The Visitors

by Sally Beauman

  He rose and stood glowering down at me. I recoiled. For one moment I thought he was about to smack me, but even he wouldn’t have gone that far, however much his fingers itched to administer a slapping; he could probably see that his words were more effective than a smack anyway. I wanted to protest, to say this wasn’t true, that it surely could not be true, but the words would not be spoken.

  ‘Anything Winlock tells me and I tell him is between us,’ he went on. ‘It’s none of Frances’s business – and it certainly isn’t yours. I won’t be spied on – you hear me? So don’t meddle with things you don’t understand. Stay clear of me from now on, little girl, and keep that damned mouth of yours shut.’

  He strode across to the gate. ‘I’m going back to Highclere. Tell Eve,’ he said, over his shoulder; then he set off across the fields at a fast pace without looking back.

  When he was finally out of sight, I waited a while and then walked slowly down towards the valley; there, I met the others making their way back. Both the puppy, who had ventured into the river, and Peter, who had rescued her, were soaking wet.

  Eve was radiant. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Lucy?’ she said. ‘Did you see Howard – did he tell you? I’m so happy for him, and for Pups. It’s worth just one last try, and I told Pups that. Even if Howard finds nothing, his plans will be complete, so honour’s satisfied, and besides,’ she took my arm, ‘he’s such a good man, Lucy. Kind-hearted, utterly loyal, a true friend – look how he’s been this last few days, coming over to see you children, helping with the puppy: I was very touched by that, and Pups was too. Howard had just suffered a terrible blow – but he’d put that behind him, not one word of reproach… He’s so generous, Lucy. Howard has a heart of gold: I don’t know why people can’t see that.’

  I said nothing. Peter had been carrying the puppy, but she was proving too heavy for him. Halfway up the hill, I took her from him and cradled her damp fur against my chest. She whined; she was cold and shivering and forlorn, so I wrapped her in my cardigan and held her tight. I set my face to the farm and walked on steadily. In the distance, I saw that the postboy was toiling down the hill, carrying his leather satchel, kicking up the dust. It was late for a delivery. When the boy glimpsed us he hallooed, jumped up and down, and began semaphoring.

  ‘What’s that daft boy doing?’ Wheeler asked. ‘Why is he back again? He brought the post earlier. There’s a letter for you, Lucy, I left it for you in the kitchen, did you see it? From Miss Mackenzie – I recognised her writing.’

  I hadn’t seen the letter – and I had no opportunity to read it that afternoon. The postboy, with great excitement and an air of massive self-importance, met us in the yard. He announced he was delivering telegrams – the first ever entrusted to him. He handed them across: two small brown envelopes, one for me and one for Wheeler. The boy bustled into the kitchen, accepted his usual lemonade and cake, sat down at the table and looked from face to face expectantly – he was anticipating a death, I think; something juicy anyway.

  I inspected the telegrams. I knew they couldn’t bode well – telegrams never did. Mine read: YOUR FATHER UNWELL + URGENT YOU RETURN CAMBRIDGE IMMEDIATELY ++ NICOLA

  Wheeler’s read: LUCY’S RETURN IMPERATIVE + UNFORESEEN EVENTS + WIRE SOONEST RE HER ARRIVAL TIME CAMBRIDGE ++ DUNSIRE

  ‘Heavens, whatever can have happened?’ Eve said. ‘Could it be an accident? Oh, Lucy, don’t be upset, dear – I’m sure it will be all right, how lucky that I’m here – leave everything to me.’

  No one seemed interested in the question of why Nicola Dunsire, still in France as of her most recent Loire letter, should now be back in England. No one enquired as to my father’s state of health before I’d left – and perhaps that was irrelevant, I thought; perhaps some accident had occurred. I felt concussed. I stared at the telegrams. It occurred to me that I was inconveniencing people again. I was a nuisance yet again – why did that happen? I was very afraid Eve might think I was presuming on friendship, but when I muttered something to that effect, she gave me a hug, made an urgent face at Wheeler, and told me not to be silly.

