The Great Unknown

by Peg Kingman

But Tam said, “Nay, they weren’t so bad as all that. Lively and clever, and very free with their money! Nothing mean or miserly about the Delavals! Plenty of folks hereabouts still talk of those good old times when, rent-day coming round, they used to go up to the Hall—not to pay money—but to receive it! To be paid, for all the good things they’d furnished to the family: beeves and hogs, mutton and chickens, butter and eggs, ale and beer and bread. Wasn’t there a lot of it, in those days!”

  “And the laundry at that house!” said the old woman. “None of this mean every-week business, nay; why, there was a good three months of linens and bedclothes belonged to that family, I tell you; and the laundry, when it was time—not but quarterly, mind you—kept half a dozen laundresses at work for a full week! The coppers! The fires! The stirrings and tramplings! The boilings, the bleachings! Why, a factory at Birmingham is what it was like.”

  “Nothing like these mean threadbare times. The family was clever, and high-spirited too, every one of them, men and women alike—and devilish handsome, forby.”

  “Oh, aye, devilish! We can agree there,” said the guard. “The family that has it now is far from saints, either.”

  “Who has it now?” asked Constantia, after waiting a moment for someone else to ask; but no one did.

  “Why, Lord Hastings, to be sure,” said the guard.

  “What!” said Constantia, “The very Lord Hastings who was Governor-General of India, back in the ’twenties? Or perhaps his son may be the present Lord Hastings?”

  “Nay, nay,” said the guard, having now abandoned all his virtuous reserve. “Out in India it was the Marquess of Hastings—a different family altogether. But our Lord Hastings is Baron Hastings, who was just Sir Jacob Astley, until Parliament raised him up three or four years ago.”

  “They wanted him out of the way, and kicked him upstairs to the Lords,” said Tam.

  “One good kick deserves another!” declared the old woman gleefully.

  “Nay; to make it up to him that he could not have his divorce when he wanted it,” said the guard.

  “Why could he not?” asked Constantia.

  “Where have you been, not to know?” said the guard. “When Sir Jacob’s wife Lady Astley ran off with that scoundrel Thomas Garth—”

  “And that’s another scandal, in the very—highest—circles—of—all!” breathed the old woman with relish. “Eh? Garth? Oh aye; the royal bastard! But you’re too young to remember any of that. The Princess Royal! With her father’s equerry!—”

  “Nay, it was worse than that—the equerry just a tale, to cover up the sordid truth—”

  “Hsst!” said Tam.

  “—leaving her two little boys behind,” said the guard, as though he had not been interrupted, “Sir Jacob lodged a suit for divorce and twelve thousand pounds in damages.”

  “Did he not succeed?” asked Constantia.

  “Garth’s solicitors brought evidence that Sir Jacob had—habitually . . . ah, had been a frequenter of prostitutes—of, well, the very lowest kind—so that Sir Jacob was awarded—what do you think? not twelve thousand pounds, nay!—but one shilling! One single shilling! And the divorce denied! Unable to remarry, all those years.”

  Now the coach was rolling past the ruined mansion itself—Seaton Delaval Hall—its massy silhouette still superb at the top of its drive; its flanking wings and broad court still magnificent; sequestered behind high iron gates. After a moment Constantia asked, “Do the family come here still?”

  “Never; London suits them—”

  “And they, London.”

  “From here, at night, with the moonlight on those towers, you wouldn’t know it for burnt and roofless,” said the guard. “It makes a splendid ruin.”

  “It made a splendid fire, too,” said Tam. “I saw it burn. Aye, I was a labourer at the bottleworks by the sluice, back in ’twenty-two. The coldest January in living memory; the old folks had been freezing to death in their beds, that winter—and the ground so hard they could not be buried; the corpses were stacking up like cordwood at the sacristan’s, awaiting a thaw. I remember waking to the bell—we all ran to help—dragged the fire engines into position—but not a drop of water could we pump, for all was ice, frozen solid! Loads of the valuables, pictures and statues, was carried out onto the grass—until the leads of the roof began to melt; aye, the very leads melting and running down like rain! No one dared risk passing beneath such a shower as that. Well, it made a magnificent bonfire—and the heat of it something wonderful, in the midst the winter. My hair and eyelashes were scorched, though I stood well back. Oh aye—you might not think it, but in those days I had hair aplenty!”

