Flowers Stained With Moonlight

by Catherine Shaw

  ‘You know,’ she says, ‘you could have your wish, and I mine.’

  ‘I never can,’ says Camilla gloomily.

  ‘It depends on what you want,’ says Sylvia, looking at her friend intently. ‘And on how daring you are. Why don’t you dress like a man?’

  Her words strike Camilla’s fevered brain like a powerful blow, causing her thoughts to shatter into shards like a smashed glass. Kaleidoscope images tumble in her mind.

  Why not?

  How could she have never thought of it before?

  Could it be done? Is it feasible?

  Why not?

  Sylvia leans forward, murmurs in her ear, so close that her lips brush a bit of hair. Her voice is warm, contains a vibrating laugh underneath its quiet tones.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ she says. ‘We can shop tomorrow – for your brother, we’ll pretend. And cut your hair. Oh, Camilla – what an adventure!’

  XIII. Free

  Camilla cannot believe the change which occurs in her the very moment she pulls on the unfamiliar garments, the curtains drawn over the sunny window, her dress, as though it contained her very personality, flung limp and abandoned over the bed; left, temporarily, behind. She stares in the mirror, holds up her arms to hide her too-familiar head, watches her long legs encased in trousers, planted well apart, buttons the stiff jacket over the firm, even surface she has created by binding a cloth tightly over her small breasts, as she has heard that the Japanese ladies do. She feels like leaping and shouting; she whirls about, laughing, to face Sylvia, whose subjugated expression provokes a burning wave. She practises throwing herself onto a chair, long-legged and free. She drapes one leg casually over the arm.

  ‘Pity about the hair,’ she says, letting it down. ‘I can’t go out like this.’

  She puts on her dress reluctantly, but her impatience drives her. Sylvia takes her to a hairdresser’s shop on a little side street. Without undue shame, Camilla explains what she wants.

  ‘Short like a man, and a chignon made from the cuttings.’

  ‘Oui, madame.’ Used to every absurd folly, no questions asked. He washes the hair, combs it out, cuts quickly and surely. Sylvia is sitting nearby, watching. The long locks fall to the ground; Camilla thought she would feel some regret, but instead feels only lighter and freer as the thick short waves lift and come to life, unencumbered by the weight that always pulled them down. The switch will be ready only the next day. Camilla returns home timidly, wearing a large hat.

  ‘I can’t go to the dining room like this,’ she says, removing it in front of the mirror, ruffling the hair, staring at herself, entranced, amazed.

  ‘Silly,’ says Sylvia, handing her the trousers.

  And now it is true. Camilla is transformed; Camilla, in fact, is gone.

  ‘Gone to the library!’ smirks Sylvia insanely.

  A young man stares back at her, takes her arm.

  ‘We’re going out,’ he says, his voice quiet and low. And together, excited, tense, fearful and adventurous, they brave the streets.

  Nothing happens. No one notices anything. And that, in itself, is the most exciting and extraordinary thing of all. Camilla increases in bravery; she stops staring at the ground, stands tall, strides long, laughs.

  ‘We’re going to have supper in a restaurant,’ she says. And they do.

  When they return to the hotel, she is inflamed as never before.

  XIV. The Party

  They go out together every evening.

  After a verre d’absinthe, they begin to invent wild plans.

  ‘Let’s elope and live together on a Greek island,’ whispers Camilla. ‘Let’s go to a church and get married. Let’s hunt antelope together in the savannah.’

  But Sylvia, as usual, dazzles her with the infinitely higher degree of daring contained in her perfectly feasible, down-to-earth projects. After all, she is the one who said Dress like a man. And now she says,

  ‘Let’s go to a party together.’

  ‘A party? What party?’

  ‘We’re invited to the Hardwicks’ this evening. Let’s go there.’

  ‘Sylvia! Camilla is invited there with you – there are people we know! It’ll never work.’

  After another absinthe, they decide to go. Camilla will speak only French, and introduce herself as a Russian prince.

  ‘This is mad,’ she says. She is terrified. Sylvia is crazy with laughing.

  ‘When I do something silly, this is what I always say to myself,’ she gasps, ‘what is the worst thing that can possibly happen?’

