by Kate Morton
She knocked again. Affected an expression of blithe dignity for the benefit of any of William’s neighbours who might be wondering at the strange woman on his doorstep who seemed content to knock all night.
It was William himself who finally unhooked the latch. Tea towel over his knobbly shoulder, wooden spoon in hand, he said, ‘I hear you’ve gone and bought yourself that cottage.’
‘Good news travels fast.’
He pressed his lips together, regarding her. ‘You’re a bloody-minded lass, I could tell that a mile away.’
‘As God made me, I’m afraid.’
He nodded, gave a little huff. ‘Come on, then. You’ll catch your death out there.’
Nell peeled off her waterproof jacket and found a peg on which to hang it. She followed William through the main door and into the sitting room.
The air was heavy, damp with steam, the smell at once nauseating and delicious. Fish and salt and something else.
‘Got a pot of my morgy broth on the stove,’ said William, disappearing at a shuffle into the kitchen. ‘Couldn’t hear you knocking over the bloody spits and spurts.’ A racket of pots and pans, a gruff curse. ‘Robyn’ll be along shortly.’ Another clatter. ‘Got held up a time with that fellow of hers.’
The last he uttered with some distaste. Nell followed him into the kitchen and watched as he stirred the lumpy broth. ‘You don’t approve of Robyn’s fiancé?’
He leaned his ladle on the benchtop, replaced the saucepan lid and picked up his pipe. Plucked a lone strand of tobacco from the rim. ‘Nothing wrong with the lad. Nothing bar the fact he’s not perfect.’ Hand supporting the small of his stooped back, he headed for the sitting room. ‘You have children? Grandchildren?’ he said as he passed Nell.
‘One of each.’
‘Then you know what I’m talking about.’
Nell smiled grimly to herself. Twelve days had passed since she’d left Australia; she wondered whether Lesley had noticed her absence. It was unlikely—all the same it struck Nell that she might send a postcard. The girl would like that, Cassandra. Children liked that sort of thing, didn’t they?
‘Come on then, lass.’ William’s voice from the sitting room. ‘Keep an old man company.’
Nell, creature of habit, chose the same velvet chair as she had on the previous occasion. She nodded at William.
He nodded back.
They sat for a minute or so, in a performance of companionable silence. The wind had picked up outside and the windowpanes rattled periodically, accentuating the dearth of conversation within.
Nell indicated the painting above the fireplace, a fisherman’s boat with a red and white striped hull and her name printed in black along the side. ‘That’s yours? The Piskie Queen?’
‘’Tis indeed,’ said William. ‘Love of my life, I sometimes think. Saw each other through some mighty storms, she and I.’
‘You still have her?’
‘Not for a few years now.’
Another silence stretched out between them. William patted his shirt pocket, then withdrew a pouch of tobacco, started refilling his pipe.
‘My father was port master,’ said Nell. ‘I grew up around ships.’ She had a sudden image of Hugh, standing on the Brisbane wharf sometime after the war, the sun behind him and he in eclipse, long Irish legs and large strong hands. ‘Gets into your blood, doesn’t it?’
‘That it does.’
The windowpanes chattered again and Nell exhaled. Enough was enough, it was now or never, and numerous other handy clichés: the air needed clearing and Nell was the one to do it, there was only so much small talk she was prepared to make. ‘William,’ she said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, ‘about the other night, what I said. I didn’t mean to—’
He raised a work-hardened palm, slightly shaky. ‘No matter.’
‘But I shouldn’t have—’
‘’Twas nothing.’ He clamped his pipe between his back teeth and thereby closed the matter. He struck a match.
Nell leaned back into her chair: if that was the way he wanted it, so be it, but she was determined, this time, not to leave without another piece of the puzzle. ‘Robyn said there was something you wanted to tell me.’
The sweet scent of fresh tobacco as William sucked a couple of times, then puffed to get his pipe smoking. He nodded slightly. ‘Should have told you the other night, only—’ he was focused on something beyond her and Nell fought the urge to turn and see what it was—‘only, you caught me by surprise. It’s been a long time since I heard her name spoke.’