  “It was the kitchen fire that started it, I suppose?” suggested Constantia.

  “Nay, it started in the east wing that was, then—in a corridor of upstairs bedchambers, where jackdaws had stuffed a chimney with their nest.”

  “Ah!—so the family was home at the time?” Constantia asked.

  “Sure they were not—and had not been for many months.”

  “How came there to be a fire, then, in that part of the house?”

  “Well might you wonder!”

  “The ghost,” said the old woman.

  “Ghosts don’t start fires.”

  “Who can say what a vengeful ghost might not do?”

  “What, the doughty laundry maid?”

  “Nay, nay, quite a different ghost,” said the guard. “A different maid; and a different Astley; a—a younger relation, not the heir. Matters got sadly crossed up somehow, by a generation or so; the amorous scion of the 1750s met with an unwilling laundry maid, and died of it; and an amorous housemaid of the 1820s met with the faithless scion who sailed for India after the fire, leaving her to perish in bringing their bastard into the world; her ghost haunts the place still.”

  “That’s all flum,” said Tam. “It’s true enough that the man who sailed for India after the fire went by the name of Astley, but he had no right to it, coming as he did from the wrong side of the blanket. He was here, the night of the fire. I remember often seeing him here that winter, idling about, waiting for his commission to come through—and trifling with the housekeeper’s very pretty daughter. Nay, it was the previous housekeeper who was here in ’twenty-two, at the time of the fire—not the present Mrs Turnbull, though she knows all about it, and will be glad to tell anyone who is curious enough to ask her. And that girl never made a ghost, for she ran off shortly after her lover sailed—and in blooming health, to put it politer than she deserved. I remember her very well, a fine fresh girl called Polly, far too pretty to be good; and she certainly did not die in her guilty childbed, but ran off to Scotland in good time—with a rascal from Newcastle who deserved the horns he got. What was his name, now? Fox? No, but something foxey . . . Todd, or Dodd.”

  “Dafty! Didn’t he know?” said Bob.

  “Who can say what she chose to tell him?”

  “There’s husbands as will believe there’s such prodigies as seven-month babies,” said the old woman. “Or six. Even five, sometimes.”

  Still the coach rolled onward; the topless towers of Seaton Delaval Hall were receding into the night. Abruptly Constantia called out, “Coachman, stop! Pray, stop at once! I should like to get down—here.”

  “What, here! Nowhere! At this hour!” said the coachman. But she insisted, and he wrested the horses to a standstill on the frozen mud of the road.

  “What possesses the woman? Is she mad?” said the old woman. “And her with a bairn at the breast.”

  “It’s yourself who’s to blame, you old carlin,” said Tam. “Who can fault her, if she won’t bear to hear such loose, vile, scandalous talk? Why don’t you curb your tongue like a decent woman?”

  “I told you Her Ladyship does not like me.”

  “And the carriage money she has paid, to be lost!” said Bob.

  “Thank you,” said Constantia to the coachman, and climbed down with Livia, against the advice of her fellow travellers an
d of the guard who handed down her carpet-bag.

  The noise of the coach receded—wheels, hooves; fainter, then gone—and the winter night’s stillness expanded around her, clear to the stars. There was a steady whispering, a murmuring, from the east: the sound of waves assaulting the shore.

  12

  CONSTANTIA WALKED BACK along the road for a hundred yards, to a place where she could see the form of Seaton Delaval Hall straight on, high and black against the starry sky. Though unroofed, it stood tall and stately upon its plinth; though ravaged by fire, it retained its distinctive towers advancing at each corner of the main central block. Its broad high flights of steps were like the ascent to a temple. It was magnificent still, this ruined moon-washed masterpiece of the celebrated architect Sir John Vanbrugh; this original of the Nawab’s Dil Kusha palace at Lucknow.

  The sight transported Constantia, so that for a moment she ceased to shiver, as she remembered sun-dazzled Dil Kusha—Heart’s Desire. She remembered just how its rooms intersected, how they fit together, inside; knew their clever interlocking volumes. Knew how the stairwells served them. Knew its balconies and galleries, its landings and passages.

