by Kate Morton
Cassandra smiled, remembering the boxes of embarrassing high-school memorabilia she’d uncovered when she moved back in with Nell after the accident.
‘Took me a while, but finally I found the essay, and sure enough there was his name, Ebenezer Matthews. I’d included him because he was from the same village I’d grown up in.’
‘And? Was there something in the essay about Rose?’
‘Nothing like that, but after I realised who Rose’s Dr Matthews was, I emailed a friend up at Oxford who works in the medical library. She owed me a favour and agreed to send me anything she could on the doc’s patients between 1889 and 1913. Rose’s lifetime.’
A friend. She. Cassandra pushed aside the unexpected surge of envy. ‘And?’
‘Doc Matthews was quite a busy boy. Not at first: for someone who rose to such lofty heights, he came from humble beginnings. Doctor in a small town in Cornwall, doing all the things young doctors in small towns do. His big break, from what I can gather, was meeting Adeline Mountrachet of Blackhurst Manor. I don’t know why she would have chosen a young doctor like him when her little girl was sick, aristocrats were much more likely to call upon the same old ghost who’d treated Great-Uncle Kernow when he was a boy, but whatever the case Ebenezer Matthews was summoned. He and Adeline must’ve hit it off, too, because after that first consultation he became Rose’s regular doctor. Stayed that way all throughout her childhood, even after she was married.’
‘But how do you know? How did your friend find that sort of information?’
‘A lot of doctors back then kept surgery logs. Records of the patients they saw, who owed them money, treatments they prescribed, articles they published, that sort of thing. Many of the logs wound up in libraries. They were donated, or sold, usually by the doctor’s family.’
They’d reached the end of the road where gravel gave way to grass and Christian pulled the car over onto the narrow parking strip by the lookout. Outside, the wind was buffeting the cliff and the tiny cliff birds huddled together glumly. He switched off the ignition, turned in his seat to face Cassandra. ‘In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Dr Matthews began to make a bit of a name for himself. It seems he wasn’t content with his lot as a country GP, even though his patient list was beginning to resemble a who’s who of local society. He started publishing on various medical matters. It wasn’t very difficult to cross-reference his publications with his log to find out that Rose appears as Miss RM. She becomes a frequent entry after 1897.’
‘Why? What happened then?’ Cassandra realised she was holding her breath, her throat was tight.
‘When Rose was eight she swallowed a sewing thimble.’
‘Why?’
‘Well I don’t know, accident I expect, and it’s beside the point. It wasn’t a big deal—half the British currency has sat inside a child’s stomach at one point or another. They pass through without too much difficulty if they’re left alone.’
Cassandra exhaled suddenly. ‘But it wasn’t left alone. Dr Matthews performed an operation.’
Christian shook his head. ‘Worse than that.’
Her stomach lurched. ‘What did he do?’
‘He ordered an X-ray, a couple of X-rays, and then he published the pictures in the Lancet.’ Christian reached to the back seat and pulled out a photocopied piece of paper, handed it to her.
She glanced at the article, shrugged. ‘I don’t get it, what’s the big deal?’
‘It’s not the X-ray itself, it’s the exposure.’ He pointed to a line at the top of the page. ‘Dr Matthews had the photographer take a sixty minute exposure. I guess he wanted to be sure he got his picture.’
Cassandra could feel the cold outside her glass window, shimmering against her cheek. ‘But what does it mean? A sixty minute exposure?’
‘X-rays are radiation—haven’t you ever noticed the way your dentist sprints from the room before pushing the X-ray button? An exposure of sixty minutes means that between them Dr Matthews and the photographer fried her ovaries and everything inside them.’
‘Her ovaries?’ Cassandra stared at him. ‘Then how did she conceive?’
‘That’s what I’m saying. She didn’t, she couldn’t. That is, she certainly couldn’t have carried a healthy baby to term. As of 1897, Rose Mountrachet was, to all intents and purposes, infertile.’