Eliza Makepeace. The unspoken sibilant shimmered its silver wings between them.
‘Been more than sixty years since last I saw her, but I can picture her right enough, coming down the cliff from the cottage up there, striding into the village, hair loose behind her.’ His eyelids had closed as he spoke, but now he opened them and eyeballed Nell. ‘I expect that doesn’t mean much to you, but back then—well, it wasn’t often that one of the folk from the grand house lowered themselves to mix amongst the villagers. Eliza, though,’ he cleared his throat a little, repeated the forename, ‘Eliza behaved as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She wasn’t like the rest of them.’
‘You met her?’
‘Knew her well, as well as one could know the likes of her. Met her when she was just eighteen. My little sister, Mary, worked up at the house and brought Eliza with her for one of her afternoons off.’
Nell fought hard to contain the thrill. Finally to be speaking with someone who had known Eliza. Better yet, to have his description confirm the illicit sense that flirted on the rim of her own patchy memories. ‘What was she like, William?’
He pressed his lips together and scratched at his chin: the whiskery sound caught Nell by surprise. For a split second she was five years old again, sitting on Hugh’s lap, head resting against his bristled cheek. William smiled broadly, teeth large and rimmed with tobacco brown. ‘Like no one you’ve met before, an original. We all of us around here like to tell stories, but hers were something else. She was funny, courageous, unexpected.’
‘Beautiful?’
‘Yes, and beautiful.’ His eyes met hers fleetingly. ‘She had this red hair. Long it was, all the way to her waist. Strands that turned golden in the sun.’ He indicated with his pipe. ‘She liked to sit on that black rock in the cove, looking out to sea. On a clear day, we’d be able to see her as we were coming back to port. She’d lift her hand and wave, looking for all the world like the Queen of the Piskies.’
Nell smiled. The Piskie Queen. ‘Like your boat.’
William pretended fascination with the corduroy grooves of his trousers, grunted a little.
Realisation crowned: this was no coincidence.
‘Robyn should be here soon.’ He didn’t glance at the door. ‘We’ll have us some tea.’
‘You named your boat for her?’
William’s lips parted, closed again. He sighed, the sigh of a young man.
‘You were in love with her.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘Course I was,’ he said. ‘Just like every fellow who ever laid eyes on her. I told you, she was different from anyone you’d ever met. The things that govern the rest of us didn’t matter one whit to her. She did as she felt, and she felt a great deal.’
‘And did she, were you and she ever—’
‘I was engaged to someone else.’ His attention shifted to a photograph on the wall, a young couple in wedding clothes, she sitting, he standing behind. ‘Cecily and I, we’d been steady for a couple of years by then. A village like this, that’s what happens. You grow up next door to a girl, and one day you’re kids rolling stones off the cliff, next thing you know you’re three years married with another baby on the way.’ He sighed so that his shoulders deflated and his woollen sweater seemed too large. ‘When I met Eliza the world shifted. Can’t describe it better than that. Like a magic spell, she was all I could think of.’ He shook his head. ‘I was that fond of C
ec, loved her true, but I’d have left her in a moment.’ His gaze met Nell’s before shifting quickly away. ‘Doesn’t make me proud to say that, sounds awful disloyal. And it was, it was.’ He looked at Nell. ‘But you can’t blame a young man for his honest feelings, can you?’
His eyes searched hers and Nell felt something inside her buckle. She understood: he’d been seeking absolution a long time. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you can’t.’
He breathed a sigh, spoke so softly that Nell had to turn her head to the side to hear. ‘Sometimes the body wants things the mind can’t explain, can’t even accept. My every foolish thought was of Eliza, I couldn’t help myself. It was like a, like an—’
‘Addiction?’
‘Just like that. I figured I could only ever be happy if it were with her.’
‘Did she feel the same way?’
