Authors: Kate Riordan
Fiercombe Manor (33 page)
W
hen I came to, I was at the bottom of the stairs on my back. I was still alone. My fall obviously hadn't woken Mrs. Jelphs, and that was of little surpriseâthe corridor back towards the part
of the house where her bedroom was took so many twists and turns that the sound wouldn't have carried very far.
It was a miracle I hadn't broken my neck. I carefully pulled myself up to a sitting position, grimacing in pain at the bruises and wrenches in my muscles. I put my hand to my stomach, but there was no movement. I didn't feel any acute pain there that I could distinguish from everything else, but I did think I could detect the beginnings of a low-slung ache. When I got to my feet, gripping the banister with all my might this time, and the weight of the baby shifted down, I felt a slight dragging sensation that I hadn't experienced for nearly eight months.
I felt too shocked to cry or go and face Mrs. Jelphs. Misery descended to cloak my sore shoulders like a damp blanket. Very, very slowly I pulled myself up the stairs and limped to the lavatory near my room. I expected to see blood, but there was none. I knew it would come, though. In my room, I peeled my clothes off and left them in a pile, crawling into bed and pulling the dusty old curtains around me to shut out the approaching day.
I woke at noon, feeling numb. I checked my underwear for blood again, but still there was nothing. When I got downstairs, Nan had already been and gone, but she or Mrs. Jelphs had left me some slices of ham and a potato salad under a cloth. I felt sick at the thought of eating anything. The door to the kitchen garden stood open, and I could smell the herbs and flowers as clearly as if I were out there amongst them. Dimly, I registered that the delphiniums were out for a second bloom; those that grew closest to the door seemed to be peeping in on their long stems, the intensely blue flowers a perfect match for the sky above. In a daze, I went out to look at them properly. I hadn't been there long when Mrs. Jelphs came through the gate, the basket on her arm indicating that she'd been up in Stanwick. I tried to make my face look normal.
“Ah, there you are,” she said gently, her eyes searching my face. “I knocked when you didn't come down for breakfast, but there was no answer. I went in to check you were all right, but you were fast asleep behind those curtains, and I couldn't bring myself to wake you. After all, you need to get as much sleep as possible while you can. And you've worked very hard recently.”
I was about to thank her and apologise when a tear rolled down my cheek and into my mouth. I was as surprised as she was, but then her concerned expression made my face crumple.
“Alice, whatever's the matter?”
She led me back into the kitchen and sat me down.
I put my hands up over my face and criedâreally sobbed like a childâuntil I was spent and hiccoughing.
“I think the baby has died,” I said finally, swallowing so I wouldn't set myself off again.
Mrs. Jelphs gasped and visibly paled, and sat down heavily in the chair next to me.
“What on earth makes you say that? Have you . . . has there been a miscarriage?” Her voice came out high and strangled.
“No, but he . . . it hasn't moved since yesterday.”
I couldn't bring myself to tell her about the fall. Her relief at my white lie took ten years off her face.
“My dear, you've said yourself that the baby moves sometimes more than others. Only the other week you said how lovely it had been that he had stopped kicking.”
“Yes, but this is different. It aches there, as though my monthlies have arrived.”
She had warned me not to use the old stairs. I had no reason to be there, especially in the dark. I suddenly remembered the key to the nursery. I couldn't remember where it was, or even if I had locked up after myself. But there was another reason I couldn't tell
her the truth: she was so pleased there was no solid reason for me to be worried about the baby that I didn't want to provide her with oneâbecause that would make it more real for me, too.
She wouldn't hear of me going back to my jobs that afternoon.
“You need some fresh air, my girl,” she said firmly, and so I let her fuss around me, the numbness returned after my crying jag. “And I will send Ruck for the doctor immediately.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Jelphs, I don't need a doctor. I'm sorry I made a fuss.” I couldn't bear the idea of a man I'd never met confirming that I had killed the baby inside me because of a foolish fixation on the past.
She hesitated. “I would feel much better if a doctor examined you.”
“Please, Mrs. Jelphs. I know I will feel much better if I just lie quietly.” I battled to keep the misery out of my voice.
