The Shifting Fog

  The doctor frowned. ‘There was another witness?’

  ‘My wife’s sister,’ said Teddy.

  ‘Sister,’ said the doctor, noting it on his pad. ‘Good. Close are they?’

  ‘Very,’ said Teddy.

  The doctor pointed his finger at Teddy. ‘Get her here. Talking: that’s the way with this sort of hysteria. Wife needs to spend time with someone else who experienced the same shock.’

  Teddy took the doctor’s advice and repeated invitations were sent to Emmeline, but she wouldn’t come. She couldn’t. She was too busy.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Teddy said to Deborah after dinner one night, ‘How can she ignore her own sister? After all Hannah’s done for her?’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Deborah, raising her eyebrows. ‘From what I hear, it’s as well she stays away. They say she’s become quite vulgar. Last to leave every party. Getting about with all the wrong sorts.’

  It was true: Emmeline had thrown herself back into her whirlwind social life in London. She became the life of the party, starred in a number of films—love films, horror films; she found her niche playing the misused femme fatale.

  It was a shame, society types whispered eagerly, that Hannah couldn’t bounce back the same way. Strange that she should take it so much harder than her sister. It was Emmeline, after all, who’d been going around with the fellow.

  Emmeline took it hard enough, though. Hers was just a different way of coping. She laughed louder and she drank harder. Rumour had it, the day she was killed on the Braintree Road, police found open bottles of brandy in the motor car. The Luxtons had that hushed up. If there was one thing money could buy back in those days, it was the law. Perhaps it still can; I wouldn’t know.

  They didn’t tell Hannah at first. Estella thought it too risky and Teddy agreed, what with the baby being so close to term. Lord Gifford made statements on Teddy and Hannah’s behalf.

  Teddy came downstairs the night after the accident. He looked out of place in the drab servants’ hall, like an actor who’d walked onto the wrong stage set. He was so tall he had to duck his head to avoid knocking it on the ceiling beam above the last step.

  ‘Mr Luxton,’ said Mr Hamilton. ‘We didn’t expect—’ His voice tapered off and he leapt to action, turning to us, clapping silently then raising his hands and motioning as if conducting an orchestra in a very fast piece of music. Somehow we formed a line and stood, hands behind our backs, waiting to see what Teddy would say.

  What he said was simple. Emmeline had been involved in an unfortunate motor-car accident that had taken her life. Nancy clutched my hand behind my back.

  Mrs Townsend shrieked and sank onto her chair, hand across her heart. ‘The poor dear love,’ she said. ‘I’m all atremble.’

  ‘It’s been a terrible shock for all of us, Mrs Townsend,’ said Teddy, looking from one servant to the next. ‘There is, however, something I have to ask of you.’

  ‘If I may speak on behalf of the staff,’ said Mr Hamilton, ashen-faced, ‘we’re only too happy to assist in any way we can at this terrible time.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Hamilton,’ said Teddy, nodding gravely. ‘As you all know, Mrs Luxton has suffered awfully over the other business at the lake. I believe it would be kindest if we kept this most recent tragedy from her for the time being. It doesn’t do to upset her further. Not while she’s with child. I’m sure you’ll all agree.’

  The staff stayed silent as Teddy continued.

  ‘I’d ask then that you refrain from mentioning Miss Emmeline or the accident. That you make special effort to ensure newspapers are not left lying about where she might see them.’

  He paused, glanced at each of us in turn.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  Mr Hamilton blinked to attention then. ‘Ah, yes. Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ said Teddy. He nodded a few times quickly, realised there was nothing left to say, and left with a grim smile.

  After Teddy had disappeared, Mrs Townsend turned, round-eyed, to Mr Hamilton. ‘But . . . does he mean not to tell Miss Hannah at all?’

  ‘It would seem that way, Mrs Townsend,’ said Mr Hamilton. ‘For the time being.’

  ‘But her own sister’s death—’

  ‘Those were his instructions, Mrs Townsend.’ Mr Hamilton exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Mr Luxton is Master of this house just as surely as Mr Frederick was before him.’

