by Joan Aiken
Val suddenly felt an interloper there.
But Pieter came to her and held her hand tightly. David sat down in a basket chair and told Elspie about his mother’s last days, while she brought him seed cake and a glass of whisky. And Jannie waking, apparently forgetful of what had caused her terror, clambered down from Mungo’s knee and came, still sucking her finger, to lean against Val and be petted.
But when Pieter said, worriedly, “Where’s Papa?” she began to cry again, and clung feverishly tight with both arms round Val’s neck.
“It’s all right, Jannie—nobody’s going to hurt you,” Val said. “Papa’s asleep, Pieter, in one of the rooms on the top floor. It’s quieter for him there. Doctor Ramsay says that he is sick, and he will sleep for hours.”
Pieter repeated this reassurance to Jannie.
And Mungo said to Val and David in a low, angry tone, “It seems, by all I can gather from what the wee lassie let out when she was so frighted, that the last time she laid eyes on her father he gave her a terrible dunt on the heid; indeed, he would aye be doing it when he was displeased with her if what she says can be believed.”
And how should a child her age invent such a thing? Val thought wearily. No doubt it is true.
She said, “Did your father ever hit you, Pieter?”
His face clouded. He said, “No. Papa’s kind to me, mostly always, and gives me candy. I don’t know why he hits Jannie. It’s not fair. I’m as kind as I can be to her, to make up. And Mama’s very kind. Aunt Val—if Papa has come—where is Mama? Has she come too?”
His face of hope raised to her was like a small vulnerable target.
“No, Pieter,” she said steadily. “I’m sorry. Your father came here on a ship, and I’m afraid that on—on the way, your mother fell overboard and was drowned.”
Pieter looked at her in silence for a long moment; then he turned and made his way blindly back to Mungo, who held him and comforted him without speaking, bending his grizzled head over the boy’s fair one.
Thank God; thank God for Mungo, Val said inwardly with all her heart; where should we have been without him?
Elspie, who had paused a moment in her work, waiting to hear what Val would say, began chopping again as if she intended to cut up the board and the table too.
Before leaving, David gave Val some quiet instructions about her brother. He could have a small quantity of brandy, if that was what he craved, but not too much.
“I have a notion,” David said, “from the look of his pupils, that he must have been taking laudanum. Has he any with him, do you know?”
“I’ve no idea,” Val said, “but it is possible. Would that account for his strange turns—his seeing apparitions and talking so wildly?”
“It might well—taken in conjunction with all the brandy he has drunk. I think you should make a search among his things and, if you find any laudanum, remove it.”
“Very well.” Disliking the prospect of this task, she delayed his departure a moment by asking, “Sir Marcus? Is he still at Wolf’s Hope?”
“No, no. He stayed only for the funeral, then went on to Ravenswood, intending to return to Edinburgh next day. Doubtless he will be there by now. I think that he was very disappointed not to see you again. But of course if your brother was here, I can understand why you wrote to put him off.”
He paused, his foot in the stirrup, to say, “I daresay, now your brother has reappeared to take charge of the children, you yourself will be leaving Ardnacarrig soon?”
Val was astonished at how much the suggestion upset her. She said, “Oh, I don’t know, Davie! How can I make any plan while Nils is in such a state?”
“Well, I will come again soon and then we can discuss it, if you like.”
He rode out of the yard, Greylag picking her way dispiritedly in the snow.
Somewhat cheered by this promise, Val made her way back up the wide stairs, past the antlers and weapons; through the Long Gallery, giving a nervous glance at its far entrance, and on up the narrow flight to the attic floor.
