by Tanith Lee
I apply that philosophy too to those awful things that have started to infest the landscape and the gardens. The Zomb-things, whatever they are. They frighten me so much. Once, one peered right in at a window on the ground floor, in the part that remains of the old dining room, and it pressed its broken nose to the glass, drooling. But Elizabeth came in and comforted me. Elizabeth is very kind, although sometimes she calls me ‘Daphne’. This is because she once painted a picture, or made a statue of Daphne, from the Greek myth, as Daphne was turning into a laurel bush. I believe I have that correctly. Elizabeth said the Zomb couldn’t see me, that it had neither a mind nor a soul. She reminded me I’d caught glimpses of such things in new-flickers on the Tea V, before the pictures failed. And while she talked, it, the thing, wandered off.
Elizabeth called it Ugg, and made me laugh. She is smart and clever, what Constance used to say women should become. I wish I could somehow hold Elizabeth’s hand for comfort. But none of us, alas, can touch, not a chair, not a tree, not each other. The last fleshly hand I remember holding, I’m afraid, is his, Captain Ashton’s, who may not have been a captain at all. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t even know his first name. Perhaps he died in the War. Or the other war that apparently followed. Or perhaps he lived. Whatever it was that he did, he went elsewhere. How sad this is. I have said enough.
4
Coral
Miss Archer murdered me. This is quite true. It is all I need to say.
Despite that fact, I would expect you will wish me to expound my claim, to provide evidence, and failing that, as how can I provide anything of such solidity, being murdered and dead, and, too, as constantly I was informed in my former life, I am only a child; failing that, as I say, I must argue my case.
I have no idea how I should do this. Nobody will believe me. The others here, all grown men and women, do not, I am sure. Nor will any other, nor you, whomsoever you are.
Certainly Miss Archer, who was, you understand, my governess, as they used to say in popular fiction, ‘did me in’. I was ‘done in’. I am done.
Now I shall start weeping again.
Miss Elizabeth says that a ghost can shed tears, it is allowed. She says she too has wept. Laurel, however, never weeps. Laurel is very strong and brave, a shining example to our weak feminine sex. My Father would have said that of Laurel. He had said that of my own lost mother. “How brave she was,” he said. “Never a complaint. Her eyes released no single salty drop. A paragon among women.” (I used once to believe a paragon was a bird, but it would seem it is not). “Take note, Coral,” he would add, with his usual benign sternness, “of the bright example you must strive to follow.”
“Yes, Papa,” I would answer.
I was six when first he said this, and afterwards I was seven. I had lost her, you see, my mother, when I was a child of five years and nine months. Now I am fourteen. I have been fourteen for almost a century and a half. I have tried very hard to be what has been expected of me. And I have failed.
The situation that annoys me the most is that of my dolls. I had two that I was particularly fond of. And when I returned to my home after the rather curious experience I had following what I have to assume was my death, I found these dolls both propped up in one of the rooms, a room of display as I afterward learned. Supposedly it recreated a nursery of the time of our Queen, Victoria, although, to me, I confess, who spent her early years in just such a place, it was very unlike the original. However, seeing the dolls I ran towards them, to embrace them, my two wooden friends, that, I confess, I had retained into my fourteenth summer. Yet when I reached them I could not touch, let alone hold them. Of course not. I am a ghost. My hands passed straight through them. I wept then, again. Despite all my handsome and patient father’s counsel, I never really could control my tears.
I had begun to cry on the day of my mother’s funeral, when I was told I might not attend, for that would be unsuitable. Until then I did not think I had fully believed Mama had perished. My current nurse had told me gently, her own eyes wet, that Mama had gone to Heaven to be with God, and I railed against God, saying He did not need her as I did. My father, naturally, admonished me. After that hour, often, I wept.
