by Kate Morton
The man noticed the tickets on the floor then and scooped them up. ‘America, eh? The land of new beginnings. I like the sound of that. Very clever. Very clever indeed. And a travel date so soon.’
‘Run ahead, Lucy,’ said Lily Millington. ‘Go and join the others. Hurry, now. Before anyone else comes up here looking for you.’
‘I don’t want to—’
‘Lucy, please.’
There was an urgency to Lily Millington’s tone, and reluctantly Lucy left the room, but she didn’t go back to the woods. She stayed on the other side of the door and listened. Lily Millington’s voice was soft, but Lucy could hear her saying, ‘… more time … America … my father …’
The man burst out laughing and said something so quietly that Lucy couldn’t hear.
Lily Millington made a noise then, as if she had been hit and was winded, and Lucy was about to charge in to help when the door flew open and the man – Martin – swept past her, dragging Lily by the wrist behind him, muttering to her, ‘blue … America … new beginnings … ’
Lily Millington saw Lucy and shook her head, indicating that she should make herself scarce.
But Lucy refused. She followed them down the hallway, and when they reached the drawing room and the man saw her, he laughed and said, ‘Look out, here comes the cavalry. The little knight in shining armour.’
‘Lucy, please,’ said Lily Millington. ‘You must go.’
‘Best listen to her.’ The man grinned. ‘Little girls who don’t know when to leave have a habit of coming to sticky ends.’
‘Please, Lucy.’ There was a look of fear in Lily’s eyes.
But Lucy was overcome, suddenly, with all of the uncertainty of the past few days, the prevailing sense that she was too young to be of any use, that she didn’t belong, that decisions were made above and around her but never to include her; and now this man whom she did not know was trying to take Lily Millington away, and without understanding why, Lucy did not want that to happen; and she saw that this was her opportunity to put her foot down on a matter, any matter, that she cared about.
She glimpsed Thurston’s rifle lying on the chair where he’d left it after breakfast that morning, and in one fell swoop she seized it, held it by the barrel, and whacked it as forcefully as she could against the sneering head of the awful stranger.
His hand went to the side of his face in shock and Lucy struck him again and then kicked him hard in the shins.
He stumbled and then tripped over a table leg and fell to the ground. ‘Quick,’ said Lucy, pulse drumming in her ears, ‘he’ll be on his feet again soon. We have to hide.’
She took Lily Millington by the hand and led her halfway up the stairs. At the landing, she pushed aside the bentwood chair, and as Lily Millington watched, Lucy pressed the wooden rise to reveal the trapdoor. Even in that moment of fearful panic, Lucy managed to feel a jolt of pride at Lily Millington’s surprise. ‘Quick,’ she said again. ‘He’ll never find you in there.’
‘How did you—?’
‘Hurry.’
‘But you must come in, too. He is not kind, Lucy. He is not a good man. He will hurt you. Especially now that he’s been bested.’
‘There isn’t room, but there’s another one. I’ll hide there.’
‘Is it far?’
Lucy shook her head.
‘Then get inside it and don’t hop out. Do you hear me? No matter what happens, Lucy, stay hidden. Stay safe until Edward comes to find you.’
Lucy promised that she would and then sealed Lily Millington inside the chamber.
Without wasting another moment, aware that the man was clambering to his feet in the drawing room below, she ran to the top of the stairs and along the hallway, sliding back the panel and climbing in. She sealed the door behind her, enclosing herself within the dark.
Time passed differently in the hideaway. Lucy heard the man calling out for Lily Millington and she heard other noises, too, far away. But she wasn’t frightened. Her eyes had begun to adjust, and at some point Lucy had noticed that she wasn’t alone, and that it wasn’t truly dark at all; there were thousands of little lights, the size of pinpricks, twinkling at her from within the fibre of the wooden boards.
As she sat waiting, hugging her knees to her chest, Lucy felt strangely safe in her secret hiding place, and she wondered whether Edward’s fairy story might have had some truth to it after all.