He raised his brows and smiled ruefully. ‘You know, for a time I thought she did. She had a way about her, an intensity. A habit of making you feel that there was nowhere she’d rather be and no one she’d rather be with.’ He laughed, a little unkindly. ‘Soon enough learned my error.’
‘What happened?’
He pressed his lips together and for an awful second Nell thought the story had dried up. She breathed a sigh of relief when he continued. ‘A spring night, it was. Must’ve been 1908 or 1909. I’d had a big day on the boats, brought in a huge haul and I’d been out celebrating with some of the other lads. I’d got a bit of Dutch courage into me and on my way home I found myself heading up along the cliff edge. Foolhardy thing to do—it was just a narrow path back then, hadn’t yet been turned into a road and was barely fit for a mountain goat, but I didn’t care. I’d got it into my head that I was going to ask her to marry me.’ His voice quivered. ‘But when I got near the cottage I saw through the window . . .’
Nell leaned forward.
He sat back. ‘Well, you’ve heard this tale before.’
‘She was with someone else?’
‘Not just any someone else.’ His lips trembled a little around the words. ‘One that was family to her.’ William rubbed at the edge of his eye, checked his finger for a phantom irritant. ‘They were . . .’ He glanced at Nell. ‘Well, you can imagine right enough.’
A noise outside and a burst of cool air. Robyn’s voice drifted in from the hallway. ‘It’s grown cold out there.’ She stepped into the sitting room. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ She looked hopefully between the two of them, running her hands over mist-damp hair. ‘Everything all right in here?’
‘Couldn’t be better, my girl,’ said William, with a quick glance at Nell.
Nell nodded slightly. She had no intention of divulging an old man’s secret.
‘Just about to dish up my broth,’ said William. ‘Come and give your Gump’s sore old eyes a sight of you.’
‘Gump! I told you I’d fix the tea. I brought everything with me.’
‘Humph,’ he grumbled, pushing himself out of the chair and catching his balance. ‘Once you and that fellow get going, there’s no telling when you’ll remember your old Gump, if at all. Figured if I didn’t look out for myself I stood a good chance of going hungry.’
‘Oh, Gump,’ she scolded as she carried her shopping bag to the kitchen. ‘Really, you are the limit. When have I ever forgotten you?’
‘It’s not you, my dear.’ He shuffled after her. ‘It’s that fellow of yours. Like all lawyers, he’s a windbag.’
While the two of them argued familiarly about whether or not it was beyond William’s physical abilities to cook and dish up broth, Nell sorted mentally through all that William had told her. She understood now why he was so adamant about the cottage being tainted somehow, sad; and no doubt for him it was. But William had become sidetracked by his own confession and it was up to Nell to steer him back in the direction she needed to go. And no matter her own curiosity as to whom Eliza had been with that night, it was beside the point and pushing William would only cause him to withdraw. She couldn’t risk that, not before she found out why Eliza might have taken her from Rose and Nathaniel Walker, why she’d been sent to Australia and a completely different life.
‘Here we go.’ Robyn appeared carrying a tray loaded with three steaming bowls.
William followed, somewhat sheepishly, and eased himself into his chair. ‘I still make the best morgy broth this side of Polperro.’
Robyn raised her eyebrows at Nell. ‘No one’s disputing that, Gump,’ she said, handing a bowl across the coffee table.
‘Just my ability to carry it from kitchen to table.’
Robyn sighed theatrically. ‘Let us help you, Gump, that’s all we ask.’
Nell ground her teeth; she needed to keep this argument from escalation, she couldn’t risk losing William again to pique. ‘Delicious,’ she said loudly, tasting the broth. ‘Perfect amount of Worcestershire sauce.’
William and Robyn both blinked at her, spoons hovering at half-mast.
‘What?’ Nell looked between them. ‘What is it?’
Robyn opened her mouth, closed it again like a fish. ‘The Worcestershire sauce.’
‘It’s our secret ingredient,’ said William. ‘Been in the family for generations.’
Nell shrugged apologetically. ‘My mum used to make morgy broth, so did her mum. They always used Worcestershire sauce. I guess it was our secret ingredient, too.’