41
Cliff Cottage, 1975
Despite a ten day delay before contracts were due to be exchanged, young Julia Bennett had been most obliging. When Nell requested early access to the cottage, she’d handed over the key with a wave of her jewellery-laden wrist. ‘Doesn’t worry me a bit,’ she’d said, bangles clacking. ‘You make yourself at home. Lord knows, the key’s so heavy I’ll be happy to have it off my hands!’
The key was heavy. It was big and brass, with intricate swirls at one end, blunt teeth at the other. Nell looked at it, almost the length of her palm. She laid it on the wooden table in the kitchen. The kitchen of her cottage. Well, almost her cottage. Ten days to go.
Nell wouldn’t be in Tregenna when she exchanged. Her flight left London in four days time and when she’d tried to change the booking she’d been told that such late alterations were possible only at exorbitant cost. So she’d decided to go home to Australia as planned. The local solicitors handling her purchase of Cliff Cottage were happy to hold the key for her until she returned. It wouldn’t be long, she’d assured them, she just needed time to sort out her things and then she’d be back for good.
For Nell had decided she was going home to Brisbane for the last time. What had she there to keep her? A few friends, a daughter who didn’t need her, sisters she perplexed. Her antiques shop she would miss, but perhaps she could start afresh here in Cornwall? And when she was here, with more time, Nell would get to the bottom of her mystery. She would learn why Eliza stole her and put her on the boat to Australia. All lives needed purpose, and this would be Nell’s. For otherwise, how would she ever know herself?
Nell walked slowly about the kitchen, making a mental inventory. The first thing she intended to do when she got back was to give the cottage a thorough clean. Dirt and dust had long been allowed free rein and every surface was coated. There would be repairs to make, too: the skirting boards would need replacing in sections, there was bound to be wood rot, the kitchen would have to be brought to working order . . .
Of course a village like Tregenna would have any number of local tradesmen available to help, but Nell balked at the idea of employing strangers to work in her cottage. Although made of stone and wood, it was more than a house to Nell. And just as she had tended Lil when she was dying, had refused to pass responsibility into the hands of a kindly stranger, Nell knew she must tend the cottage herself. Use the skills that Hugh had taught her all those years before when she was a little girl, wide-eyed with love for her dad.
Nell stopped by the rocking chair. A little shrine in the corner caught her attention. She went closer. A half-empty drink bottle, a packet of digestive biscuits, a comic called Whizzer and Chips. They had certainly not been there when Nell made her purchasing inspection, which could only mean that someone had been in her cottage since. Nell flicked through the comic book: a young someone, by the looks.
A moist breeze brushed Nell’s face and she looked to the back of the kitchen. The window was missing a pane of glass from one of its four square frames. Making a mental note to bring plastic and tape to mask it before she left Tregenna, Nell peered through. A huge hedge ran parallel to the house, blunt and even, almost like a wall. A flash of colour and Nell thought she saw movement at the corner of her vision. When she looked again there was nothing. A bird probably, or a squirrel.
Nell had noticed on the map sent to her by the solicitor that the property extended quite a way beyond the house. That meant, presumably, that whatever lay on the other side of the tall, thick hedge was hers too. She decided to take a look.
The path that wound around the side of the house was narrow, and dim fro
m lack of sun. Nell went cautiously, pushing long weeds aside as she went. At the back of the cottage, brambles had grown between the house and the hedge and Nell had to pick her way through the tangle.
Midway along, she sensed movement again, right by her. Nell looked at the ground. A pair of shoe-clad feet and skinny legs protruded from beneath the wall. Either the wall had fallen from the sky, à la Wizard of Oz, and crushed some poor unfortunate Cornish dwarf, or she had found the small person who’d been trespassing in her cottage.
Nell grabbed hold of the skinny ankle. The legs froze. ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Out with you.’
Another moment of stillness, then the legs began scrambling backwards. The boy they were attached to looked to be about ten, though Nell had never been particularly good at guessing the ages of children. He was a scrap of a lad with sandy brown hair and knobbly knees. Bruises up and down his bony shins.
