Pale as the Dead

by Fiona Mountain

  Natasha had a peculiarly strong image of him in a succession of rooms filled with flowers, showing the picture of a girl apparently drowning in a river to people who just shook their heads.

  Adam rested his fingers on the diary as if swearing an oath. ‘I’m living in Oxford at the moment, renting a flat in Jericho, and the studio, until the exhibition’s over. Wanted to get the feel of the place you know. Bethany came to stay at weekends. That week though, she’d taken time off from work for the shoot at Little Barrington. Friday evening we had supper at an Italian restaurant we often went to. I told her it had been great having her around all the time. We argued, like I said. But I thought it was all OK. We came home and drank a bottle of wine, went to bed and made love.’ He paused. ‘When I woke up in the morning she was gone; taken everything with her, except this.’ He looked down at his own hand, still resting on the olive book. ‘I didn’t get in touch with you right away because I hoped she’d come back. I thought we were going to spend Christmas together…’

  ‘You’ve tried her friends?’

  ‘She never mentioned anyone.’

  ‘Were there places she liked?’

  He waved his hand dismissively, as if he found the questions tedious in the extreme. ‘Galleries, the parks, old houses.’

  ‘I mean where she might have gone now, other areas of the country, abroad?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘You’re not being very helpful considering you approached me,’ Natasha said. ‘If I’m to be of any use at all I need to know.’

  ‘She said she liked travelling, because it gave you a different perspective. Because it made the days seem longer she said. She’d been to France recently, Italy too. I thought we’d go together sometime, but she wouldn’t talk about the future, absolutely refused. I thought we really had something,’ he added quietly, as if to himself. ‘I just want the chance to talk to her.’

  She watched his fingers, turning the cigarette packet over and over, ‘I understand.’

  ‘You’ll help me then?’ There was a touch of resentment in his tone, like someone who wasn’t comfortable asking for help.

  Natasha looked down at Boris, sitting attentively at her feet amidst the hem of her coat. She was torn. The trouble was, knowing the little she did about Bethany, she instinctively felt that finding her wasn’t the right thing to do. But to her surprise she felt sorry for Adam, and she couldn’t deny that she was intrigued by it all.

  She weighed things up. The piles of work on her desk, the long winter evenings ahead. She was thankful she already had more than enough work to fill them. The new millennium seemed to have made everytone nostalgic, keen to forge links with the past, and all the genealogists she knew were inundated with work. But this project was refreshingly unusual, probably impossible. But that had never stopped her having a go before.

  It would be very time consuming, that was for sure. And the only way to make a decent living from genealogy was the routine, straightforward research. No one else would be enough of a mug to agree to take it on.

  But Natasha could. Thanks to the small inheritance, left to her by Ann’s mother which, wisely invested by Ann, had almost quadrupled in fifteen years. Natasha had been able to buy Orchard End outright. It gave her a little freedom, meant she didn’t have to worry all the time about only taking on bread and butter projects that she was certain, as certain you ever could be, were going to be uncomplicated. It made her feel better about the inheritance, which at the time she’d wanted all to go to Abby. It was her birthright, only hers. But Ann, always scrupulously fair, had insisted Natasha have half, and Steven had said there was no point cutting off her nose to spite her face.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said to Adam. ‘If I can borrow the diary over the holidays, I’ll take a look at it, make some investigations. I can’t promise anything but I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Adam asked how much it was going to cost.

  ‘We can talk about that later.’ When she had more idea if what he’d asked her to do was remotely achievable.

  She opened her carpet bag, slipped the diary carefully inside one of the inner pockets. ‘She told me her grandmother gave it to her.’

  ‘The only member of her family Bethany ever mentioned. She said how, when she was a little girl, eight years old I think, her grandmother told her the story of Lizzie Siddal’s body being exhumed so that Rossetti could retrieve the poems he buried with her.’

  The story was familiar to Natasha. How, after Lizzie’s death, Rossetti placed beside her in the coffin the only complete copies of his poems, saying he had no need for them now she was gone. Years later he changed his mind, wanted them back. When the grave was reopened it was said that Lizzie’s fragile beauty had not faded, that she looked as if she had died not years but only hours ago. Natasha had always found it rather appealing in a macabre way.

