Signs for Lost Children

by Sarah Moss

  Penvenick peers around Tom’s door. ‘I’m off home now, Tom. What are you working on?’

  Ink has dripped from his uplifted pen onto the blotting paper. ‘Just the letters about the apparatus for Red Rock.’

  Penvenick opens the door fully. He became stooped and drawn while Tom was in Japan. Tom wonders when his son last saw him, if he knows how age has come upon the man.

  ‘Taking you a good while.’

  Tom dips the pen again. ‘I’ll stay till they’re done.’

  Penvenick sighs. ‘There’s no great urgency. Mrs—Dr. Cavendish will be wanting you home.’

  Tom keeps his head down. ‘She’s over at the convalescent home.’

  ‘Thought they had a housekeeper for the nights?’

  ‘Ally had to dismiss her. Not suitable.’

  ‘So your wife stays every night?’

  Tom looks up. Penvenick already knows. He writes the first line of the address. ‘Most nights, yes. She won’t be wanting me home.’

  Penvenick pats Tom’s shoulder and then draws back. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Tom. Truly sorry.’

  What is he supposed to say? Thank you? It is nothing? It is not nothing. He has—they have—failed. He has not learnt to be a husband, has not sufficiently studied what husbands do. He assumed it would be obvious, matrimony. He assumed that love and good will would be enough, and he was wrong. He waits while Penvenick shuffles away and then writes the next line of the address. At least now the old man knows, he can volunteer for the Scilly job without having to give explanations. He dips the pen again.

  There is still sunlight lying on the hill above Flushing when he leaves the office. From here, he cannot see even the rooflines of the palaces above Rose Tree House, only the sky above where Ally is and the sea before her. It will be easier to think of their separation in Scilly, from which England itself is only occasionally visible on the horizon. It would be easier still if he returned to Japan. A perfectly civilized arrangement. Not yet. The boats are all afloat now, bobbing and swaying companionable as sheep in a field, and the stillness that precedes sunset is settling on the water. He did not see this in Japan, the tender slowness of a northern dusk. He would need to go further: Aomori, Hakodate, Sapporo, the high forest places of the Ainu, who worship bears by taming them and nurturing them, calling them Brother until one day it is time to put the honoured creature to a slow death. The seagulls wheel and call over his head. He will walk out to the sea before he goes home.

  There are flowers blooming in all the gardens, bright colours and variegated shapes foaming over walls and dripping from trees and fences. The terraced houses are painted pink, blue, green, as if by children newly entranced by the power of colour. Along Dunstanville, couples saunter, the women garish in aniline dyed skirts, laughing and chattering loud as ravens. He remembers beds of gravel raked into patterns that wove tapestries of shade under black branches and crimson leaves. He remembers Makiko’s grey and white bird kimono, her neat gait as she knelt and rose. He has passed the captains’ houses and is almost at Ludgate House. He finds himself on the doorstep, ringing the bell.

  ‘Good evening.’

  He remembers the maid from last time, an elderly woman, tall and thin in her black and white, her hair scraped back under a lace cap.

  ‘I’m not expected,’ he says. ‘I’m Thomas Cavendish. I brought all the things—the hangings, the netsuke—from Japan?’

  She waits, the door still her hand. The house is so big, he thinks, the panelling so deep and the brocade curtains so heavy, that he would not hear if there were a whole dinner party going on in there. He feels dampness under his arms.

  ‘And I was just wondering—well, I was thinking, perhaps if it’s not an inconvenience I would so very much like to see them again. In their places. Now Mr. De Rivers has had time to—to arrange them.’

  She looks him up and down. ‘Mr. and Miss De Rivers are at table, sir.’

  Inside are all the treasures, the foxes on the inro, the blossoms on the tea-bowls, the golden persimmons floating on the lacquerwork tray. And not the cranes, which are still there, still under the imperial roof in Kyoto.

  ‘Perhaps I might return?’

  A door opens, a shaft of light across the dim hall behind her.

  ‘Who is it, Ellen?’ De Rivers approaches, napkin in hand. ‘Tom Cavendish! Good evening.’

  Tom shifts. What is he doing, why is he here? He has completed his commission and been generously rewarded.

  ‘It’s nothing, Mr. De Rivers. Only I was passing, and thinking of Japan, and I found myself here wondering how the—the consignment looks in its new home. Foolishness, I’m afraid. I apologise for interrupting your evening.’

