Authors: S. K. Tremayne
The Fire Child (16 page)
I’ve got a man from Inverie in Scotland to come down and live in a cottage in Zennor, he dyes his own yarns with vegetable dyes to achieve the right colour for the tapestries.
Further down:
The fabric is made and dyed by Richard Humphries; I spoke to the textile dept at the V&A, I’ve chosen moreen, a woollen material with a silken watermark, very right for the period of the bed and its hangings. Dyed to a misty blue green, just ethereal …
This tells me nothing, except that Nina knew what she was doing. And that she never sent this carefully written letter. I do not know why. But, as with that photograph in the gossip magazine, I have the strange sensation that I am now in possession of a clue.
Folding the letter, I replace it in the notebook, and slip the notebook in the pocket of my jeans.
The last box is books, as promised by Juliet. Lots and lots of books. Memoirs, history, novels. Many of the books are in French, too – Colette, Balzac, Simone Weil.
The thinnest book looks especially cherished: it is a hardback edition of Sylvia Plath’s
Collected Poems.
Turning it in my hand, I see it is dog-eared and battered, though Nina has repaired the binding – or had it repaired. Clearly a much-loved volume. Weighed loosely on my palm, the book splits, naturally, on one page. The spine has cracked at this point – this is evidently the poem she liked to read most.
‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’.
I don’t know much about Sylvia Plath, or about poetry. Novels were my thing, my means of escape when life became unbearable. But the first line of the poem – circled neatly by Nina – is enough to give me the dusty taste of anxiety, once more.
This is the light of the mind
I recall that line very well. It is the epitaph on Nina’s tombstone. And I may not know much about Sylvia Plath but I know one thing. She committed suicide.
The questions build and burst, like rainstorms over Cape Cornwall. Like Christmas gales.
Did Nina commit suicide? If she did, that might explain the sense of doom, remorse and secrecy that surrounds her death. That surrounds all of us here, trapped in Carnhallow. But if she did commit suicide, why did she do it? She had everything. Beauty, brains, a son, a husband, a wonderful home. Or so it seemed.
I consider the child I carry, who will inherit half of Carnhollow, but all of this history.
Taking the notebooks upstairs, flicking the lights off, I make for the drawing room. But as soon as I open the door a new sickly fear suffuses me, making the notebooks tremble in my hand.
Chanel. I can smell it. In here. In this room. But this is not a memory of a scent, some trace of something long gone. This is real. This is the perfume of a woman who has just been inside this room, her favourite room, her beautifully restored drawing room: and only this moment departed.
It’s Nina’s perfume. No one else wears Chanel. She has been in here. She was here a few minutes ago. I know it. I know it. It can’t be. But it is. Nina is quietly and invisibly walking these halls and corridors, like she is waiting for me to leave, at Christmas. So she can take my place.
Lunchtime
David is finally coming home tonight. This weekend I will tell him about the pregnancy. But the ideas in my head are driving me to the edge. Literally. I am parked on the pier at St Ives, watching the waves. Helpless.
Placing a protective hand over my stomach – my womb – I consider the child within. The line from which this child descends. Greedy, evil Jago Kerthen. Violent, drunken Richard Kerthen.
And David Kerthen: a liar, deceiver, or worse.
What if I am pregnant by a bad man? A man who has inherited the worst of his ancestors, the worst of the Kerthens? Maybe the idea of this, of my foolish credulity, is what sends me mad: because it is my own fault. I saw what I wanted to see: his charm, his looks, his humour. The beautiful son, the ancient house, the thousand-year dynasty. It was my greedy desire to be part of this that blinded me, and condemned me.
I revelled in the jealousy of Jessica and my other friends when I first brought David to the bars of Shoreditch. Oh yeah. Hey. My new boyfriend. David Kerthen. Lawyer in Marylebone. Family dates back before the Norman Conquest. Owns a fabulous house in Cornwall. Oh, you think he’s handsome? Yes, I suppose he is.
All of this done with a fake, self-deprecating laugh.
And now I am pregnant. How will I tell David? How will he react?
Starting the car, trying to clear my clouded mind, I steer myself through the granite zigzags of the little town, up on to the moorland roads. I am more than happy to get lost in these cold, muddy lanes, these strangely mazy roads through Nancledra, Towednack, Amalebra. Past the meagre churches and holy wells, past the bonsai moorland trees, all shorn to the same angle, writhing in the same ceaseless winds.