  ‘It must have had a strange effect on a child’s imagination, telling them something like that, don’t you think?’ Adam said.

  ‘Perhaps.’ From an early age Natasha had known more about corpses than would generally be considered healthy. She smiled, remembering the stories her adoptive father, Steven, had told her. About the corpse of a thousand-year-old princess, her hair and skin frozen in the ice and permafrost of the Mongolian mountains, and the bogs of northern Europe which yielded the remains of the human sacrifices of Celtic tribes, preserved in tannic acid with their throats cut from ear to ear. Egyptian tombs where mummified emperors lay for centuries until they were disturbed by explorers and robbers who were cursed for their inquisitiveness and greed.

  It hadn’t done her any harm. Then again, perhaps it explained a great deal.

  ‘We were talking about flowers.’ Adam dropped his voice. ‘I said to her that it’s wrong, how some people think cut flowers are ugly because they’re dead.’ He looked at her. ‘But there’s beauty in death. What they saw when they dug up Lizzie Siddal’s coffin proved that.’

  Natasha suddenly wanted to escape his rather brooding but beautiful blue eyes ‘Do you have a photograph of Bethany that I could borrow?’

  ‘Sure.’ Adam reached inside his jacket and drew out a small black and white print which he handed across the table. As Natasha took it, she noticed how he didn’t immediately relinquish his grasp, as if he was loath to let it go.

  She didn’t recognize the girl as Bethany straightaway. She would have assumed instantly from the sepia tint of the shot, the crimped edges, the clothes and slightly posed and solemn expression of the sitter, that the photograph was at least a hundred years old. She was standing inside a stone doorway with ivy creeping around it. The photograph must have been taken using flash. The door was open but the light didn’t reach far and it wasn’t possible to see anything inside. Behind her was only darkness. She wore a pale, diaphanous gown that fell straight to the floor. Her long hair was fashioned like a figure from a medieval tale, held off her face by two thin rope-like plaits drawn back from just below her temples to the nape of her neck. She had a grave kind of beauty, with her head tilted slightly to one side, her eyes cast down. The image was faintly blurred, as if there’d been a slight fault in the processing.

  ‘It was one of the first ones we did for the exhibition,’ Adam explained.

  ‘It’s lovely.’ It suddenly occurred to her that there was something incongruous about someone so private, so keen to keep their identity a secret, being perfectly happy to have photographs of themselves put on display.

  ‘Was Bethany excited about the exhibition?’

  ‘Yes.’ Without thinking she knew he was lying, remembered Bethany’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘It was a joint project, something we shared.’ He dragged his fingers through his hair. ‘She knew how important it is for me. My chance to do what I want to do. No more days photographing crisp packets and cans of hairspray. I’ve invested everything. I just can’t believe she’d go, that she wouldn’t at least stay and see it open.’

  Unless she needed to dis
appear while she still could, before her face was plastered over the walls of an exhibition hall.

  Natasha slipped the picture inside the diary. ‘I’ll give you a call in the new year.’ She stood to leave, Boris springing to his feet beside her.

  ‘Natasha and Boris,’ Adam said lightly. ‘Your family tree has Russian blood I take it?’

  Of all questions she should be used to this one by now, the one question everyone expected someone in her profession to be able to answer. She should be used to it but every time it opened a cavern of emptiness inside her.

  ‘I like to think so.’

  Six

  ADAM’S COMMENT ABOUT Russian blood hovered in the air as Natasha sloshed vodka into a glass that evening. She should really switch to something else, whisky or gin perhaps. What had started as a rebellious, adolescent statement of independence had come to seem more like a silly, ironic joke against herself, one that begged the kind of remark Adam had made. ‘With your name I suppose you’d not drink anything else.’ But now wasn’t the time to alter habits. No other drink seemed quite so comforting, or slipped down so easily. Too easily. But tonight it wasn’t helping her to relax. Christmas Eve. Her parents and sister would be leaving Derbyshire to travel down to the Cotswolds. Still too early to go over to the pub without the risk of seeming desperate.