When she entered the stuffy little room she found Nils motionless still, deep in sleep as they had left him. With great reluctance she knelt down on the floor by his canvas duffel bag and began to investigate its contents. She found the metal brandy flask, empty now. There was a shirt, handkerchiefs, and two pairs of stockings, all dirty. A notebook, pens, knife, and inkwell; some sheets of paper with notes scrawled on them in a kind of shorthand; a much-tattered, much-folded red and green theatrical print, captioned “Miss Letitia Pettigrew as Titania,” which Val hurriedly refolded with trembling hands; some Lucifer matches; a razor, a morsel of soap and a candle end; small box containing snuff; and a larger, wooden box. That was all. If there were any laudanum, it must be in the wooden box. With slow and nervous care, Val levered off the tight-fitting lid. An object inside, wrapped in a dirty piece of snuff-coloured rag, occupied most of the space.
Val undid the wrappings.
After that she was concerned mainly with a desperate struggle for self-control—first, not to scream aloud, secondly, not to vomit. For what lay in front of her on the dark-smeared cloth—grey, wrinkled, cold, leaden, horrible—was a small severed human hand.
One of its fingers still wore a wedding ring.
Bluebeard, Val thought confusedly. Scheherezade. She kept calm and told a story every night. No, that was heads, not hands.
Her own hands were shaking so much that it was difficult to rewrap the horrible object. Along with it was a phial, presumably containing laudanum drops. She wrapped a handkerchief round both things, ran downstairs, flung on a cloak, let herself out by the French window, and walked rapidly down to the snowy beach. The tide was far out; the stretch of wet sand it had left exposed was a bleak grey, reflecting the colour of the sky.
Val walked rapidly along to Jock’s line of posts. Beyond them the Kelpie’s Flow rippled slightly, heaved and sighed, like porridge just below boiling point. Val drew back her arm and hurled both objects as far as she could into the middle of the dimpled, vibrating space; then waited and watched. In a moment both the small dark things had disappeared from sight, sucked into the sand.
It was lucky for Nils, she thought, turning, that he didn’t walk into the quicksand, hiding in the cliff cave along at this end of the beach. But I suppose he knew about it, I suppose Kirstie will have told him—when they came here—before they were married.
She imagined them, young and lighthearted, running along the sand, exploring the caves, laughing as they tossed stones into the quicksand, climbing the terrifying goat track that led straight up from the rocks to Wolf’s Crag castle. Kirstie didn’t know that one day, her hand . . . If Kirstie was drowned, what was her hand doing in that box?
Val walked along the beach as if the furies were after her; the snow stung her face and she welcomed its cold bite; she breathed huge gulps of the piercing air and rubbed her hands violently on the snowy grass; anything to expunge the smell and feel and thought of what Nils had carried about with him.
To and fro along the beach; a jerky tune wandered through her head, to which her feet automatically kept time; vaguely she identified it as one of those she had danced to at the Allertons’ ball—something called the “King Pippin Polka.” Tum te tum te turn. The foolish music, the chandeliers, muslins, smell of floor polish and gardenias, the snobbish chatter of the Allertons and their friends came back to her with a mad irrelevance. That evening seemed in another century. There I was, she thought, dancing over that huge expanse of polished floor with my yellow ribbons flying out behind; there I was making polite conversation with Mr. Dexter about the Bermondsey Beast, and all the time Nils was waiting for me on the doorstep in Twenty-third Street. And all the time that hand was waiting for him. But where did it all start? To and fro, to and fro. With that goodbye on the quay, Mother in her black velvet and green muff? It’s a good thing I’m not sti
ll engaged to Benet, at all events, she thought; he’d never put up with hands in people’s luggage. But of course Nils thinks that Benet is a fortune hunter. And Nils ought to know, being a fortune hunter himself par excellence; first you marry, then you chop their hands off. I’m hysterical, she thought, I must stop thinking these thoughts, which do not help at all. I must pull myself together and go back to the house, to kind blessed Mungo and sane, tough, fair-minded Elspie.
What would they say if I told them about the hand?
She simply could not imagine. Perhaps Scots take such things more matter-of-factly? They have a tradition of battles and border raids, feuds and murders and mutilations, not too far in their past.
But she knew she was not going to mention this horror to them.
Back in the kitchen Elspie was distracting Pieter, who showed a tendency to nervous harping on his father’s illness, by tales of smugglers and their doings.
