“Because you won’t believe me. And you might not respect me if you did.” She pulled her hand away from mine. “I wish that a metaphor about currents and tides explained the mess I’ve made of things with Charles,” she began. “And it does a bit, you know. It does. But only a bit.” She smiled, calmer now. I listened.
“Of course my family are delighted that I’m marrying. Of course they’d be horrified if I married anyone who wasn’t as ‘suitable’ as Charlie. That’s all true. But there’s more to it than that. And I’ve got myself deep into something I can’t quite explain but which frightens me much more than marrying Charlie could possibly frighten me. Something in my past—a habit, a way of behavior, if you like—is out of control. Oh it’s not drugs,” she added quickly, seeing the look of comprehension on my face. “But I am like an addict. I’ve lost the ability to stop. The fact that I might have married Charlie has made me see that. It—this thing—is taking me over. I can see that because it has made me do something concrete which I despise myself for having done. Have you any idea what it’s like to despise yourself? Not only for what you’ve already done but for what you see you might do. I’ve been taken there; I’ve been shown that blackness. But I can’t see where it ends. And I’m frightened of it.”
“ ‘It’ being jealousy?” I was struggling to see a path through the clouds.
“Oh no, James. Well, yes … But it’s more complex than that. All my explanations, even my metaphors, can’t do justice to it. It’s alive in me, not in a physical way, but it’s there nonetheless. My id. It’s subtle and elusive; it’s not obvious. No one would recognize it, save perhaps one other person; I have difficulty in recognizing it myself. But it frightens me, I tell you that frankly.”
“Why me?”
“What?”
“When you could have shared this with anyone in the world, why did you choose to share it with me?”
My question broke the flow of her tumble of words.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t know but also, in a funny kind of way, I do know. You came when you were asked for, you see. As I sat on that bench, in an empty park, feeling more alone than I had ever felt in my life, you appeared. Oh I don’t mean I thought you were an angel, not in those running shorts at least.” She chuckled at the recollection. “And anyway, an angel would have been no use. The help I need is of the most human kind.” She smiled shyly. “I almost told you everything then. I would have done if you’d only asked. But you didn’t; and then something made me hesitate. I knew that before I could explain it to anybody I had to be able to explain it to myself. I knew also that it was no good explaining it to just anyone. So I didn’t tell you.” She paused. “I need another cigarette,” she said, and lit one.
I watched her draw on it, thinking of the cigarette she had smoked in Hyde Park on that warm morning weeks ago. I felt that years had passed since then, that the cardboard figure of Ella which I had taken away with me and made three-dimensional in private hours of daydream was being dismantled before my eyes. From the wreck of the romantic doll I had created I saw a woman emerge who had no notion of nineteenth-century dilemmas and dashing saviors. Yet she was frightened and alone, as my creation had been, though for reasons other than the ones which I had devised. This new woman was reaching out to me and I took her hand, not knowing where she might lead or pull.
Ella continued. “But then you appeared again at Camilla Boardman’s,” she said, “just when I was trying to pretend that nothing was really wrong. And you made up that silly excuse about a handbag and endeared yourself instantly.” She smiled. “Then you listened to me as I talked, and I felt that here was someone who might throw me a rope.” She paused. “But I didn’t want it,” she said at last. “You need to admit to yourself that you’re drowning before you can be rescued and I couldn’t do that. It was up to you to tie the rope around my wrists by force if needs be. I couldn’t come to you. And perhaps I wouldn’t ever have been able to. But as things turned out, you—you of all people-—appeared at my engagement party, and there you did tie the rope around my wrists, in a manner of speaking.” She put her hand on mine. “Of course I could see that it terrified you to do it. You’ve been brought up to believe that one shouldn’t speak to a woman as you spoke to me that day.”
Still I listened.
“But you made me see that you might be strong enough to help me, and I know that the hand that pulls the rope must be firm and the arms that hold it powerful. I thought that you might be strong. I wrote to you, not knowing whether you would meet me at the station or not. But you did. And now you’re here.” She leaned towards me. “Thank you,” she said softly. And she kissed me.