  She went over to the iMac instead. Her notepad was open on the screen, a long list of things that needed to be done, names and dates to follow up, certificates to chase, problems that needed thinking time to solve. One swift click on the mouse and they were all magicked away. For now.

  There were hundreds of websites dedicated to families and individuals with the surname of Marshall, and Natasha browsed through the main ones. Marshalls were doctors originally, of a kind. Horse doctors, grooms and farriers. Despite humble origins the name was borne by one of the most important and influential families in the middle ages. The founder, yet another John Marshall, whose son was the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, was Regent of England for a while. Then the dynasty fell into decline, all those succeeding to the title suffering early or violent deaths.

  According to one chronicler, a curse lay on the Marshall name.

  Bethany’s voice echoed in Natasha’s head, made her shiver, despite herself. Do you think it’s possible that some families can be cursed? But Bethany said her name wasn’t Marshall; she just believed she was descended from them.

  And not all members of that clan were afflicted. There were plenty that were very successful, including a few with either artistic or medical backgrounds. Charles Marshall, a scene painter and master of illusion, responsible for introducing limelight. Benjamin Marshall, the sporting artist. Two medical Marshalls were given specific mention. Henry Marshall born in Stirlingshire in 1775 who reformed the way soldiers were treated, and John, anatomist and surgeon, credited as among the first to demonstrate the connection between cholera and infected drinking water. It also said he was a friend of Ford Maddox Brown, one of the Pre-Raphaelites. He died in 1891, on New Year’s Day and was buried in Ely, Cambridgeshire.

  There was her man, perhaps.

  John Marshall. J.M. Same initials as the diarist.

  On a long shot, Natasha inserted the Family Search CD-Rom. She did a rough mental calculation to work out the possible birth date of an offspring John Marshall may have had. Died in 1891, friends with the Pre-Raphaelites so mid-nineteenth century. She ran a check on the most common girls’ names, any Jennifer, Jane or Joanna Marshalls born between 1830 and 1870 in London with fathers named John. It threw up over 100 entries. That would have been too good to be true. She ejected the disk, took the diary out of her bag.

  Even with Natasha’s palaeographic training, it had taken several minutes to decipher a single page of the scribbled handwriting. She’d mentally translated a dozen or so pages on the train back to Moreton-in-Marsh from Oxford. Several of the entries had made her laugh out loud.

  My appearance is moderate generally and sometimes pretty good. That is the truth with no vanity or false modesty, J.M. had written, going on to say that people called her Sunshine as a child because she smiled a lot. Natasha had formed an instant picture of her. Single-minded and slightly crafty. Someone who’d be amusing company so long as you didn’t get on her wrong side.

  Reading the diary didn’t feel like work. But it is so keep your mind on the job. What she really needed was to find some clue, any clue, that would help to pinpoint J.M.’s identity. A starting point from where it would, hopefully, be possible to trace forward through the records to Bethany or her parents.

  The entries were brisk and chatty, slightly acerbic sometimes, full of interesting little details of clothes, music, travel and flirtations. In the space of twenty pages, J.M. had been through two thwarted relationships, been clearly hurt at first but stoically shrugged off her disappointment. Good for her.

  The first liaison had been with a guy named John Wood, who kept sending family tickets for the opera so he could enjoy the proximity of seats, from what Natasha could gather. Until J.M.’s mother was alerted and returned the next batch of tickets with the excuse of a previous engagement. What an awful shame and a fib too! J.M. complained.

  Natasha turned to the next page. An Aunt Julia was mentioned. The perfect chaperone. She sits by the fire and shuts her eyes!

  Natasha skipped forward. Apparently J.M. had worked her way through a couple more affairs. Helpfully, she had even summarised them.

