Something kept nagging at him, pressuring the back of his head. He knew it was connected with the strange past few weeks, but couldn’t put his finger on it. And then it hit him: the beggar. He had seen him twice, he was sure now. The second time, when he was returning from that strange evening at The True Dawn. And the first time it had been in front of Charles’s house, the night of the séance. Two strange evenings, on which his senses had been somewhat heightened, or that had brought with them the vividness of the supernatural, had started or ended by sighting this odd creature.
His hairs stood on end, exactly as they did when he recalled the way Lady Matthews had looked at him.
He went out and crossed the street. The gas-lamp by which the beggar had knelt the night of the séance didn’t work, and he had the feeling it hadn’t since then, although he had not remarked on it. On closer inspection he saw why: the whole long metallic pole was rusty, and the pavement around it, in contrast to the rest of the street, was overtaken by fungus, weeds, rotten leaves. The gas-lamp, newly installed barely two years previously, looked two hundred years old. What was going on?
At about eight o’clock, after a lonely supper, someone rang at the main door, and none other than Jim was shown into the library, where Sam sat, trying to finish MacDonald’s strange novella, but in truth musing on the recent events. Jim’s countenance alarmed Sam a great deal. He looked shocked; his whole face was set in a clenched mask, and he avoided Sam’s eyes.
‘Jim, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ He got up and served two stiff drinks.
‘Sam, I’ve got news.’
‘Which news?’
‘I thought I better come to tell you in person.’
‘Tell me what? Is it about Freddy? Is he alright?’
Jim took the glass and emptied it in one gulp, gesturing to be served another. Sam complied.
‘Jim, what is going on?’ Sam’s heart missed a beat, as he started to realise that, whatever Jim had come to tell him, it somehow involved him.
‘It’s about Viola.’
Sam caught his breath.
He could hardly mumble, ‘What about her?’
‘She’s alive, Sam.’
Sam hardly understood the rest of the explanation that followed this initial blow. As he slowly receded and sat on a chair, he half-heard the words coming out of Jim’s mouth: Viola had never drowned, apparently, but had appeared somehow upstream, in Wolvercote. Upstream? Was that even possible? The family had hushed the matter up almost entirely; Viola was, so the modern doctors said, catatonic, half mad, looked after in a private clinic somewhere in Yorkshire.
‘Maybe it was on account of your own disappearance you thought she was dead!’
Sam knew Jim was trying to be helpful. However, he had no idea what his friend might mean by this statement.
‘What disappearance? You mean my coming to my uncle in London?’ For the first time, the word ‘uncle’ felt odd in his mouth.
‘I mean your disappearing into the countryside like you did.’
A pause.
‘Do you really not remember? You were lost, Samuel. You ran into the wild after it happened. It took days to find you! That was when we brought you here; Mr Bale said it wasn’t the first time you had done that, that you ran away once when you were a child.’
Sam’s head was filled with Viola’s face, with the dark-greenish waters of the Isis, with the ruined Tudor manor in all its decaying splendour. He had no idea what Viola’s cousin was talking about, and could only press his nails deeper into the sofa’s leather arms, as he tried to grasp hold of reality, and as reality slowly receded away from him.
Grewelthorpe, the village was called Grewelthorpe. Up in Yorkshire. That was all Sam needed to know. The rest of Jim’s gibberish didn’t matter a bit.
* * *
On the other side of the train window, he saw now and then square black buildings through the darkness, old farms and villages resting on slopes, churches stinging the clouded sky, buildings extending their fingers like a dead body lying over the hills. The train left lagoons behind and the countryside became richer in rocks and gradients and uneven slopes, a welcome rest from the eerie, infinite vistas that filled his brain; and then Sam knew that he was going north. And that meant going to Viola. He was angry, thirsty and cold, but would not leave the train for any of the refreshment stops, scared that he would miss the call to get back on board. The only thing in his mind was to see Viola as soon as possible. Not even talk to her, something according to Jim her current state did not allow, but simply to see her face, to reassure himself that she truly lived. He needed to see this, and had vowed not to go to sleep until that was done. Then, and only then, would he think on what to do next.