  Mrs Townsend opened her mouth to debate the point but Mr Hamilton cut her off. ‘You know as well as I that the Master’s instructions must be observed.’ He removed his glasses and polished them fiercely. ‘Never matter what we think of them. Or him.’

  Later, when Mr Hamilton was upstairs serving supper, Mrs Townsend and Nancy approached me in the servants’ hall dining room. I was at the table mending Hannah’s silver dress. Mrs Townsend sat one side, Nancy the other. Like two guardsmen arrived to accompany me to the gallows.

  With a glance to the stairs, Nancy said, ‘You have to tell her.’

  Mrs Townsend shook her head. ‘It isn’t right. Her own sister. She should know.’

  I wove my needle into the silver thread reel and set my stitching down.

  ‘You’re her maid,’ said Nancy. ‘She’s fond of you. You have to tell her.’

  ‘I know,’ I said quietly. ‘I will.’

  Next morning I found her, as I expected to, in the library. In an armchair on the far side, looking through the huge glass doors toward the churchyard. She was intent on something in the distance and didn’t hear me approach. I came up close and stood quietly beside the matching chair. Early sunlight floated through the glass and bathed her profile, giving her an almost ethereal look.

  ‘Ma’am?’ I said softly.

  Without shifting her gaze, she said, ‘You’ve come to tell me about Emmeline.’

  I paused, surprised, wondered how she knew. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I knew you would. Even though he’s told you not to. I know you well after all this time, Grace.’ Her tone was difficult to read.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. About Miss Emmeline.’

  She nodded slightly, but she didn’t take her eyes from that distant point in the churchyard. I waited for a while, and when it seemed clear she didn’t want company, I asked if there was anything I could bring her. Tea perhaps? A book? She didn’t answer at first, appeared not to have heard. And then, seemingly out of the blue, she said, ‘You can’t read shorthand.’

  It was a statement, not a question, so I did not answer.

  I found out later what she meant, why she spoke to me then of shorthand. But not for many years. On that morning I was still innocent of the part my deception had played.

  She shifted slightly, retracted her long bare legs closer to the chair. Still didn’t meet my eyes. ‘You may go, Grace,’ she said, her voice tinged with a coldness that made my eyes sting.

  There was nothing more I could say. I nodded and left, unaware it was the last conversation I would have with her.

  Beryl brings us to the room that was Hannah’s at the end. I wonder at first whether I’ll be able to continue. But it is different now. It has been repainted and refurnished with a Victorian suite that was not amongst the original furniture at Riverton. It is not the same bed on which Hannah’s baby was born.

  Most people thought it was the baby that killed her. Just like Emmeline’s birth had killed their own mother. So sudden, they said, shaking their heads. So sad. But I knew better. It was a convenient excuse. An opportunity. True enough, it wasn’t an easy birth, but she had no will left. What happened on the lake, Robbie’s death and Emmeline’s so soon after, killed her long before the baby got itself stuck in her pelvis.

  I had started in the room with her, but as the contractions came harder and faster and the baby began to force its way out, she had surrendered more and more to delusion. Had stared at me, fear and anger in her face, shouted at me to leave, that it was all my fault. It was not uncommon for birthing women to
lose their grasp, the doctor explained as he bid me do as she ask, to give themselves over to fantasy.

  But I couldn’t leave her, not like that. I retired from her bedside but not from the room. As she lay on the bed and the doctor started to cut, I watched from the door and I saw her face. As she laid back her head, she breathed a sigh that looked an awful lot like relief. Release. She knew that if she didn’t fight it, she could go. It would all be over.

  No, it wasn’t a sudden death; she’d been dying for months.

  Afterwards, I was broken. Bereft. In an odd way, I had lost myself. That is what happens when you give your life and service to another person. You’re bound to them. Without Hannah, I was without function.

  I had no capacity for feeling. Was emptied, just as surely as if someone had slit me open like a dying fish and scooped out everything inside. I performed perfunctory duties, though with Hannah gone there were few enough of those. I stayed a month like that, steering myself from one interchangeable location to another. Until one day I told Teddy I was leaving.