  But the bitter cold of the Northumbrian night soon recalled her to the present moment, and her present difficulties. Just what was she to do now? Now that she had—suddenly, impulsively—broken her journey northward? A single light showed from a small low window in the flanking west wing of the mansion; all else was dark. There was a pair of carriage gates in the iron railing at the broad drive which entered the grounds, but these were chained shut. A little further along she came to a man-gate, but it too was locked. In her dismay, she rattled it hard and long. The clatter—cold iron on cold iron—rose into the black sky, futile.

  Livia now awakened with a start, and began to cry. Constantia, as she considered what to do and where to go at this hour of the night, kissed her, rocked her; but Livia would not be comforted. Was she hungry? Must she be fed? Again? Livia howled louder, and there was nothing Constantia could do but set down the carpetbag and tender her breast there and then, in the high road at midnight. Just as she had got Livia quiet, she heard a man’s rough voice, a shout—and saw through the iron railing a moving light: a bobbing hand-lantern approaching from inside the grounds of Seaton Delaval.

  The watchman was apprehensive until he saw what he had to deal with: only a vagrant slattern feeding her bastard. “Be off then! off with you!” he said roughly. “You can’t stop here.”

  But when she rose, and spoke, he was not so sure. Was she not rather too neat, modest and clean for a whore? It was hard to be certain, by lantern-light. Well-spoken too, like a gentlewoman—though a stranger, undoubtedly. “I have come to speak with Mrs Turnbull,” she said again.

  At this hour of the night?

  “I am called Mrs MacAdam; I am an old connection of the family,” she said.

  Not that he had ever heard of; and old connections of the family did not generally arrive unannounced outside the gates at midnight. But doubt was sown; and after a moment, he unlocked the gate to admit her. There was no knowing who might not come to speak with Mrs Turnbull the housekeeper, with whom he was not on good terms—but whose window was, unusually, still lit. If he admitted this visitor, would Mrs Turnbull be annoyed? If he denied this visitor, would she be more annoyed? While opportunities to goad Mrs Turnbull were welcome, she had proven capable of revenge. In any case, this stranger was unlikely to steal the burnt building stones which still remained in the high grass where the ruined east wing had once stood; so as these, his main concern, seemed safe, he decided to open the gate. “My bag,” she said. He carried it up the broad expanse of the entrance court for her, lighting the way toward that single illuminated window in the west wing.

  Mrs Turnbull’s lamp burned so late only because she had failed to extinguish it and go to bed; had instead fallen asleep in her chair, slumped forward upon the deal table before the dying fire, her gin bottle empty. A clatter at the door and the voice of the despised watchman roused her; angrily she heaved herself up and flung open the door, her cheek embossed in red where it had been pressed against the pine board.

  The watchman, a teetotaller, did not miss the bottle on the table or the smell of gin. He heard the stranger introduce herself, apologising for the lateness of the hour, but he did not believe that she—this Mrs MacAdam—was an old connection of the Astley family. He himself had no right to receive and entertain friends of his own upon the Astley premises, and he doubted that Mrs Turnbull had any such right either. In short, he thought he smelled not only gin, but an opportunity to stir up trouble; perhaps even blackmail. “Night callers, is it now, Mrs Turnbull?” he said, a leer in his tone.

  Mrs Turnbull, who waged an unflagging campaign against presumptuous and encroaching inferiors such as the watchman, retorted, “I do not see what concern it can be of yours if I receive respectable callers, in my own rooms.”

  “At midnight,” he said, insinuating something.

  “At any hour I please. Pray, won’t you step in, ma’am,” said Mrs Turnbull genteelly to the visitor, enunciating with extreme care. “Do come and warm yourself and the baby at my fire.” The watchman was not permitted to have a fire in his guardhouse unless it was actually snowing.

  “We’ll see about that,” said the watchman.