X
I still hear his voice sometimes, that whisper in my ear. I still remember the smell of cheese and tobacco from his lunch. ‘Your father isn’t in America, Birdie. He never was. He was trampled by a horse the day you were supposed to sail. It was Jeremiah what brought you to us. Scooped you off the ground while you were sickly, left your dad for the poorhouse to bury, and brought you to my ma. Your lucky day, it was. Jeremiah’s lucky day, too, for he’s been on a very good wicket ever since. He said that you were a bright little thing and you’ve done very well for him, you have. You didn’t really think that he was sending all those spoils across the ocean, did you?’
He could not have winded me more surely had he driven his knee hard into my chest. And yet, I did not question what he told me. I did not doubt his claim, not even for a second, for I knew, as soon as he said it, that it was true. It was the only thing that made sense, and everything in my life to date was suddenly brought into sharper focus. Why else would my father fail to send for me? It had been eleven years since I had woken up in the room above the shop selling birds and cages, surrounded by Mrs Mack and the others. My father was dead. He had been dead all along.
Martin grabbed my wrist then and started pulling me towards the door of the Mulberry Room. He was whispering that it was going to be all right, that he would make it all right, that I wasn’t to be sad because he had an idea. We would take the Blue, he and I, and instead of delivering it back to London we would take it ourselves, the diamond and the tickets, too, and sail to America. It was the land of new beginnings, after all, just like it said in the letters that Jeremiah brought for me each month.
He meant, of course, the letters that Mrs Mack used to read out loud, the news from America, the news from my father, all of it made up. It was a breathtaking deception. But what moral platform did I have from which to beat my breast? I was a petty thief, a pretender, a woman who had taken on an assumed name without a blink of hesitation.
Why, I had deceived Mrs Mack little more than a fortnight ago, when I told her of my intention to go away with Edward to the country. Mrs Mack would never have let me go away willingly, not to Birchwood Manor for the summer and not on to America with Edward. Over the years, I had become her most reliable earner, and in my short life there was one thing I had learned for certain: people become used to riches quickly, and even if they’ve done nothing themselves to earn the wealth, once it’s been had, they consider it their due.
Mrs Mack believed that she was entitled to everything that I was and that I had, and so, in order that I might leave London with Edward, I told her it was all part of a scheme. I told her that within a month I would return with riches the likes of which they’d never seen.
‘What sort of riches?’ said Mrs Mack, never one for generalities.
And because the best deceptions always skirt the truth, I told them about Edward’s plans to paint me and his idea to include the priceless Radcliffe Blue.
It was dark in the chamber and very hard to breathe. It was eerily quiet.
I thought about Edward and wondered what was happening with Fanny down by the woods.
I thought about Pale Joe and the letter I had sent him from the village telling him that I was going to America; that he might not hear from me for some time but he was not to worry. And I thought about the photograph that I had enclosed for him ‘to remember me by’, the photograph that Edward had taken with Felix’s camera.
I thought of my father and the weight of his hand around mine, the supreme happiness I had felt when I was tiny and we set out together on our railwa
y journeys to visit a broken clock.
And I thought of my mother, who was like sunlight on the surface of my memories, bright and warm but shifting. I remembered being with her one day at the edge of the river that ran behind our house in London. I had dropped a scrap of ribbon I’d been treasuring and was forced to watch, helpless, as the current took it away. I had cried, but my mother had explained to me that it was the nature of the river. The river, she said, is the greatest collector of them all; ancient and indiscriminate, carrying its load on a one-way journey towards the depthless sea. The river owes you no kindness, little Bird, she said, so you must be careful.
I realised that I could hear the river in that pitch-black hole, that I could feel its currents lulling me to sleep …
And then I heard something else, a set of footprints heavy on the floorboards above, and a muffled voice: ‘I have the tickets.’ It was Martin, right above the trapdoor. ‘Where have you got to? We just need the Blue and then we can get out of here.’
And then there came another noise, a door slamming downstairs, and I knew that someone else was in the house.
