Tamara peered out of the drawing room window as guests milled about her. She nodded occasionally at them, attempted a smile when it was required. The view outside was mossy green, like the bottom of a pond. Dovestead was built into a natural dip, so that most of the land around it rose up into the distance. ‘Private and tucked away,’ was the way Cecil liked to describe it.
She wasn’t really sure what she was supposed to do in the country. There would be no more going to lectures of course. Cecil expected her to ride; he’d mentioned it several times, even though he knew that horses scared her. She found them beautiful from a distance, useful in front of a carriage, but she always felt nervous and timid whenever someone forced her to sit on one and kick her heels into its side. How on earth was she supposed to fill her time here then? What did one do in this mossy, ugly place?
Mama approached her from the other side of the room, wearing an expression of controlled relief and smiling thinly at those around her as she moved. She came up close and brushed out a crease in Tamara’s sleeve, as if her hands felt duty-bound to do something maternal.
‘Now you will behave, won’t you?’ she said softly in her ear.
For the first time that day Tamara wanted to cry. She gulped back the tears, clenching her teeth.
‘If I don’t, then will Mr Palmer do something terrible to me?’
Mama’s mouth twitched into something between a smile and a scowl. Her chest heaved.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Mr Palmer has gone for good; you don’t need to worry about him. Cecil has assured me that the man is far away and we can all now quietly forget about the past. Finally.’
She looked at the floor as she spoke and then out of the window. She had barely looked Tamara in the eye all day.
‘What was it like for you, when you married Father?’
Her mother shook her head softly.
‘I came from a different country. From a different world. I just wanted to survive.’
‘But Father loved you, didn’t he?’
Mama looked over to where Cecil was talking to two ancient women. He smiled and simpered at them, stroking back the thinning hair on his head.
‘Yes, for a while,’ she answered quietly.
Tamara barely remembered Father now. She had a fixed vision of him, like a pencil drawing: a slim, quiet man with rather melancholy eyes. She also had a hazy recollection of once listening to him and Mama, talking in low voices in the drawing room.
She’d been young at the time, small enough to crouch behind the large Chinese urn with her petticoats fluffed up around her ears. She couldn’t really hear what they were saying, although it still felt like a great game to spy on them from behind a pot. But then something about their voices made her suddenly not want to play that game anymore. There was a sadness to Father’s tone that wasn’t right in a grown-up’s voice and Mama began to gasp, as if she might cry. Tamara scrambled to her feet and ran away. She could picture her small back charging down the corridor as if she had somehow risen out of herself and could now watch the scene unfold from another place.
‘Would Father have been pleased?’
Mama’s eyes darted up, finally meeting hers. ‘About what?’
‘About me marrying Cecil of course.’
Her face went rigid: more stony and impenetrable than ever.
‘Ah, Mrs Hearst,’ came a voice. ‘May I be one of the first to offer my congratulations?’
Tamara turned to greet an associate of Cecil’s: a man in an unconvincing wig whose name had escaped her. When she turned back again, Mama had left the room.
When all the guests had finally left, Tamara found herself alone in the drawing room with Daniel. He had sat close to the fire throughout the day, ensconced in a great chair stuffed with cushions and blankets. She joined him now, warming her hands.
‘Damned house,’ he murmured, so softly that she wasn’t sure whether he was talking to her or muttering to himself. ‘Always damp, whatever we do. It gets into your bones.’ He rubbed at his knees and shivered.
Tamara regarded his sickly face. There were dark, bruise-like rings beneath his eyes. And yet for the first time she noticed that his hands looked considerably better. Usually they were covered with rashes and welts that made her feel rather squeamish.
‘Your hands have improved Daniel, you must be pleased about that,’ she said.
He inspected them, stretching his fingers apart carefully.
‘Yes, Mr Balanchine’s medicine did it. But it won’t last,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not now I’m here.’