“Och, yes, there were plenty around here! Every drop of brandy the auld laird drank was run over from France; he ne’er paid a penny of duty. The exciseman used to come roond fra Wolf’s Hope, but he ne’er caught them; they used to bring it along the underground way from the cliff foot—”
“Underground way?” Pieter cried, eyes sparkling. “Can we see it? Is it still there?”
“Fegs, I daresay it is, but no one’s set foot in it this fifty year; it comes oot in the auld part o’ the hoose; there’s a hidden entrance i’ the ingle that’s in the little cheese room. But ye dinna want to go in there; it’s a’ dark and dirty and cobwebby—”
Pieter’s fears seemed as likely to be aroused by this as by thoughts of his father’s seizure; Val soon made an excuse to take the children off to bed. Pieter, when he had Val alone, wanted to ask her questions about his mother’s death. But she could tell him nothing. She could not bear to think of Kirstie’s death. Had she been killed like those others—the streetwoman? How had she died?
Val had to stay with the children longer than usual before they would settle; Pieter was nervous and tearful, Jannie prone to hysteria, reverting to all her former troublesome ways.
Val herself lay awake for hours, and when she did sleep, it was to such horrible dreams that she was glad to wake, though she did so with an aching head, and a feeling as if no night had passed, as if the new day were but a dreadful continuation of the old one.
She leaned out of the window. It was black dark still, but she could feel the snow brushing her face. Not a sound was to be heard, except the distant murmur of the sea.
“How happy we were before Nils came,” she thought, brushing her heavy fair hair. “Just Mungo and Elspie, just the children and me. Why was I so discontented here? Why do I never learn?”
Downstairs it was a faint pleasure to find that Tom the postman had brought a letter for her in Sir Marcus’s handwriting. Val opened it quickly, wishing with all her heart that the writer were present in the flesh.
But the contents were dismaying.
He wrote briefly and simply of his sorrow at Helen’s death—“I will speak more of this at a later time”—and his disappointment at not seeing Val again. “But doubtless you were right in forbidding me to come,” he wrote. “In my sad spirits I might heedlessly have blurted out more than you wished to hear. (Such babes are we all at heart.) And I imagine you had the best and strongest reasons for prohibiting my visit.
“Since my return to the city I have had the pleasure of a meeting with your friend Mr. Benet Allerton, who yesterday called on me to inquire your direction. I have not yet given it to him, being uncertain of your wishes in this matter, but he is very urgent to see you. Shall I tell him where to find you? He and his mother and sisters are, I understand, staying at the Caledonia Hotel I thought him a most estimable young man and—need I say it—I have every sympathy for his evident desire to be reunited with you.”
A note from Benet was also enclosed. Val eyed it as if it might, when opened, emit a poisonous gas.
“Is Tom Postie still here?” she asked, when she had swiftly digested its contents.
“Och, no!” said Elspie. “He was awa’ back to Wolf’s Hope as if the dragoons were after him, before the bents are a’ blocked over wi’ snaw. ‘Tis like tae be a dooms heavy fa’—the whaups are awa’ inland, an’ that’s a sure sign. Tom says he mightna be this way again for three-four days, gin the tracks are covered deep.”
Val was dismayed at this news. She wanted to write to Benet at once and tell him not to come—what disastrous concatenation of chances had brought him to Scotland now, of all possible times? All she could hope was that he and his womenfolk (sisters, Sir Marcus had written, but he had only one; who could the other be?) would tire of waiting in wintry Edinburgh and return to London, and thence to New York. But her hope was not strong; Benet was dogged and persistent to an extreme degree when in pursuit of some desired object. If he had come all this way to see her, he was not likely to be put off.
