Angel with Two Faces

by Nicola Upson

  She liked Nathaniel. He was kind and gentle, and talked to her about things which didn’t seem to interest other people. And he never seemed to mind how many questions she had, or tried to shut her up with silly answers. He had asked her that same day what made her sad, and she told him about the night her parents died in the fire. They hadn’t come back, she said, but Nathaniel explained that just because she couldn’t see them, it didn’t mean they weren’t there; they were still looking out for her, he said, and always would be. He’d asked what she remembered, and she told him. When she’d finished, she noticed that Nathaniel looked a little bit like the man on the cross, because he was crying. He asked her if she’d told anybody else the story and she explained that she hadn’t because no one ever wanted to talk about the fire in front of her, not even Morwenna. But she liked the idea of her parents looking over her shoulder. Since then, she had hoped more than ever to see them; she kept turning round suddenly to see if she could catch them out, but so far they had been too quick for her.

  As she got up from the pew, she heard a noise from the door at the back of the church. Not wanting to be caught, she hurried to the side wall where some tiny steps led up to a rood loft, barely big enough for her to squeeze into. It was just like the hide-and-seek games she played with Harry. Excited, she tried not to laugh or do anything to give herself away. She peeked out through the gap in the stone, putting her face close enough to the opening to make out a large figure coming down the aisle. It must be the vicar – no one else she knew was that round and stout – and she was horrified to see that he was heading straight for her. If he found her here at night, she’d be in terrible trouble. She held her breath, but at the last minute the vicar turned right into the small room at the side which he and Nathaniel sometimes used to get changed in, and where she knew they kept the valuable things. He stayed in there for several minutes, and she heard the chink of coins against metal. Then he muttered something – something which sounded like a word Morwenna often used and always scolded Loveday for repeating – and left the church as quickly as he had entered it.

  All was silent again. Loveday waited a few seconds, then left her hiding place and went over to the north chapel to set about her task. In the darkness, she didn’t see the bucket by the altar and walked straight into it. Water spilt on to the floor, and she did her best to mop it up with the sleeve of her jumper, but it was the noise that worried her. She paused again to make sure that the vicar wasn’t on his way back in, then took one of the candles from the altar and lit it with the matches she’d brought. Just in case it let her down, she lit a second candle and left it burning in its pillar to guide her back to safety. Now that she could see properly, it was easy to find what she was looking for – a wooden trapdoor, just to the right of the altar table, with a metal hook in one corner. The door covered some steps down to a passage under the church. Harry had shown it to her, but warned her not to come here without him because it might be dangerous: it led to a sort of cellar under the bell tower, and then down again to the sea. Sometimes – at high tide – the water filled the lower part of the passage completely. The first time he brought her here, they had stood in the cellar and listened as the sea crept gradually towards them. She had said it sounded like the hiss of snakes and Harry had laughed, but not unkindly – Harry was never unkind.

  After that, she had pestered him to bring her here as often as possible and he had agreed – on the condition that she promised never to come alone, and that they never went further down. No one else seemed to know that you could get right to the sea – Harry said that people used the passage regularly in the olden days, had even lived in the cave which it led to – but nobody bothered with it now. She loved the idea of sharing something so exciting with her brother. One day, she announced proudly to Morwenna that she and Harry had a secret, but Morwenna had been furious; she had tried everything to make Loveday tell her what it was, had even started following her for a while to see what she and Harry were doing, but Loveday knew every hiding place there was on the estate and her sister could never keep up with her. After that, though, she hadn’t boasted to anyone else, not even Christopher – and anyway, she and Christopher had a secret of their own.

  As she set out down the passage, she felt a little guilty about breaking her promise to Harry. Still, she would only go as far as the room under the bell tower and she wouldn’t stay long – just long enough to leave the parcel of food that Mrs Snipe had let her take from the pantry. After her conversation with Nathaniel, Loveday had thought long and hard about where Harry would go first when he came back, and this seemed to her to be the obvious place. The tunnel widened out into a small room, about ten feet wide in each direction; she held up her candle, hardly daring to look, but was disappointed to see that the space was empty. In her heart, she had hoped that Harry might be here already, smiling at her and holding up his hands the way he always did when she found him out in a game of hide and seek. The candle sputtered for a second and some wax dripped down on to her hand, burning her fingers and forcing her to let go of the precious light. The flame went out and, as she stood there in the darkness, peeling the hardened wax from her skin, she had a sudden moment of doubt. What if Nathaniel was wrong? When she’d told Christopher that love brought people back, he’d told her not to be silly – that wasn’t how it happened and Harry would never come back. She’d stood her ground and Christopher had apologised for calling her silly, but now, all alone, she was less sure. After all, Christopher worked with the dead and surely knew more about them than Nathaniel – perhaps he was right after all? The idea of Harry being gone for ever was too much to bear, and she shook it off obstinately. All she had to do, she thought, remembering Nathaniel’s words, was to have faith and she would be sure to see her brother again one day. She must be brave, and keep looking.