  ‘We’ll get you back home in no time, Lucy, dear,’ she said. ‘And meanwhile, you mustn’t worry.’

  Before I could say a word, Wheeler was hastening upstairs to pack my cases. The Carnarvon machine swung into action, and its efficiency was impressive. We couldn’t telephone my home, because there was no telephone; domestic phones were still comparatively rare then and my father regarded them as unnecessary, intrusive, new-fangled extravagances. He no more approved of phones than he did pet animals, holidays, Americans, aristocrats, scarabs, disobedient children, or deceitful women who concealed secrets from him. Accordingly, within an hour, no ifs or buts and no ‘Let’s discuss this,’ a telegram was sent in return, confirming my arrival home later that night. Half an hour after that, I was inside one of Highclere Castle’s fast cars, its most reliable driver at the wheel. As it drew out of the farmyard, Peter and Rose, in tears, ran after it. I heard Peter call Lulu one last despairing time as the great machine turned and accelerated; then the farm – which I loved, which I’d return to, briefly, later in my life – was hidden behind its sheltering hawthorn hedges.

  The time, the driver informed me, was 4 p.m. Four o’clock it is, I thought. I felt as if I were sleepwalking. I strapped my neglected watch around my wrist, adjusted the hands and wound it.

  25

  It was a long slow drive to Cambridge, and it took us through several counties. Periodically, the driver, a kindly man whose name was Frobisher, would look over his shoulder and inform me of our progress in an encouraging way. ‘Well, that’s Hampshire under our belt,’ he’d say, ‘now for Berkshire.’ I think he could see I was in a wan, muddled state, so after a while he gave up on the confusion of counties. ‘Twenty more on the clock,’ he’d announce, ‘I’ll top her up soon,’ or ‘Another half-hour and we’ll be seeing signs of civilisation… You all right there, in the back, miss?’

  I’d assure him I was. By the time we’d reached the top of the lane behind the farm, I’d resolved to forget what Mr Carter had said to me. It had happened, I couldn’t change it. I must concentrate on my father. Could he have suffered an accident – could someone, perhaps Mrs Grimshaw or the college or even a friend like Dr Gerhardt have summoned Nicola Dunsire from France? What did ‘Your father unwell’ mean? It must mean ill enough to send a telegram, ill enough to summon me – did that mean he was dying? Could it mean he was already dead – was I being gently prepared, as Rose and Peter had been with Poppy?

  Somewhere on the edge of two counties, Frobisher pulled over to the roadside verge. He unstrapped two large petrol cans from the back of the car and filled up the tank. I opened the little attaché case I had with me. Inside it was the letter from Miss Mack. I left that unopened and took out my book. It was Charlotte Brontë’s Villette: over six hundred pages of holiday homework; I was halfway through it. As Frobisher started the car again and pulled away, I found my place at the end of Volume I. How the car jolted, how the words bounced on the page! I read: I was left secretly and sadly to wonder, in my own mind–– I lost track as the car cornered sharply and had to read back. The heroine and narrator of the novel, Miss Snowe, had seen a ghost, which might have existed, been faked or been imagined; it might have come from a realm beyond the grave, or was perhaps only the child of malady, and I of that malady a prey.

  I turned to the next page, new volume, new chapter, and read: A new creed became mine – a belief in happiness. I wondered distantly if you could adopt that particular creed: could you decide to be happy, as you might decide to become a Roman Catholic, a Hindu or a Muslim?

  ‘Skirting London now,’ Frobisher announced – and I saw to my surprise that we were: I’d been in a Brussels convent school and had looked up expecting to see its garden, its allée défendue. Instead here were houses, shops, other vehicles. There was even a garage, where we pulled in and the thirsty car was refilled. London huddled on the grey horizon. I got out and s
tretched my legs on the dusty forecourt. I walked back and forth, back and forth. It was beginning to rain hard. I climbed back into the car, and we set off again. The windscreen wiper swished a rhythmic semicircle. I replaced Villette in my case: the light was now too poor to read by.

