Ember Island

by Freeman, Kimberley

  And each retired to their own room, their own cold, empty bed.

  Sometimes Tilly cried hot tears, pounded the pillow, screamed silently about how unfair it was that this marriage was such an enormous disappointment. But sometimes she managed to compress all those wild feelings into a hard kernel inside her and let her brain take charge. He did not want children yet. His financial difficulties probably shook him to the very core of his sense of himself as a man. Their long separation between the wedding and her arrival had filled him with doubts, which he was slowly and patiently working through. Just because Tilly could not be slow and patient didn’t mean Jasper could not also.

  But it wasn’t that Tilly was madly keen for sex: she was curious about it certainly, and she desired Jasper. It was that she needed comfort, physical comfort. She and Grandpa hadn’t lived a day together that didn’t involve a long hug, a stroke of the hair, a walk holding hands. Losing him was one kind of pain, but losing human touch was another, keener pain. She needed Jasper to hold her, not because she was an intemperate woman whose virginity irked her; but because she felt isolated and surrounded by cold. An island. A place in between.

  Tilly was in the garden, wondering if it were the last day of the year warm enough to be outside all day. The sea wind was rough this morning, and the sun had not yet lain upon the grass long enough to lift the dew. She knelt on her old tablecloth, tidying the lavender beds. The sky was a great blue arch above her, pale and barely warmed by the sun. She tried not to think about how they would stay warm this autumn, this winter. Jasper hadn’t earned a penny in months. All rested on his sale of granite pavers to the Dublin merchant, and the quarrier who had promised him such a good deal had been out of contact for a week.

  “Tilly! Tilly!” This was Jasper, calling from the house. She rose, peeled off her gardening gloves and waited. He ran towards her, excited happiness in his face.

  A weight lifted off her heart. “They are here?” she asked.

  “They are here! Four granite pavers, beveled, cleaned, and ready to be waxed, finally offered up by that wretched man at the quarry,” he said. “The price was low and I had nothing to buy them with. But I am not averse to risk. I took a beating from the Spaniard and I took your jewels from you, and I am ashamed of both. But it is all worth it. My man in Dublin will pay three times what I did for them. I leave this afternoon to take him the samples, to sign paperwork.” He shook his head sadly. “And to take the down payment that will let us breathe again. I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

  “I seem to remember vowing to stand by you for better and for worse,” Tilly said. “Well done, my love. My husband.”

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead with such tenderness that her heart lurched. She closed her eyes and leaned in to him. A wild wind whirled around them and then was gone. She turned her face up to him.

  And saw it. An expression between expressions, something he felt before he covered what he really felt. The same expression she had seen at the wedding—she had forgotten about it in the chaos after Grandpa’s collapse. But now she had seen it again. An expression of pity and . . . condescension? Disdain? Surely not . . . contempt?

  “Jasper?”

  “The wind,” he said. “It’s too cold out here.”

  Should she admit it? That her heart thumped with uncertainty? That she had seen an expression cross his brow—a tenth of a moment in length—that made her fear he didn’t love her? She could not admit it. He already thought her prone to fits of wild imagination, and she was already doubting herself. Yes, the wind was cold. He didn’t like being outside, at his own admission. Why should she assume that the look of scorn was for her and not the weather?

  Simply because she’d seen it before.

  Tilly wondered if Jasper was right. Grief over Grandpa’s death, the move to this strange new place, the anxiety over money . . . perhaps they had weighed upon her thoughts until the point that those thoughts had started to warp and crook.

  Back inside the house she made a vow to herself never to mention these thoughts to Jasper. To rest and keep her heart calm, and to call the physician if they continued. It wasn’t right to be so fearful of her husband. That was not how marriage was meant to be.

  •

  Jasper left as a cold front moved in, bringing leaden skies and chill rain. Tilly was all but trapped inside. The one time she tried to walk down to St. Peter Port, her umbrella blew inside out and she was sodden in seconds. Her dealings with Mrs. Rivard were monosyllabic, and Jasper had sent Miss Broussard on leave while he was away. Two servants were too much for one person, he explained. So for days, she spoke to nobody. The house was silent and grim. The leaden clouds made the dark come earlier and it felt as though she lived her whole life by candlelight.