The mention of Walter Balanchine made her start. She hadn’t known that he’d treated Daniel. It seemed odd that Cecil would go to a man like Walter for help when usually he was so scrupulous about his choice of esteemed London doctors. Poor Walter. He’d lost his closest friend because of her.
‘Would you come here, please.’
They both looked up. Cecil was standing by the door, his hands clasped behind his back. Daniel reached for his walking sticks.
‘Not you. You!’ said Cecil, pointing at Tamara.
The command made her want to crumple up, as if she’d suddenly shrunk into a small child again. She walked slowly over to her husband.
‘It has stopped raining. You can go for a walk now; familiarise yourself with the grounds, breathe in the air. Then you will go to your new room in the north tower to wash thoroughly and change for dinner. We dine at seven thirty. Is that all clear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Go on then.’
*
She should have worn her boots, but they hadn’t been unpacked yet and she didn’t want to bother the new maid about it. Even Saunders, the ancient butler who’d once served Cecil’s parents, shook his head and blinked his milky eyes at her, as she left the house and did her best to skirt the puddles. The land around Dovestead Castle was completely waterlogged. It made loud, guttural squelches with every step of her fine, kid-leather wedding shoes. She tried to stay on pathways whenever she could, lifting her skirts above the muddy ground. When the paths gave up she had to make do and squelch on. The land rose up and soon she was out of breath, a chill breeze stinging at her face.
In the direction she had taken, the outer limit of the estate was marked by a stone wall. Beyond it there was a narrow road. She knew that if you turned right, the road would eventually reach Bristol; the place where Hearst tobacco was brought in by great ships, some of which once belonged to her father. If you turned left, then you would reach the village of Thornspire and the church where she had married Cecil that morning.
She turned her back to the road and looked down at Dovestead Castle. The house really did sit in a saucer-like dip in what was otherwise an almost entirely flat landscape. She looked down at her shoes, now ruined by mud, and prodded at the ground with the ends of her toes. Up here the land was much firmer, in spite of all the rain that morning.
Her eyes moved across the two towers that dominated Dovestead. The red brick expanse of the north tower was where she was supposed to sleep. It was squat and round and ugly. Cecil’s father, old Mr Hearst, had designed it himself. Clearly a lifetime in industry had made its mark on his vision. Someone had attempted to grow some climbing plants up its walls, but they looked sickly and unconvinced, as if they would much rather be somewhere else.
Cecil had had the rooms reorganised in the north tower for the wedding, ‘to make the most of the view’. His bedroom looked out across the fields to the other side from where Tamara was standing now. There, just beyond Dovestead’s grounds, snaked a river. It cut across the land like a shiny, silver scar.
Her own bedroom looked the other way, back across the rest of the house, over the tiled roof and into the windows of the ancient tower on the other side of the building. They called this ‘the south tower’. She scanned its smooth, pale stone; so different to the modern part of the building, that looked as if it were clamping red brick jaws into its side. How many hundreds of years had it stood there, we
athering the elements, carrying the burden of history on its shoulders? The stones that held it together were immense. Its narrow windows blinked back at her with leaded glass. Suddenly she was filled with a desire to explore it; to press her cheek against the stone walls that had endured this place for so long.
The sound of approaching horse’s hooves clattered on the road behind her. A single male rider appeared in view, coming from the direction of the village. As he got closer she saw that he was a man of middle age with a pleasant-looking wide face and long, greying whiskers. He spotted her and came to a halt.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said in the soft Somerset burr where the ‘a’s are long and the ‘r’s are even longer. ‘Can I help you at all Miss? Are you lost?’
His eyes were clear pale blue and sparkled warmly at her.
‘No, thank you,’ she replied. ‘This is my home now.’
A look of wide-eyed astonishment crossed his face.
‘Well! I heard that Cecil Hearst was getting married. Am I to understand that you are the new Mrs Hearst?’
Tamara hesitated and then found herself nodding. Tears instantly filled her eyes, which made hot panic rush though her and the inevitable threat of yet more tears. Awful. This man was a complete stranger and here she was welling up at just the mere mention of her marriage. The man looked away, pretending to adjust something on his horse’s bridle. She took a few deep breaths and blinked into a fixed point in the distance.