Even from a distance of almost fifty years I can feel the touch of those soft lips, can feel the tingling that ran through me as they leaned to touch mine. Ella’s lips: long observed, long imagined, finally given. Our kiss: shivering, electric, long, deliberate, gentle. I can taste the cigarette smoke of it.
“Thank you,” I said in my turn.
“And now you know a little more than you did.”
“I do.”
“And the rest you shall know tomorrow.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Good night, James.”
“Good night, Ella.”
She got up slowly and left the room, deserted now but for a few loyal patrons who had been locked in to continue their drinking uninterrupted. It was long past midnight.
CHAPTER 8
THE NEXT DAY WAS COLD. A chilly wind whipped the small streets of the island, sending the tourists scurrying to shelter in tea shops with Tudor beams and low doors. The islanders themselves paid no attention to the weather, moving with ruddy cheeks through the gusts which ripped the tiles from their roofs and sent sprays of sea into gardens and boats. Above the village, aloof, stood the castle, a disdainful eye on the new army which trooped up its steep hill and paid the uniformed attendants at its gates for admission. The weapons of these invaders were not the halberd, bayonet or musket of bygone ages; they were the camera, guidebook and traveling pouch of the modern era. Their leaders did not exhort their followers fearlessly on snow-white chargers; instead they explained, in as many languages as there are countries, that there was a gift shop selling island memorabilia at attractive prices on the left past the Italian fountain. I listened to snatches of Seton’s history from these guides as Ella and I walked behind them. I heard how it had been a monastery since the early twelve hundreds; how in 1536 the monks had been expelled by a vengeful Henry and his cardinal; how the great rooms had lain empty for almost a hundred years. I heard too how the seventeenth century had brought the place fitfully back to life, first as barracks, then as ammunition store and finally as prison. It was Ella who told me how the castle had then been given—by a guilty or grateful king, who is to say?—to Margaret, Countess of Seton in 1670 for “services rendered,” as her descendant put it with a wry smile.
As I listened to all this I felt the castle watching me— and the other invaders who climbed its hill—with cool, untroubled disdain. If cannonballs and shot had failed to cripple it in the Civil War, it seemed to say, what hope had we with our flashbulbs and chewing gum? Hewn from ancient granite, its walls four feet thick in places, it had the air of grim permanence which only eight centuries’ exposure to cold wind and cold sea can impart. Walking with Ella under the delicate swirls of its wrought-iron gates, a Victorian addition, I felt that no alterations, however cozy, could change the primeval nature of the place. Seton would not be molded; it would not bend to the most persuasive of hands. One might change; add; improve; install hot water and electricity as Blanche had done; heat; furnish as one liked; but the character of the castle was immutable: cast in the very stone of its crenellations; expressed in the thick set of its towers and the defiance of its walls.
Inside we passed heavy rooms of solid furniture cordoned off by silk ropes, the American lilt of Ella’s voice making me think of another young American girl, long
ago, walking the corridors we walked then. Taking my hand, Ella led me through splendors of library and drawing room; past the dusty brocade and Chinese screens of the King’s Bedroom; up stairs and along corridors. At length we emerged in the great hall, a high, cold, magnificent room of flagstones and mullion-panes. The hunting trophies of the Victorian gentleman lined its lengths; at its farthest extreme, set between two huge windows, was a painting, a portrait.
“There it is,” said Ella softly, nodding towards its heavy gilt frame. “That’s what I’ve brought you all this way to see.” She followed me as I walked towards it, her words joining the echoes of whispered French, German, English and Japanese which composed the secret code of Seton’s modern invaders.