  He wanted me to stay; when I refused he begged me to reconsider, for Hannah’s sake if not for his, for her memory. She had been fond of me, didn’t I know? Would want me to be a part of her daughter’s life, of Florence’s life.

  But I couldn’t. I had no heart for it. I was blind to Mr Hamilton’s disapproval, Mrs Townsend’s tears. Had little concept of my own future, other than to know for certain it didn’t lie at Riverton.

  How indescribably frightening it would have been, leaving Riverton, leaving service, if I’d had any sensation left. Better for me that I hadn’t: fear might have triumphed over grief and tied me forever to the house on the hill. For I knew nothing of life outside service. Was panicked by independence. Wary of going places, doing the simplest things, making my own decisions.

  I found a little flat in the Marble Arch, though, and proceeded to live. I took what jobs I could—cleaning, waiting tables, stitching—resisted closeness, left when people started to ask too many questions, wanted more of me than I was able to give. In such occupation, I passed a decade. Waiting, though I didn’t know it, for the next war. And for Marcus, whose birth would do what my own daughter’s could not. Return to me what had been emptied by Hannah’s death.

  In the meantime, I thought little of Riverton. Of all I had lost.

  Let me rephrase: I refused to think of Riverton. If I found my mind, in a quiet moment of inactivity, roaming the nursery, lingering by the stairs in Lady Ashbury’s rose garden, balancing on the rim of the Icarus fountain, I quickly sought occupation.

  But I did wonder about that little baby, Florence. My half-niece, I suppose. She was a pretty little thing. Hannah’s blonde hair but not her eyes. Big, brown eyes, they were. Perhaps they changed as she grew. That can happen. But I suspect they stayed brown, like her father’s. For she was Robbie’s daughter, wasn’t she?

  I have given it quite some thought over the years. It is possible, of course, that despite Hannah’s failure to fall pregnant to Teddy all those years, she fell swiftly and unexpectedly in 1924. Stranger things have happened. But at the same time, isn’t it too convenient an explanation? Teddy and Hannah shared a bed infrequently in the latter years of their marriage, but Teddy had been anxious for a child at the beginning. For Hannah not to fall suggests, doesn’t it, that there was a problem with one of them? And as she proved with Florence, Hannah was able to conceive.

  Isn’t it more likely then that Florence’s father was not Teddy? That she was conceived on the lake? That after months of being apart, when Hannah and Robbie met that night, in the near-finished summer house, they were unable to resist? The timing, after all, was right. Deborah certainly thought so. She took one look at those big dark eyes and her lips tightened. She knew.

  Whether it was she who told Teddy, I don’t know. Perhaps he worked it out for himself. Whatever the case, Florence didn’t stay long at Riverton. Teddy could hardly be expected to keep her: a constant reminder of his cuckolding. The Luxtons all agreed it was best he put the whole sorry affair behind him. Settle down to running Riverton Manor, staging his political comeback.

  I heard they sent Florence to America, that Jemima agreed to take her as sister to Gytha. She had always longed for more than one. Hannah would’ve been pleased, I think; would’ve preferred to imagine her daughter growing up a Hartford than a Luxton.

  The tour ends and we are delivered to the entrance hall. Despite Beryl’s keen encouragement, Ursula and I bypass the gift shop.

  I wait again on the iron seat while Ursula fetches the car. ‘I won’t be long,’ she promises. I tell her not to worry, my memories will keep me company.

  ‘Come again soon?’ Mr Hamilton says from the doorway.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Hamilton.’

  He seems to understand, smiles briefly. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Townsend you said goodbye.’

  I nod and he disappears, dissolves like watercolour into a dusty streak of sunlight.

  Ursula helps me into the car. She has bought a bottle of water from a machine in the ticket booth and opens it for me when I am buckled into my seat. ‘Here you are,’ she says, feeding a straw into the spout and wrapping my hands around its cold sides.

  She starts the engine and we drive slowly out of the car park. I am aware, vaguely, as we enter the dark leafy tunnel of the driveway, that it’s the last time I will take this particular journey, but I don’t look back.

