessantly for Eleanor’s attention during her visits while she, listening intently or speaking with gentle gravity, drew me patiently back to a world I had ceased to care for. I sensed a fine judgement at work there: she seemed to know what I needed before I knew it myself, and showed considerable skill in countering my irrational resistance to her suggestions. I remember in particular how adroitly she brought me round, on the evening of my fourth day back at the villa, to her view that it was time for me to leave my sick-room and get out of the house. I was not, I told her peevishly, well enough to do so, but she was insistent.