The case of the dolls was worse in its way. My mother vanished from my life. But, returning, the dolls were and are here. It was some while before the consequences of my spectral state were confirmed and explained to me by Laurel, and later, Elizabeth. The old man in the library, once he became one of us, explained to me also, seeing I still chafe against my fate. He is a kind old man, and very clever. Everyone is clever save myself. But all of them lived longer than I. I was murdered before I had learned enough.
My Father was often away, and in the early days I had several nurses, who were gentle with me, and not strict, which was apparently a fault in them. No doubt their shortcomings added to my own. Yet I do remember comfortable times, such as eating hot buttered muffins by the nursery fire, and little games with puzzles, and a treacle sweet for a prize.
When I was just twelve, my father came back from half a year in another country, which I think lay on an enclosed sea called the Mediterranean. He found his house, he said, this venerable and significant building, erected in the 1600’s on earlier foundations, and adjoining the historic ruined fortress that had stood on the site since 1289, to have everything unruly, and in a disgraceful condition of dusty untidyness and neglect. I, too, had been undusted and neglected, it seemed. He tested me all one long, greying afternoon, in his study, which room was very newly scoured and burnished, and chokingly perfumed with large amounts of lavendered beeswax, so I coughed continually, and my eyes ran, and presently my father upbraided me quite coldly for weeping again, when it was not the same thing at all.
During the interview otherwise, my Father learned my reading skills were poor, and I had attempted only worthless books, these being fairy tales and youthful romances, for children, of knights and such-like. Nor was my ability with simple mathematics of any value. He remarked I could not seem to add two and two, which actually I could, if not much else. What use would I be, he cried, if ever I should have to govern servants in my own husband’s house? The poor fellow would be destitute in a week due to my ignorance. Nor had I luck with my embroidery, and my water-colours were undisciplined. It was not that he chided me, but more that I had clearly added to the general dissatisfaction he had. It seemed, for I had caught a snatch of below-stairs talk, the upkeep of the mansion was very costly, while his friends had dwindled in number sharply, owing to some failed business venture; which talk, inevitably, I did not coherently absorb.
The upshot was, however, he dismissed my nurse. Next a woman arrived, who was to be my governess.
Miss Archer, whose first name I learned once, by accident, to be Pomponia, a royal name from Ancient Rome, was extremely and frighteningly beautiful. And when first I glimpsed her on her arrival, my heart missed a beat, for she was like something from one of the tales I had read, instead of Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution, or Plato’s lectures.
Her shining hair was jet black, as dark as my father’s own. Her eyes were a gleaming amber. All her features seemed to have a perfect shape, so that in whatever direction she turned, her face, from the front, above or below, or in either profile, astonished by its delicate flawlessness. Even her teeth were beautiful, and very white. And her complexion was like the petal of a pale flower. She had such pretty hands. I thought I should love her unreservedly. I did so. But also I feared her somewhat. Going to see her every day seemed to be like a visit to great royalty. She was always so gracious, and patient, but her beauty was distracting and – intractable. When she sang a song, trying to teach me the words and melody by this means, I could never quite achieve it, for to come in after her own presentation was onerous, a travesty.
Aside from this, however, a model discipline began to preside over my lessons. I was taught etiquette properly, and how to behave in company, although very seldom was there any, beyon
d the maid bringing cocoa at my bedtime, or my father sometimes joining Miss Archer and myself for the afternoon tea.
He and she spoke easily, despite her immaculate decorousness. Now and then he would discuss something with her at length, by which I mean he would tell her something, occasionally inviting her comments. This was unusual for him, I thought. I had not had the impression that generally he sought female confirmation, let alone advice, on any matter.
That winter there was a heavy snow. From upstairs, in my rather draughty bedroom, I could watch the white flakes falling and falling by the windows; while rising from the dining-room downstairs, through the vast snow-silence that came to enclose the house, I might hear her silvery voice singing at my mother’s old piano, which Papa had finally had retuned. Or I might hear him laugh, in a different, warm and fireside way.