Topping the hill, the north coast comes into a view: the distant tumult of the Atlantic. There are no ships today. But the waves plough on, silently and very fast. As if they have some grim but important job to do, further up the coast, perhaps someone they have to drown off Port Isaac.
‘Zennor,’ I say, as I drive into Zennor.
I am talking to myself. Again.
Parking the car, I step out. I’ve visited this remote, arty village many times, but still its atmosphere surprises. There is
something
here, something to do with the little pub, the humble granite cottages, and then the church: old, small, thickly walled, with narrow lancet windows cut deep into the granite like grievous wounds.
This well-kept church stands in stark contrast with all the ruined Methodist chapels. These chapels remind me, strangely but distinctly, of the ruined tin mines. Because they are all monuments to dead industry. The seams of faith have been worked out, the precious metals of devotion and belief have been exhausted.
But the stone workings remain. Suffering in the drizzle, crumbling slowly into the cliffsides and the fields, until at last they are overtaken by green nettles and sea thrift, until their broken sills become nests for gulls and choughs.
One day, I suppose, they will be gone entirely.
Part of me resists this idea: the total erosion of religion. I was a devout Catholic as a girl: the simple Irish faith knocked into me at Catholic primary school was hard to knock away. I’d like to believe in God, still: to have that consolation, to think there is something Beyond, a brother for the lonely, a father for the orphaned, an embracing and eternal Lord, gathering the anguished. And a God for my unborn child.
But I can’t. My faith died when I was twenty-one. Just after Christmas. And yet now I have faith in a much darker superstition. I believe my stepson can predict the future, and I know his dead mother walks the house, and I know all this is impossible, and it is shredding me to a frenzy of nerves.
Stepping inside the church, I strive to inhale the calming, familiar churchy scent – of rotting flowers, sweetish incense, and mildewed prayer books. Taking out my cameraphone, I take pictures of the various memorials, the Nancekukes of Emba, the Lerryns of Chytodden, and then Jory Kerthen of Carnhallow, 1290–1340, and William de Kerthen of Kenidjack,
dates obscured
, and Mary Kerthen of Carnhallow, 1390–1442. These people will be the ancestors of my child.
Now I find a humbler grave. William Thomas:
kill’d in Wheal-Chance Tin-Mine in Trewey Downs near this Church-Town, by a fall of Ground y
e
16
th
of August 1809, aged 44 years.
That was a Kerthen mine. Wheal Chance. And this man died there. Killed by the Kerthens. Everyone is killed by the Kerthens.
The history is inescapable, even as I escape the church. Halfway down the path I come to the grave I cannot avoid: that particular stone.
Nina Kerthen, died aged 33
This is the light of the mind
A chiselled mermaid arcs across a sculpted half-moon. Juliet has told me the Kerthens are meant to descend from mermaids. She also told me about the stone hedges that surround the little fields of Zennor church.
The oldest human artefacts still being used for their original purpose, anywhere in the world.
The wind is rising, a sea breeze from the west; cold with little nagging cuts of rain. The time is nearly here. The time when I must tell.
I get in the car and drive back as darkness descends, the early winter gloom, at 3.30 p.m., so horribly quick and clammy: not exactly raining, yet with that dampness that rots into your heart. My face is dimlit by the dashboard glow, staring out at the gloom of the moorland road, watching the headlights smear across the arches of Wheal Owles, yet another ruined Kerthen mine. As I drive I keep the window open to the cold oceanic air: breathing the savoury and freezing wind, breathing it deep, trying to keep calm. David is coming home tonight.
At last I take the final turning. And still my mood is dark, and darkening, now I am heading through the oaks, the rowans, the kerthens. Carnhallow emerges through the darkness of Ladies Wood; the hamstone balustrades, the wide south terraces, the older monastic stones, castellated, shadowed in the silver moonlight.
I don’t have time to appreciate the antique beauty. Because I have seen David’s Mercedes in the garage. He is already here.
And now I somehow know that something will happen. The rainclouds are too black.
Why is David back so early? Normally he flies around 4 or 5 p.m., then the drive takes another hour, and he arrives around 6.30 or 7. Today he is back at 4.30.