‘I presume you’re the young monkey who’s been making free with my cottage?’
The boy blinked dark brown eyes at Nell before looking to the ground at her feet.
‘What’s your name then? Out with it.’
‘Christian.’
So soft she almost hadn’t heard.
‘Christian who?’
‘Christian Blake. Only I wasn’t doing any harm. My dad works over at the big estate, and sometimes I just like to come and visit the walled—your walled garden.’
Nell glanced at the bramble-covered wall. ‘So that’s a garden behind there, is it? I had wondered.’ She looked back at the boy. ‘And tell me, Christian, does your mother know where you are?’
The boy’s shoulders slumped. ‘I haven’t got a mother.’
Nell’s eyebrows raised.
‘She went away to hospital in the summer, and then . . .’
The heat of Nell’s ill temper cooled on a sigh. ‘I see. Well. And what are you, nine? Ten?’
‘Nearly eleven.’ Healthy indignation sent his hands into his pockets, his elbows out to the side.
‘Of course, I see that now. I have a granddaughter about your age.’
‘Does she like gardens too?’
Nell blinked at him. ‘I’m not sure.’
Christian tilted his head to the side, frowned at her answer.
‘That is, I imagine she does.’ Nell found herself skirting apology. Chastised herself. She needn’t feel contrite just because she didn’t know Lesley’s daughter’s mind. ‘I don’t see her often.’
‘Does she live a long way from you?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Then why don’t you see her much?’
Nell eyed the boy, trying to decide whether his impertinence was charming or not. ‘Sometimes that’s just the way things are.’
By the look on the boy’s face, this explanation sounded as weak to him as it did to her. But there were some things that didn’t need explanation, especially to strange little boys trespassing on one’s property.
Nell reminded herself that the little scamp was newly motherless. There were none immune to poor judgement when their certainties had been pulled from under them, Nell knew that as well as anyone. Life could be so bloody cruel. Why should this boy grow up motherless? Why should some poor woman go to an early grave, leaving her lad to make his way in the world without her? Looking at the boy’s skinny limbs, Nell felt something inside her tighten. Her voice was gruff but kind: ‘What is it you said you were doing in my garden anyway?’
‘I wasn’t doing any harm, honest. I just like to sit inside.’
‘And this is how you get in? Under the bricks?’
He nodded.
Nell eyed the hole. ‘I don’t think I’ll fit beneath there. Where’s the gate?’
‘There isn’t one. At least not on this wall.’
Nell frowned. ‘I have a garden with no entrance?’
He nodded again. ‘There used to be one, you can see from inside where it was patched up.’
‘Why would anyone patch up the entrance?’
The boy shrugged and Nell made an addition to her mental list of necessary improvements. ‘Perhaps you can tell me what I’m missing then?’ she said. ‘Seeing as I’m not going to be able to take a look myself. What it is that brings you all the way up here?’
‘It’s my favourite place in the whole world.’ Christian blinked his earnest brown eyes. ‘I like to sit inside and talk to my mum. She loved gardens, she loved your walled garden specially. She’s the one who showed me how to get inside, we were going to try and fix it up. Then she got sick.’
Nell pressed her lips together. ‘I’m going home to Australia in a couple of days but I’ll be back in a month or two. I wonder whether you might not keep an eye on my garden for me, Christian?’
He nodded gravely. ‘I can do that.’
‘I’ll be glad to know I’ve left it in capable hands.’
Christian stood tall. ‘And when you come back, I’ll help you fix it all up. Like my dad does over at the hotel.’
Nell smiled. ‘I might well hold you to that. I don’t accept help from just anyone, but I have a feeling that in this case you’re the right man for the job.’
42
Blackhurst Manor, 1913
Rose gathered the shawl around her shoulders and crossed her arms against a chill that wouldn’t be warmed away.