I wondered if, in the evenings, she ever told him ghost stories. She had once told one to me, and scared me, but she said sharply I must not be foolish. It was about an old man who haunted a house, he having powdered hair or wig, and he hated particularly all children, and murdered them with one terrible look of venom. Miss Archer said he walked an ancient and historic mansion, just like this one. I had many nightmares about him, but I was younger then. There is, on the other hand, supposed to be the ghost of a warrior from Ancient Times who haunts the ruined castle here, but I am never allowed in that part of the grounds, as once I caught a chill from sitting in the wet grass under the ruined tower. (But I never saw a ghost until I was dead.)
Despite my childish years and lack of knowledge, I believe I came to apprehend that the exquisite Miss Archer had fallen, soft and snow-like, and silent, somewhat in love with my father. It was like the noble romances in the books I had formerly read, before I had to tackle the works of duller, slower, more tedious and valuable writers.
Once, deep in a black freezing night, I heard her step in the corridor outside my bedroom. I thought she was coming to speak to me, which, once I had settled in my bed I had never known her do. But instead her quiet and dainty feet moved on along the passage, taking the corner towards the west wing of the house. At the time, sensationally, I wondered if Miss Archer were walking in her sleep. The western wing, certainly, had nothing in it to demand of her. My father’s study, and other private rooms, lay there. Yes, you will mock me for my innocence. I recall even dear Elizabeth laughed when I told her this, so long after. But if anybody has been forced to wear a blindfold over one eye all their short life, how could they expect to recognise, even if so flamboyantly shown, what that one eye might see when uncovered?
One evening in the spring my father asked me to add my name to three legal papers. I did not know what they were, but once or twice had had to attend to such items before. I was not concerned. My task was soon done, and the papers meant nothing to me, were only to do with some little household matter that apparently my poor dead Mama had wanted left in my charge when I was twenty-one. I forgot the signing, as I forgot the others. I was struggling by then with an awful translation of a profound German novel, packed with precepts and exhortations and nobleness, construed in dark brown pits of untranslatably sunken prose. This was enough to dismay me. I needed no other worry.
We had a wet spring. I had gone out to look at the fruit trees in the orchard with the cook, who wanted me to mention to Miss Archer that she might tell my father some of the trees were sorely in need of attention. The cook had tried to pass this news to my father directly, but was not noticed, it seemed. Over the past five years all the gardeners had gone but one, an elderly, sottish man, who poached the nearby woods that, by now, belonged to another landowner. The result of some of the poachings came to our kitchen and were economically helpful, and so the man was not sacked for his otherwise laziness. Our funds were low. I had not been bothered, of course, as to how or why my father could or would engage such a governess for me as Miss Archer, when impoverished.
As the cook and I returned to the house, the rain came down again, and both of us got a wetting.
Upstairs by the fire, Miss Archer found me drying my hair and grew abruptly anxious. “You should have more care, Coral. You know how very easily you take cold.”
I was crestfallen to displease her. But by the hour of my supper, I felt I had incurred no harm. Miss Archer nevertheless did not agree.
“Oh, dear, Coral,” she said, gazing at me with great attention, “you’re pale and shivering. No, perhaps you don’t yourself notice. We try to be brave, do we not, and to ignore these things? But I’ve known you quite some while, and I believe I detect the signs.” She felt my forehead and my hands. “As I thought, your brow is hot, your fingers cold and clammy. You shall go up to bed at once, with a hot stone to warm you.”
So off to bed I was packed, where I touched my own head and felt it, by then, quite hot, but that might be the fire, or the stone water-bottle. I hoped not to be ill. It was tiresome for me, and for my father, and the servants. The only ray of light in it might be not having to read any more of the unspeakable book.
Having eaten my supper, I lay back and watched the fire, and soon I fell asleep.
I have no idea what hour I woke, but by then the room was pitch dark and cold, and the stone hot-water-bottle stone cold. Before I could be concerned at how I felt, I heard again that delicate step in the corridor. I wondered if now Miss Archer would indeed slip gracefully into my room, to ask me how I did. Probably I wished she might. Although, maybe I am not entirely certain of that.