Martin ran towards the interruption.
Raised voices, a scream.
And then a gunshot.
Moments later, more shouting – Edward calling out.
I felt about for a latch to release the trapdoor, but no matter where my fingers traced, I could not find one. I could not sit up; I could not turn around. I began to grow frightened, and the more I panicked, the shorter my breaths became, the harder they stuck against the back of my throat. I tried to answer, but my voice was little more than a whisper.
It was hot, so hot.
Edward called out again; he called for me, his voice sharpened with fear. He called for Lucy. He sounded a long way away.
Rapid footprints overhead, lighter than Martin’s, coming from the hallway upstairs, and then a tremendous thump that made the floorboards rattle.
Mayhem, but not for me.
I was a boat on a gentle tide, the river shifting softly beneath me, and as I closed my eyes another memory came. I was a baby, not yet a year old, lying in a crib in an upstairs room of the little house by the river in Fulham. A warm breeze wafted through the window and brought with it the sounds of morning birds and the secretive smells of lilac and mud. Light was turning circles on the ceiling, in step with the shadows, and I was watching them dance. I reached up to clutch at them, but they slipped through my fingers every time …
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Spring, 1882
‘A nice old place. Been a bit neglected inside, but good bones. Let me just get the door open and you can see for yourself what I mean.’
Lucy did not do herself or Edward’s lawyer the discourtesy of pretending that she had never been inside Birchwood Manor; neither did she volunteer the fact. She said nothing and waited instead for the man to jiggle the key in the lock.
It was a morning in early spring and the air was crisp. Someone had been maintaining the garden – not perfectly, but with sufficient care to stop the tendrils overgrowing the paths. The honeysuckle had a promising layer of buds, and the first jasmine flowers along the wall and around the kitchen window were starting to open. They were late. The laneways of London were already perfumed, but then, as Edward used to say, the city plants were always more precocious than their country cousins.
‘There she goes,’ said Mr Matthews of Holbert, Matthews & Sons as the lock gave way with a deep, gratifying clunk. ‘That’s got it now.’
The door swung open and Lucy felt a roiling sensation deep within the pit of her stomach.
After twenty years of absence, of wondering, of trying not to wonder, the moment was finally upon her.
She had received the letter five months before, only days after news of Edward’s death in Portugal had finally reached them. She had spent the morning at the museum in Bloomsbury, where she had volunteered to help catalogue the donated collections, and had been home only long enough to sit down to a pot of tea when her maid, Jane, brought in the afternoon post. The letter, written on gold-embossed letterhead, had begun by expressing the writer’s deepest sympathies for her loss before moving on to notify her in the second paragraph that she had been named as a beneficiary in the last will and testament of her brother, Edward Julius Radcliffe. In closing, the letter’s writer had invited ‘Miss Radcliffe’ to make an appointment at their offices to discuss the matter further.
Lucy had read the letter again, and again tripped over the words, ‘your brother, Edward Julius Radcliffe’. Your brother. She wondered whether there were many beneficiaries who needed reminding of their relationship to the deceased.
Lucy had not needed a reminder. While it had been many years since she had seen Edward, and then only a very brief and unsatisfactory meeting in a dingy building in Paris, reminders of him were everywhere. His paintings covered almost every wall of the house; Mother insisted that none should be removed, holding out hope to the last that he would return and take up where he’d left off – that perhaps it was not too late for him to ‘make a name for himself’ as Thurston Holmes and Felix Bernard had done. And so the beautiful faces of Adele and Fanny and Lily Millington stared down at Lucy – in repose, in consideration, in character – watching her every move as she tried to get on. Those eyes that followed a person. Lucy was always careful not to meet them.
When she received the letter from Messrs Holbert and Matthews, Lucy had written back by return post to make an appointment to meet at noon that Friday; and, as the first flurry of December snow fell lightly outside the window, she found herself sitting on one side of a large sombre desk in the Mayfair office of Mr Matthews Sr, listening as the old lawyer told her that Birchwood Manor – ‘a farmhouse in a little village near Lechlade-on-Thames’ – was now hers.