I drop my keys in the brightness of the kitchen, and there is no sign of him, yet the lights are all on, and I can see someone has used the espresso machine. But he isn’t here. No briefcase, no raincoat carelessly thrown over a kitchen chair. No necktie un-noosed, with a sigh of relief, and chucked on to the big oak table. No whisky bottle. No gin bottle. So he came in and swallowed coffee and then went –
where
?
Stepping outside the kitchen, all is dark. A few lamps pierce the gloom, but most of the house is shrouded. I think of the bats downstairs in the basement, hanging upside down. Happy in the cold and the black. Eyes barely open. But smiling.
This house chills me now. Its dampness soaks into my bones, drowning me in the dark. And I have to confront David. Dig out the truth, like the vile black tin at the end of the tunnels. Then confront him with my truth. A new baby. Another Kerthen. To go with all the others in the house. Jamie. David.
Nina.
But where is he?
‘David?’
The house is so big it answers me with a trailing echo.
David
…
‘David? Where are you?’
Standing in the New Hall, with its photos of bal maidens in their tatty shawls, I take out my phone and dial his number. Voicemail.
‘David?’
Walking to the foot of the stairs, I can see a sliver of light. Coming perhaps from Jamie’s room. Switching on more lights – more light, more light – I ascend the grand staircase and walk the landing to Jamie’s door with its blue Chelsea FC pennant hanging from a nail. I can hear low voices inside. Like people exchanging secrets.
Something makes me hesitate. Alarm. Fear. A basic silly dread that I will find Nina Kerthen in here, talking to her son. Calmly existing.
Taking hold of my growing insanity, I knock on the door. ‘Jamie. Hello, Jamie, it’s Rachel.’
There is no reply. But I can hear whispers now. Beyond the door.
‘Jamie, please, can you let me in? Can I come in? I’m trying to find your father.’
Another silence; but then Jamie says, ‘Come in.’
Turning the knob, I push the door. And there he is, in his school uniform, sitting on his bed. And in the chair near the bed is his father, dressed in his work suit and tie. Their stance is somehow furtive. They look like two people who have been discussing me. I know it. I know it. Their faces say:
We were talking about you
. David’s expression is deliberately blank, yet that alone is suspicious. He’s making an effort to look normal, and unconcerned.
What were they deciding, or conspiring? How to get rid of me? Abruptly I feel like the worst kind of intruder: an outsider. Someone who shouldn’t be here. But I
should
be here. I am proudly, helplessly, inexorably, carrying David’s child. Now I belong in Carnhallow as much as them. Even if I don’t want to be here, even if I don’t want to be one of them: I am.
‘David, what’s going on?’
His face comes alive, flickers with contempt. ‘Going on? What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re home so early, and um, now—’
I am about to say,
You are having secret conversations with your son
– but I restrain myself. ‘I was unnerved,’ I say. ‘I came home and the house was dark yet your car was here and … it was a bit odd.’
He frowns. ‘Are you sure you feel all right, Rachel?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Really?’ He stands, and puts a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘OK. Jamie. You do that homework and then we can all have supper, unless Rachel has already had food. And drink.’
He eyes me again. A lawyerly gaze. I stammer, defensively, ‘No no. No. I had lunch, took some photos at Zennor and – supper would be nice.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Let’s go down and talk. Let Jamie do his homework.’ He turns to his son. ‘Remember what we said, Jamie? Remember that promise? What we agreed?’
Right in front of me, David tilts his head, and raises his eyebrows, significantly, towards Jamie. As if to say,
That thing we agreed about Rachel, remember that, and don’t tell her.
Jamie nods in response, then turns to his school bag, fishing out his homework.
What are the two of them hatching? Now I bristle with anger. I have secrets too. But enough of this. He needs to know. And maybe a bit of me wants to put him on the defensive.
You can’t touch me now, I’m carrying your child. I’m as good as Nina.
Taking my arm, David steers me downstairs to the Yellow Drawing Room, turns on the lamps. Closes the curtains on the black winter lawns outside, shutting us off from the winter-black woods, the narrow lane through the sobbing trees, the great black moors. Then we sit down and he starts asking me questions, about my day, about photography, about Christmas arrangements – the most trivial things. Why this interrogation?