She read again the little note that Sir Marcus had enclosed. It was somewhat curt and dictatorial. “My dear Val: Please make arrangements to see me. It is an absurd piece of childishness not to send your address. You must allow that I have the right to see you and discuss this matter. If it is concern for your brother’s children that is holding you back—and if you persist in this quixotic wish to look after them—though I see no reason why you should, since your brother never lifted a finger for you—then why not bring them back to New York where they can be cared for in a proper manner? If the parents still have not reappeared by the time we are married, we can adopt them legally; or, Mother and Delia can look after them in Washington Square.” Val gulped at this, thinking of the drawn curtains, and all Mrs. Allerton’s bric-a-brac; bare and shabby Ardnacarrig might be, wintry and bleak, but at least there was no chance of the children growing up into helpless stuffed stupidity there, like poor Delia.
“I suppose there will be some money coming to them from their mother’s family?” wrote Benet, and Val thought of Nils, saying, “Of course old Benet knew about your money; all those lawyers live in each other’s pockets.”
Could Nils have been right? About the money, about Benet’s knowledge of it? “I’ve a talent for finding things out about people,” Nils had said, and she could see that he had; suspecting the worst about people, he then proceeded to hunt for it and profitably find it.
Val had a sudden grotesque vision of the world seen in his terms: Benet, a calculating fortune hunter; their father, an impotent, Puritanical prig; David Ramsay, warped into an oddity by excessive devotion to his mother; Elspie, wedded by old grudges to a mouldering house; Sir Marcus, a valetudinarian egoist, incapable of real love—the Carsphairn ladies, loveless misers—
Is nobody truly good, truly disinterested? she wondered, and then thought, Don’t be a fool, look at Mungo, look at Helen Ramsay. (But is Mungo really truthful, what do I know about him? Only what he has told us.) No, she thought, Nils has a view of the world that is distorted by his own sickness; I think he is really mad; his horrible occupation of searching out people’s secret faults, making money from the ugly irrational side of their behaviour, has tipped his own mind over into unreason. He always had a streak of it.
She remembered an occasion when she had been standing by him at the window, watching the approach of the muffin man, bell in hand, tray on head, along Twenty-third Street. When the man was in front of their house, Nils had flung open the window and deliberately tossed down Val’s cherished pot of geraniums which hit the tray of muffins and smashed, scattering earth, cakes, flowers, and shards of pot all over the snowy sidewalk. When punished by their father, Nils had merely said, “I thought it would be a lark to stop little Miss Greedyguzzle from having a muffin for once. She’s too fat!” “But you like muffins as well,” Mr. Montgomery said, utterly baffled by his stepson’s spiteful perversity. “Not so much as seeing that pot smash on the tray!” Nils said, and took his punishment wit
h indifference. “Why do you break my things?” Val wept on another occasion when he cracked her ivory thimble in the nutcrackers. “Why, you little simpleton? I’ll tell you why. Because, once a thing is broken, no one, not you, not Father, not the president himself, can do anything about it. It’s gone, for good and all!”
Rousing herself from this unprofitable reverie, Val went to see how the children were occupied, before nerving herself to interview her brother.
She found Mungo crossing the yard, carrying a pot of tar.
“The bairns? They’re fine,” he said. “They’re down to the boathouse, a’ set to watch me paint the boat. Pieter’s boring holes in a wee bit of wood, an’ Jannie’s playing wi’ the shavings. Never fret about them, Mistress Val. They can bide with me for an hour or two. You try and get your brither out for a bit walk; he needs air to blow the horrors out of his mind.”
“How should we manage without you, Mungo?” said Val gratefully, and went up to the attic; her task could be postponed no longer.
He was still sleeping when she went in, but she shut the door with a deliberate bang, and then walked across to the bedside and slightly shook his shoulder. He opened bloodshot eyes and looked at her sensibly and recognisingly. He was wax-pale, but his breathing and pulse appeared normal.
“Nils,” she said without preamble. “Why did you have Kirstie’s hand in your box?”
He stared at her in silence for a long moment, during which she had time to think, Perhaps he is really raving mad. Perhaps he will cut my throat with that razor, slash me, disembowel me—he is trying to make up some lie—perhaps he will just never speak again?
“I might have known you’d pry, you bitch,” he said at last in a low voice. “Anyway—how did you know it was Kirstie’s?”