  We drive in silence for a time, until Ursula says, ‘You know, there’s one thing that’s always niggled me.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘The Hartford sisters saw him do it, right?’ She sneaks a sideways glance at me. ‘But what were they doing down by the lake when they should have been up at the party?’

  I do not answer and she glances at me again, wondering if perhaps I have not heard.

  ‘What did you decide?’ I say. ‘What happens in the film?’

  ‘They see him disappear, follow him to the lake and try to stop him.’ She shrugs. ‘I looked everywhere but I couldn’t find police interviews with either Emmeline or Hannah, so I had to sort of guess. It made the most sense.’

  I nod.

  ‘Besides, the producers thought it more suspenseful than if they stumbled on him accidentally.’

  I nod.

  ‘You can judge for yourself,’ she says. ‘When you see the film.’

  I had once thought to attend the film’s premiere, but somehow I know it is beyond me now. Ursula seems to know too.

  ‘I’ll bring you a copy on video as soon as I can,’ she says.

  ‘I’d like that.’

  She turns the car into the Heathview entrance. ‘Uh-oh,’ she says, eyes widening. She places a hand on mine. ‘Ready to face the music?’

  Ruth is standing there, waiting. I expect to see her mouth sucked tight around her disapproval. But it isn’t. She is smiling. Fifty years dissolve and I see her as a girl. Before life had a chance to disappoint her. She is holding something; waving it. It is a letter, I realise. And I know who it is from.

  SLIPPING OUT OF TIME

  He is here. Marcus has come home. In the past week he’s been to see me every day. Sometimes Ruth comes with him; sometimes it’s just the two of us. We don’t always talk. Often he just sits beside me and holds my hand while I doze. I like him to hold my hand. It is the most companionable of gestures: a comfort from infancy to old age.

  I am beginning to die. Nobody has told me, but I see it in their faces. The pleasant, soft expressions, the sad, smiling eyes, the kind whispers and glances that pass between them. And I feel it myself.

  A quickening.

  I am slipping out of time. The demarcations I’ve observed for a lifetime are suddenly meaningless: seconds, minutes, hours, days. Mere words. All I have are moments.

  Marcus brings a photograph. He hands it to me and I know before my eyes focus which one it is. It was a favourite of mine, is a favourite of mine, taken on an archaeological dig many years
before. ‘Where did you find this?’ I say.

  ‘I’ve had it with me,’ he says sheepishly, running a hand through longish sun-lightened hair. ‘All the time I was away. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I say.

  ‘I wanted a photo of you,’ he says. ‘I always loved this one, when I was a kid. You look so happy.’

  ‘I was. The very happiest.’ I look at the photo some more, then hand it back. He positions it on my bedside table so that I can see it whenever I care to look.

  I wake from dozing and Marcus is by the window, looking out over the heath. At first I think Ruth is in the room with us, but she is not. It is someone else. Something else. She appeared a little while ago. Has been here ever since. No one else can see her. She is waiting for me, I know, and I am almost ready. Early this morning I taped the last for Marcus. It is all done now and all said. The promise I made is broken and he will learn my secret.

  Marcus senses I have woken. He turns. Smiles. His glorious broad smile. ‘Grace.’ He comes away from the window, stands by me. ‘Would you like something? A glass of water?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  I watch him: his lean shape housed in loose clothing. Jeans and a T-shirt, the uniform of today’s youth. In his face I see the boy he was, the child who followed me from room to room, asking questions, demanding stories: about the places I’d been, the artefacts I’d unearthed, the big old house on the hill and the children with their game. I see the young man who delighted me when he said he wanted to be a writer. Asked me to read some of his work, tell him what I thought. I see the grown man, caught in grief ’s web, helpless. Unwilling to be helped.

  I shift slightly, clear my throat. There is something I need to ask him. ‘Marcus,’ I say.

  He looks sideways from beneath a lock of brown hair. ‘Grace?’

  I study his eyes, hoping, I suppose, for the truth. ‘How are you?’

  To his credit he doesn’t dismiss me. He sits, props me against my pillows, smooths my hair and hands me a cup of water. ‘I think I’m going to be all right,’ he says.

  There is so much I would like to say, to reassure him. But I am too weak. Too tired. I can only nod my head.