William inhaled slowly through wide nostrils and Robyn bit her lip.
‘It’s delicious though,’ said Nell taking another slurp. ‘Getting the amount right, that’s the trick.’
‘Tell me, Nell,’ said Robyn, clearing her throat, assiduously avoiding William’s eyes. ‘Was there anything of use in those papers I gave you?’
Nell smiled gratefully. Robyn to the rescue. ‘They were very interesting. I enjoyed the newspaper article about the Lusitania launch.’
Robyn beamed. ‘It must have been so exciting, an important launch like that. Terrible to think of what happened to that beautiful ship.’
‘Germans,’ said Gump, through a mouthful of broth. ‘Sacrilege that was, a mighty act of barbarism.’
Nell imagined the Germans felt much the same way about the bombing of Dresden but now was neither the time nor the place, and William not the person with whom to have such a discussion. So she bit her tongue and carried on pleasant, pointless conversation with Robyn about the history of the village and the house at Blackhurst until, finally, Robyn excused herself to clear the plates and fetch some pudding.
Nell watched her bustle from the room, then, aware that it might be her last chance to speak with William alone, she seized the opportunity. ‘William,’ she said, ‘there’s something I have to ask you.’
‘Ask away.’
‘You knew Eliza—’ He sucked on his pipe, nodded once.
‘—so why do you think she took me? Did she want a child, do you think?’
William exhaled so that smoke plumed. He clenched the pipe in his back teeth and spoke around it. ‘Doesn’t sound right to me. She was a free spirit. Not the sort to welcome domestic responsibility, let alone steal it.’
‘Was there any talk in the village? Did anyone have a theory?’
‘We all believed that the child, that you, had fallen to the scarlet fever. No one questioned that part.’ He shrugged. ‘As for Eliza’s disappearance, no one thought much of that either. It wasn’t the first time.’
‘No?’
‘She’d done the same a few years before.’ He glanced quickly towards the kitchen and lowered his voice, avoided Nell’s eyes. ‘Always blamed myself a bit for that. It was soon after—soon after the other thing I was telling you about. I confronted her, told her what I’d seen; called her all manner of names. She made me promise not to tell anyone, told me that I didn’t understand, that it wasn’t as it seemed.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘All the usual things a woman says when caught in such a situation.’
Nell nodded.
‘I did as she asked, though, and kept her secret
. Not long after that I learned in the village that she’d gone away.’
‘Where did she go?’
He shook his head. ‘When she finally got back—a year or so later, it was—I asked her over and over, but she never would say.’
‘Pudding’s up,’ came Robyn’s voice from the kitchen.
William leaned forward, pulled his pipe from his mouth and pointed it at Nell. ‘That’s why I had Robyn ask you here tonight, that’s what I wanted to tell you: find out where Eliza went, and I reckon you’ll be some of the way to figuring out your riddle. Because I can tell you something, wherever it was she disappeared to, she was different when she came back.’
‘Different how?’
He shook his head at the memory. ‘Changed, less herself somehow.’ He clenched his teeth on his pipe. ‘There was something missing and she was never the same again.’
PART•THREE
37
Blackhurst Manor, 1907
On the morning scheduled for Rose’s return from New York, Eliza went early to the hidden garden. The November sun was still shrugging off sleep and the way was dim, light just enough to reveal the grass, silver with dew. She went quickly, arms wrapped across her front against the chill. It had rained overnight and puddles lay all about; she stepped around them as best she could, then creaked open the maze gate and started through. It was darker still within the thick hedge walls, but Eliza could have navigated the maze in her sleep.
Ordinarily she loved the brief moment of twilight as night anticipated dawn, but today she was too distracted to pay it any heed. Ever since she’d received Rose’s letter announcing her engagement, Eliza had battled her emotions. The spiked barb of envy had lodged in her stomach and refused to grant her rest. Each day, when her thoughts turned to Rose, when she re-read the letter, felt her imaginings slide towards the future, fear prickled her insides. Filled her with their dread poison.