The Great Unknown

by Peg Kingman

  At dawn, Constantia—stunned by broken sleep and cold—found angry red raised welts on Livia’s neck and wrists. There was no looking-glass in the room, but Constantia felt suspicious itching raised places on herself, too; and did her scalp crawl only with doubt? Or with something worse?

  “I hope you were comfortable, ma’am,” said Mrs Turnbull civilly, over breakfast. She had resolved to conceal that she could not remember this visitor’s name or her claim to be here—if indeed these had been told, last night. Most of the people who came wanted to see the ruined house, and Mrs Turnbull confidently anticipated a gratuity; perhaps a handsome one, to judge by the quality of this visitor’s tartan cloak.

  “Oh—well enough!”

  “The bed not damp?”

  “Well—perhaps—rather damp,” admitted the visitor.

  “I feared as much. Those featherbeds are dreadful to keep dry. And we’re not allowed to put them to the fire for airing—not after what happened. I mean our fire, of course—all those years ago.”

  “Oh! But what have featherbeds to do with that? Was not the fire caused by a jackdaw’s nest in a chimney?”

  “Nonsense. Oh, a jackdaw’s nest had something to do with it, sure enough—but the housekeeper’s daughter was to blame for that fire. A previous housekeeper: Mrs Wilson was her name. Well, not apurpose—I would never say that—nay, the girl’s wickedness was of another kind altogether, if you understand what I mean. Will you take coffee? Ma’am? And there is some butter if you want it for your bread. Does the baby take a rusk yet? There’s crasters, too. Her mother was to blame; she should have kept a stricter watch over such a girl as that. A pretty face is not always a girl’s fortune; it may very likely prove her downfall, instead. But there, I mustn’t clack on about all that old scandal—of no interest to anyone, after so long a time.”

  “On the contrary, Mrs Turnbull, there is nothing I should like better than to hear about that long-ago fire. I beg you will tell me all about Mrs Wilson—and her daughter—and the fire—and featherbeds, and jackdaw nests.”

  “Ah? Well; if it is of any interest to you . . .” Mrs Turnbull paused to gather her thoughts, and to re-estimate the tip that might be had by gratifying this nameless visitor’s unexpected taste for stale gossip. “Aye . . . well, Sir Jacob—as he was then, you know—always would write a week or two in advance, to advise that he would arrive on such a day, and would bring so many gentlemen with him; and to desire that Mrs Wilson should light fires in the necessary bedchambers for at least three days and nights—oh, the chill in those rooms, in winter! three days and nights of fires round the clock, just to get them passable warm! And she was to put the featherbeds before the fires, of course, to air and dry them—for this is not a dry house, and never was, not on this shore—not even in those days, when there was a roof over it. And the beds and their sheets all to be slept in for three nights at least before their arrival—”

  “Slept in! Why?”

  “So him and his friends wouldn’t be bit to pieces, of course, by hungry bugs! Mrs Wilson and her three daughters would all have to go upstairs each night to lie in all those grand beds—aye, in the new east wing that was, in those days, along the upstairs corridor. I’ll show you after breakfast, if you like, where it was. They must have come down each morning chewed to bits. Oh, there’s no getting rid of bed-bugs; they creep through the walls, and hide in the cracks, and behind the tapestries and the pictures; and even if you chase them from one room, it’s only as far as the next—and then they’ll creep right back again, the nasty bloodsucking creatures. A body can’t help but wonder what the Creator thought He was up to, when He created them. But once they’ve fed they’ll leave a body alone, for a few nights. And so Sir Jacob always wanted the beds well slept in—the bugs well-fed, you see!—before he’d come here, him and his friends. Another craster? Well, if you like to come along then, I’ll show you the house. Now, Jeannie,” she interrupted herself, turning to address the pitiable little maid, “I want you to sift the meal while I conduct, ah, this lady over the house. Oh, aye, ma’am, teeming with weevils, this latest sack of meal; dreadful stuff! We’ll go up this way; mind the steps. Often? Oh nay; even then Sir Jacob came here only seldom—and Lady Georgiana never, for her second baby was just new-born—and they were living together, mostly, at Melton Constable, and in London. But he’d bring a party of gentlemen, from time to time. ‘Gentlemen’! I suppose they must have been, though you might not have thought so, from their antics. Fancy dress; and theatricals; and tableaux wearing nothing but Roman togas—if so much as that. London must be a very odd place. Or sometimes Sir Jacob would come for a fortnight or so, with just his valet. What bad luck he had with valets! There seemed to be a new one every time he came. I was just a girl at the time, an under house-maid in my first place, up the coast—but everyone knew, and the matter was much talked of, though I did not understand it then. Now, you are about to see our celebrated, our magnificent hall,” said Mrs Turnbull, unlocking the door and standing politely to one side.

