Fiercombe Manor (42 page)

“But do you think what the servants said was true—that Elizabeth and Isabel went to London?”

He sighed. “Well, it's always been a fancy of mine that they had a happy ending, despite the debts and the probable death of the second child. What is known is that Edward drank himself to death within a year, and poor Charles spent the last of the money settling
his affairs—gambling debts and unpaid bills for the work on Stanton House. Charles was lucky that the old manor house was spared.

“I once liked to believe that even if her mother didn't survive into old age, the little girl was all right, that she was scooped up by a benevolent relative and taken far away, to somewhere exotic like India, to grow up as lovely as her mother. That was my hope, for what it was worth. Do I believe it anymore?” He spread his hands, not needing to answer his own question. “After all, wouldn't she have come back by now? Sir Charles would have taken her in, I'm sure.”

His words reminded me of one of my favourite books as a child,
The Little Princess
. I thought of Isabel's long journey to India to start a new life, the reverse of Sara Crewe's.

“She didn't look like Elizabeth, though,” I said softly. “None of the gypsy curls and flashing eyes. Her hair was silver blond. She took after Edward in that.”

Hugh sighed. “Perhaps she did. Poor little mite.”

“Mrs. Jelphs didn't tell me about Isabel. I asked her about a little girl because I found a toy—a little hare—but she evaded my question.”

“Can you blame her? She is one of a handful of people who was there at the very end—and is still there now. In fact, she might well be the only person left alive who knows precisely what went on down there during those weeks.”

“Her and Ruck,” I said.

I don't know how long we sat there, both of us far away in the valley's past, but then Hugh got up and went back to the bureau.

“I said I had something else for you. I remembered it the other night, out of the blue. An antiques dealer friend of mine came across a desk in a sale a few years ago. It was an enormous thing, with all sorts of drawers and compartments, and had apparently
belonged to a doctor. My friend thought it quite ugly, but a local businessman had enquired after such a desk—specifically wanting something big and dark and Victorian, I suppose for the gravitas. This was just the thing, and my friend got it cheaply enough.

“When it was delivered to his shop, and he got a proper look at it, he found that one of the drawers—a sort of secret compartment for private papers—had been missed when the desk was emptied. Much to the surprise of my friend, he realised that a previous owner—a Dr. Frith—had lived in this house at the time he'd written the notes found inside. The address was there, printed at the top of each sheet.

“The next time we met, he brought them out. He said they were probably of little interest, but he'd liked the coincidence. The doctor had died years before, and he didn't see the harm in it, particularly as he hadn't noticed anything confidential in the pile.

“I did in fact buy this house off an old doctor who, if I remember rightly, was going to retire to the coast of Dorset for his lungs. I hadn't given him a thought in decades. I didn't look at the papers properly until later. I remember settling down in here with them that evening, thinking I had got hold of the mundane musings of a country doctor. I liked the fact that I would be reading them some thirty-odd years after they had been written, quite possibly in the same room. Most of it was total trivia, old prescriptions, and reminders to order in various pieces of equipment. But in amongst the rest was something more interesting. When I sat down to read, it never occurred to me that I might see a name I recognised, but it leapt off the page almost immediately: Elizabeth Stanton.”

He seemed to hesitate, as though he'd changed his mind about showing me. I saw him glance briefly at my protruding stomach.

“Please, I'd like to see them, since you went to the trouble of digging them out,” I said, holding out my hand.

Rather reluctantly he handed over the pile of brittle papers, all of them covered in faded black ink. It was the kind of antiquated writing that looks beautiful but is actually very difficult to read, a slanted cursive only easily intelligible to the writer.

“Doctors' handwriting has always been impossible to read, it seems,” said Hugh quietly. He swallowed the last of his drink and looked thoughtfully out the window.

There, at the top of the paper, was the printed name and address. It was an odd thought: that those sheets had been written in the last century in the house I was sitting in, and had somehow found their way back.

Just then there was a sharp rap at the door. Hugh raised his eyebrows at me as he got to his feet. I began to scan the first page, my eyes managing to decipher the odd word. One was
mania
. Another was
hysteric
. I heard the door open.