  We reached Newnham some four or five hours after leaving the farm – it was difficult to be sure of the time: my watch, unwound for weeks, seemed unreliable; it would tick, stop, tick again. I stared at the tall grey house as we drew up outside it: every light in the rooms facing the road was on. Frobisher waited until I’d unlocked the door with my latchkey, and then lifted the cases into the hall for me. He asked if he should wait, but when I thanked him and told him I’d be fine now, he wished me good evening and left. I closed the door behind me.

  Frobisher had been reassured by the lights in the house, I think – but I was not. My father disliked rooms to be lit unless they were in use, and Miss Dunsire always observed this economy. As soon as I’d seen lights in the drawing room, in my father’s study, upstairs in the front bedroom, my heart had begun beating fast: they signified trouble. I was nerving myself for evidence of emergency, a doctor or a nurse emerging from a room upstairs – Nicola Dunsire, distraught, summoned from France, running to greet me.

  The house was silent. No sounds from upstairs or down, only the faint hiss that came from the gas-lights – my father had always refused to install electricity. I dragged my cases to the foot of the stairs and listened. I called out. No answering footsteps or voices. I ventured into the drawing room, where I saw that a fire had been lit but was almost out. I went into my father’s study, in which the gas-lights were hissing and blazing. The shabti figure I’d given my father had suffered an accident, I discovered. It had been smashed, and its fragments lay scattered across his desk. Apart from this isolated damage, the house seemed in perfect order: it looked exactly as it always did. I crept from room to room. Two wineglasses had recently been used and washed; they were the only signs of recent occupation; they lay resting on the kitchen draining board.

  I was afraid to go upstairs, but when I’d called again and again, and no one replied, I did so. The bedrooms on the first floor, with the exception of Miss Dunsire’s, were never occupied. I looked into my father’s room at the back of the house: unlit and unused as always. I opened the door of my mother’s bedroom next to it. That room was dust-sheeted. The white sheets around the bed billowed and beckoned in the wavering light from the landing. I slammed the door shut on them. I looked into the empty guest rooms and then, summoning my nerve, tapped on the door to Miss Dunsire’s room.

  When I’d tapped three times and there was still no answer, I opened it. All the gas jets were burning brightly. I stared around it in dismay. I rarely entered this room, but whenever I had, it had been immaculate. Now clothes and underclothes were tossed on the floor; a stocking snaked over the bedpost, a petticoat had slithered under a chair, and the bed itself, a double one, was tumbled. One pillow lay on the floor and the eiderdown was humped over the bed end. A white silk nightgown lay on the bare white undersheet. I gazed at this disorder – and saw that on the table next to the bed there was a telegram. It was unopened.

  I picked it up – surely this must be the wire sent in reply to Miss Dunsire’s cables? Why should it lie here, and why had she not read it? I stared at the objects scattered next to it, the painkiller aspirins, numerous bottles with pharmacy labels, the book by Marcel Proust that Miss Dunsire had been reading – À la recherche du temps perdu, lying open and face down, its spine broken. I hated books to be mistreated: I picked it up and closed it, and saw the letter beneath that it concealed. It was written in Miss Dunsire’s neat, italic script. It bore that day’s date. Dear Lucy, I read. It’s such a beautiful day here at the chateau. We had a picnic lunch by the river, then Clair, Meta and I walked to the market in town. Now we’re back, and I’m sitting on the terrace overlooking the valley. I have a tranquil hour, my dear, in which to write to you…

  There were pages of it. I dropped the one I was holding and let it flutter to the floor. I backed out of the room and fled upstairs. No one there either: the whole house was unoccupied. In my attic the bed had not been made up; none of the gas-lights had been lit. I went to the window, opened it and leaned out. It was raining heavily, it was dark, and the Cambridge church bells had begun tolling. I counted ten strokes. As the echoes of the last bell died away, I glimpsed a woman walking along the lane towards our back garden. She was caught for an instant in the pooling light from a street lamp; she was walking swiftly, my view of her obscured by the umbrella she held. She passed into the shadows, was hidden from view by a patch of trees, then stepped into a circle of lamplight again. She was dressed in black – and she was not alone.