“Very well,” she said reluctantly. “But the minute you feel any different, you must tell me, and we'll fetch him immediately.”
She arranged a rug and cushions around me on a shady patch of grass close to the stream, at the edge of the Great Mead.
“I sit here sometimes,” she said. “It's a lovely peaceful spot. You stay here and doze in the sun, it'll do you a power of good.”
I did as I was told, lying back on the cushions and searching the sky for clouds that never appeared. The sound of the stream's clear, bright water was like something alive and purposeful, rushing through and over the pebbles that lay on the bottom, smooth and cold and unperturbed. I pretended I was one of them and made myself as still and unmoving as the baby. I can't have been there long when I slept again. I dreamt of Elizabeth Stanton, her expressive eyes not the shades of umber and cream the portrait photograph had rendered them but green flecked with gold.
In the dream she was in the summerhouse, and when I woke I knew immediately that I would go there again. In the privacy of that little room I checked again for bloodâthere was still no sign of itâand then sat carefully down with the diary. The entry I pulled out was on different paper, slightly smaller and squarer than the diary's leaves. I started reading, and as I began to understand its import, a horrible sense of inevitability stole over me.
I fear I am lost to the blackness again. Three mornings ago I glimpsed it: a slender thread of despair woven through my thoughts. The sunshine flooded in through the open curtains and my daughter peeped around the door to see if I was awake, clutching the little hare she won't be parted from. Even as I held out my arms to her, I felt a wall start to go up between us, between me and rest of the world, brick by invisible brick.
Today I am afraid that the wall has got higher, that the black-edged thoughts seem to be crowding in faster. Each one is a drop of black ink fallen onto a clean blotter. No, that is not right. It is more than that, for each thought spreads and marbles, running into the next. Like ink into a bowl of cream. Drip, drip, until every thought is tinged with bleak despair.
I know I am exhausted, but I won't rest. I can't eat and took only a few mouthfuls of dinner tonight. Mercifully Edward didn't notice because only a single lamp was lit, and my plate was in shadow. Mrs. Wentworth will have seen, though, and perhaps she will speak to the housekeeper, who may well speak to my husband. Mrs. Wentworth, as wide as she is tall, does not take kindly to any food returned uneaten to her domain. She regards it
as a personal slight, but I could not force another morsel down, my stomach filled with dread, dread filling up the space that the baby had occupied until last week.
It's very late now, and everyone else in the valley slumbers on. I am writing this on a sheet of writing paper because my diary is hidden in the summerhouse, and I feel like I must write and write until my hand is stiff and sore to ward off the gloomy thoughts, as though setting everything down in its proper order will bring some order to my mind. I must remember that I got well again after my daughter was born, and that I will be well again this time too. That is, if I am ill at all. It is impossible to tell if it is the feeling returned, or if I imagine it. Perhaps it is all my own invention, so strong is my fear of the fear I remember so vividly. But perhaps they are one and the same, and the result identical.
Edith has been in to see me often these past days, her face drawn with worry. If only I could tell her what goes round and round in my mind. I think only she has noticed that something is awry in meâafter all, she is the only person who knows when my courses come each month, and therefore when they are missed. It won't be long until Edward notices. I must eat everything on my plate tomorrow, or he will be told. Of course he wouldn't need to be told anything if he had known about this child's short existence. He would have seen it for himself by now. I am gladâand it is the only thing I can find any gladness for todayâthat I waited to tell him about the child growing inside me. Another boy; I'm sure it was a boy. A third failure.
I closed the diary, not wanting to glimpse another word; my life apparently turning into a morbid echo of Elizabeth's. It wasn't just the reference to a miscarriage, though that was bad enough at that moment: it was the widening gap between Elizabeth and her daughterâjust like the breach between my mother and me, which I was starting to think had occurred many years before. The mention of the hare had also sent a shiver through me. Only the previous day I had asked Mrs. Jelphs who it had belonged to. Now I knew for certain. It was another tangible bond to connect Elizabeth's time and mine, and I thought again of the silken tether that seemed to pull me back towards her.