The great hall at Seton is a long rectangular room on the first floor, once the monastery refectory, and you enter it in the middle of its west side. The two walls to the north and south hold pairs of great windows that reach almost to the floor. One of these pairs gives on to a narrow balcony with a low balustrade, a quite inexplicable Victorian addition, from which a terrace, far beneath, is visible. The other is exposed to the sea, which pounds on the cliffs a hundred feet below it. It is a large, dramatic room, not entirely without charm. A magnificent Elizabethan table, of ships’ timbers salvaged from the Armada, stands in its center. Otherwise the hall has no furniture, nothing in fact save the stags’ heads on the walls and the painting of Blanche.
Ella’s grandmother gazed out at the room, over the heads of the tourists who photographed her picture, towards the windows on the opposite wall and the sea that crashed below them. Her portrait hangs, whether as memorial or cruel joke I do not know, between the windows that give onto the balcony. It is from this balcony that she threw herself, and her death (though not its means) are commemorated by a bronze Latin plaque set in the flagstones below. The castle guides translate it by rote.
I remember seeing Blanche’s picture for the first time; I remember looking up at the features of Ella and Sarah, neither one yet both, distilled in a face of extraordinary charm; I remember the brush strokes of her blond hair, luxuriant and long, piled high above her face with its small nose and high cheekbones. She is wearing a pale blue dress, and one small hand is visible clasping a closed book. She stares out at the sea, a wistful look in her eyes. Perhaps she is thinking of home.
“Do you see what I’m talking about now?” Ella asked quietly.
I felt the beginnings of understanding stir within me, but they were nebulous and incomplete. I looked at the woman by my side, the living breathing woman whose hand held mine; and I looked at her again, this time immobile, a thing of canvas and oils in a heavy frame. I started to speak, then stopped. “Explain to me,” I said finally. And quietly Ella led me out of the room and into the long gallery which houses the Seton china. I saw that several corridors opened off it, and that the opening of each was protected by a red silk rope. A guard sat sleepily on a high-backed chair at the far end of the corridor. Looking at him sharply to make sure that he did not see, Ella stepped over the first of the ropes and motioned for me to follow.
“Quickly,” she hissed. And quickly, almost running, I followed her down the corridor, through a door and up the spiral staircase behind it. Up and up we climbed, the darkness relieved on each complete revolution by a small arrow slit of window, through which we could see the blue sea, farther and farther away as we circled upwards. We passed first one then two doors set into the stone. Outside the third we stopped. “I’m just hoping this is open,” said Ella as she tried its wrought-iron handle. “Come on James, push.” So I pushed, and forced the unlocked door open on rusty hinges. We were in a small, oddly shaped sitting room tucked between the staircase and the tower wall. It was obviously unused; dust sheets covered the furniture and I saw, as Ella removed one of them, that there was a large dolls’ house in one corner. “Kinda spooky, don’t you think?” she whispered delightedly as she removed another sheet to reveal a moth-eaten sofa.
“Very,” I said.
“It was my favorite room as a child. My father used to bring me to stay here sometimes, you know. And I colonized this room for myself. There’re so many here it was never missed.” She smiled wistfully at the dolls’ house. “My mother gave me that,” she said. Then quickly, before I could say anything, she went on, “You know you’re the only person, besides my father, whom I’ve ever shown this room to? At least while it’s been mine.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “It’s lovely.”
“Isn’t it?” Ella looked slowly about her. “But I wonder why they’ve left it just as I did.”
“I don’t suppose they need the space. Why should they bother to clear it?”
“You’re probably right. Why bother? There’re enough rooms to dust as it is.”
“I’m sure.”
“Something like three hundred, as a matter of fact.”
“No.” But I could well believe it.
“It’s true.” Settling herself on a window ledge she motioned me towards the dusty sofa.
“What did you think of that painting?” she began, more serious now.
“Artistically or …” I hesitated. “Or in the context of what you were saying last night?”
“Both,” she replied.
“Well I thought it was beautiful, as a painting.”
“It’s by Sargent, you know.”
I nodded. “Sarah told me about it.”
“She told you? What on earth did she tell you for?” Ella’s eyes were bright with instant fury.
“No idea. She didn’t tell me much, anyway.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing really. Not much more than that Sargent had painted your grandmother.”