“Mrs. Jelphs, what a pleasant surprise.” He said it loud enough that I knew it was for my benefit.

I got to my feet awkwardly, wincing from the strain on my lower back as I did. After what I'd heard, I couldn't let Mrs. Jelphs know I'd been nosing around in what was also her own past. Without thinking, I took the dozen or so sheets of paper and stuffed them into the band of my skirt, pulling my blouse down over them. The old paper had thinned and dried with time, and I could hear it protest and crackle as I moved awkwardly towards the sitting room door. Mrs. Jelphs met me at the threshold.

“Alice, I've been so worried. I looked for you everywhere when I returned from Painswick. We even called at Nan's to ask if she knew where you might be. I've said it before, but you really
shouldn't be walking up any hills in your condition. What were you thinking?”

Her tone was shorter than I'd heard it before, her blue eyes dark with mingled frustration and anxiety.

“I . . . I'm perfectly well,” I stammered. “I suppose I just wanted some exercise, and then I, well, I bumped into Mr. Morton by chance.”

I stood as still as I could so the papers didn't rustle against my hot skin. I was glad Hugh had turned over the auction catalogue on the table, the bold typography out of sight.

“Yes, that's right,” he said. “We met on the green. I insisted that she come back for a cold drink.”

“That's very kind of you, Mr. Morton, but Alice shouldn't be overexerting herself. She shouldn't be leaving the valley at all.” She looked back at me. “You'll need to rest this afternoon. Ruck brought me up in the carriage so you won't have to walk down.”

I realised she was trembling.

“Mrs. Jelphs, can I offer you and Mr. Ruck a glass of ginger beer before you go?” said Hugh.

“Thank you, but no, we must get Alice back where she belongs.”

“Right you are.” He looked over at me, and I managed a wan smile for him.

I didn't trust myself to say a word to Mrs. Jelphs or Ruck as we descended back into the valley's arms. I sat between them like a prisoner on her way to the gallows. I think Mrs. Jelphs imagined I was sulking, like a little girl whose game had been broken up by the call to bed, but my head was full of scratchy black script, my mind's eye running again and again over the unsettling words I'd seen.

There was a chance that Elizabeth had died when she had her second child. It was possible the child had died too, or instead of
her. In a few short weeks, I would be giving birth in the valley myself.

And Isabel: What of her? Despite Hugh's notion and the rumours that she had been taken to London, I had an instinct that something darker had happened. Perhaps it was my mood, and my own fear, but my mind kept going back to Henry's early death in the valley. Had Tom's mother been right? Was the valley ill-fated somehow? What of my child? What of me? I thought again of the words I'd seen and the diary entry of Elizabeth's I'd read.

As the carriage wove down the steep path, the wheels finding the ruts in the dry earth as if it drove itself, I heard the wind stir. I looked up through the layers of beech leaves that crowded over us, and watched them shift and shiver. Mrs. Jelphs and Ruck stared straight ahead, apparently oblivious to it.

I put my hand to my belly and felt the papers there. The heat from my skin had dampened them, so they felt plastered to the mound of me. I didn't like those unflinching words pressing against the baby and wished I could pull them out and let them flutter down to fall under the wheels. Mrs. Jelphs looked sideways at me.

“Why do you do it, Alice?” Her voice was curiously flat. “We are just trying to look after you while we wait for the baby to come. You can't be in your right mind going up that hill in this heat. What if I had been too late?”

“Too late for what?” I said, but she didn't reply.

We were nearly at the bottom of the path, the manor's pale stone glimmering from behind its dark concealment of holly and yew. As soon as we came to a stop, I climbed down clumsily without waiting for Ruck to help me, and heard Mrs. Jelphs sigh.

“Thank you for collecting me,” I called over my shoulder as I hurried awkwardly towards the kitchen door, a note of defiance
creeping into my voice. “But you really needn't have. There's absolutely nothing wrong with me.”

