by Jane Healey
I sat down on the chair, but it felt like I was waiting for someone, so I got into bed. I had always worn pajamas but that night I did not want to put them on. I slid my legs back and forth under the sheets and curled and uncurled my toes.
I had woken the next morning with a start while it was still dark and, with a churn of shame in my stomach, dressed and packed in record time. Once finished, I took a seat again on that rotten chair, this time fully clothed and with neatly pinned hair and a thick layer of powder covering any possible blushes. Thank god I had given a false name, I kept thinking as I smoothed my hands down my skirt and picked up my watch at intervals to check the time. I would leave the moment it got light—any earlier and I would look suspicious. I would have to walk past his room to get to the stairs, and I prayed that I would not run into him. How embarrassing to be seen in the light of day with my coat and suitcase, I thought, how unbearable to have his eyes watching me, knowing what I looked like underneath.
I could walk straight from the hotel to the station and be on a train in no time at all. I pictured myself sitting in a carriage, reading the book I had saved for the journey, the countryside rushing past, thinking that soon enough I would be back in London, slipping into the crowd outside Euston and descending into the crush of anonymous bodies on the underground. And then back to my little room and my flat bed and the noise of Beth in the room to the right of me and Shirley to the left and the traffic outside my window, the fiddler who lived opposite playing on Sunday mornings, the smog of London, the rain and fluorescent lights, the honk of car horns and heels tripping down the pavement.
* * *
I remembered it all now in the bathroom at Lockwood Manor, standing in my borrowed ball gown, and was embarrassed anew.
A knock on the bathroom door made me jolt. “Just a moment,” I called, and splashed some water on my wrists, pressing them against my clammy neck and smoothing errant strands of hair back into place as I stared into the mottled mirror. My curls had dropped as they always did, and my face was ghostlike.
How ridiculous to think that he would have said anything if it had been him; he was probably married anyway, for god’s sake. I hated that I felt ashamed by the whole thing when it was hardly out of the ordinary, but it was the utter failure of it, the way that sex with him had felt like an awkward inconvenience, nothing more—a quasi-medical event—that bruised me the most. I think I had convinced myself that once I found out what I was missing, I would approach my romantic life with more enthusiasm, and instead I was more reluctant than ever to make a match—not that there was a great crowd of men clamoring at my door to take me out.
I could spend the rest of my life alone, I thought, as I used the mirror to reorder my expression into a polite smile and left the bathroom, apologizing to the two women waiting outside. I could be happy alone, I could survive; I had done so all my adult life, what was thirty more years? I reasoned, as I headed toward the comforting familiarity of my animals, wanting their placid gaze to help me forget the trials of the evening.
Eleven
The long gallery had been locked before the ball, but the other rooms were left open so that guests could wander freely through them, sipping champagne and perusing their private show. I had been a little nervous about mixing a party with the museum but when I had said so, the Major scoffed and said that the kind of guests he invited would hardly be the type to take liberties and besides—and here he had tapped his nose in an almost mocking motion—two of the museum’s own guards would be also on duty.
Yet apparently I had been right to be nervous, because when I entered the drawing room, I found a group of soldiers standing close to the okapi, who was secure in his cabinet, and the polar bear, who was not. They were rowdy with alcohol, and one of the soldiers, a man with a nose that looked broken, was pressing his hand on the polar bear’s back as if it were a horse and he was about to jump on it, while another man with red hair slapped his hands forcefully on the okapi’s cabinet, making the whole box rattle.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” I called across the room. By the time I reached them they were all staring at me, like a pack of hyenas interrupted in their jape, apart from another of their number—whose small eyes resembled those of a capybara—who was holding his fist against the polar bear’s head and miming a soft punch.
“I can think of lots of ways you can help,” the cabinet basher said, and two of the men jeered.
I put my hand on my hip as if I was a schoolmistress, and these my delinquent pupils. “I’m the director of the museum which has been evacuated here. Are you looking for a zoology lecture to go with your champagne?”
“No thanks,” said the potential rider. “But if you give me a hoist you can get me up on this thing.” He pressed down with both hands again. It was a wonder the preserved bear had not yet buckled under his weight.
“Get your hands off the polar bear,” I said, and the men, sensing a fight, cheered.
“We’ve got a firecracker here, men,” one said.
“It’s a party. We’re taking advantage of the entertainment,” the aspiring rider said, patting the bear.
“If you’d like to spend three hundred pounds to fix the polar bear once you’ve broken it, that’s fine. What’s your address so I can make sure the insurance offices know who to contact?”
“This shoddy stuffed bear?” he said. “Like hell it’s worth that much.”
“Of course, the museum is part of the civil service, so there’ll be a government investigation too, and they’ll be eager to recoup the costs and punish the man responsible.”
“What a bore you are, miss,” he said as he finally stepped away.