Unfortunately, his eagerness was interrupted by his anxiousness: he got into a fight with a group of youngsters and had to change trains. Jim’s presence prevented the situation from getting out of hand, as he insisted Sam needed to calm down.
The house was a large Regency mansion in the outskirts of Hackfall Wood. It sat alone on a little slope of land, with the woodland shooting up behind it. They arrived on a frosty morning, and the pale birches on the back looked like whitish ghosts. They took rooms in the nearby town, and set off almost immediately. Sam was restless, eager to do something, anything.
They first observed the building from the edge of the wood, hidden among the oak, lime, ash and sycamore trees. He had a strong feeling then of the wood protecting him, of nature bending to his will. Sam kept saying that he would come up to the hospital by the front door, that he would not hide. That he felt that the oak and the lime and the ash and the sycamore trees were on his side, and that this gave him strength.
Sam introduced them, and Jim quickly added that he was Viola’s cousin. They were granted access at once.
A nurse offered to take them to her. She smiled now and again, revealing teeth that needed some attention. They traversed some white corridors, through the open doors of which one could glimpse benign inmates occupied in genteel pastimes, all of them lavishly attended by a set of professional-looking carers. Everything was clean and full of light, blessed by a calming whiteness that reflected the peaceful but cold winter sun. The wide rooms and passageways and serious hunting portraits and high ceilings spoke of old fortunes and rich inmates, and Sam silently wondered how Viola’s father, a sexton in a minor Oxford church, could possibly afford such a luxury.
The distant wing they reached after a few minutes suffered from a sudden change of mood, for lack of a better word. The woman had directed him into an area very different from the ample corridors and vast wards they had been traversing. The chambers here were decidedly smaller, most of the doors were locked, and the windows weren’t in the tall French style that he had admired but rather small, poky and barred. There was another thing that struck Sam, an indefinite stench, an acrid odour that emanated from the mixture of human smells and the medicines and chemical concoctions necessary in institutions such as this one. He found himself in what appeared to be one of the gloomiest and more dangerous wards of the asylum.
Sam suddenly saw that the nurse’s clothes were strangely grubby, more perhaps than was fit even for a busy worker in a place like this. Her eyes were clouded by something indeterminate, and were strangely alert, and her nails appeared to be too long and yellowish to be considered hygienic.
He looked around in some trepidation.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, with all the calm that he could muster, ‘but I don’t think I caught your name.’
She smiled again, looking down as if she were blushing, an odd gesture.
‘Does it matter, sweetheart?’
She advanced in his direction and Sam went rigid, but thought it better to give her a sense of being in control, so he let her take him by the arm and direct him to look into one of the chambers. Jim was already peering through the small opening. Those poor souls looked terribly dirty and haggard, very much, he now saw, the mirror image of the unkn
own woman they had so foolishly followed.
‘They know the land beyond the stars,’ said the woman. ‘They have looked directly into it.’
‘What?’
‘That is why they are like this: they looked into that which no human being should ever glimpse…’
‘My dear woman!’ Jim started. But he didn’t know what to say.
‘Here you are! Mary, thank you so much for looking after our guests. Mr Moncrieff, Mr Woodhouse, I hope Mary wasn’t a nuisance,’ said a young-looking doctor, going rather pink at his ears.
‘Not at all.’
‘Good! I’m Dr MacFarlane. Miss Rochford is right here. Before we go in, I would like to tell you a few things. In fact, if busy-bee Mary hadn’t walked you all the way here already, I might have done so in my office. Perhaps you want to see Miss Rochford now, and come and talk to me after?’
Sam could not wait to see Viola; he could not wait a single minute.
‘That would be most kind, Doctor, if you don’t mind,’ he muttered.
‘Not at all! I’ll wait for you just here.’
The last sentence carried the notion of a visit of a short duration, and the implication of a risk for their safety inside the ward. Reluctantly, they went in.
Viola looked at him, or rather through him, lost on those otherworldly plains where she now dwelt. Sam moved slightly, right and left; her eyes did not follow. She was tied up to a chair with the straps used to physically restrain lunatics, but her posture shifted slightly. Sam thought he could glimpse a flicker of recognition, and said her name repeatedly. Her skin was an odd, greenish hue, and it looked cracked in places; she was strangely aged, as if ten years had passed in a few months.