“It was a wedding present from my grandfather.”
“I see. I presume, though, that you didn’t bring me to see it for its artistic merit alone.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Well then …”
Ella got up and walked over to another of the low windows by which the room was lit. Sitting on its ledge, her knees pulled up under her chin, she began to speak. I can see her there, framed by the blue of the sea far below her, I can hear her carefully chosen words; I can feel the tension between us, a tension of confidence dared and understanding attempted. I remember the intimacy of that cold afternoon, the way it became almost tangible in that small, strange, awkwardly shaped room. It both tempted and scared me; for much as I wanted it to grow, I felt its power even then.
“I talked to you last night about an id, about my id,” began Ella.
I nodded.
“Well I’ve been trying to answer for myself the question of how it began, of what it grew from. Do you understand?”
I nodded again.
“And I think that the answer is in that picture.”
“In what way?”
“In lots of ways.” She paused, thinking. “That picture is about family,” she said at last, “about my family. It’s about unhappiness and brilliance and madness and … a million things.” In a few words she told me the story of Blanche’s life and death, which I had already heard from Sarah. “When I was six and Sarah was seven,” Ella continued, “my mother and both Sarah’s parents died together in a car crash.”
“How awful. I’m sorry.” Even as I spoke, the words seemed inadequate.
“It was awful.” Ella looked at me; for a long moment neither of us moved.
“And how terrible for Sarah, too,” I said at last. “Losing both her parents when she was … how old did you say?”
“Seven.”
I paused, a faint realization crystallizing slowly in my mind. “This is to do with Sarah, isn’t it?” I hazarded, feeling that I was approaching some sort of truth.
“Yes, James. My life to date has been to do with Sarah.”
“Go on.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t jump around like this. First told you about my grandmother; now I’m telling you about me and Sarah. It might help if I
told you about the generation that went between us.”
“All right.”
“Well, Blanche had four children: Cyril, the eldest, who now lives here with his wife; Alexander, my father; Anna, my father’s twin; and Cynthia, Sarah’s mother. Cyril was ten years old when his mother died; my father and Anna were eight; Cynthia was six. You can imagine what it must have been like for them.” She looked out to sea. “They each reacted in their different ways, but it scarred them all. Cyril took refuge in eccentricity; my father stopped talking much about how he really felt; so did Cynthia. Anna, on the other hand, was like Blanche: brilliant, very brilliant, but not stable. She became obsessed by her mother’s death.” Ella took a cigarette from a packet in her pocket and lit it. “She devoted her life to being as much like her mother as she could be,” she said, exhaling. “From the age of eight onwards she was devoted to Blanche’s memory, but not in a healthy way; not in a normal way. She wore her mother’s dresses; she did her hair in the same way as her mother had done hers; and she hated her father as much as it is possible for one person to hate another.” She paused. “There’s quite a history of insanity in our family, you see,” she said slowly, drawing deeply on her cigarette. “This house has plenty of dark secrets.”
I sat quietly, waiting for her to continue.
“Anna killed herself eventually, you know. Not here. At Oxford. She also jumped out of a window. Just like her mother. They buried her at Seton, of course, and the car crash in which my mother and Sarah’s parents were killed happened as they were driving back from her funeral.”
“Oh my God.”
“So, you see, my father lost his twin and his wife within a week of each other. That was why he took me away to America. I’m afraid I was a bit flippant about it all on the train. I wasn’t sure I was going to tell you everything then. Now I see it’s all spilling out.” She looked at me and I smiled. “Anyway, he hates this place. I think he feels Seton is somehow to blame for what happened to his family. Or perhaps it’s just too full of memories. I don’t know. What I do know is that he’s terrified of me turning out like Anna or his mother. That’s why he took me to America; first to California and then, when he met Pamela, to Boston. You couldn’t get farther from Seton than San Francisco, I assure you. He tried to forget he ever knew this place. And although he had to visit it every so often, he kept his visits to a minimum.”
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