  Mrs Turnbull shut the door in his face and turned to this unknown visitor. The proffered fire, unfortunately reduced to embers, emitted only a faint warmth, but the stranger was warming her hands and her baby before it. It was a handsome cloak she wore, and her bonnet was more than respectable. What had she said her name was? What had she said her business was? Mrs Turnbull felt herself a little unsteady; perhaps not quite up to entertaining a visitor, after all. She got herself safely into her chair, however, and heard the visitor say, “ . . . I beg your pardon . . . so very late an hour . . . better perhaps in the morning instead, if you can give me a bed for the night? For what remains of it, at least?”

  And so it was that a miserable sleepy ten-year-old maid of all work, roused from her bed by Mrs Turnbull’s bell, was ordered to conduct the visitor by candlelight to a spare bedchamber behind the kitchen. The candle showed a small low room with a large patch of damp beneath the window, an old bedstead, and a strong smell of mildew. “Nor can I leave you the candle, ma’am, as it’s strictly against orders, for the family is exceeding wary as to fire, even now; but there’s a moon to see by. And water . . . aye, there’s some,” observed the girl—a thin pale child— tipping the jug on the table. “Just enough . . . no, there’ll be none hot at this hour, only the cold.” And then the little maid withdrew, leaving the visitor and her baby in full enjoyment of that dismal chamber of near-perfect discomfort.

  By moonlight Constantia drew back the coverlet and, feeling the damp chill of the wretched old featherbed’s ticking, resolved not to undress; she only wrapped herself and Livia in her cloak, and lay down. It was a vile bed, damp and musty, an envelope of mildew and deep cold which relentlessly drew the warmth from her, and did not return it. Livia slept; Constantia did not—or so she thought. But when she opened her eyes again, it was to moonlight in her face; some time had passed and the moon was descending to the west. Constantia lay and considered the strangeness of being here; of sleeping in this house. This house, of all the houses in Britain! Presently, in the same way as memories would sometimes let down with her milk when she nursed the babies—as underground springs rise, whelming upward between rocks to the air—as faint musical phrases sometimes wafted unbidden into the minds of the Chambers girls—a memory now welled up her. Most wonderfully, this memory of her mother was a fresh one, never remembered until now. It had a raw bright distinct quality, not yet worn down by examination and handling. A pearl still round, not yet rubbed flat in back; not yet dissolved by repeated handling—but round, fresh and full, entire, new:

  Her beautiful mother, licking her own fingers to smooth Constantia’s hair away from her face; and then smoothing her ow
n hair too, and smoothing the cloth of her gown over her belly; and adjusting the bodice of her dress, and her bosom within the bodice. Waiting, so tiresome. Dusk. Hot. Waiting with her mother in a small octagonal room windowed all round, overlooking the Nawab’s dusty garden; in the distance lay the sluggish grey-green river. This was Dil Kusha, she knew; a room atop one of the corner towers. Presently an English officer came in, a tall man with yellow hair brushed back, wearing military dress and polished boots. He spoke, quietly, to Constantia’s beautiful mother, who replied in a voice Constantia had never heard before. What did they say? Constantia could not remember. They were not speaking to her. But her mother made Constantia curtsey to the officer. He dropped to one knee to look in her face, while holding her two hands. She did not like this. It had greatly embarrassed her to be looked at so intently; she had scowled at the floor, twisting away instead of looking at him. Still, an impression remained with her: His dark wiry moustache. His gold-green eyes; his straight brows. A dimple to his chin, like her own.

  That was all. This fresh new memory was constituted almost entirely of boredom and embarrassment—but these remembered sensations were so pure and so strong as to convince Constantia that this memory must be a true one; a real artefact, of real experience.

  Hadn’t her mother been very gay, afterward? Laughing a great deal at supper? Very lively and high-spirited at the nautch that followed? And wasn’t the English officer there too, among the guest-spectators, beside a Hindu woman who was his wife; a beautiful woman who reclined upon a litter, and did not walk, but was carried by bearers? After that, Constantia did not remember ever seeing him again.

  Was it later that same night that Constantia had followed her mother? Had surprised her in the embrace of the handsome balloonist?

  That was all. How odd that she never had thought of this before.

  How odd that she remembered it now.

  Despite the moonlight in her face, Livia slept, her tiny lips slack. Veins showed blue through the transparent skin at her temple, which fluttered to the pulse of her baby heart.