by Sophia Tobin
‘Yes,’ he said.
Her eyes were bright with tears. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said.
They heard Peregrine’s voice, in the far room, bidding goodnight to the footman. Charlotte turned and went back into the darkness, turned right: some route that he did not know.
Peregrine appeared, the man at his side. ‘As we didn’t drop breadcrumbs,’ he said, ‘this kind person is going to show us the corridor where our rooms are situated. Henry?’
Henry turned. He was holding on to the partition. ‘Yes?’
‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just the port. Is there an outside route we can take? I would like some air.’
*
Sobered up, they smoked cigars out of the window in Henry’s room. ‘It’s not as if anyone will smell them,’ said Peregrine. ‘The nearest bedroom from this is at least two miles away.’ He lit Henry’s cigar, and they perched companionably by the open window.
‘It’s almost morning,’ said Henry. He had not mentioned seeing Charlotte. He did not wish to open that particular Pandora’s box.
‘Past two on one of the many clocks I glimpsed on my way here, but you’re taking it like an old man,’ said Peregrine.
‘I feel like one,’ said Henry. ‘Do you not feel – Perry – something here. Like a suppression. Like the air is pressing down on your chest? And you cannot do anything for yourself, or make any decision of your own?’
‘Yes,’ said Peregrine shortly. ‘And I’m afraid the fault all lies with our laudable Mr Kinsburg. He has every minute accounted for. I’m not surprised you felt so sorry for his wife. But don’t go trying to be some kind of knight in shining armour.’
Henry stared at the lit end of his cigar, at its granular brightness against the blue-black of the open window. He looked up to see his friend watching him. They smoked on.
‘Of course,’ said Peregrine eventually, ‘she is as much a creation of Kinsburg’s as everything else here.’
Henry looked at him.
‘He has taken everyday raw material – she is pretty, I give you that, fine-boned, and sweet eyes – but who does not have a housemaid with all of those things? Do you know where he found her, by the way? Gentle-bred, I’m sure; a younger daughter, though. He chose someone pliable, for I’ve seen many a broad and brisk young heiress who would have bettered her for wealth but not like to have their gowns chosen for them; they would like their own spheres. But Mrs Kinsburg, I hazard, has no sphere. He has taken her, and he has created something. Her dresses – the man does adore colour, doesn’t he? – her jewellery, in the eighteenth-century style. Do you think she chose all of those things?’
‘She does not seem to give them much notice, from what I can see – that is, she is immune to vanity,’ said Henry.
‘It’s a little too early to say that, even if she is a favourite of yours,’ said Peregrine, giving him a look. ‘But there is an air to her which indicates that she doesn’t care for it all, overmuch. And yet how fastidiously she dresses – or is dressed. How she complements these rooms. She is a vision, created by him.’
Henry thought of the look Charlotte had borne, when he had glimpsed her in an unguarded moment during dinner. A fleeting, drained look, like one who had shed all her tears. ‘She is overtaxed somehow,’ he said. But she feels it, he thought, thinking of that touch. There is something in her. Life, vividness, strength.
‘And who would not be taxed, living in such a place, with such a husband?’ said Peregrine, delivering the stub of his cigar out of the window.
Henry gave him a look of disapproval. ‘You show remarkable lack of breeding, sometimes.’
Peregrine grinned guiltily. ‘I’m sure. Anyhow, he is a perfectly creditable husband. We must not play the tragedy here. There are thousands of women across England who would draw blood for such a husband. And he does not seem to harm her.’
‘A man like that can do all the harm in the world,’ said Henry. ‘He moves through it like shadow, casting his darkness on everyone else.’
‘This drama,’ murmured Peregrine. ‘It is not like you. My friend sees everything as a play for his own amusement. My friend would have made a hundred witty comments by now about the whole situation. On Monday morning we will leave these people with their problems, Henry. Do not become embroiled. You say she is overtaxed but, my dear friend – you are very tired.’