  Two figures approached the gate that led into our rear garden. I could hear voices now and they were raised as if in disagreement. They were women’s voices, I realised, and one of them was surely Miss Dunsire’s – but whoever was with her, it could not be my father. The two shapes disappeared beneath the rose arch, took the path between the lavenders and came to a halt on the terrace directly below me. The light spilling from the house illumined their faces. The taller of the two women – and it was Nicola, I saw – gave an exclamation of annoyance and lowered her umbrella. I realised that the person with her was her artist friend Clair. As they came to a halt, she was clasping at Nicola Dunsire’s arm with her small hands, and Miss Dunsire was closing the umbrella and attempting to shake her off. She said: ‘Let go of me. Let go. It’s done, Clair.’

  She tried to prise her friend’s hands free, and for a brief moment the two women seemed to struggle. Then Clair released her, and took a step back. Her white face flared in the light. She said: ‘This will finish you, Nicola. We both know that.’

  Miss Dunsire made some reply that I couldn’t hear – though I recognised the familiar taunting tone in her voice. Then she seemed to reconsider, or falter – I wasn’t sure what happened, but it was swift. She made a low sound, and the next instant Clair’s arms were around her. The two women clung to each other; they embraced and kissed – it happened swiftly, in a swirl of agitation. Then they broke apart. Clair turned away down the path without a backward look. The gate slammed shut behind her. Miss Dunsire turned to face the house. Her expression, caught in the light, assumed a fixed serenity. She walked inside, and when I heard her moving in the drawing room below, pacing back and forth, then pausing to put coal on the fire, then pacing again, I went downstairs to her.

  She must have seen my cases in the hall, but if she had, she’d not taken in their import, I think. I made sure to come downstairs noisily, but even so, I startled her. She wheeled around from the fire, her face bloodless, and stared at me. She said, ‘Oh – it’s you, Lucy. For a moment I thought––’

  ‘You haven’t been in France,’ I said. ‘You lied to me. Who posted those letters?’

  ‘Such a greeting! My letters? Does it matter?’ Her gaze dropped. ‘Meta. My friend Meta. I gave her a batch of them before she left. I told her to send one every three days.’ She frowned and I saw her make a quick calculation. ‘What happened? Was there a gap? Maybe I underestimated how many she’d need – ask her when you next see her.’

  ‘Why are you wearing black? Is my father ill? Where is he?’

  ‘No, he’s not ill.’ She took a breath, and I could see that – swiftly as always – she was asserting her will and regaining her self-control. ‘He’s well – he’s remarkably well. He was here earlier, now he’s back in college. I’m sorry for that deception… no, actually, I’m not. I needed you here and that seemed the quickest, most effective way.’ She paused. ‘Too effective: I wasn’t expecting you until the morning.’

  ‘If you’d opened the telegram that’s lying next to your bed, you’d have known I was arriving tonight. Why didn’t you?’

  There was a silence. For the first and the only time in all the years I was to know her, she blushed. I watched the blood course up into her pale neck a
nd stain her face. It was painful to watch; then she brushed at her wet jacket with a black-gloved hand, and said, ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’ve acted wrongly: I accept that. As for that telegram – I must have forgotten it… I was distracted… your father was here, then Clair arrived. First he wouldn’t leave, then she wouldn’t: such a scene – I took her for a walk to calm her down. Clair doesn’t approve of what I’ve done, you see. She came here to persuade me not to do it. But by then it was too late. I’ve told her. The matter is settled.’

  In a resigned way, she drew off one of her gloves and extended her left hand towards me. I stared at it, not understanding at first. Then I realised that she was wearing an engagement ring. A narrow gold band, a small stone; her hand was unsteady.

  ‘The wedding is in two days’ time,’ she said. ‘A register office. It will be a stupid, ugly sort of ceremony, but very quick and efficient, I expect. We decided two days ago. And the instant we had decided, I found I wanted you back at my side. So I summoned you. I needed you, Lucy. To celebrate. Or commiserate.’