‘The name’s Peters, I own the farm beyond.’ He waved his hand at some indistinct region ahead. ‘If you need any help settling and understanding the area then I’m sure my wife can help you. She’s lived here all her life, as have I for that matter!’
‘Thank you,’ Tamara tried her best to smile. ‘I was wondering, where does that road lead?’ she asked, pointing in the direction he’d come from.
He scratched his head. ‘Well that there road forks about a mile after Thornspire. You know Thornspire?’
‘Yes, I was married there this morning.’
He looked startled again. ‘This morning you say? And here’s you walking around on your own in all your finery.’ He shook his head for a moment and then continued. ‘Well, one of them roads that forks’ll take you up to the sea. The other leads to Glastonbury. Have you been there?’
‘No.’
‘They say that the stone that built St Michael’s Church there in the 1300s was the same as what built this tower here,’ he said, pointing to the south tower at Dovestead. ‘They say they brought the stones all along this same road ’ere and built Marshstead Tower with them.’
‘Marshstead? Don’t you mean Dovestead?’
‘No, no. It’s always been Marshstead because it’s right in the middle of a marsh you see. No building’s ever survived on that land there apart from that great strong tower ’cause it gets flooded so much. It was old Mrs Hearst, your departed mother-in-law, who took a shine to it. Fancied herself as a princess I think,’ and he laughed heartily. ‘She thought up the new name but all of us locals still call it Marshstead.’
Tamara looked back over the old tower. She’d only ever known Cecil’s parents at the end of their lives: withered and powdered and always rather in awe of their eldest son. She imagined the fluffy haired old lady sitting in her tower, clutching some embroidery and dreaming of another life of turrets and sonnets and courtly love.
The light was just beginning to fade and the landscape was changing with it. She regarded the river again, just beyond the house. It looked different now, like a thick grey ribbon.
‘You must come and visit us, Mrs Hearst. My wife bakes like nothing you’ve ever seen or tasted. Come for tea.’
‘I’d like that very much. Do you … do you know my husband well?’
Mr Peters looked down for a moment, as if he were embarrassed. ‘Relatively so,’ he replied. ‘The Hearst family, they’re not farmers you see, they’re city folk. But we’re that happy to make you feel at home.’
She watched his horse disappear, thinking of Mrs Peters and her baking. The promise of it made her smile properly for the first time that day. No, the Hearst’s certainly weren’t farmers; they were born and raised in industry, however much Cecil attempted to play the country squire. And she…well, she could barely ride a horse. What would they think of her?
*
She changed for dinner. Her wedding gown was filthy around the hem and she was grateful for the comfort of her dark blue dress again. Cecil sat at the head of the table. She sat to the right of him and Daniel to the left.
‘How did you find your walk?’ Cecil enquired.
‘Very pleasant, thank you.’
‘I will have to look into getting you a horse.’
‘I don’t really like riding.’
‘Well that will have to change. You’re in the country now.’
She peered down at her soup. Daniel did the same. He rarely seemed to look up.
‘The soup’s to your liking, boy? Too hot? Too cold?’
‘Quite satisfactory,’ he mumbled.
‘I met a neighbour on my walk,’ said Tamara. ‘A local farmer called Mr Peters.’
Cecil put his spoon down and drew his hand over his head.
‘Was he bothering you?’ he asked.
‘No, not at all. He was just passing by. We should have invited him and his wife to the wedding.’
This made Cecil’s nose wrinkle up in amusement. ‘What, people like that? Are you quite serious? Anyway, that man is an infernal pain who likes nothing better than sticking his nose into our affairs. You keep away from him from now on.’
When it was time to retire for the evening, Cecil took Daniel to his room to ‘settle’ him. Tamara climbed the stairs alone to her new bedroom. She sat at the dressing-table, peering at her reflection. Strange. She felt so lonely at that moment that she even missed Mama. The thought of Tom’s gentle, handsome face drifted through her mind. And that exquisite kiss they’d shared. Never had she felt so intimate and so honest in another person’s company.