In any event, no other sound came, nor did anyone enter. I believed myself mistaken.
I was lapsing back into deep slumber, when something occurred that I can only describe as being like a huge pale bird rushing down through the darkness, its gigantic wings feathering and creaking. And then it squashed home upon my face. A terrible and immoveable weight and power was behind it. Struggle and flail and churn about as I did, I was unable to dislodge it. I could smell damp and starch and dank cloth, and some other harsher smell, rather like metal, but not quite. But I had not been really awake, and those moments of semi-awareness were already being crushed from me like tiny sparks under the heel of a boot.
I was savage with panic and a surging horror such as I had never known, as vast chunks of nothingness crowded in on me. I had no single thought. I could not breathe, and as I choked and stifled, had the sense too of some other female life, also expunged in an oddly similar way, gasping and spasming, drowning; drowned. I believe, by now, this was a ghostly foresight of Laurel, who would die of the influenza plague, her lungs suffused by matter and fluid. In mine, if any had looked – which they did not – would only have been the nesty, tawny down of the very large pillow used to suffocate me.
What strength she had, Pomponia Archer, in her pretty little hands!
Because the others have spoken, and told me what they surmise, I can say the immediate medical verdict upon my death was, probably, that I had been the victim of a violent chill, caused by the rain storm, and my own foolish failure to change my garments. It appears, or rather does not appear at all, that those who are suffocated by the steadfast application of a pillow, or other impenetrable barrier, to the face, closing off the passages of breath through mouth and nose, very frequently display no evidence, save their heart failure, or, conceivably, a very rapid congestion comparable to a severe coriza. The story told of me by that evil woman must have been that I grew ill through the evening, refused any fuss, how bravely! – and died during the night of congestion, fever and a general weakness of my constitution, which was already evidenced by my other recurrent, if more minor, ailments. Doubtless she would have added that she would never forgive herself in being swayed by my reassurances. Perhaps she even pretended she had, after all, visited my room just before dawn, unable to rest herself in her anxiety about me, and so – alas! – discovered my poor little corpse.
My father would have credited the story immediately. He knew he had drilled me to be valiant, or as much as any mere female might be; to resist my o
wn whimpering physical failings. Perhaps he was even proud of me a moment, even if my victory over self had led to my death. How often he has assured me my mother was “brave...” Never a complaint, even near death. “Her eyes released no single salty drop.”
I must also admit I do not think he mourned me much at all, and then, his gorgeous mistress, Pomponia, was at hand to console him.
Why did she kill me? I have no definite conclusion, despite the time I have had to consider one. I think possibly only because I depressed her, in my unimportance, much as that weighty, highly-valued translated German tome had dragged down my own spirits. I was a set task for her that was, not merely unachievable, even for such a paragon as herself, but both intensely repellent and dull. I was therefore better closed and laid back on the shelf. In other words, dead.
My Prayer
After I died, I found myself in a long room, whose many windows were flooded by soft, clear light that did not dazzle, but neither was anything visible outside. I was on a bed, I thought. There were other beds, too.
At first some figures in long gowns seemed to pass to and fro, and I took them for women who nursed us. In the other beds seemed to be other figures. Then, gradually, as I came more and more to myself, I found nobody else was there, and the other beds were empty. Nothing in any of this disturbed me. I seemed to have been enjoying the sweetest rest, and now I was myself again, and I rose up, straight off the bed, and the light was warm and soft.
Aside from this very first memory, which still seems quite clear, any other things that happened for a time are blurred and I cannot remember them, certainly no details, only vague hints of colour, light and shade, or feelings – and the feelings were all pleasant ones, calm and happy. This is rather like a dream one had and then cannot recollect, only vague little scraps that drift and float away. And once, much later, I believe, I saw a man in an old-fashioned coat of green brocade, and dear Heaven how he scowled at me! But then he too was gone.