  The candle had not rolled far and she didn’t have to grope around on the floor for long to find it. She picked it up gratefully, then felt her way back along the passage and climbed the stone steps to the church, where the second flame was still burning brightly on its pillar. As soon as the trapdoor was closed, she relit the candle she had dropped, blew the other one carefully out, and made her way down the aisle and back to the entrance. She left the church, shutting the door softly behind her, and followed the path round to the graveyard. The path was sunk quite low into the ground, and the gravestones stood up tall on either side like soldiers. When she got to the place where Harry had gone, she looked sadly down at the mound of earth. All her work had been covered up, and the flowers that lay on top of the soil were nowhere near as pretty as the ones she had picked for her brother. She wished he could have seen how nice the bluebells looked, but she would make sure to tell him. For now, she would leave him her candle. She placed it, still alight, next to the flowers and was pleased to see that the grave looked instantly more cheerful.

  It was time to go home. She’d been out too long, and Morwenna would be looking for her. She turned and headed towards the cliff path, noticing suddenly how cold it was and deciding to take the shortest route through the woods to the cottage. When she reached the edge of the trees, she turned back for one last look at Harry’s grave, and was astonished to see Christopher standing on the spot she had just left, staring down at the candle which the breeze had already blown out. He had his back to her, but there was no mistaking his silhouette, clearly outlined in the moonlight. What was he doing, she wondered? As she watched, he turned and walked back behind the church, following the path which would bring him round to the lych gate. She retraced her steps to meet him, pleased that they could walk back together but, when she got to the gate, there was no sign of him. She waited a couple of minutes, then went further into the churchyard to look for him, peering behind the gravestones, even trying the church itself, but Christopher was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, and annoyed with him for giving her the slip, Loveday set off for home.

  It was already long after midnight when Morwenna began to clear away the mess
left behind in her cottage after the wake. She had refused all offers of help: the women meant well, but she just wanted everybody out of her house and out of her head, no matter how many hours it took her to wash the endless dirty cups and get rid of the smell of stale drink which hung around the downstairs rooms. Sighing heavily, she began to gather together the empty bottles and leftover food; her weariness made things look worse than they were, she was sure, but it felt as though the rituals associated with Harry’s death – even down to the chaos left behind by his friends – would never end.

  Certainly, there was plenty here for her to do while she waited up for Loveday. In the end, she had given up trying to find her sister: she might be anywhere on the estate, and she would no doubt come home when she was ready. Taking responsibility for raising a young child had not come easily to Morwenna and even now, after eight years, the protectiveness and sense of duty which she thought she ought to feel still eluded her. It was hard to be a second-hand parent. Unlike her mother, Morwenna hadn’t planned Loveday or longed for her, and it was hardly surprising that she felt no maternal instincts towards her whatsoever – the emotions which came with motherhood could not be handed down through the family like old jewellery or precious bits of furniture. It had been easier when there were two of them – at least in the early days, before Harry became someone she did not recognise – and she missed her brother’s reassurance, his strength. She had no idea how she would cope financially without him, and she would rather die than go to the Union again, but she had Loveday to consider as well as herself. Things might have been different if she’d only been braver when she had had the chance to make changes: people often told her that there were opportunities outside the estate for someone as bright as she was, but she had clung to the life she knew, terrified of trying anything unfamiliar on her own. Looking back, though, she knew that nothing could have been as unfamiliar as this grief – this vast landscape of sorrow, emptiness and guilt, in which there were no signposts, and no rules on how to behave. If she weren’t so numb, she might be amused by the irony of it all: the first thing she had ever had to do without Harry was mourn him.

  Overcome now by weariness, she abandoned the cleaning to the morning and sat down at the kitchen table, thinking back over the events of the day. She was surprised at how pleased she had been to see Archie, although she half regretted talking to him so openly. Still, at least it had stopped her from going too far with Nathaniel: the violence that she had felt well up inside as she watched him in the pulpit had frightened her, and it was only now that she began to analyse why his eulogy had made her feel the way she did. She was concerned about the curate’s influence on Loveday – that much was true, but there was more to it than that. Put simply, she was jealous of his faith: Harry’s death had made her crave the certainty of which she had been so scornful, the certainty which Nathaniel carried with him every day, and she did not want to be teased by the hope of immortality and reunion if she could not believe it in her heart.

  And anyway, was that really what she wanted? To see Harry in another life when she could never forgive him for what he had done to her in this one? How could he treat her like that, then leave her to pick up the pieces? That wasn’t reassurance and strength; it was cowardice – despicable cowardice – and the injustice of it was that she was the one left to atone for it as best she could in the blank, meaningless days that lay ahead, when Harry’s death would continue to hang over her like a silent, angry accusation.