As soon as I reached my room and closed the door, I tore off my blouse, letting it fall to the floor. I peeled the old papers off as carefully as I could bear to in my desire to be rid of them and then spread them out on the bed to dry. None were torn, but the ink had blurred in places. I crossed the room to wash my hands, but catching sight of my reflection in the wardrobe glass made me stop dead. Some of the dark ink had been imprinted onto my skin. It made me want to step out of it like a snake.

As I stared at my reflection, a lock of hair fell forward and lay like a loosened spring against my shoulder. In the sunlight that surged unremittingly into the room, I could see embers in the dark brown that was the colour of freshly turned earth. I thought of the confusion swimming in Ruck's eyes when we had met on the path flanked by rhododendrons. He hadn't known it was me.

Outside, the wind—an uncanny, murmuring sort of wind—began to build until I thought that if I dared to cross to the window, I would see the Great Mead filled with all the people who had ever been there. The casements I'd pushed back that morning began to rattle very slightly, as though a pocket of pressure very deep underground was beginning to be released. I believed that if I turned, there would be someone behind me.

I stood immobile with my eyes shut for a long minute, concentrating on breathing in and out, in and out, so that I wouldn't fall. I told myself that I was overwrought after all that Hugh Morton had told me, and because the existence of the doctor's notes on the bed seemed to chime with some of what I'd read in Elizabeth's diary—and what I'd been wondering about my mother.

When I opened them again, I realised that the wind had died down a little. I looked at my reflection again. My stomach looked
horrible, a swirl of blurred ink. The baby began to move and twist inside me, and that finally galvanised me into action. I went to the jug, poured water into the bowl, and began wiping off the mess with my flannel, watching the water turn grey.

When I was clean, I didn't fetch a towel but let the warm wind that sporadically barged in through the open windows, only to die off again, dry the water on my skin. Outside, I could see the yews moving reluctantly back and forth in the turbulent air. They reminded me of the furled parasols you see by the seaside at the end of the season, when the weather is beginning to turn and the crowds have gone. They creaked as they moved.

I went over to the bed and made sure the papers were in the correct order. They had dried, but now rippled like a book left next to the bath. I propped up the pillows so I would be comfortable, and began to read. It was hard going at first, but after a few minutes my eyes adjusted to the unfamiliar handwriting and began to decipher it automatically. Some of it was smudged and blurred and lost for good, but I could make out most of it.

T
HE
P
RIVATE
O
BSERVATIONS OF A
C
OUNTRY
P
HYSICIAN
R
EGARDING
S
ERIOUS
C
ASES OF
P
UERPERAL
I
NSANITY
, I
TS
C
ONSEQUENCES AND
C
URES
By Dr. Robert A. Frith

Stanwick, Gloucestershire, 1894

As we are all surely aware, severe disturbances of the mind are not only more common amongst women, but amongst women of childbearing age. Those suffering from puerperal insanity, whether taking the form of a suffocating and gloomy melancholia or absolute insanity, are not rare cases. Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that, in the course of the last century, these conditions have become as good as contagious, spread by the influence of lurid newspaper accounts of infanticide and misguided health manuals.

In decades past, physicians would have treated women suffering such flights from reason in a markedly different way. There is ample evidence, dreadful to relate, of women being sent to asylums where they were treated like animals. Some would be chained to their beds; others plied with leeches; still more sent further into the blackness by close proximity to the truly deranged. A dim view is now taken of such treatment. It is now understood that women who, after giving birth, and occasionally before it, seem to display signs of advanced hysteria and madness, must be treated lightly, carefully, and with sympathy, their delusions remaining unquestioned so as not to disturb their weakened minds still further. This extends even to those who,
without constant supervision, would do harm to themselves or to their infants.

It is now more widely understood that alarming changes in behaviour are merely symptoms of the malady, not the true character of the sufferer rising to the surface. This usually temporary loss of wits leaves little or no memory of it behind, at least for the afflicted. I have seen with my own eyes women raving and wild-eyed one week and quite calm and restored the next. There is no remnant of the mania that has blown through them, and most are recovered completely within a few months.