Henry decided to leave dangerous territory behind, though his mind was teeming with it. ‘You see why I did not wish to have his opinion on the Club, or to have him too closely involved with decisions on it? Look at this place. He speaks as though it is innovative.’
‘But it is just trying to be a little Versailles in a country manor.’ Peregrine finished the sentiment, sitting forwards and rubbing his hands on his knees. ‘Feeling the sting of the night air now. If I’m not too careful, it will wake me up completely. I’ll take myself off to bed. I may get lost on the way. You perhaps will never see me again.’ He rose to his feet, slightly unsteadily.
‘And I thought you would stay here and encourage my bad manners of slandering our host,’ said Henry. He was a little disappointed; he did not usually have the taste for malice, but now he wished to drain the poison of the day, and something was urging him to dwell on the events, like a thumb moving back to an embedded splinter in the forefinger.
‘Sleep will do us both good,’ said Peregrine, patting him on the shoulder, then moving off across the room. ‘And Henry, my dear chap.’
‘What?’
Peregrine looked at him with the brief, unnerving insight of the intoxicated. ‘You may not like his ridiculous house, but he will triumph if he gets you to fall in love with his vision of a wife. “The perfect lady, by Mr Ashton Kinsburg”, he who coats everything in gold and mirrors. He made her. Don’t show your approval of it. She is as much a sham as every other bit of imported furniture in this place.’
Henry looked at his dearest friend with a sorrowful benevolence. ‘You have it all wrong, Perry,’ he said.
Peregrine raised his hand in farewell and toddled out, closing the door with remarkable softness. Henry heard no more from him as he made his way down the halls by the light of one candle. But he thought of him with a kind of paternal tenderness as he closed the window. Then he opened his bag, settled with his sketchbook, and began to draw. He fell asleep there, only waking when his man came to bring water in the early morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
1940
DINING HALL, THE MIRRORMAKERS’ CLUB
‘What is disturbing you?’
Jonathan was standing in the doorway of the Dining Hall, and he turned at the sound of Livy’s voice. He was watching Bill trying to put together the long mahogany table lying before him in twenty pieces. Livy had seen a design for it: a special table to be put out when the committee of the Club dined alone. Bill was standing with his hands on his hips, looking at it as though it were an immense jigsaw puzzle. The underside of the piece was rougher than the top: unvarnished, bare, imperfect wood.
Jonathan wore a faintly disgusted expression, as though he were looking at a maimed animal. ‘I’ve only ever seen it complete, when I’ve dined on it,’ he said. He wore the same look he had given to the section of bare wall in the hall, when its marble lining had cracked.
‘You only want perfect things,’ she said.
‘I have standards, that’s all.’
She saw that he had been trained to expect the best, in himself and others. His money and education made him well-groomed, gentlemanly. And yet, some underlying part of his character always seemed to be tugging at him – to make him slouch, rather than standing tall; to make him unkempt. Some deep shame underlay his disgust at the imperfect. She touched his arm.
‘Perhaps you will see it again one day, in its splendour,’ she said. ‘There’s been a delivery for you.’
Jonathan turned to look at Livy. ‘What?’
‘A trunk, from Redlands. De
livered by one of your servants. A Mr Simmons, Peggy said. I didn’t see him.’
His steps quickened. ‘Is he here? Has someone given him a cup of tea?’
‘No. He went. She said he seemed keen to be gone.’
She turned away from the disappointment in his face, and went on ahead of him, walking briskly. Past the clock, its pendulum keeping time in stately fashion.
*
The battered trunk stood in the corner of the Document Room, where Peggy had directed the servant to leave it. There was an envelope tied to the handle, and Livy watched as Jonathan untied it and opened it, barely containing her impatience. His expression darkened as he read it.
‘The papers are unsorted. My wife says she looked in the attic and found it, and she also emptied one of the bureaus into it. She says that she doesn’t have time to look through it. We must do it. When she has time, she will go through the archived family papers and look for mentions of the diamond.’
‘Please,’ said Livy. ‘Open it.’
He crouched down and unclipped the heavy brass latches.
