As Shadows Haunting

by Deryn Lake

  ‘No eighteenth-century girl could have done that,’ Sidonie thought. ‘The most that anyone with talent could have hoped for would have been a really good tutor who would have instructed her at home.’

  Nor would what followed later have been allowed. When she had left the College she had gone to Paris to study with Madame Monique Amboise, living in cheap chambres, sharing the lavabo. Sidonie had also shared a workshop with others, where she had practised the harpsichord for hours. It had all been a far cry from the life of the black-haired girl who had lived in the eighteenth century.

  Sidonie had met Nigel by then, a local boy who had gone to Marlborough College and been handsome though decidedly thick-set. He would phone her, coming through on a telephone situated in a nearby launderette; but usually Sidonie phoned him and they would murmur trivialities at one another in a rather sentimental manner. She supposed now that distance had enhanced the view, that he had seemed far more attractive because he was on the other side of the Channel. Whatever the reason, Sidonie had married him at the age of twenty-three when she had returned to England in 1982, and Nigel had promptly been elected to parliament, standing for the Tories, at the next by-election. In a way they had hardly known one another and Sidonie thought now that it would have taken two very exceptional and adult people to make the marriage work.

  “And that is where my little ghost would have triumphed,” Sidonie remarked to Carl. “She would have had nothing to do all day but look after her husband, while I had to fit in hours of practice and the occasional concert with all he wanted to do.”

  They had been married two years, two years during which Sidonie had been expected to play the part of political hostess as well as everything else, when Nigel’s somewhat liquid charm had got him noticed by the Prime Minister. Sidonie had done her best, trying to help him as much as she could, but he, typically, had not returned the compliment. The member for Midhurst had wanted his wife to give up her career and become strictly an amateur. She had been on the point of doing so when Roderick Rees had heard her play in Bath and everything had changed.

  The natural antipathy between the two men had been instant. Rod had even gone so far as to call Nigel Beltram MP a selfish bastard in a very loud Welsh voice.

  “It’s music or me,” Nigel had shouted when things had finally came to a head. “If you sign on as one of that Welsh crook’s clients you can bloody well get out.”

  “Then I bloody well will,” Sidonie had shouted back. “I didn’t waste countless years of my life studying music just to make small talk at political cocktail parties. I’m off.”

  He had struck her so hard then that she had reeled through the front door, dizzy and hardly able to see.

  “That’s it,” Sidonie had gasped over her shoulder. “Men who hit women disgust me. I hope I never set eyes on you again.”

  ‘Now that could have happened in the eighteenth century,’ she thought, ‘but I wonder how tied they would have been. Would a woman have been able to get a divorce or would she have been stuck?’

  But whatever the answer to that question, Sidonie in her century had had no hesitation.

  “Get rid of the pig,” her mother had said forthrightly. “Violence is something that must not be countenanced.”

  Rod had put it a different way. “Tell him to piss off or I’ll land one on him.”

  “One what?”

  “One knuckle sandwich. Now don’t think about the prat any more. Listen, I’ve got you a cancellation at the Wigmore Hall for 1990.”

  Sidonie had looked at him breathlessly. “Do you mean it?”

  “Yes, Sid bach, I do. It’s a Tuesday night, worse luck, but I’ll get everybody there who counts. Trust me.”

  “I do.”

  “And as to the future, divorce that creep and concentrate on your playing. You are going to be a very big star indeed.”

  “Am I truly?”

  “Yes, but no mixing with the wrong sort of men, mind. You can sleep with who you like but it’s got to be love ’em and leave ’em. I don’t want some half-baked idiot interfering again.”

  “But what happens if I fall in love?”

  “Avoid it like the plague,” Rod had said succinctly. “Chauvinism is alive and well and dwelling in the hearts of most European males. Don’t trust any of ’em.”

  She had laughed, watching his great Italian eyes rolling in his head, but still there had been something about the words that had struck home. She had had one affair since the divorce, with a flute player in the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, but it had been doomed from the start. It had almost been a contest as to which one of them had the greater ambition, and had lasted only a few months.

  ‘And now here I go again,’ thought Sidonie, ‘falling for the man upstairs and about to make a fool of myself no doubt.’

  But what a beautiful man he was, and only available to her because of the death of some poor creature she had never met.

  “Fate is very odd,” she said to Catty Scarlatti, who opened one eye and then closed it again. “I wonder what will happen next.”

  She stared at her reflection, back in the present day, her reminiscences at an end, regarding herself critically. Her eyes were lively, shining, obviously much improved by the love affair. But it seemed to Sidonie that she was a little fuller in the face.

  “Oh, God, I’m not putting on weight, am I?” she groaned, and pulled at her chin, looking for flab, then stood up and turned sideways. “I’m sure I’m getting a paunch. It’s all that sitting.”

  Much as she disliked the idea it did seem to Sidonie that she was fatter and a quick leap onto the scales showed a gain of five pounds.

  “Oh dear, it’s diet and exercise time,” she grumbled to the cat, and searching in her wardrobe unearthed an old pink tracksuit which she rather disliked. “Time this went to a jumble sale,” she said, but put it on as there was nothing else handy.