  She could bear it no longer. Hardly caring that it was Loveday’s favourite picture of her brother, Morwenna tore the photograph of Harry from the wall and ripped it from its frame. She walked over to where the fire burned low in the grate and placed one corner deep into the coals, watching as the flames made easy work of his smiling face – and wishing that everything else could be wiped out as easily.

  Chapter Six

  The indigo tide stole ever further across the sand like a stain of spreading dye, and campion tinted the cliff-top in every direction. Josephine was glad of the holiday mood which had driven her early from her bed and out along the coastal path for her first glimpse of the sea. She was not an early riser by nature, but one evening at Loe House had shown her that she would be wise to snatch some peace and quiet at the beginning of each day if she was to get any work done at all. The Motleys’ hospitality was infectious, and she was intrigued by the estate traditions which were to be played out over the coming week – above all, she wanted to spend some time with Archie away from the professional demands that dominated their time together in London. If sleep had to be sacrificed, then so be it.

  It was a glorious morning, and it seemed to belong entirely to her and to the flock of young herring gulls who swung overhead, testing their broad, muddy-brown wings and repeating a strident, laughing note as if they sensed that their first long winter had finally come to an end. It was the essence of the coast as surely as the pipes were the essence of the Highlands, and it would, she guessed, arouse the same feelings in the heart of someone born to the sea as a few notes of ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ could stir in her. The gulls’ dissonant song followed her along the cliff path, past the church and away from the estate. When she came to a spot which offered a particularly good view of the long beach stretching back towards the Lizard, Josephine left the path and made her way down a gentle slope of springy turf to the cliff edge, where a group of flat, grey boulders created exactly the working space she was looking for. Apart from a solitary figure heading towards her from the direction of the village, there wasn’t a soul in sight. If she couldn’t find peace and inspiration here, it was time to look for another job altogether.

  The figure on the path – a small, dark man with heavy black boots and a paper tucked under his arm – waved jovially as he passed her, and went on his way, whistling tunelessly. Josephine sat down on the smallest of the three rocks and took a notebook and pen from her bag, enjoying the ritual and the sense of possibility that these early stages offered before the inevitable frustrations had a chance to take hold. She looked at her watch and made a start, intrigued to see where the first few words would take her. ‘It was a little after seven on a summer morning,’ she wrote, ‘and…’ She cast round for a name. Archie? No, too obvious, and he’d only be embarrassed. William, then – that would do. ‘… and William Potticary was taking his accustomed way over the short down grass of the cliff-top.’ The words seemed to run into each other on the page, and she reached impatiently into her bag again to look for the reading glasses which she had recently accepted as a necessary evil. They felt strange and uncomfortable, and she hated the way she looked in them, but she had to admit that the wretched things made life easier. ‘Beyond his elbow, two hundred feet below,’ she continued, and glanced up from the paper to consider the image. As she looked at the sea, her attention was caught by a shape on the sand down to her left, where the beach cut between two rocks. Glad of any excuse to remove her glasses, she peered more closely at the object and saw that it was a young girl in a green dress, lying on her back with her arms stretched out behind her. The tide was on its way in, and an occasional wave came far enough up the beach to wet her feet. Josephine watched for a moment, hoping that the girl would sit up and move out of reach of the water, but she lay there motionless, allowing the sea to wash over her bare legs and threaten the rest of her body, and Josephine knew instantly that she was dead.

  Battling with urgency and hopelessness, Josephine flung her notebook down and ran back to the coastal path. The cliff-top church, which offered the closest safe access to the beach, was about a hundred yards away and she reached it in good time, but then had to double back via the sand, which was much harder going. There was no doubt in her mind that the girl was Loveday, and her concerns of the night before came back now to haunt her. Why hadn’t she telephoned Archie before she went to sleep? No young girl should be allowed to wander about near the sea in the middle of the night, let alone one who had so recently suffered a devastating
bereavement and who, in Ronnie’s words, ‘wasn’t quite right in the head’. What were they all thinking of? What a terrible way to go – alone in the cold, black water, just like her brother.

  She rounded the rock, no longer able to keep up more than a jog, and saw with relief that she was at least in time to stop the body being washed back out to sea. As she approached the girl, she noticed that her hair and upper body were completely dry but, in her panic, the significance of this did not register – until, as she stretched out her hand, Loveday sat up quickly and looked at her.

  Josephine screamed and stepped backwards. ‘Jesus Christ – I thought you were…’ She stopped in mid-sentence, trying to maintain some sort of tact in spite of her shock.

  ‘No, I’m not dead – I’m just pretending,’ said Loveday, with a matter-of-factness that defied any pretensions to sensitivity. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’