They filed slowly out of the room, giving me dark looks for spoiling their fun, while I stood there sternly with my arms crossed. Once they were gone, I let myself relax and gave a long sigh. I walked over to the bear and checked its back carefully to see if there was a rupture or a sunken patch. All seemed well, thank god. Not that the polar bear was really worth an awful lot; it had been one of those last-minute additions to the spare truck during the evacuation, and we had three others of its kind down in London.
My animals not having proved the sanctuary I had hoped, I asked one of the guards to make the rounds of the rooms, stressing that no one should be touching any of the animals—or trying to climb them.
I wanted the party to be over. I wanted all these guests who had infringed on the museum’s space gone. I wanted to go up to my room, get out of this ridiculous dress, and have a good cry and then sleep off my bad mood. Instead—fearing it would be rude to just disappear—I made my way through the busy crowd of the ballroom again, pushing past the heavy blackout curtains to get to the terrace and the fresh air outside, pausing for one moment on the threshold when I saw a flash of white ahead of me before the light of the full moon revealed the shape leaning against the balustrade to be Lucy.
I felt my spirits lift for the first time that evening and walked over to join her.
Lucy kissed me on the cheek in greeting and I caught a wave of her rich perfume. I settled next to her, pleased to be in her company.
“Cigarette?” she offered.
“Please,” I said. She slid one from a silver case inside her beautiful beaded bag. Her fingers were cold against mine when she handed it over. She had lost her fur somewhere and her collarbones gleamed as if she had applied powder to them—perhaps she had, was that not what the movie stars did?
“Are you having fun tonight, Hetty?”
I leaned against the balustrade to take the weight off my bruised feet. “Well, I just had to shoo a pack of men out of the drawing room; one of them wanted to ride the polar bear.” I thought about telling her about the man I had knocked into, and what I had overheard the guests say about me, but since neither anecdote painted me in the best light, I decided not to.
“Silly boys,” she said, twisting her body to stub the last of her cigarette out on the stone, “but at least there hasn’t been a fight yet.
There tends to be when there’s enough young men about. They get their pride bruised.”
“That sounds a bit ghastly,” I said. The crowds of soldiers inside had taken on a more hostile tone in my mind now, their shiny brass buttons like eyes glinting. “As to your question, would it be terribly ungrateful of me to say, not really?” I admitted. “It’s so busy and loud, and the little dancing that I did has made my feet ache. This is not my natural habitat, I’m afraid.” I sighed. “I suppose you’re used to it, that it must be small fare after the season in London.”
“You’ve got an eyelash on your cheek,” Lucy remarked softly, brushing it off with a featherlight hand. My eyelids fluttered. “And I’ve never been to the season. I wasn’t well enough to be a debutante,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I just assumed.”
“My grandmother was apoplectic about it,” she said, arms around her own shoulders. “She said in her day you would attend every party even if you had scarlet fever, that my attack of nerves was deplorable. Maybe if I’d come out properly I would have a nice husband by now.” She gave a short laugh and lit another cigarette and I thought it was good that she was not married to one of those bores inside, the ones who saw their pretty wives as trophies more than anything else.
What exactly her attack of nerves referred to, I did not quite understand, but I assumed it was part of what her father meant when he said that she was “delicate,” and it would hardly be polite to ask, although I dearly wished to. I wanted to know her better, for us to be the kind of good friends I had only ever heard about, the ones who told each other everything—and we could be, I felt oddly sure of that. Perhaps I only needed to be bold enough to tell her more of my past, or of my worries for the future. Perhaps if I made the first overture—but that had never worked with other potential friendships before.
“That dress suits you,” she said, adjusting the neckline, and blowing smoke from the corner of her mouth, the red of her lips matching her own dress perfectly.
“Thank you,” I said. I should tell her how wonderful she looked tonight, but surely that went without saying.
I looked at the blacked-out windows of the house that loomed above us, cutting out half the sky, and said, “It’s strange, the house tonight, with the crowds and the music, feels so different from usual, as if I could turn a corner and see a woman in a corset and bustle, as if time is playing tricks.”
“Yes,” Lucy said, also staring up at the house. She paused and licked her lips as if she was about to speak, and then shivered. She rubbed her hands against her chilled arms. “This is the first party we’ve had for years, you know. Back when my mother was well, there would be at least one a month. And when I was a child, I would be brought downstairs by my nurse, wearing muslin and petticoats, and with my hair in ribboned ringlets.” She patted the short curls of her hair, eyes soft with remembering. “I must have looked like a little doll being paraded about, and sometimes my father would carry me on his hip and introduce me to some of the dignitaries—the lords and ladies, the princes,” she said, with a smile and a sidelong look at me as I pictured the wondrous grandeur of her childhood. “And I would shake their hands very solemnly, or curtsy very prettily.” She bobbed her knees as she gently mocked her childhood self. “One evening, my father let me stay longer, and I stood on his feet as we danced in the middle of the ballroom. I was ever so jealous when I was whisked back upstairs, I used to cry about it and my nurses would cluck and my mother would kiss me on the cheek and say, It’s all right, darling, it’s quite boring down here with the grown-ups, really. But when I glanced back, I used to see my parents standing there looking so glamorous, with a crowd of fawning admirers around them, my father’s arm tight around my mother, her gazing up at him with such adoration, and know that a part of them was always hidden from me, that they had some secret adult accord, and feel sour with envy.” She frowned and twisted a foot before her. “I was a strange child,” she said.