When she’d decided to seek sun in the garden, Eliza had been the last person she’d expected to see. As Rose had sat making notes in her scrapbook, looking up occasionally to see Ivory fluttering and swooping around the flowerbeds, there’d been no indication that the day’s peace was to be so horridly shattered. Some peculiar sense had made her glance towards the maze gates, and there had been the sight that chilled Rose’s blood. How had Eliza known that she would find Rose and Ivory alone in the garden? Had she been watching, waiting for just such a time when she might catch Rose off guard? And why now? Why after three years had she materialised today? Like a nightmare spectre crossing the lawn, wretched parcel in her hand.
Rose glanced sideways. There it sat, masquerading as a harmless thing. But it wasn’t. Rose knew that. She didn’t need to look beneath the brown paper wrapping to know what lurked within, an object representing a place, a time, a union Rose wanted so much to forget.
She gathered her skirts and smoothed them against her thigh, trying to create some distance between herself and it.
A flock of starlings took flight and Rose looked towards the kidney lawn. Mamma was coming towards her, the new hound, Helmsley, stalking close to her dark skirts. A wash of relief left Rose light-headed. Mamma was an anchor back to the present, to a safe world where everything was as it should be. As Adeline drew near, Rose could contain her anxiety no longer. ‘Oh Mamma,’ she said quickly. ‘She was here, Eliza was here.’
‘I saw it all from the window. What did she say? Did the child hear anything she should not?’
Rose ran the encounter back through her mind, but worry had conspired with fear to wrinkle the edges of her memory and she could no longer tease loose the precise words that had been spoken. She shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t know.’
Adeline glanced at the parcel, then lifted it from the bench, cautiously, as if it were hot to the touch.
‘Don’t open it, Mamma, please. I cannot bear to see inside.’ Rose’s voice was almost a whisper.
‘Is it . . . ?’
‘I’m quite sure it is.’ Rose pressed cold fingers against her cheek. ‘She said it was for Ivory.’ Rose looked at her mother and a fresh wave of panic surged beneath her skin. ‘Why would she bring it, Mamma? Why?’
Mamma’s lips tightened.
‘What did she mean by it?’
‘I believe the time has come that you must put some distance between yourself and your cousin.’ Adeline sat beside Rose, and laid the parcel across her lap.
‘Distance, Mamma?’ Rose’s cheeks cooled, her voice dropped to a terrified whisper. ‘You don’t think she might . . . might come again?’
&
nbsp; ‘She has proven today that she holds no respect for the rules that were laid out.’
‘But Mamma, surely you don’t think—’
‘I think only that I wish for your continued wellbeing.’ As Rose’s daughter fluttered beneath the dappled light, Adeline leaned close, so close that Rose felt a smooth upper lip against her ear. ‘We must remember, my darling,’ she whispered, ‘that a secret is never safe when it is known by others.’
Rose nodded slightly. Mamma was right of course. It had been folly to think all might continue indefinitely.
Adeline stood and rolled her wrist, motioning Helmsley to heel. ‘Thomas is about to serve luncheon. Don’t be long. You needn’t compound the day’s unpleasantness by catching a chill.’ She returned the parcel to the seat and lowered her voice. ‘And have Nathaniel dispose of that.’
Racing footsteps every which way overhead and Adeline winced. It mattered not how many times she delivered the well-worn diatribe on young ladies and fitting behaviour, the child would not be taught. It was to be expected, of course: no matter the pretty wrapping in which Rose clad her, the girl was common born, there was no escaping that. Cheeks that glowed too pink, laughter that echoed along the halls, curls that escaped her ribbons, she was as unlike Rose as was possible.
And yet, Rose adored the girl. Thus had Adeline accepted her, schooled herself to smile at the child, meet her impertinent gaze, tolerate her noise. What wouldn’t Adeline do for Rose, what hadn’t she already done? But Adeline understood, too, that it was her duty to maintain a stern and ready hand, for the child would need firm guidance if she were to escape the pitfalls of her birth.
The circle of those who knew the truth was small and so must it remain: to allow otherwise was to invite the hideous spectre of scandal. It was imperative therefore that Mary and Eliza be properly managed.