He is drinking now. He has one gin and tonic, then another. And still I wait for the right moment, to tell him my secret. Yet something stalls me. I count the clink-clink-clink of ice cubes. Followed by sliced limes, from the Carnhallow greenhouse, speared from a little Georgian silver bowl. Here is the wealth and elegance of his life in one action. The Kerthen signet ring glints on his little finger.
‘Do you feel happy here, Rachel?’
He is five yards away, in the chair so carefully recovered by Nina Kerthen. The psychological distance between us is almost immeasurable. I struggle to answer.
‘Yes. Well. Yes. It hasn’t been easy, but yes, we’re muddling through.’
Another big glug of G&T, draining the glass. He pours himself a third from the fat bottle of Plymouth gin set on a silver tray, alongside the silver tongs and rocks of ice.
‘You don’t ever feel strange, or scared of things?’
‘Scared of what?’
‘Does the thought of Nina in the mine unnerve you?’
I shiver. I hide my shiver.
‘No.’
‘Her dead body in the tunnels, trapped for ever?’
What is this?
‘No. It doesn’t. Not really.’
‘So the thought of her, trapped, a face in the black water, it doesn’t give you bad dreams, or make you think strange things? Make you feel persecuted?’
He is implying I am losing the plot. Again. Has he been talking to people? This doesn’t make sense. No one is allowed to talk, not even to my husband. And how dare he investigate me, anyway?
I bridle. My own anger isn’t far from the surface. ‘No. David. I am fine. Please stop this, stop it now.’
‘I will stop. Sure. Once you’ve calmed down.’
‘Calmed down? I am
totally
OK.
Totally
fine.’ I hurry on, ‘David. We’re just having problems, we both know that, but we can get through them. We have to get through them. But only if you answer my questions, too.’
He swallows the rest of his rocky gin and tonic, his handsome face smeared with insobriety. His eyes glittering with a sullen drunkenness. I think of his father: Richard Kerthen, and his boozy cruelty. I
see
the father now, see it in David. Yet I still hope he isn’t really like that, because David is the father of my child.
‘So you’d say you are doing a good job, as a stepmother? Perhaps you still think your stepson can predict things. Do you think that, hmm?’
I am about to snap back – to defend myself loudly, tell him about the pregnancy – but his phone rings. Silencing us both. He drags it from his pocket, looks at the screen, scowls in puzzlement. Then he waves an irritated hand my way, as if to say:
This is more important than you
. He goes out into the corridor, closing the door to take the call clandestinely.
I want a joint. I cannot. I am pregnant.
The house sits quietly all around us. Waiting. The silk-upholstered chairs are silent but poised. The yellow damask wallpaper gazes at me, suspiciously, with its meaningful patterns.
Getting up, twitching with nerves, I walk to the curtains and pull at a handful of heavy velvet, gazing out at the dark trees lacing the blue-black sky, and the rain that approaches. Like a hunter, down from the moors. But there is no one out there, no one between the moors and the mines, and the carolling sea. No one is watching. The valley is empty.
The door opens. David has returned. There is something about his expression. This I have never seen before. Black dark anger. He is furious. His left fist is clenched. He comes closer.
‘You went to see her?’
‘Uh—’
‘You went to see her. The child psychologist. The fucking shrink. You went to see her?’
What can I say? ‘Yes, but—’
‘Mavis Prisk rang me. She was quite surprised to find I didn’t know. About your little visit. She explained everything.’ He is growling. ‘How could you fucking do that? How? After I explicitly told you not to?’
‘David—’
‘How dare you fucking do that? Do you know what could happen?’
He is standing so close his spit hits my face. I can taste the Plymouth gin in his cold saliva.
‘You fucking bitch. You
stupid
fucking slut, you little whore, you stupid little cockney
whore
, you did that, you risked everything, you fucking little
cunt
from
nowhere
.’
The blur of his hands is too fast. The first crack of his fist in my face is a white-out. My mind blanks to light. Then he hits me again, very quickly, sending my face spinning left, blood like splattered ink from my mouth, my lips crushed against my teeth. The third blow is a violent slap, it stings so much it makes me choke with pain. I groan as I fall.
I wonder if he will kill me.