How much had he suffered? She had prayed and prayed that just the fright of that fall had killed him. That by the time he reached the floor of St Paul’s, his spirit had already gone to another place. Because the very thought of those long, slim bones shattering agonisingly against the floor, still made the bile crawl up her throat.
It had taken both Cecil and Mama to drag her down the stairs of the Whispering Gallery that night. She tried to fight them off over and over again, but Cecil held her arms and shoulders back in a grip that was too powerful for her to shake off. When at last she saw the curled, broken body on the floor, she finally gave in.
The sound of stark footsteps, somewhere far off in the building, suddenly doubled the force of Cecil’s grip on her.
‘Quickly, and be quiet,’ he hissed, dragging her away. ‘Someone’s coming. Quickly.’
‘But his body!’ she spluttered, catching a last glimpse of the broken form.
‘Nothing more than a suicide.’
She remembered being grappled outside, vomiting violently on the street before being hauled into a carriage.
And yet, through the thick haze of misery that blanketed over her at that moment, she noticed one strange thing; one small occurrence that had captured her attention. As Cecil barked out orders to the driver and she pressed her face against the carriage window, her wrists clenched like a prisoner in Mama’s grip, she saw a figure leaving the cathedral by the same door. The figure was lithe and agile, more like a boy than a man, and it moved through the shadows with the grace of someone who knew just how to disappear from sight.
Day and night merged after that. She refused to eat.
‘Don’t make me marry that man!’ was all she could scream.
The key to her room was turned on her; she really did become a prisoner. Only Mama had access.
Slowly, as the days moved on, the scream turned into a plea: ‘Don’t make me marry him, don’t please.’
She felt her body be
coming weaker. Soon her refusal to eat became an inability to eat, as if her stomach had wrinkled up into a hard, tight knot inside her. Her skin became so dry and shrunken that when she looked at herself in the mirror, it seemed as if an old and dying version of herself was looking back at her.
At last she found herself lying at Mama’s feet, gripping her skirts and whimpering.
‘Why? Why must I marry him?’
Mama came down to the floor to meet her, her skirts puffed about like a grey puddle that was slowly sucking her in. Her usual indomitable expression had been replaced by lines of deep anguish.
‘Tamara, if you don’t marry Cecil Hearst, it will be the ruin of you and me. We will be nothing, we will have nothing and our names will be dirt. Be strong, marry him, and then lead your life as you see fit. That is what women do. Stop being a silly little girl. Now, never speak to me of this again.’
Her mother’s voice had shaken as she spoke, as if she were holding back something so powerful and unrelenting inside her that it physically hurt. When she spoke like this, the Germanic tones of her accent became stronger. She sounded different. And, with that haunted, anguished expression on her face, she even began to look different.
Everything about her seemed so strange that Tamara suddenly didn’t recognise this woman at all. To see her mother metamorphose into this foreign, unknown being was so shocking, that Tamara found herself unable to form a single word in response. There was a force in that pained, seething voice that could not be answered. There was a frightened beast behind those almond eyes that could not be crossed. And so Tamara did the only thing she felt capable of at that moment. She nodded.
*
Her new bedroom in the north tower was sparsely furnished. Cecil didn’t like ‘fuss’ when it came to decoration. She began to unpin her hair, looking at the room through the reflection of her mirror. For the first time she noticed that the curtains, now drawn against the night, had some sort of motif embroidered in them. She squinted her eyes for a moment and then suddenly realised what it was: an image of the south tower, with a ship floating in front of it. The new Hearst coat of arms, of course. Cecil was tremendously proud of his commission, but it made her want to snort with laughter whenever she saw it. In this image, the south tower looked more like a lighthouse to her, politely warning a passing vessel. It wasn’t quite the impression of grandeur that she imagined Cecil had hoped for.
Illusion Page 12