  Sidonie had, in common with quite a few musicians, never really liked exercising, while still being aware that it was vital she took a fair amount. Hours of practice, in her case sitting down, quickly took their toll on even the slimmest, and the recent tour when she had crammed in as much hotel food as she could to keep her energy level high had not helped at all. Added to this was the fact she felt under no strain, that she bloomed in Finnan’s company, that when they were together they cooked for one another.

  “I’ve got to jog,” said Sidonie determinedly and let herself out of the front door.

  It was Wednesday and it was March, a sharp day with clear definition of leaf and bud, a day of high bluster and needling showers. But, as always, none of this was apparent in the roaring abyss of Kensington High Street and it was not until she had turned into Holland Park, feeling a little foolish in her blancmange-coloured gear, that Sidonie seemed capable of taking a deep breath and running freely.

  Having sped past the Commonwealth Institute, a building that everyone was supposed to like but which she actually detested, Sidonie ran up the grass slope towards Nightwalk, the pathway in front of Holland House where once the night watchman had done his rounds. It went through her mind just then that she had not seen her Joshua Reynolds girl, her dark-haired ghost, since New Year’s Eve, that she had been away so much her extraordinary trips into the past had not been possible. And it was even as Sidonie thought this that a horse suddenly and rather shockingly loomed in front of her.

  She had been running head down, concentrating on her feet, on making her metabolism rise with her heartbeat, and so had not actually been watching where she was going. In this way it was something of a surprise to see four equine legs stand directly in her path and realise that there was a rider abroad where she had never realised such a thing was allowed. Instantly Sidonie was suspicious, aware of mysteries which allowed supernature to catch up with her at any time. Panting for breath, feeling dishevelled, she looked up.

  A man sat astride the horse, a man with whom for no reason at all she felt an instant empathy. He was young, in
his early twenties, and had a fresh handsomeness which appealed to her. A wide pair of bright blue eyes stared towards Holland House and a clear healthy skin, quite unblemished and unspoilt, flushed as a consequence of what he saw there. Sidonie followed his gaze and realised it had happened to her again. The mansion stood whole and splendid, while the surroundings looked as they had done over two hundred years ago.

  In the past Sidonie had been either afraid or alarmed, but now she took a deep breath and tried to conquer the panic that seemed an inextricable part of any experience she had into the unknown. Though she had been barely able to grasp its complex mathematical formulae she had recently studied Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, particularly with regard to the concept of lapses of time being different in different frames of reference.

  In the encyclopaedia she came upon the example of the pair of twins, one on earth, the other travelling in a rocket to Proxima Centauri, the nearest known star. Eight and a half years would elapse on earth between the launch of the spacecraft and its return, but on the vehicle itself only fourteen and a half months would pass because of the speed at which it travelled. Therefore, so Sidonie understood, if the twins had been ten at the start of the journey, the earthbound one would be eighteen and a half when the rocket returned but the travelling twin just over eleven.

  If time truly could elapse at different speeds for different people might this be the explanation of Sidonie’s own strange experiences? But now, gasping from her exertions in the cold clear light of day, rational answers seemed to have little place. Only just keeping in control of herself, Sidonie studied the rider who sat his horse so close by, unaware that she was only a few feet away from him, observing everything he did.

  She recognised the man at once as somebody famous, somebody whose face she had seen before and yet who, for the moment at least, she could not identify. Fascinated but irritated by her loss of memory, Sidonie scrutinised his appearance.

  The man was tall and slim, with fine broad shoulders and a simply excellent carriage. Beneath his tricorne hat he wore a short wig but, close as she was, Sidonie could glimpse traces of his own hair, cut close to his head and fairish. His nose was long and straight, the mouth passionate, full-lipped and loving. He was, even measured by modern standards, a very good-looking young person and Sidonie experienced again that strange feeling of empathy, so much so that it distressed her to see he was shaking with emotion and seemed almost on the point of tears. And, looking once more in the direction that he did, it was not difficult to see why.

  The ghost, the Joshua Reynolds beauty, was creeping back through the park towards Holland House in a most furtive manner while, in the distance, another young man, dark and dashing, was cantering off in the direction of the farm buildings. So the girl had two sweethearts and one had caught her in the act of keeping an assignation with the other!

  The rider wheeled to go and Sidonie saw the girl look up, startled. For no reason the musician started to run alongside wanting, perhaps, to tell him not to upset himself. Gazing up at him, she wondered if he had finally noticed her. If, momentarily, time had gone mad for him too, for he seemed to stare at Sidonie and mouth something. But then he was gone in a great drumming of hooves, the sound of which rang in her ears long after he had vanished from view and Sidonie found herself, somewhat perturbed, jogging in Holland Park as if nothing unusual had taken place at all.

  *

  The identity of the horseman puzzled her throughout the rest of the day, and though she practised a new and complicated work, and also had to concentrate on giving a lesson to one of her private pupils, the mystery of him would not go away.

  “I knew his face,” she said to Finnan O’Neill later that evening.

  But for once the Irishman was not receptive. He had been giving a lecture on haemophilia to medical students on top of a day dealing with children suffering from leukaemia and his patience was understandably short.