I sat on the old chaise for a long time, my hands clutching the diary. My fascination with Elizabeth had not lessened, but I felt afraid of the contents of it. In my anxious state, exhausted and battered by my fall, I felt as though the past was reaching back to claim me. Its grip on the valley had never felt more tenacious, like invisible ropes winding slowly around my ankles until they were ready to pull me under.
It was these dark thoughts that were reverberating around the stone walls of the summerhouse when I felt it, deep inside me. It was only a small movement, more of a fluttering, but it was enough. I realised that for the first time since I'd known I was pregnant, I was uncomplicatedly glad. The baby hadn't died, and I wept again.
When I had calmed down, I put the diary aside and went over to the little window behind the chaise. Pushing it back as far as it would go, I found I was smiling. Whatever darkness I had felt draw close had, at least for the time being, melted back into the shadows.
The dusk was approaching, and despite the lingering heat of the day, someone somewhere had lit a bonfire. The sharp, melancholy scent of it curled through the valley, freighted with memories of summer evenings past. I breathed in deep draughts of the air,
the heady perfumes of the valley rising to mingle with the smoke. My sadness for Elizabeth was still there, but my fear for my own baby, so suddenly alleviated, made me put her aside as I had her diaryâand my mother, and a little girl who had once owned a small velveteen hare.
I went carefully down the stairs and pushed back the door I'd left ajar, only to collide with Ruck. I let out a small scream and fought the urge to hurry away.
If I had similarly startled him, he didn't show it, only frowning as he peered around me to the empty room behind.
“What's brought you here, then?” he said sharply. “Mrs. Jelphs know you come here, does she?”
“IâI don't know why I came,” I stammered. “I was curious, I suppose. Mrs. Jelphs pointed the summerhouse out to me on my first full day here, and . . .”
“You's an inquisitive one, in't you, creeping about. No good will come of it.”
I flushed. “I'm sorry. I should have asked. I'll tell Mrs. Jelphs when I get back.”
He shook his head violently at that, the furrows of his brow deepening. “Oh, no, you won't! You leave her out of it, if her don't know already. It'll be a kindness to keep it quiet, if you get my meaning.”
I thought I did and nodded, too embarrassed to look him in the eye.
“It's supposed to be closed up,” he continued more softly, as if to himself. “I could have swore it were locked.”
He looked up abruptly, and I got the feeling he'd temporarily forgotten I was there.
“Well, back you go now, to the manor,” he said more gently, making me wonder if, like Mrs. Jelphs, it was concern that made
him so brusque with me, and not dislike after all. “Her'll be wondering where you've got to. And don't forget them blankets you've left behind. I saw 'em down there and thought you'd tumbled in the stream.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I will. Thank you, Ruck. And I'm sorry.”
But he had already turned his back and was heading back up Fiery Lane. I breathed out slowly and reminded myself that the baby hadn't been lost. I felt the relief bubbling up inside me again, and I think I had forgotten Ruck by the time I reached my room.
Tearing off my stale clothes, I put on a yellow dress that I had bought two sizes too big in the weeks before I came to Fiercombe. Mrs. Jelphs had helped me alter it, and in the spotted mirror of the wardrobe I thought I looked quite nice. I tied my hair back with a yellow ribbon but then pulled it out again. I looked like a schoolgirl. I fingered a lock of my hair and thought how thick it felt, the back of my neck hot and damp under it. I decided to pin it all up on a whim, though it was not a style I had ever worn. When it was finished, I looked different; I realised with a lurch that I'd unwittingly copied the style I'd seen in the photograph of Elizabeth. It suited me, though, and it felt cooler, so I left it how it was.
There was no one in the kitchen, and not wanting to sit in the gloom during my favourite time of the day, I decided to go for a short walk before dinner. I felt too full of gratitude to sit still. I was on my way back, having just passed the chapel, when I saw Ruck again. He was standing in the lane that ran from the graveyard towards the back of the manor. The late rhododendrons blazed there on both sides. Somehow they were still at their blowsy best, in every shade of magenta, crimson, and pink.