When the meeting was at a close, he sent her home to Hampstead with a direction that she must let them know when she wished to visit the house so that he could arrange for his son to accompany her to Berkshire. Lucy, with no intention then of visiting Berkshire, had told him that it was far too much to ask. But it was ‘all part of the service, Miss Radcliffe,’ Mr Matthews had said, indicating a large wooden panel on the wall behind him on which in gold cursive lettering was painted:
HOLBERT, MATTHEWS & SONS
Carrying out the wishes of our
clients in death as indeed in life.
Lucy had left the office, her thoughts in an uncharacteristic swirl.
Birchwood Manor.
What a generous gift; what a double-edged sword.
In the days and weeks that followed, when the nights were at their blackest, Lucy had wondered whether Edward had left her the house because on some level, due perhaps to the deep connection they’d once shared, he had guessed. But no, Lucy was too rational to let such an illogical idea take root. For one thing, there was nothing certain to guess; even Lucy did not know for sure. For another, Edward’s thinking had been clear: he had specified within a handwritten letter attached to his will that the house should be used by Lucy to build a school offering education to girls as bright as she had been. Girls who quested for the type of knowledge that was otherwise denied them.
And just as Edward had possessed a gift in life that enabled him to win people over to his way of thinking, in death, too, his words had influence. For although, in the offices of Holbert, Matthews & Sons, Lucy had promised herself that she would sell the house, that she would never again willingly set foot within its walls, almost immediately upon leaving, Edward’s vision seeped into her thoughts and began weakening her better judgement.
Lucy had walked north through Regent’s Park and her gaze had alit upon one little girl after another, each obedient beside her nanny and longing, surely, to do more, to see more, to know more than she was currently permitted. Lucy had a vision of herself shepherding a clutch of pink-cheeked girls with questing spirits and excited voices, girls who did not fit within the moulds that had been ascribed to them; who longed to le
arn and improve and grow. Over the coming weeks, she thought of little else: she became obsessed with the idea that everything in her life had led her to this point; that there was nothing more ‘right’ than that she should open a school in the twin-gabled house on the bend of the river.
And so, here she was. It had taken five months to reach this point, but she was ready.
‘Do I need to sign something?’ she said as the lawyer led her into the kitchen, where the square pine table was still in place. Lucy half expected to see Emma Stearnes coming through the parlour door, shaking her head in bemusement at whatever strange behaviour she’d witnessed on the other side.
The lawyer looked surprised. ‘What sort of thing?’
‘I’m not certain. I’ve never been given a house before. I presume there is a deed of title?’
‘There is nothing to sign, Miss Radcliffe. The deed, as it were, is done. The papers have been finalised. The house is yours.’
‘Well, then’ – Lucy held out her hand – ‘I thank you, Mr Matthews. It has been a pleasure to meet you.’
‘But, Miss Radcliffe, would you not like me to show you the property?’
‘It won’t be necessary, Mr Matthews.’
‘But having come all this way—’
‘I trust that I am able to stay behind today?’
‘Well, yes, as I said, the house is yours.’
‘Then thank you kindly for accompanying me, Mr Matthews. Now, if you will excuse me, I have much to get on with. There is going to be a school, did you hear? I am going to open a school for promising young ladies.’
But Lucy did not get on at once with preparations for the school. There was something more pressing that she had to do first. A task as awful as it was essential. For five months she had turned it over in her mind. Longer than that, to be honest. For almost twenty years now she had been waiting to discover the truth.
She closed the door behind the young Mr Matthews, whose countenance left little doubt as to his dejection, and watched each step of his retreat from behind the kitchen window. Only when he had cleared the garden path and latched the wooden front gate did Lucy let out the breath that she’d been holding. She turned away from the window and stood for a moment with her back against the glass, surveying the room. Uncanny though it seemed, all was exactly as she remembered. It was as if she had merely stepped out for a walk to the village, become waylaid, and returned two decades later than expected.