  Entering, Constantia was startled by an explosion—but it was only the beating wings of a score of pigeons taking flight, climbing up into the open grey sky that was the immense hall’s only roof. For a moment Constantia fancied the house’s ghosts—the Grey Lady, the White Lady—embodied now in these pigeons; and wasn’t there still a faint whiff of smoke, a ghost of calcined stone and burnt timber? “Forty-four feet long, and forty-four feet high,” Mrs Turnbull was saying, in a loud practised manner. The floor, a broad chequerboard of black and cream marble squares, was filthy, littered with leaves, twigs, bird-droppings. “There’s talk, now and again, of re-roofing it, but nothing ever comes of it. You wouldn’t think it could happen so fast, but see how the very marble of the floors is weathering, under twenty winters of snow; twenty summers of rain—”

  “Twenty-three, is it not?” said Constantia.

  “Let me see . . . the fire was the night of the third of January, in the year ’twenty-two,” said the housekeeper, “so that will make it . . . aye, twenty-four years, on the third of January next; so it will. How the years do fly by.”

  The water-stained walls rose three storeys. Let into them were tiers of Roman niches, each still occupied by its life-sized classical figure. Crammed against the plinths at the feet of each figure were pigeon-nests, on which a great many birds remained, peering warily down. “The statues large as life,” the housekeeper was declaiming, “executed by the best Italian artists, and each one holding her own symbols and ’tributes representing the fine arts such as, Music, Painting, Geography . . .”

  Constantia could feel the mist falling wetter on her upturned face, and pulled Livia’s cap well down over her ears. The statues were horrible, leprous; and Constantia saw that they were—had always been—frauds; not carved from stone at all by those best Italian artists, but only hollow skins of plaster over armatures of wire, their burnt heads now dangling on their breasts from shreds of wire and plaster; like incomplete suttees, widow-immolations; like half-cremated corpses on the banks of the Ganges. “ . . . Architecture, Sculpture, and . . . Stronomy,” trailed off the housekeeper, sounding increasingly doubtful.

  The marble fireplace was undamaged; caryatids supported it still, headachy but uncomplaining. The masonry of the walls was exquisitely worked, and the stone a luscious russety-pink hue as though bathed in the glow of a permanent sunset. “What is this beautiful stone?” asked Constantia. “Such an unusual colour.”

  “Well, it is our limestone, from the estate quarry. It was creamy, near white, but the fire burnt it pink,” said the housekeeper.

  The housekeeper now led the way to the splendid saloon. This, she asserted, measured seventy-five feet long and thirty feet wide, and its ceiling, “when it had one, before the fire, was painted by Signor Vercelli, an Italian, of goddesses and nymphs without any clothes on.” They proceeded then through various lofty apartments—dining-rooms, drawing-rooms, sitting-rooms, business-rooms, libraries—and arrived even
tually at one of the grand spiral stone staircases, “a full seventeen feet in diameter. And up there, you see, at that landing, was the doorway that led formerly to the new wing built by the last Lord Delaval—where the fire started.” Constantia could see a wide doorway which opened into thin air, grey sky. What remained of the iron stair baluster writhed over empty space where a few of the steps had fallen away. The stone was burnt a darker pink here; this stairwell filled with fire, thought Constantia, must have been like the chimney of a furnace.

  “Now we’ll pass outside again by way of our magnificent portico—of the Ironic order, and each column three feet in diameter—to the south front, formerly the pleasure grounds; and from here you can see where Lord Delaval’s handsome new wing had been.” With a wave of her arm, the housekeeper sketched the vanished wing in the air: “Two storeys, fourteen rooms: bedchambers, dressing-rooms, sitting-rooms—each with its own fireplace.”