The trunk opened silently, revealing piles of papers and ephemera. A small wooden box, decorated with flowers of inlaid ivory, lay in the centre. The scent the trunk released was musty and faintly floral. Completely unfamiliar to Livy. The scent of Redlands, she thought. Of Jonathan’s other life. Even, at a stretch, of the world Charlotte had inhabited. She breathed it in: tried to pin the memory of the scent in her mind. In it, she felt the pull of them: Charlotte, Henry, Ashton, as though they were tugging her into their own orbit. Be still, she thought. I will find out what you want me to know. After a moment, the perfume faded to nothing, lost in the dusty, close scent of the Document Room.
Jonathan swore under his breath, and picked up the box which was nestled in the papers. As he removed it, papers fell inward into the indentation it had left behind. He put it carefully on the table. The key was in the lock. He turned it, and lifted the lid. Standing behind him, Livy caught a glimpse of necklaces and brooches. Jonathan lifted a small piece of white card from the top tray. Livy saw the message: written in bold black characters, the handwriting slanting forwards. His hand was trembling.
Jonathan. If it is as bad as you say, I suppose you should sell these. It’s not as if they really mean anything. They are only so much metal and stones. Stevie
He put it back, and shut the box with a thud. Turned the key, and put it in his pocket.
‘You can put the box in the filing cabinet, if you want to keep it safe,’ Livy said. He turned and looked at her as though he hadn’t known she was there.
‘Yes,’ he said. He stared at the mixed-up papers. ‘What a mess. It’s as though she dropped everything in here from a great height.’
‘We’ll have it shipshape in no time,’ Livy said briskly, trying to hide her impatience with efficiency. ‘If we work at the desk, and sort by date.’
He put the jewellery box in the filing cabinet. They sat down. He smoked, and she worked.
‘Some of these are recent,’ said Livy, picking up a gilt-edged invitation to a ball at Redlands in July 1938, issued by Mr and Mrs Jonathan Whitewood.
He plucked it from her hand, his jaw flexing. ‘She’s put all kinds of things in here,’ he said.
It was an hour before it happened. An hour of careful sorting, until Livy’s patience was exhausted and she buried her hand deep into the trunk, pulling out a sheet of paper at random. As she pulled it out – a piece of music – another piece of paper fell away from it, and it was this she followed with her eyes. ‘Henry Dale-Collingwood’s handwriting,’ she said. She glanced at it: just three lines.
‘Good. Keep looking.’ He held his hand out, and read the letter, then shook his head. ‘Nothing. He’s just replying to an invitation.’ He put the letter down, clenched one fist, then released it.
‘If there’s one, there will be more.’
‘I shall have to go home soon,’ he said. ‘I should never have stayed away for Christmas. It was the wrong thing to do. Dishonourable.’ Then he looked at her as though something entirely different had occurred to him. ‘Some of us don’t have the luxury of beginning again,’ he said.
‘I don’t call it a luxury,’ she said. ‘I have no obligations that I know of. Only . . .’ She let the sentence trail away; she thought he would leave it, but he didn’t.
‘What?’
‘Only, I’d like to get this mystery solved,’ she said. ‘Jonathan. Do you think the bones Christian found are anything to do with this?’
‘No. Don’t be ridiculous.’
She nodded, but he had spoken too quickly and vehemently for her to believe him. He saw the doubt in her eyes, and put down his cigarette. ‘Whatever ridiculous little mystery you’re cooking up, don’t go repeating it, all right? I don’t want Peggy and Bill thinking my family was mixed up in some kind of sordid murder, or whatever it is those stories have put in your head.’
‘I didn’t realize you were so concerned with your reputation,’ she said, reaching for another letter. He caught at her wrist and held it tight. They stared at each other, and she did not know whether she wanted to slap him around the face or kiss him. He seemed to draw violent feelings from her; there was no calm way, with him. She gave a little pull of her wrist, and the tension withered in the air, dying like the perfume from the trunk. ‘Shall we work?’ she said. ‘It’s what we came here for, after all.’