  De Rivers watches a cart pass down the hill behind Tom. ‘Not tonight, Mr. Cavendish. Come back on—let me see—Wednesday. After dinner, if you please, but I dare say we can raise a supper for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Tom feels his face flush. He is, after all, always was, just a hired hand. A flunkey. He has no idea what hour is meant by after dinner and before supper. ‘Er, what time should I come, please? Only, I have business obligations, you understand.’

  De Rivers is turning away, impatient for the next course. ‘Penvenick does work you hard. Nine o’clock?’

  ‘Thank you. Until then.’

  Tom steps back onto the pavement with his fists balled. Wherever he goes, whatever he builds, however he might learn to conduct himself in a Japanese tea room or among the boys on a ship, he will never know the codes of the rich. Even Mr. and Mrs. Dunne serve suppers only after evenings of dancing or at the theatre. How can a man be dining—he checks his watch—at eight and require feeding again an hour later? He continues down the hill, into town and away from the white cottage. Babies go longer between meals, he thinks, than bloated rich men. At least on a passenger ship there is the excuse of boredom. He is past the quay before his face begins to cool in the breeze picking up on the water.

  THE DARKNESS AT THE TOP OF A CLOUDLESS SKY

  Mrs. Curnow’s trunk stands at the bottom of the stairs. The front door is propped open with a grey oval stone, and the tin trunk bathes in sun like a rock on the beach. There are scuffs on the floorboards now, and a dent in the wall where the door-handle hits it. The hall smells of the bluebells in a jam jar on the windowsill, and as Ally comes down the stairs she can hear the thump and roll of Miss Mason kneading dough in the kitchen and the hens squabbling in the backyard.

  Mrs. Curnow is going home. Her husband has agreed to send the girls to stay with his mother for a fortnight and Mrs. Curnow’s sister is coming to stay so that she won’t be alone during the day when Mr. Curnow is at work. She will be ‘on probation’, as if madness were a crime and sanity as provisional as moral reform, and at the end of her probation she will have to prove her sanity in an interview with the committee. How will you keep yourself well, they like to ask. What will you do if you feel yourself weakening again? Do you consider yourself wholly cured? Yes means that the patient has unrealistic ideas and lacks self-knowledge, no means that she is still unwell. Ally stops in the kitchen to greet Miss Mason and then steps out into the morning.

  The trees, now in full bright leaf, rise tall as churches around the garden, and the air is loud with their whispers. Even now, near eleven, half the garden lies under shifting shadows, and at first it is hard to see clearly across the sunshine to the two women bending in the shade at the far end.

  ‘Mrs. Curnow?’

  They both straighten up, hands on hips. Mrs. Curnow’s hair has come loose and her face is flushed. She will need to look tidier for the committee. They are weeding the new vegetable bed, both able to distinguish the nurtured from the unwelcome green shoots as Ally cannot.

  Mrs. Rudge gestures towards the basket at her feet. ‘I’m keeping the chickweed for the hens. And there’s plenty of it.’

  Mrs. Curnow wipes her
forehead with the back of her hand, smearing mud. ‘I’m not wanted already? He hasn’t come early?’

  ‘No,’ says Ally. ‘But it is probably time to come in and get ready. You will want to wash your hands and face.’ And it was not a good idea to weed the garden in the costume in which you propose to travel, she thinks, but it is too late for that.

  ‘Of course. Margaret, you won’t mind if I go in now? And you’ll come and say goodbye, won’t you, before I go?’

  ‘We all will, I’m sure. The first one. You’d best go make yourself pretty.’

  They watch as Mrs. Curnow hurries towards the house. The grass is still long and rough, harbouring snails which are also given to the hens, but gradually the garden is being tamed. Dr. Crosswyn himself spent some time in personal combat with the brambles, and set up a highly irregular arrangement by which the gardener of the cottage hospital came to dig beds and build a henhouse in exchange for Ally’s attendance on the women’s ward one Saturday. Mrs. Rudge turns back to her work. Her children have not replied to the letter, and her husband shows no interest in assisting in her discharge. And Tom, Ally thinks, Tom has made no approach either, shown no desire for her return.

  ‘These are the marrows?’ Ally asks. ‘It is hard to imagine that they will get so big. The growth must be almost visible in the summer.’

  ‘Aye. But they’re not much use when they’re let get too big. Taste of nothing much and liable to fall into a heap when you cook them. We’ll eat these small and tender. Maybe with the wild garlic, if it holds on long enough.’

