by Sarah Moss
‘Knock knock.’
Giles. ‘Who’s there?’ I said.
‘Arthur.’
‘Arthur who?’
‘I’ve no idea, Raph couldn’t remember the punchline. I thought I saw you heading up here. May I come in?’
I moved over. The anchorite was debarred as much by logistics as chastity from entertaining gentleman visitors.
‘Is Zoe looking after the kids?’
‘No, I left them with Brian. Of course Zoe’s looking after the kids. But I need to go back in a minute, it’s time Moth was waking up. Unless you’re volunteering, of course.’
His gaze rested on the cargo ships, which were inching towards each other like snails. ‘Can’t. Not today. Listen, Anna, when I was getting the birds out of the chimney?’
I shivered. ‘Yes?’
‘I found something.’
Another death. ‘Giles, do I want to know about this?’
‘It’s a packet. Brown paper and string. It’s full of letters.’
‘What kind of letters? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Judith was there. And then you were asleep. They’ve been opened. With stamps but no postmarks. Penny stamps. Red. Mostly to an address in Manchester. I didn’t look inside.’
The ships met, became one. ‘You mean they’re Victorian? Victorian letters?’
He shrugged, still watching the ships, waiting for them to draw apart and prove that there had been no collision. ‘Your field not mine. Old handwriting, and red penny stamps.’
I stood up. ‘Where are they? Do you mind if I go back and look at them now?’
He looked as if I’d pushed him. ‘I’d like to see too. I mean, it’s my family.’
‘Is it?’ The cargo ships uncoupled. ‘Cassingham letters?’
‘I don’t know. They’re in my box. But wait for me, OK? And we can look together.’
Victorian letters had postmarks. It sounded as if these hadn’t been sent, as if they’d been aborted between stamping and posting. And then opened.
‘Mummy,’ said Raph. ‘Mummy, are we having whole onions? And Moth’s eating a worm.’
Mortality avenged. I thought I would rather let him finish a worm out of my sight than have to deal with a half-eaten one. Raph was right: I had tipped the onions from the chopping board into the pan but forgotten to cut them up. I picked them out, warm and slimy with oil.
‘Well, can you tell him to stop? I hope he’s not short of protein.’
‘You should have given him more peanut butter,’ said Raph. ‘What are you making?’
The onions skidded about as I attacked them with one of Julia’s old bone-handled knives. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But it usually starts with onions. I think there’s a tin of chickpeas in the cupboard. If not, we’re a bit sunk.’
He turned back at the door. ‘We can find some more worms, I suppose.’
‘Not much good if you’re vegetarian,’ I pointed out. ‘Anyway, it hasn’t come to that.’
‘I was only saying.’
‘I know.’ There were not only the chickpeas but a tin of clams, though perhaps better not to think about worms at the same time. ‘But there’s always the chippy in Colla if things get that bad.’ We could leave Giles to the locally harvested organic worms and go eat southern-fried battery chicken with our fingers and leave the bones in Andrex-coloured polystyrene shells.
He paused again. ‘Do vegetarians eat fish?’
Yes, I thought, invariably. Fish fingers are in fact a vegetable. I found the tin opener but there were no tomatoes. ‘Most of the ones I know do. Now can you run and check what Moth’s up to?’
Giles’s eyes widened at the sight of his plate but he said nothing, as befitted someone who came in late to find a meal on the table, and wielded his fork as one trained on the playing fields, or at least dining halls, of Eton. Moth picked out the chickpeas and ate them with his fingers and then demanded biscuits, which Giles thought we hadn’t bought, and Raph objected to the murder of clams but faced the rest with more spirit than I found I could muster.
‘Not hungry?’ asked Giles.
‘Maybe not hungry enough,’ I admitted.
His mouth twitched but he took another mouthful before he put his fork down. ‘Anna, my love, was there any motive but desperation for this combination?’
I poked at the mound on my plate. It looked like the vomit of some bottom-feeding fish, only drier.
‘Mummy,’ said Raph. ‘Is this the nastiest thing you’ve ever given us?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Giles, what about your thirtieth birthday cake?’ Bicarbonate of soda, I demonstrated to our assembled friends on that occasion, is not the same thing as baking powder, and the eighteenth-century household manual that suggested the exchange of milk and vinegar for buttermilk was either wrong or an example of the historical specificity of certain forms of material culture. Furthermore, if you replace the butter in ‘buttercream’ with an olive-oil-based margarine and fail to sieve icing-sugar of uncertain vintage the result will not mask the former misjudgements. Subsequent birthdays have been celebrated by courtesy of Marks & Spencer for the children and the Patisserie Maison Rouge in Summertown for Giles, enterprises after all founded on their ability to exceed amateur culinary efforts at a competitive price. Nobody provides a cake for me, although every year Giles and Raph express their surprise and regret when one does not materialize.
Giles considered. ‘No, I think Raph’s right. This is worse. Darling Anna, may I make you something else?’
‘Oh, you may,’ I said. ‘Any time, Giles. Every time. Be my guest. The question, if you look in the cupboards, is whether you can.’