  First, John Wood. About thirty, called me ‘dear’ until Mama put a spoke in his wheel. He departs and is married in sixteen months. Second, Harold Archer, over thirty, short and faithful. Danced with me six times and that was that. Third, Archibald Leslie Innes, lieutenant in the Cambridgeshire Regiment, about twenty-four, appeared to like me very much. Gone to Ceylon. No money anyway. Fourth, Herbert Thomas, tall, red-headed but very clever, about forty. Afflicted with intense staring and makes embarrassing speeches, very nervous and awkward. In short, all bad symptoms. Papa did not approve or encourage. Married ten months after. There you are!

  You could read an old document and it seemed just that, fusty, dead. But sometimes the words leapt off the page, as if they were written only yesterday. Natasha almost felt J.M. was speaking to her directly, could hear her voice. It was a good feeling.

  Suffice to say what odd creatures men are, J.M. had concluded.

  Which made Natasha think, as she often did, how little people changed over the centuries. Situations altered only on the surface. It was the same characters, the same emotions and dramas played out again and again.

  Was that reassuring or depressing?

  Natasha slipped the photograph of Bethany out of the front of the diary’s cover and tilted it towards the desk lamp.

  There were a pair of small initials in faint white print, in the right hand corner of the frame, where artists traditionally signed their work. T. R. Puzzling. Since Adam had said he’d taken it. Don’t say he wasn’t who he said he was either.

  She went to put the photograph back inside the diary and noticed something else. The lining of the cover was uneven, the ridges of a square showing through, as if something had been inserted and stuck beneath it.

  She peeled back the corner. It came away surprisingly easily, had clearly been done before. Underneath was a piece of lined paper which looked as if it had been torn from a spiral-bound notepad. It was perhaps ten centimetres in diameter, folded in two, similar to the paper which Adam had shown her, on which Bethany had written Natasha’s address. The writing was the same as well. Elegant, looped and sloping, like a medieval manuscript, written in blue ballpoint. A light hand which had left no indentation.

  One of Natasha’s first clients had made her shiver when he told her, ‘You’ve brought the dead back to life.’ She’d heard it many times since then and had come to think of it as the most rewarding aspect of her job, making the past and a person’s ancestors real for them, rediscovering those who’d been buried and forgotten. Now her own words came back to he
r as she stared at the note, her mind resisting the obvious. I don’t find people who are alive.

  An image flashed into her mind, Bethany as Ophelia, driven insane after her lover had rejected her, walking into the river to drown.

  Say no goodbye,

  I am gone to the unknown land,

  Where at last you will be mine.

  Seven

  BRIGHT SUNSHINE WOKE Natasha on Christmas morning, but it was deceptive, gave off little warmth, just enough to melt the snow. When she took Boris for a walk out on the Broadway Road, it was already disappearing fast beneath the piercing blue sky. The sounds of dripping icicles, droplets tinkling from black branches forming rivulets in the steep lanes, the thump, thud of snow slipping down roofs and crumpling to the ground.

  Two little girls who lived at the other end of the village came skipping up the path in spangly wellingtons, tinsel crowns and paper angel wings clipped to their shoulders. Their father ambled behind them, and wished Natasha a merry Christmas.

  On the way home Natasha wandered into the church, a squat little building with a square castellated tower, braced low against the ever-present winds. She let Boris follow her inside. It didn’t seem right that God’s creatures weren’t welcomed in His house.

  Boris padded down the aisle, then stood muscles tensed, nose in the air.

  Natasha spotted Mr Nicholson, the warden, busy in the vestry preparing for the Christmas service.

  ‘Sh,’ Natasha whispered as Boris snorted. ‘Sit down.’

  Boris chose to ignore her completely and remain standing, tongue lolling, staring up with complete disrespect at the silver crucifix.

  Natasha looked up at it too.

  She’d always been drawn to churches. The atmosphere of sacred otherworldliness. The drama of stained glass and candles, crucifixes, statues and tombs, soaring gothic arches. She hadn’t attended church regularly since she’d left her parents’ home but she liked the fact that her work often took her to deserted chapels, draughty vestries, overgrown graveyards. Small, ancient, isolated places of worship where you could still hear the whispered prayers of the past. She found in those places something calming, an assurance that you were never entirely alone, that unspoken worries and fears were universal and shared.