  ‘“Camilla, what do you mean by that ridiculous get-up?”’ says Camilla, mimicking being recognised instantly by their high-nosed hostess.

  ‘“Dear Eleanor, Sylvia has been behaving most peculiarly,”’ chokes Sylvia, mimicking a letter being addressed to her mother by a well-meaning blue-haired busybody. They are laughing so much they can hardly breathe.

  But when they arrive at the party, after the first minute of sheer terror, Camilla realises that nobody recognises her; it is not so surprising, after all. She has only encountered their hostess once before, and that briefly. She stops wanting to burst into nervous laughter and begins to live her part; to live her life, she thinks. Camilla is a part.

  ‘Where is Camilla?’

  The words break on her ear like a wave, she looks up, startled. But Mrs Hardwick is addressing Sylvia.

  ‘She couldn’t come, I’m so sorry,’ Sylvia is saying with impressive self-composure. ‘She – she had to go to the library!’ Camilla loves her madly. Her face burns as she hooks her arm over Sylvia’s and draws her away.

  She adopts her role so completely that she feels Slavic to the soul. ‘This is my friend, Vassily Semionovich, Prince Yousoupoff,’ says Sylvia inanely to a bunch of old ladies who fan themselves, fluttering, and Camilla becomes the Russian prince, advances a leg and swings her arm over the back of a chair in a pose of casual mastery.

  Oh, the moment of exquisite panic and beauty when Mrs Hardwick suddenly takes it into her stupid head to introduce the Russian prince to a Russian diplomat! Within five seconds, he has grasped that the impostor in front of him is no Russian at all – but the real imposition in front of his very eyes – of that, he sees nothing! Flooded, blinded by euphoria, Camilla recounts a ridiculous tale of a joke and binds him to the secret – and he merely laughs, and promises.

  ‘Do you mind, sometimes,’ Sylvia asks her later, ‘that you do after all need to disguise? Does it mar your pleasure in being able to behave openly?’

  ‘No!’ answers Camilla, so sharply she surprises herself. ‘This is the openness that I wanted. This is it; I have it. I don’t need the other Camilla, the one in the dress. She can disappear, she can—’

  ‘—go to the library!’ finishes Sylvia with a giggle.

  XV. The farm

  Marie-Antoinette had it built for her entertainment; a frivolous, artificial but ravishingly beautiful plaything. Sylvia and Camilla walk through it, through the little dilapidated buildings: stable, dairy, farmhouse. Their thatched rooves are half eaten away and their yellowish colour is dirty, yet it is easy to see how dainty they must have been when they were fresh and new. A toy for a princess.

  ‘It cost a fortune to have it all built,’ said Camilla. ‘Even the lake is artificial. And look at the little houses around it; she had a whole tiny toy village built next to her farm.’

  Enormous branches of wisteria twine around the half-collapsed balconies, covered in light green leaves; the flowers are gone already. A pigeon-house, a bee-garden, a vegetable patch. Camilla can only shake her head in disbelief. It is the tangible sign of a cosmic effort to play at life.

  ‘What does it mean to play at life?’ wonders Sylvia, unconvinced.

  ‘To engage yourself in something … but not deeply. Not for real. Just for fun, or for show.’

  ‘Like me marrying,’ she says then. ‘Perhaps I meant to play at it.’

  ‘You did,’ says Camilla.

  ‘But
George didn’t,’ she answers. Camilla whirls, turns on her.

  ‘Sylvia – have you – has he—’

  ‘No,’ she says, a little wrinkle of worry appearing between her eyes, belying her unconcerned voice. ‘Camilla, you know I never will. I don’t want to, and anyway, I couldn’t. I should go mad. But then, I am destined to go mad anyway, I suppose. In fact, I am already mad.’

  ‘Nonsense, Sylvia, what are you saying? Sylvia – if it’s becoming very bad, you should leave him!’

  ‘Oh, Camilla, I can’t leave him any more. I didn’t want to tell you. He’s got a certificate from a doctor friend of his, that says I’m quite mad. Really he does. He made him write it because he did the doctor a favour. He told me if I make him, he’ll use it to have me locked up in a madhouse.’