  The mist was turning to drizzle and Constantia drew her cloak around Livia; how heavy she was becoming! Here, Constantia could see once more (from outside now) the high doorway which opened upon air. A few stone supports and corbels still jutted from the wall of the house, but in the rank grass below lay only a few—surprisingly few—large blocks of building-stone, burnt pink; not enough ever to have constituted so large a wing. “What has become of all the stone?” asked Constantia.

  “Stolen,” said the housekeeper. “So much easier, and cheaper, to steal, than to pay good money for new-cut stone from the quarry! The folk hereabouts have been helping themselves for years—until the new iron fence was put up. You need only stroll about the district with your eyes open to see where it has gone: there’s garden walls, and byres, and entire cottages all in the telltale pink of our stone. Now we’ve a watchman at night, but he’s worse than none; I’ll warrant you he’s been selling off what little remains.”

  “Do the family not come here?”

  “Not them. Why should they? Why leave the warmth and ease of Melton Constable? And London?”

  Constantia studied the building again, so strangely familiar. Just there, upon that balustraded terrace above the magnificent portico, she had held her mother’s hand, and watched the handsome balloonist sail his boat upward into the blazing Lucknow sky.

  Just there, in the hot airless room atop that corner tower, she and her mother had waited, and waited; waiting for the yellow-haired English officer who, when he came at last, held her hands and her gaze as though he would swallow her.

  “How did it start, though—the fire?” asked Constantia.

  “Aye, I was coming to that . . . where was I?”

  “Bed-bugs,” said Constantia.

  “Oh, aye. Come along out of the rain . . . this way, now, to the stable wing. Its chief apartment measuring no less than sixty-two feet long, and forty-one feet wide, and twenty-one feet and four inches high—and each stall and hay-manger built of dressed stone.”

  “All untouched by fire, I see,” said Constantia. “You were just about to tell me how it started.”

  “So I was. Well, as I’ve said, Sir Jacob had wrote to Mrs Wilson desiring her to ready the house for a party of gentlemen to arrive soon after the new year, so there was fires in all of those upstairs bedchambers in the new wing, and Mrs Wilson and her girls setting the featherbeds over the fenders in front of the fires each morning, and then putting them back onto the beds to lie in them each night. Only, that night—the third of January—one of the girls, the middle one, Polly, the pretty one—well, was she in her bed and sound asleep, where she ought to have been?” She turned to Constantia for a reply.

  “Was she?” said Constantia obligingly.

  “Nay, ma’am,” said the housekeeper. “I tell you she was not. And that featherbed she ought to have been sound asleep on—where was it?”

  “Where indeed?” said Constantia.

  “I will tell you: it was left draped over the fender, in front of the bedchamber fire. Just so near that when an old jackdaw nest came atumbling down the chimney, alight—well! Ticking and old dry feathers; imagine! They’d go up like tinder, you can be sure; and the stench of it! But was anyone there to see it, or smell it, or throw the water-jug onto it, or raise the alarm?”

  “Was no one there?”

  “Nay, ma’am; no one, I tell you. And where was the girl, then, if not sound asleep where she ought to have been?”

  “Where was she?”

  But the housekeeper only pursed her mouth and shook her head, saying nothing. She led the way now through a door which led into the vaulted basement beneath the main block of the house: chamber after chamber of dismal damp offices, passages, and store-rooms, with low dressed-stone arches between. Presently she stopped at a heavy timber door, and fumbling through her ring of keys, unlocked and opened it. Constantia followed her into the dim room lit by a single glazed window set high, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that it was stacked to the vaults with upturned chairs, and filthy tables, and chests, and crates, baskets, trunks, wardrobes. “This store contains everything that was saved from the fire,” said the housekeeper. “Only this.” She drew back a tarpaulin to uncover a stack of old framed pictures leaning against a wardrobe. Tipping three of them forward to reveal a fourth, she wiped it tenderly with the hem of her apron; then waved Constantia near, to see a three-quarter-length portrait of a man in uniform.

  Young; only recently entered upon the virile beauty of his full manhood; frank and level of gaze, his moustache darker than his yellow hair. His brows were straight and flat, and his eyes an unusual greeny-gold, rather feline; a deep dimple in his chin.