  Because they will both be here, still, Ally and Mrs. Rudge, when the marrows are small, and when they are large, when summer nights flit over the garden and when the leaves begin to turn and fall again.

  ‘That sounds good. And this one is the chickweed?’

  Ally stoops and pulls a few stalks, trying to tug gently so the roots slide out of the soil instead of breaking off. She does not like the hens, with their ancient scaly feet and unblinking hostile eyes, but she is glad that they are there, an audible counterpoint to the work of living together.

  The house is resting, full of sunlight and shadows and the smell of flowers. Under its cloth in the kitchen, Miss Mason’s bread respires, grows, exhales the smell of yeast at work, of bacteria multiplying and grain lifting towards the sun’s warmth. Dust dances in the banners of light hanging across the hall, and the breeze from the sea comes across the stones and the trees to stir the curtains with an idle hand. Ally listens. Mrs. Gunner and Miss Trennick have gone across the water to a help at a church coffee morning organised by the vicar’s wife. I think you are so brave, she said to Ally, taking on such responsibility. I wonder you are not afraid to sleep there all alone! Anything we can do to help, of course—I do not sleep there alone, Ally replied. There are seven of us, and if you wish to help it would be most kind of you to invite our residents to participate in the Ladies’ Programme. Several of them have considerable experience of such matters and would doubtless be of assistance to you.

  Water trickles: Miss Mason in the bathroom, easing flour from under her fingernails and from the creases in her hands. Mrs. Henning still prefers, or feels obliged, to spend time in her bedroom rather than taking possession of the sitting room, and she is probably up there trying to finish the handkerchief she has been embroidering for Mrs. Curnow. A drawer closes overhead: Mrs. Curnow checking again that she has left nothing behind. Another one opens. The repeated checking is not reassuring, and Mrs. Curnow’s apparent inability to recognise and control the checking less reassuring still. Mr. Curnow should be here any moment. Ally hurries up the stairs.

  Mrs. Curnow is kneeling at her bureau with an open drawer in her hand. There is still mud on her face. She, Ally and Mrs. Rudge all verified the bureau’s emptiness yesterday.

  Ally kneels beside her and touches her arm. ‘You know that if anything were to be left behind we would send it on to you. You can lose nothing.’

  Mrs. Curnow closes the drawer and puts her hand on another one. ‘I know. It’s just—I worry. I don’t want him thinking I can’t be trusted to pack. To know my own things.’

  ‘Yes. But also, you don’t want those around you to think that you do not know your own mind and doubt your own actions. It is a hard thing to prove oneself well, Mrs. Curnow, and it is not foolish to be anxious. Come.’

  Ally stands up and holds out a hand to help Mrs. Curnow, who has been kneeling on the wooden floor for some time. Mrs. Curnow lumbers to her feet. Ally leads her to window, from which they can see the trees sparkling with sunlight and the sea glimmering behind them and the darkness at the top of a cloudless sky.

  ‘It will be a difficulty for some time that your family and friends will be watching you for signs of distress and anxiety, and watching more closely if they see such signs, because naturally you will be anxious about being watched, especially if you fear losing your liberty. If you are indeed well, and if your friends indeed value you most when you are well and happy, the passage of time is likely to ease the circle of surveillance and fear. Otherwise, I can tell you only that when in doubt a woman is more likely to be criticised for action than for inaction, for speech rather than silence.’ If a woman in most situations wishes to be considered sane, she should conduct herself in the way best calculated to drive any reasonable adult to distraction. This is probably an exaggeration, and anyway not a useful thing to tell Mrs. Curnow, already tangled and trapped in self-surveillance.

  ‘There. I hear wheels. Come, we will talk to your husband. He must be your friend in this matter.’

  They give Mr. Curnow lunch, as if his wife has been staying with friends instead of detained as being of unsound mind. Ally takes her accustomed place at the head of the table and seats him on her right, where the master of a house would put an honoured lady guest. Miss Mason sets out silver and china with unusual precision. Mrs. Rudge speaks of vegetable gardening, Miss Mason of the warm weather and its probable effect on the harvest. Mrs. Henning, in between carrying in the stew and taking out the plates, discloses opinions on the Irish Question more insistent than the occasion justifies, but Ally is able to draw out Mr. Curnow’s consequent account of meeting an Irishman in a Plymouth hotel when Mrs. Henning fetches the currant pudding. Ally fills bowls and passes cream.