  Camilla stares at her in blank shock.

  ‘Sylvia, how can you bear to go on with it?’

  ‘Oh, he won’t really do it, I suppose,’ says Sylvia, smoothing out her forehead with her fingers. ‘At least I hope not. Anyway, I’m here now.’

  She has a magic ability, which Camilla totally lacks, to remain carefree under such a menace, as long as she is momentarily far away from it. But Camilla is cramped with terror. Sylvia twines her arms around her neck with kisses.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll never go back,’ she says. ‘Let’s just stay here forever.’

  Reality has no power over her.

  XVI. Escape

  ‘We know too many people in Paris. Let’s leave.’

  Camilla has slipped so entirely into the skin of a young man that the feel of the lace ruffle on her fingers confuses her when she buttons her blouse, and the swish of the long skirt swinging around her legs feels awkward, like a disguise, like an obstacle. She puts them on, hating it, when they must visit Sylvia’s friends.

  ‘Your clothes are so lovely, Camilla – it’s almost a pity!’

  ‘I never want to see them again. I’ll still make things for you.’

  And they leave Paris altogether and take a train up to Deauville, and live in the night altogether; dancing, gambling, walking on the waterfront wrapped in greatcoats, kissing on the beach under the winking stars, sleeping until the afternoon. Moonlight is their time – moonlight is the time for secrets. Deauville is their place – a nocturnal town where phantom people dripping with phantom diamonds fling phantom money, laughing, to the winds.

  When they run out, Sylvia says they must return to Paris and wire.

  ‘You wire your father for money, and I’ll wire George and say we’re staying on here. I wonder what he’ll say,’ she suggests. ‘Perhaps he’ll come and get me, and lock me up in a madhouse after all.’ She laughs, half-bitterly, half-lightly. And Camilla spends another night of agony, trying to pierce the blackness out of the window, trying to pierce the blackness of the future, while Sylvia lies in bed, her naked limbs abandoned in sleep, and incomprehensibly, perfectly tranquil.

  The manuscript broke off suddenly at this point. My candle had grown small as I read, and now, as I remained still and trembling, it guttered and went out. I sat in the dark, clutching the bundle of papers, pictures whirling in my brain, unable to think or act. A long time passed, I believe, before I finally rose and tried to feel my way quietly, in the pitch darkness, back to my room. It was only a few feet away, but objects were littered about the place, and I soon knocked something over – it fell with a crash and I gasped into the darkness.

  A match scraped nearby and I heard the sound of a bolt, and simultaneously, saw a line of light form underneath the door leading into Sylvia’s room. It opened, and she stood in the doorway, framed in the square of light. She stared at me, and it seemed to me that on her face, in her wide eyes, was imprinted a strange look of horror that I had never seen there before. Her eyes fell upon the papers in my hand, and she raised them in a quick glance to the top of the closet, then to my face.

  ‘So you know,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Yes. I know now. Did you know?’ I answered. I spoke low, but could not whisper, for it was too ghostly in that dark room, shivering with spirits of the dead.

  ‘Only today, when Mother’s wire came. She only wrote that you had come back, and wanted to see me. I thought it quite ordinary, but Camilla panicked. I didn’t understand at first, when she said you must have realised everything. She said you were looking for George’s murderer, she knew it. She said that that lady in Paris, Mrs Clemming, had written to Mother while you were over there. Camilla saw the letter arrive, though Mother never mentioned it. I thought that stupid lady just wanted to scold Mother for my bad behaviour in Paris, but Camilla was sure that it was because you were investigating over there. She was so upset this morning, when the wire came. I couldn’t understand it. Don’t you see? She knows. She knows it was me, she said. I stared at her. It took me a long time to understand. You’d better leave. Go back home, she said. I’ll write to you. So I left. It seemed like such a long way back. I arrived after you had gone up, so I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Then I heard something fall in here, and knew it was you.’ She paused for a moment.

  ‘I feel numb,’ she continued. ‘I don’t seem to be able to feel anything. Camilla is gone. She’s gone forever, I think. Maybe to Russia, maybe to Africa. And I can’t feel what she did, I can’t feel that she’s gone. I feel dead.’