‘Oh.’ Giles pushed his chair back and knelt at the cupboard’s mouth. Raph slid down and squatted beside him, as if they were peering into the lair of a potentially edible animal.
‘Mummy, biscuit!’ said Moth.
‘How about some fruit? A nice banana?’
‘Banana hates me. Chocolate?’
‘No, love. Not for dinner.’
Giles sat back. ‘What’s in the freezer?’
‘About twenty-five gallons of your mother’s home-made stock. And it’s too dark to go to Colla for fish and chips.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of going to Colla for fish and chips. I’ll make something, OK?’
‘Remember to leave some stock for your mother’s next visit.’
Moth yawned and I gathered him in my arms and cuddled him. It was eight o’clock.
‘I might go put Moth to bed while you do that. I don’t think he’s going to eat anything we’ve got.’
I let Moth swim his plastic cows around the bath until he noticed that the water had cooled and asked to come out, and then set a regrettable precedent by reading all of The Big Alfie and Annie Rose Storybook as well as The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck and a chilling little parable about some owlets whose mummy flies away. Eight circuits of ‘Hush, Little Baby’ and I was free, though I hung over the cot for a while, watching his eyelashes settle on the curve of his cheek and his fingers loosen on his bear. The landing outside was already dark; you can feel the earth tilting away from the solstice here, towards the dark weeks of winter, even before the back-to-school flurries of yellowing leaves at home. I could hear the hammering of knife on chopping board downstairs (would I be a better cook if I made more noise about it?) and Raph asking a question.
I went into our bedroom. There was still a pink glow coming through a rift in the dark cloud in the west, and enough light in the room that I didn’t need to acknowledge what I was doing by flicking a switch as I moved towards Giles’s box. The wind moved through the tree outside, which was already losing its leaves, but the sea was quiet. I opened the lid. The package lay on top, just as he said. Worn brown paper soft as skin and sandy with soot, tied like a Christmas parcel with hard string. Giles had pushed one quadrant of string aside and unfolded the top. I slid the letters out on to the bed, about a dozen of them. The writing on the front was
too fine to read in the dusk, although I could see that there were several different addressees, and I could barely tell the colour of the stamps, which were colder and shinier to my fingertips than the weave of expensive envelopes. No postmarks, and the envelopes ragged where they had been ripped open. It was unusual, in the nineteenth century, not to have a paper-knife to hand. Some were much heavier than others, fat with old news.
Condensation trickled down the kitchen window, leaving a trail of dark sky and stars. There were three pans on the stove, and the smell of fish.
‘Raph?’ I said. ‘Raph, love, shouldn’t you be going to bed?’
He looked up from the table, where he appeared to be doing the Guardian crossword. ‘I haven’t had supper yet.’
‘Not much longer!’ said Giles. He’d found a butcher’s apron somewhere and there was an invisible chef’s toque on his head.
I looked round. ‘Who’s doing the washing up?’
Giles sashayed past me with a device which I believe chops parsley when the handle is wound. I do not think there has ever been parsley on Colsay.
‘Don’t be a spoilsport. It’ll all be worth it in the end.’
I began to scrape the fish-sick I’d made earlier off the plates and into the bin, which required dexterity because the bin bag had technically been full since Giles’s breakfast tealeaves. I filled the sink.
‘Mummy, what’s a divorce petitioner?’
‘What Daddy’s going to be if he makes me clear up,’ I muttered. ‘Er, someone who doesn’t want to be married any more.’
He put the pen down. ‘Why?’
It seemed unreasonable to have to have this conversation without the excitement of an actual divorce.
‘I suppose because – because occasionally things go wrong and people don’t notice until it’s too late to sort them out.’
Giles looked up.
Raph clicked the biro up and down. ‘What sort of things? Why does that mean people want to stop being married?’
I went over and leant against Giles, who put his arm round me. ‘Oh, I don’t know. All sorts of things. One person can think that things are unfair but the other person won’t listen. Or one person could be very sad about something and the other person could be too busy to notice. Things like that can be sorted out if the people like each other and they see what’s happening in time to make it better. But if it goes on and on I suppose they can forget why they got married in the first place.’
Giles’s arm tightened and he kissed my hair. I rubbed my head against his shoulder. He smelt of Giles, clean with notes of grass and wind, and his fisherman’s jersey was unravelling at the holes in the elbow. He reached round to stir one of his pans.
Raph sketched a space ship in the margin of the crossword, as if reminding himself of where he came from. ‘When Rosie Roberts’ parents got divorced she said it was because her dad was shagging someone else.’
‘Raph!’
Giles’s shoulders shook as he turned back to the stove.
‘What?’
‘Er – we don’t use words like that. Oh, never mind. Look, put the paper away and help me set the table, OK?’
It was past eleven when Raph went to bed.
‘I’ll wash up in the morning,’ said Giles.
‘Yeah, right.’
He paused, the pile of plates unsteady in his hand. ‘I always used to wash up in the morning. I used to wash up while you had your bath. Remember?’
It was true. Before any of us could really afford it, people used to bring good wine for Giles’s cooking, and, before any of us had the babysitter’s meter ticking away in our minds all evening, people used to stay late. Giles sometimes ran a bath for me before I woke, and by the time I emerged pink and in search of coffee our rented Formica kitchen looked like an illustration from a 1970s Good Housekeeping.