  “Could we talk about it another time,” he said, slumping into a chair. “I’m not feeling particularly bright at the moment.”

  At once Sidonie was suffused with uncertainty. “I didn’t imagine it. Honestly, Finnan, it did happen.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he answered, and closed his eyes.

  Stung, she reacted in the silliest way possible. “I think I’d better go,” she said huffily. “It’s obvious you need an early night.”

  And with that she left his flat and went downstairs to her own despite the fact she could hear him calling out for her to come back. Once inside her front door Sidonie fought back a terrible urge to cry but instead broke her diet by pouring herself a glass of wine, then switched on television. Briefly looking at the programme guide she saw that a late film had just started and, as it was about the life of Handel, decided to watch. The story was fairly standard and somewhat glossy, the actor playing the name part far too handsome, one or two of the minor characters speaking with pronounced American accents. But it was the last scene in the film that riveted Sidonie’s attention. It showed the great man’s funeral in 1759, Westminster Abbey packed with three thousand people, the combined choirs of the Abbey, St Paul’s and the Chapel Royal soaring out his beautiful music and, walking behind the coffin as a mark of respect, old King George II, supported by his tall handsome grandson. The make-up department had obviously done their stuff with these two characters for they looked very like the portraits of the monarchs concerned.

  Sidonie leant forward in her chair, unable to believe her eyes. “George III,” she breathed. “Of course!” And despite the lateness of the hour rushed to her set of encyclopaedias.

  There was no doubt about it. The painting of the King in his Coronation robes was identical to the man she had seen in the park earlier that day. So George himself had somehow been involved with Holland House. Hardly able to take it all in, Sidonie began to read his biography.

  “George William Frederick, King of Great Britain and Ireland, and Elector of Hanover, was born in London on 4th June, 1738, son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and grandson of George II.” There followed a paragraph about the Prince’s education and then something of enormous significance. “The young Prince of Wales feared the burden of kingship and relied heavily for advice on his mentor, the Earl of Bute. This handsome, easy man ruled the life of the heir apparent and when the Prince fell in love with the fifteen-year-old sister of the Duke of Richmond, he turned to the Earl for advice.”

  Sidonie put the book down slowly. Were the Joshua Reynolds girl and the fifteen-year-old one and the same person? And, if so, who was the dashing rival who had galloped off at such great speed?

  ‘Tomorrow when the library is open I’ll check on this,’ Sidonie decided, and went to bed so full of excitement that she only spared her quarrel with Finnan the merest passing thought.

  *

  They made up the argument simultaneously, he appearing at her front door with a bunch of flowers, she opening it to go upstairs and tell him what she had discovered.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” Finnan said. “I was very depressed and tired into the bargain.”

  “And I’m sorry too. I behaved like a spoilt child. Please forgive me.”

  “I do. Shall we go out to supper?”

  “Why don’t I get it? I’ve so much to tell you. I think I know who my ghost is.”

  “Let me have a bath and then I’ll be with you.”

  While he was gone, Sidonie, who had been hoping he would come all day and so had little preparation left to do, remonstrated with herself about being selfish.

  ‘He was obviously dying to talk about the hospital and all I could do was waffle on about seeing things. This is not the way to make friends and influence people, Sidonie Brooks.’

  Deliberately keeping the topic of conversation away from herself, she said over dinner, “Have you had another terrible day?”

  “Not as bad as yesterday. It’s the children with haemophilia who are also HIV-positive that I find so distressing.” Finnan paused, the
n added, “By the way, there’s a chance I may soon be able to see some very interesting work on that condition in Canada.”

  Sidonie looked at him blankly. “Are you going there, then?”

  “Yes. That is if it comes off. There’s nothing definite yet.”

  Sidonie suddenly felt cold, realising how much, in a short space of time, she had come to depend on his companionship.

  “Do you hope you will?” she asked, speaking rather slowly.

  Finnan leant forward over the table and Sidonie saw that his eyes were alight with enthusiasm. She realised then that he was as much in love with his profession as she was with hers, and felt that up to this moment she hadn’t fully understood him.

  “Of course. It would be a wonderful opportunity.” Finnan smiled at her. “You’re looking a little distant. I suppose having a haematologist for a friend can be a bit daunting. In future I’ll try and spare you the gory details.”

  “Was that a pun?”

  “Yes. I’ve been making it since I was a student.”

  “Well, it’s terrible. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” Sidonie’s voice changed. “I’m sorry if I looked far away. I was trying to imagine living here without you.”

  “Oh, glory be. You’re always touring. You won’t even notice I’ve gone.”

  If she said anything further, Sidonie thought, he might well mistake it for a heavy approach, so with a certain effort changed the topic of conversation.

  “Do you want to hear about what happened yesterday?”

  “Of course.”

  “Time slipped again and I saw a man on horseback in the park. Finnan, it was George III.”

  The doctor’s face changed curiously. “George III? How do you know?”

  “I identified him from his portraits. He was young, about the same age as the Coronation painting. Do you know, I liked him. He seemed so human. I wonder if that was what finally sent him mad.”

  “He didn’t go mad in my view,” said Finnan.