  ‘It’s shock,’ I said gently, going to her.

  ‘People thought it was for the money!’ she said, with a strange giggle. ‘The money – George’s money! What’ll happen to it now? I don’t want it – I’ll never touch it, even if they give it to me, after all. Oh, it isn’t mine – if I had my way, I’d – I’d make it all over to Ellen’s little boy.’ She was speaking a little feverishly, her eyes strange, her breath short. ‘If only – if only there was some way they could prove he was really George’s son.’

  ‘I think it could be proven,’ I said softly, remembering the photograph. I approached her, worried about the echo of madness in her voice, and held out the manuscript, I don’t know why. But she pushed my hand away.

  ‘Oh no, not that!’ she cried. ‘I don’t want it, I never want to see it again! Oh God, I’m afraid of it – it means death … yet it means love. It’s too beautiful to destroy.’ She paused, and added softly, ‘Do you think Camilla will write to me? I don’t know what I’ll do if she does. Burn the letter, maybe. Or follow her to the ends of the earth. I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  She reached out a finger and lightly touched the manuscript I held, then turned away and returned to her room, silently.

  The dawn was just beginning to flush the sky with pink streaks. I closed my door behind me and tried to lie down upon my bed, but I could not rest at all; it seemed to hold a secret horror for me. I rose and dressed instead, packed my small bag, thrusting Camilla’s manuscript deep into it amongst my things, and now I am writing to you until it should be late enough for Peter to be about his work. Oh, Dora, I cannot face Mrs Bryce-Fortescue and tell her these things – I cannot! I mean to slip away to Cambridge as soon as I can get Peter to take me to the station. I need to go home, I need to see Arthur. I shall write or telegraph from there – but only God knows what I shall say …

  Your desperately upset

  Vanessa

  Cambridge, Sunday, July 24th, 1892

  My dearest sister,

  All is over; I am here, and safe. I am worn out with it all. Only this morning, awakening with the sun, I suddenly remembered that the fresh breeze blowing the curtains and the shrill birdsong outside signified, perhaps, the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

  Yesterday after I finished writing to you, I picked up my bag and went out to the stable. I thought it might still be too early, but I found Peter there already, employed in waxing saddles.

  ‘Peter, I need you to take me to the station,’ I said miserably.

  ‘So you’re leaving,’ he said tonelessly, putting down his work.

  ‘Yes, I am leaving,’ I said. He stood up, and began the complex wor
k of leading out the horses and hitching them up without speaking or looking at me.

  ‘Oh, Peter,’ I said, climbing up on the box beside him, ‘I do feel terrible that I never told you I was engaged. It was awful of me. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. But I never thought you would care at all – I thought it was all just …’

  I stopped, for why should I add another lie to all the harm I had already done? I had seen well enough that he was growing fond of me.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Miss Vanessa,’ he said with a ghostly smile. ‘It was all just … That’s all it was. All I want now is to get away from this place and this family and start off afresh.’

  ‘That is all I want, as well,’ I said with heartfelt sincerity. He glanced up at me in quick surprise, but said nothing until we reached the little country station in the nearest village. Only then, as he reached my bag down and helped me alight, did he speak again, but then it was with a kinder expression in his eyes.

  ‘Goodbye, then,’ he said with the hint of a smile. ‘Folks like you and me will always fall on their feet, I think. So it’s all right. Good luck!’ He turned away abruptly, and heaving a sigh of mingled guilt and relief, I stepped onto the quay, sat down upon a sunny and dilapidated wooden bench, and waited for the first train of the day.

  It took me far too long to reach home; changing trains, and waiting, alone, on platforms in tiny stations overgrown with vines, in villages with enchanting names. It was afternoon already when I reached Mrs Fitzwilliam’s house. I rushed upstairs at once, and knocked on Arthur’s door, terrified that he would not be in. But he opened it at once, took one look at me and collected me in his arms.

  ‘Oh, Arthur,’ I cried. ‘You didn’t want me to shake hands with a murderer …’

  It took me a long time to steel myself to tell Arthur everything; much longer, in fact, than it took for the actual telling. He listened, white, and wanted to rush to the police at once.