  “Who is that?” asked Constantia. She leaned closer, to see the engraved plate affixed to the frame. “‘John Fenwick Astley,’” she read aloud.

  “Jack. With him, that’s where,” said the housekeeper. “She was in Jack Astley’s room.”

  “Sir Jacob’s room, do you mean?”

  “Nay, not at all! I mean this cousin, Jack Astley; that is, Mr John Astley—not a legitimate cousin, mind you, but only a natural one, from the London branch of the family—nay, he was waiting for his commission that his guardians were trying to get for him in the service of the East India Company, for him to go out there and make his fortune, if he could—but there was some delay . . . and so, having no place to wait but here—well, here he waited: smoking in Sir Jacob’s library, and shooting at Sir Jacob’s game, and drinking Sir Jacob’s wine, and making himself agreeable—rather more than agreeable—to the daughters of Sir Jacob’s housekeeper. Ah! But he had a way with him, hadn’t he? And handsome! the picture doesn’t do him justice. The result was just what any reasonable person might foresee and expect. And prevent! But who’s to say that was not just what Mrs Wilson was hoping for, all along? A young man bearing that name, and with such prospects, even though illegitimate, would have been a fine match for any of her girls, and I’ll warrant you she’d have been relieved, not to say triumphant, to have had one of them taken off her hands by young Jack Astley, and away with him to the Indies. And that’s where that girl Polly was, that night, when she ought to have been sound asleep on a featherbed in the new bedroom wing. She was in Jack Astley’s room instead, off the upstairs gallery in the old central block.” The housekeeper jerked her thumb upward.

  “Oh! It was not Mr Todd, then? Not Miles Todd, from Newcastle?”

  “Him!” scoffed the housekeeper. “A day late, and a pound short, that one. Only just in time to get a pair of horns fastened to his forehead! I’ll say that for Mrs Wilson: she rarely missed a chance. There’s not many as could have been her equal, in her day, for turning any situation to advantage. I daresay there’s a great deal more to it, that she might have told if she pleased—but too late now. We’ll never know.”

  “That is a pity—for I should very much like to have met her. When was it she died?”

  “Died! Where did you get that idea? Nay, she is quite alive, though childish and unable to speak, nor stir from her chair, these ten yea
rs now. Aye, she is looked after by her eldest daughter, Mrs Russell, who does for old Miss Huthwaite of Seaton Lodge. Oh aye; they live in the cottage hard by—with the younger daughter too, the evangelical one. Far? From here? Not at all! It’s just down the road by the Sluice, across from the bottle works.”

  Mrs Turnbull’s anonymous visitor, with her baby and her carpet-bag, took leave suddenly, even hastily; but the tip pressed into Mrs Turnbull’s outstretched hand exceeded even that greedy woman’s utmost expectation.

  The watchman who let her out the gate watched her walk away along the muddy road toward the town, beneath a thickening drizzle now turning to frank rain. To his surprise, she had tipped him too.

  13

  THE WALK to Seaton Sluice, in a light gusting rain, took ten minutes. Within the shelter of Constantia’s cloak, heavy-lidded Livia nodded, drooling. A single line from the song her mother used to sing sounded over and over again in Constantia’s head as she walked; she could not banish it:

  No nine-months’ child, but only seven . . .

  No nine-months’ child, but only seven . . .

  No nine-months’ child, nor scarcely seven . . .

  Each of the six conical chimneys of the bottle works streamed its stinking black plume of smoke toward her, for the breeze blew fitfully off the sea. At the bridge across Seaton Burn, she paused. A bottle sloop tied up at the quay on the opposite shore was being loaded; from one of a pair of black gaping holes opening into the bank itself there issued clanking railcars laden with crates—from tunnels leading underground to the bottle works. What a thriving, bustling, dirty, stinking, noisy place! The shores of the Burn were bare mud, without grass or any growing thing. The opaque brown water of the Burn seemed scarcely to flow at all. She heard shouts of men, and groans and shrieks of machinery; but no birdsong, no plashing of water. A short distance upstream she could see another, smaller bridge thrown across the Burn; a footbridge, which led from the brick-built ranges of the bottle works on the far side to a large but plain thatched house on the near side: Seaton Lodge. Tucked in beyond the Lodge she could see the servants’ cottage; and from its chimney, there rose a meagre thread of smoke.