“Children are envious creatures,” I mused. “We’re supposed to be such angels, but I was the crossest little madam as a child, stubborn and sullen.”
“Really?” she said delightedly, and studied me. “I can’t imagine that.”
“You can’t imagine me as stubborn, as serious?” I jested.
She laughed and tapped her thumb against her tooth before taking another drag from her cigarette. “By the time I was old enough to join the parties, to stay downstairs all night, they were infrequent and had lost their allure. When my parents were drunk they could both be such flirts, and cruel with it,” she confessed. “My mother would dance with a dashing young man and then be furious when my father danced with a woman younger, prettier, than her. There always seemed to be some spectacle or other, some shouting match, and my father herding my mother upstairs and apologizing to the guests.” She shook her head and her voice grew small. “And then, at the very last party, maybe seven years ago now, my mother attacked a woman dressed in white, thinking she was her ghost, and tore at her face with her fingernails.”
“Oh god,” I said, putting an ineffectual hand on her shoulder as she brushed her fingers across her forehead as if to brush away the memory. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right.” She shrugged, and then coughed. “I should head inside, find my fur stole.”
“I think I shall stay out here for a little longer, it’s quite warm in there,” I said, noting that she had not invited me to join her and thinking that she might want to leave the memories exhumed by our conversation behind.
“All right,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek in farewell.
I watched the liquid sway of her walk and the glint of the pins in her hair. She was taller than me by a few inches and had proper woman’s hips compared to my shapeless figure. I was not totally objectionable in looks—I liked to think of myself as forgettable more than anything else—but I hoped out of some strange vanity that we did not appear too much of an odd twosome when standing beside one another.
I looked out across the grounds, the light wind brushing my dress against my legs; a dress so expensive I could never hope to buy it on a museum salary. My stomach was warm with champagne, the hairs on my arms standing up in the cool of the night. Life had performed a strange trick to wash me up here in exactly the kind of place my mother had always wished I would find myself—though without the necessary husband, of course—but the longer I lived at Lockwood, the less I envied its inhabitants and their gilded lives, and the more all the talk of curses seemed to make some kind of sense.
I stepped down into the gardens, away from the house, and circled the fragrant knot garden, running my fingers over the prickly box hedge, when I saw movement by a tree. There, half hidden by the night, were two figures embracing, the moon casting a stripe of light on their Brylcreemed hair. It was two men, kissing like lovers. I was no ingénue—I knew of the Greeks, of Oscar Wilde and his ilk, that there were men who loved other men—but to see two men like this now, here, was shocking.
And who were they? I was too far away to see if either or both were wearing uniform. I turned around in case one of them saw me watching—and besides, I did not want to be a voyeur, to intrude on a private moment—and made my way quickly back to the terrace and then inside. I could not tame my thoughts, though; I kept looking at the men I passed and thinking, you too? Wondering what the scrape of stubble against stubble would feel like. What they would do together. Suddenly every gesture became suspicious, every friendly slap on the back, every arm slung over the shoulder. Would a man like that know another on sight? Was there a tell, a secret signal?
I left the ballroom again, thinking about heading for my office—the key for which I had placed in my purse, foreseeing my need for an escape route—but when I came to it I found the door next to it, the door to the narrow corridor that led to the long gallery, ajar.
I pushed through it and walked along the corridor and through the other open door. The lights in the long gallery were on and I could hear the m
urmur of a voice and the shuffle of feet coming from one of the rooms. My heels clicked on the wooden floorboards as I strode down the gallery to find out who had wandered in here, and just how they had made it past a locked door in the first place.
Twelve
As the men at the ball danced with me, they complimented my dress (praise which I palmed off on the tailor), my elegance, my “radiance” (a term I always suspected referred to the perspiration that bloomed on one’s face as an evening of dancing progressed), and my nimble feet, but inevitably their conversation soon turned to the house itself. Such a gorgeous house, they would say, as they held me in their arms; what a grand estate, what a glorious ballroom, they would remark as the hand on my back nudged me in the direction they wished; and I knew that in their eyes I was a part of the house they coveted, that when they looked at me, when they clutched me close, they thought of my inheritance and wondered whether they might seduce me into giving them Lockwood itself.
If I told them about my bad nerves, if I called it madness, would that only make them want me more? I thought darkly; would they think that they could shut me up somewhere and have free rein of the house for themselves?
It was easier when I was younger, when the men my age had not yet turned their thoughts to property and legacy and women as parcels of land or crumbling estates that needed only their expert financial guidance to recover, when attraction was what mattered, the frisson of a hoped-for dalliance later that night.