  They gather at the door to watch Mr. and Mrs. Curnow leave. Mrs. Curnow needs to play her part, Ally thinks, she needs to be well, or the first evidence from Rose Tree House will be failure. Mrs. Curnow turns around in her seat and waves her new handkerchief until the wheels bump away between the banks of cow parsley and buttercups that sway and dance along the lane.

  AT THIS TIME IN KYOTO

  The window is sequinned with rain, and beyond it clouds huddle low over the town. He will write this next letter, and then speak to Penvenick about the Scilly job before Joseph Kidd recognises a chance to put himself forward. It would be better for Penvenick to have Tom, the senior man, in charge, for even if he insists on overseeing the design himself his faith in Tom should save him several rough crossings and hard going on the clifftop. The islands themselves will be pleasant enough, this time of year, but the sea is still the Atlantic Ocean, unpredictable and bad-tempered even when the shore breathes the fragrance of gorse and the berries soak up sunshine in the hedgerows. It would be good to be there. Not to be here. He signs his name and presses the blotting paper over the letter. As he peels it back he remembers the movements of the maker of paper fans, the careful unveiling of filigree birds and foliage.

  Tom leaves the office earlier than he has been doing, to have time to wash and change at home before appearing again on the doorstep at Ludgate House. It is dull again today, the pavement oiled not quite with rain but with water settling from the air. The tide is rising, the estuary dark and sullen. He fastens his jacket and steps briskly through the mizzle. He does not know what he was thinking, to turn up unannounced like that. He does not know why he is going back t
oday, except that he said he would and it would perhaps be more embarrassing, having asked for an invitation, to change his mind and send apologies than simply to go through with the thing. But you went, Ally would say, because you wanted to visit your things, because you miss them and you hope that seeing them in their new place will reconcile you to yours, and perhaps your instinct will prove correct; in any case the visit does no harm. Or at least that is what she might have said had she anything to say to him still. He looks across the water, to where the low grey sky is snagged and tangled in the tops of the trees on the hill. She will be inside, probably, sitting at her fireside with the madwomen whose companionship she finds preferable to his own. She will be reading or writing, in passionate communion with the minds of people who are not there. Ally, it occurs to him, finds it easier to be with people who are not there, or not all there. She likes people mad, or dead, or far away. Scilly may not be far enough.

  The cottage smells of damp again. He pushes hard against the front door to close it behind him and throws his jacket over the bannisters. There is a letter, a London postmark and a scrawled handwriting he doesn’t recognise. Ally meant well, he knows, with the white paint and pale curtains, intended a new beginning purified from carpets thick with the dust of departed tenants and previous owners, from the condensed exhalations of everyone who has lived here in three hundred years. The plaster and paint may be evidence that she did not know until he came back that she no longer wishes to be his wife, but he misses the brown floral patterns, the mismatched chairs, a setting in which he was wholly unselfconscious. All this white, he thinks, this emptiness, it makes him feel like a performer, as if some propitiation is required for blotting it with one’s presence as a boy spoils a garden of new-fallen snow. He still has the letter in his hand.

  It’s from Annie Forrest. Please forgive my writing like this out of the blue, an unwarrantable interference, and I find myself wishing to add, please burn this letter, but you will know best and I will, after all, say nothing that I would not say to her. I have heard of your separation from Ally and I could not let things rest. She thinks he doesn’t understand. She thinks he hasn’t tried hard enough, and she’s right, this is an unwarrantable interference. I imagine that when you were in Japan you were always trying to guess what people wanted and what they meant, trying to guess how you might appear in their eyes? Hoping that by rigorous observation you might be able to avoid giving offence? This idea of mine is a compliment, Tom. Many men, even if they travel, never live like this even for half an hour of their lives. But if it was like that for you, if you were watchful and hesitant from first waking until sleep, then you know how it is to be a woman and especially to be a woman entering a profession. We are always strangers in a strange land. I think Ally is like that all the time, hunted and cunning, because she has had no safe place, no home. She is now and has always been afraid of her mother. Her Aunt Mary and Uncle James love her but they don’t understand why she is a doctor and she has always known that she doesn’t know which fork to use or what should not be said in mixed company or among ladies with their gloves on. I think Rose Tree House may be the first place where she doesn’t have to guess or see herself through another person’s eyes, and that’s why she doesn’t want to be anywhere else.