He released her. She picked up and held out another letter with Henry’s handwriting on it, suppressing her desire to read it, seeing the possessiveness in his eyes. He took it and put it on the pile. A thought occurred to Livy.
‘I’ve never seen her handwriting,’ she said. ‘Charlotte’s. All I know of her is in the portrait – the rest I’ve imagined. All the things we’ve read about, talked about – there’s a space for her, but it’s always other people writing, speaking. Never her.’
‘There are gaps in this period,’ he said. ‘The family archives are in good order for the late nineteenth century. But you’re right: all my evidence comes from others.’ He passed a hand over his eyes. ‘She may be an enigma, but as far as I know, Charlotte Kinsburg was the only person who ever handled the diamond apart from Ashton. In 1841, she came to London, to see a goldsmith about having the diamond set, which is when it was held in the safe here, according to the family lore the solicitor reported.’
‘Where is the appointment recorded?’
‘In a diary. There’s only a few entries – times and appointments. That is in her handwriting; the diary has her name written in the front. The entries stop soon after. I’m sorry I don’t have it to show you. It’s the only trace of her I’ve seen in our family archive. Unless Stevie can find anything else.’
‘Don’t you think – it’s as though someone has tried to erase her?’
He looked down. ‘Perhaps. I can’t deny that, in the official part of the archive, there is nothing of her. No letters. Only the appointment diary, which somehow escaped the cull, and bills for items bought by Ashton for her, including for the diamond. I must find it, Livy. I must.’
‘We’ll keep looking, don’t worry.’
‘Yes. Don’t touch that.’
Livy froze as her hand closed over a small box covered in ornate paper, cut to resemble lace. ‘It looks Victorian,’ she murmured, as he put his hand over hers, and removed it.
‘It’s not Victorian.’ He stared at it in his hand. Untucked the small paper flap, and opened it. The scent of fruit cake: rich, spirit-soaked.
He looked at her puzzled face.
‘It’s a piece of my wedding cake,’ he said, closing it up again. A faint tinge of red along his cheekbones. ‘Why would she put that in there?’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Please, just help me sort these letters.’
Livy went for the lowest layer again, knowing the earliest letters lay like sediment at the bottom of the trunk. Her own face was flushed now. She imagined Jonathan, this man she had kissed, this man she had des
ired, on his wedding day: staring at his wife’s face with a complete devotion. It must have been unthinkable to that bride that his lips should ever rest on another woman’s.
These thoughts had to be put away. She focused on the letter she pulled out, on the words. On Ashton Kinsburg’s handwriting:
December 1841. I hereby gift to the Mirrormakers’ Club a valuable painting by Herr Franz
Winterhalter. Henceforth to be known as Woman and Looking Glass.
Livy held it out to Jonathan. ‘Charlotte has joined us,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
1839
Riding without pause in the morning light, Ashton leading the way on his bay thoroughbred, Henry glimpsed hills covered with trees, the sky above their outline slightly paler blue, fading into a darker shade. Even from a distance, each tree had its own shape and patina, texturing the landscape, the whole dense and varied. It looked ancient: a forest where one might be lost and find one’s ancestors. There was the incipient promise of heat in the menacing brightness of the sky and the sharpness of the flickering shadows.
Hours later, the carriage ride to Henry’s second excursion of the day was not a comfortable one for him. Separated from Peregrine, he travelled with Barbara and Nicholas, who had found new and mysterious things to bicker over. They seemed to exist in a kind of mutually acceptable hell. His conclusion was that they required occupations, and other company. ‘Do you often have guests at Redlands?’ he asked, purposefully interrupting them.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘Politicians, musicians, writers, artists. Often my sister-in-law is not able to be present as much as she has been this time. She rests whenever possible. Her health is not good.’
‘What rubbish you talk, husband,’ said Barbara provocatively. ‘She is strong. Do you not think so, Mr Dale-Collingwood?’ She was wearing a pair of earrings mounted with hummingbird feathers, and they shivered alarmingly as she fluttered her head in disagreement.