‘Used to wash up,’ I said.
He put the plates down and came over to me. ‘I know. Sorry.’
‘Sorry I forgot that your maternity leave ended months ago, sorry I forgot that you have a career too, sorry I’ve been systematically dismantling your intellectual life until you don’t recognize yourself any more, or just sorry for making you take over the kitchen and then belittling your best efforts?’
He reached out for me and I pushed him away. ‘Or maybe sorry for acting as though sex makes up for everything?’
He turned and stared out of the window. The condensation had cleared, adding to the mould round the window frame, and I could see him staring back at himself. ‘All of that. Anna, I’m sorry.’
I picked up the plates and put them by the sink. I knew he would never speak to me the way I had just spoken to him. I could have counted off my next words on my fingers. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t care about your grieving. I’m sorry I’ve been rude about you to the kids. I’m sorry – I’m sorry I’ve been so resentful.’
He didn’t turn round. ‘And we’re in time to make it better?’
I went and stood beside him. Our reflections gazed back from the orchard, where the apple trees stood black against the dark sky, showing signs of neither life nor death. I put my arms round him, pressed my face against his rough wool back.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. But it’s probably time to start trying, wouldn’t you say?’
Colsay House, Colsay
7th Dec., 1878
Dear Lord Hugo and Miss Emily,
I write with sadness to resign my position here. The Grice child was born five days ago, by night, and I was not called. I believe it is not yet dead, but I am sorry to say that the coffin prepared by the father will be of more use than the shawl that I, seeing no preparations in hand for a living child, passed my evenings in knitting; the infant ceased feeding three days ago and lies now stiff and pale. There is another child expected on this island in March of next year, but I have no confidence that the mother would accept my ministrations even were I to pass the Spring here and devote myself to befriending her.
Sir, if you wish to save the children of Colsay you must either disband this people and send them into a land of progress and forward-looking or, perhaps, send one of their number to be trained at one of the great nursing schools in London or Edinburgh, though I suspect the latter course, could you persuade any of these women to pursue it and, harder yet, to return to the hardship and filth of her native island having pursued it, would serve only to alienate the chosen girl from her own kind. It is my deep conviction that the only future for these people lies away from this place.
I regret, also, that relations between myself and Mrs Barwick, who was called to the birth, have not been friendly, and indeed I have reason to complain of her conduct towards me in many regards. I know, of course, that a lady’s relationship with her personal maid must of necessity be an intimate one, and further that she must have given perfect satisfaction in that position to be so maintained in later life, but I must inform you that, far from being that help and support to me in this work that I had hoped, there is all too much reason to believe that she has given to the ‘knee-woman’ (whose identity remains unknown to me) that loyalty which, as your employee and even agent in this place, I had every reason to expect.
I trust you will understand my desire, under the circumstances, to depart immediately; I am told that the wind is such as to make it unadvisable to launch a boat this morning but I am determined to prevail upon the men to make it possible for me to take the Oban steamer which leaves on Thursday, and I have yet, I believe, sufficient means to induce them to do so.
Yours truly,
May Moberley
16
WHAT MAY BE FOUND WITHIN
In the quiet of the bedroom we raise the boxlid, and the skeletons are there. In the calm evening walk we see in the distance the suspicious-looking bundle, and the mangled infant is within. By the canal side, or in the water, we find the dead child. In the solitude of the wood we are horrified by the ghastly sight, if we betake ourselves to the rapid rail in order to escape the pollution, w
e find at our journey’s end that the mouldering remains of a murdered innocent have been our travelling companion; and that the odour from that unsuspected parcel too truly indicates what may be found within.
– William Burke Ryan, 1862, quoted in Hilary Marland, Dangerous Motherhood: Insanity and Childbirth in Victorian Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. xxx
They stood on the pavement watching as I started the car, Moth in Giles’s arms looking at me as if I were chopping up Teddy or taking an axe to his cot, as if I were destroying all the things he had trusted me to protect. He was still as if sick, wide-eyed. I put the car into first gear and released the handbrake. It would have been easier if he’d cried, although when I saw a tear on Raph’s cheek I thought maybe tears were worse.
‘They’ll be fine,’ said Giles. ‘You’ll be fine. Don’t think about us.’
I leant out of the window. ‘I’ll phone you, all right? Moth, love? You can talk to Mummy on the telephone. On Daddy’s phone. And you’ll probably be asleep when I get back on Wednesday but I’ll come and see you. Giles, remember Moth needs Teddy to watch him having a bath. And you need to get milk before you head back.’
‘I’ll stay awake until you come back,’ said Raph. He rubbed his sleeve across his eyes.
‘I’ll think about you all the time,’ I promised. As if that would make any difference. ‘Moth? You’ll see me the day after tomorrow, OK? Mummy’s coming back very soon.’
Moth hid his face on Giles’s shoulder.
‘Just go,’ said Giles. ‘You’re only prolonging the performance. Come on, Raph, this is silly. When I was your age I was at boarding school.’