‘Viola, my love. It’s me!’ Sam repeated.
She was sitting lopsided by the straps, like a broken doll; but she suddenly jerked up with all her might, trying to position herself as far as possible from him. There was no other way to describe the scene: Viola was scared of Sam. She started shrieking, suddenly animated.
They were instantly ushered out from the room and into the care of the young doctor, who conducted them back down the long corridor.
‘Miss Rochford has started to sleep more than normal. But that doesn’t seem to make her less tired,’ he explained, once they were sitting in his office. ‘She can hardly stay awake during the daytime, and grows progressively more lethargic.’
‘I see.’
‘She seems to have experienced some extreme shock, although her development from day-lethargy to a total catatonic state has been progressive, taking place over a few concentrated weeks. But we are helping her here.’
‘Why is she restrained?’ Sam asked.
The doctor seemed lost for words. ‘Restrained? Sir—?’
‘Why is she restrained?’ Sam could not mask the threat in his voice, and the doctor was quick to sense a change in his manner.
‘Sam, please…’ Jim interjected.
‘For her own protection, of course! Look here, this isn’t the hospital from a penny dreadful, but a respectful, modern establishment! What did you say your name was? You are not exactly family like this gentleman here, are you? I’m going to have to ask you to leave, sir.’
Sam understood at once that he would not be allowed back in the institution. The realisation threw him into a fury; he had to muster all the control he could not to succumb to his sudden need to destroy the doctor’s office, and hit his complacent face until it turned into a fleshy pulp. But he managed to contain himself. He got up, boiling inside with anger, and left, leaving the door open behind him. Jim made his excuses and went after him.
* * *
It happened as they were on the way out, when they were passing next to a set of double French windows. Behind them was a well-kept garden that made one think of nothing unwholesome. Suddenly one of its glass doors inexplicably exploded, fragments of glass cutting everyone at hand, Sam and Jim included.
In a corner Mary was laughing wildly, and cheerfully clapping her hands, a distorted grin on her face.
Sam, however, had just finally understood something about himself: he had broken that glass door, without touching it.
There was some tranquillity in knowing the truth, in accepting it. It had taken its time, but it had finally come to light: for so unwilling had he been to interrogate the mysterious events of his life that it had needed to find other ways to reach him.
Sam had come to understand something in the past few weeks: people think that a burial is final, but this supposed finality is a mockery. If justice so requires, a coffin can be dug up, unveiling its secrets: a child buried with his mother because he wasn’t meant to exist; objects one thought gone forever, hidden amid the earth’s embrace; empty infant coffins, empty adult coffins. Even the oldest corpses, under proper examination, were capable of pointing a finger at those responsible for their early departure. Nothing, nothing at all, could stay hidden, no secret was safe, no matter how deeply it was buried. No crime was left unresolved, and all truth came to light at the end.
A French window had exploded, and Samuel Moncrieff had finally learnt a crucial truth about himself.
CHAPTER TEN
Lady Matthews had arranged some séances to take place in London before her country weekend. The first one was going to be hosted by Madame Florence. As usual, Miss Clare Collins and Mr Thomas Bunthorne were in attendance, as well as Madame Florence’s new pet, Willimina Lawrence, a little American with incredible powers of sight.
‘We are all friends here,’ Miss Collins began, throwing an odd glance in Mr Woodbury’s direction. ‘And we can share our greeting to Mother Gaia with you. From here, we invoke the Mother of All, the Earth Queen.’
‘Should Madame Florence not be present?’ Helena ventured.
‘We have a little surprise tonight,’ continued Miss Collins. ‘Miss Lawrence here will perform, under the blessings of our beloved Madame Florence.’
A murmur of anticipation could be sensed from among sitters, except the two men who were there, who continued to display brooding moods. Willimina Lawrence, Madame Florence’s new protégée, was quickly making a name for herself with her impressive powers of sight. She was also, or so it seemed, the female Messiah. Helena took note of the likes and dislikes that the young woman generated in the public.
Everyone was instructed to close their eyes, and unite in a chain of hands.
No hymns, no prayers, but a regular breathing whose rhythm came loudly from Miss Clare Collins’s seat, and which all the sitters gradually followed. Helena opened her eyes one second, just to keep track of proceedings, and saw how the room was much darker, as someone had put out candles one by one, leaving only the one in the centre of the table shining, together with the fire in the grate. That was all she could hear, the fire, the rhythmical breathing, one by one all present falling into a regular way of existing that was similar to a regular thinking, a performance, a moment in which they were all sharing the same thoughts, seeing the same images in their inner eyes. Miss Collins started humming slowly, and then she spoke a series of words intently, with long pauses between each of them.
‘Sun. Moon. Light. Darkness. Male. Female. Line. Circle. Clarity. Shadow. Sound. Silence.’
It was hypnotic. Helena had never sat on a séance like this one; but Miss Collins knew very well what she was doing. Willimina, on the other hand, seemed not to be doing anything. Helena opened her eyes and saw her head hanging, slightly lopsided, in front of her, describing little circles. She looked like one of those old-fashioned French dolls. Suddenly, her head jerked up, and she opened her eyes. They were two white balls, surrounded by deep dark circles that hadn’t been there before.
‘I am so lonely,’ Willimina blurted out. ‘Oh, my friends… Where are my friends?’
She didn’t sound like her at all, but like a much younger girl, a girl who perhaps was pining because a doll had been left out in the garden and the rain had damaged it, Helena thought. It was a dull tone, uncanny, as if t
hey were listening and posing questions to a child talking in her sleep.
‘We are all friends here, you are not alone,’ Miss Collins answered confidently to whoever had taken possession of Willimina.
‘Oh, but I am, miss. For where are Flora, and Maud, and Alice?’
Helena looked up, and everyone around the table had opened their eyes and was looking at each other and at Miss Collins for guidance.
‘No one moves,’ she simply indicated. ‘Who are you, dear?’ she asked.
‘Dot,’ answered Willimina. Mrs Ashby swallowed a gasp.
‘Ask her about the girls!’ the old lady couldn’t help but interpose. Miss Collins indicated with a serious countenance that she should be patient, and let her continue the proceedings.
‘Welcome, Dot, we are all friends here.’
‘No!’ the spirit shouted now. ‘You are not my friends! I don’t know where my friends are! Only Maud has come to see me… and you turned her away.’
Willimina started whining like a spoiled little girl, shouting and crying and hitting the floor with her boots, in a veritable tantrum. Miss Collins tried to calm her, and she eventually succeeded. Willimina started talking again:
‘When did it happen then? I cannot remember. I remember Baptiste, my favourite kitten of that whole litter. He made friends with me very quickly, followed me around, pushed his little face against mine, caressed my arm with his little paw, scratching. And then, one day, he wasn’t there anymore. How I looked for him! How dreadfully scared I was! For there was something there, some thing… In the ruins, it was, that I came upon his broken body, the pulpy grey liquid of his flesh mixing up with the earth and the rubble. Someone had smashed his head with an old brick.’
‘The ruins? Who else was there, dear?’
‘The man with the long hair. He always crossed the room inside the mirror, you see, never on the other side. On the other side, it was only me, sewing, or writing, or playing, or reading. How handsome he is, I think, with his three-piece suit, his walking stick, his moustache. I feared him; I waited for him, for he always knew very well how and where to find me. I saw him: inside the mirror in the parlour’s wall, over the stagnant water of a puddle, sticking out over my shoulders.’ Willimina’s face was not her own, a shadowy, shaded face. ‘I saw him: in the recently cleaned stone floor of the kitchen, buckets of water thrown on it. I felt him: walking all over the house, turning the corners ahead of me. In the garden I saw him often, reflected in the house windows.’ Willimina was now twisting her head far to the left and to the right. ‘I recognised him in the vanishing of food in the pantry, always liquid things, in the wash stands that appeared filled up of their own accord, because he wanted somewhere to reflect himself, so we could see each other. I talked to him, finally: on the thresholds of badly lit rooms, hidden among the shadows.’ She stopped her movements, jerked her head upright. ‘And then I learnt what he wanted.’
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