  With the garden awash, Tilly returned to her other task, organizing the books in the library. One by one, she pulled them down, sneezing from dust, collecting them on the floor with their brothers and sisters; then one by one she reshelved them. Even with the curtains drawn wide, the daylight was dim. She went at a leisurely pace, often stopping and sitting on the wooden step-up to read a poem or remember a favorite part of an old story. Rain pounded at the windows and wind danced eerily around the eaves. She wondered how Jasper was getting on, when she might see him again. Sometimes, as she took down books and stacked them, she imagined a change in fortune for them. She imagined having a party like the one the Morningtons had held. The house would be full of cut flowers and rich ornaments, all the lamps lit, the great chandelier restored in the entrance hall. It made her smile and long for him to return so that this future could rush upon them in an instant, rather than being beyond her fingertips.

  Then eight days later, the rain stopped. Tilly woke to a fine, clear morning, the sun low in the sky but a cheerful yellow.

  And she knew she couldn’t stay inside.

  Directly after breakfast, she pulled on her sturdiest walking shoes, her gloves and scarf, and her walking coat. She thought about calling out to Mrs. Rivard that she was heading out, but the servant would neither care nor bother with a heartfelt adieu, so Tilly let herself out, pocketed the front door key, and set off down the path.

  Ten feet into the wood, she realized she could go no further. The path was deep, sticky mud. But she knew there was another way off Jasper’s estate—further, and much more dramatic—via the cliff road behind the house. She returned to the grounds of Lumière sur la Mer, crossed the garden, then went through the gate that bordered the neighbor’s apple orchard. Miss Broussard had told her about this route, but she had never walked it so she carefully followed the fence, climbed over the stile and then down. From here she could look down over the rolling headland and down to the beach. A stony track led north to St. Peter Port, and south down the hill and to the water.

  On a whim, she went south. She had lived here five weeks without ever having seen the beach, and after all the rain and bad weather, all kinds of interesting things might have washed up on the sand.

  Tilly trod carefully. There was no mud here, but some of the stones were mossy. She was very exposed. No trees grew here. The distant sun was warm on her shoulders. She loosened her bonnet and took it off, enjoying the warmth in her hair. She knew she should be careful in the sun or she would freckle, but after days cooped up inside while it rained, a few freckles would be a small price to pay.

  The sea breeze was soft, almost still. The hush and pull of the waves soothing. She glanced down and saw two figures on the beach: a man and a woman. He sat on a rock, she stood in front of him, facing the sea. His arms encircled her hips. She smiled at this expression of love. No doubt many folk would be heading outside today, to enjoy the autumn sunshine, many fond lovers like these two.

  Her heart knew before her eyes did.

  One of those figures was Jasper.

  She stopped, skin frosting over. Was this her imagination again? She pinched herself, looked again. Her eyes tried to make him not Jasper. He sat with his back to her after all. Jaspe
r was in Ireland. Jasper wasn’t here on the beach with another woman’s hips between his firm hands. He stood, his hands sliding up around her waist and embracing her. Both of them, facing out to sea. Two hundred feet down from where Tilly stood.

  Two hundred feet. Too far to see clearly.

  The woman stepped away from the man and they began to walk along the beach. Tilly moved again, walking fast, sliding and slipping on the stones, desperate to catch them. Because she had seen it, clearly with her own eyes: the woman wore her coat, her treasured sable-trimmed coat. Long red-gold hair spilled over its collar and was caught by the wind. Jasper had her hand. Oh, yes, it was Jasper. The closer she drew to them the more certain she was. Running now, desperate to get to the beach before they disappeared around the cove and out of sight.

  But Tilly’s feet were in too much haste to be careful. A stone punched into her toe, the slippery moss under her other foot could not hold her. Over she went, landing heavily on her left wrist. The fall itself seemed slow, almost as though it were happening to somebody else. But the pain in her wrist brought her back to herself: hard and sharp.

  And just as she was trapped in her body with this horrible pain, so she was trapped in this marriage, on this island, with the hard, sharp fear that her husband didn’t love her. He loved somebody else.

  •

  She lay for a long time in the damp grass, heart thudding in her ears, dreading to look at her wrist. Finally, she lifted it up in front of her, wiggled each finger in turn. Then she tried to bend her wrist. It moved too freely. Searing pain. She let out a little cry.

  Keep it still, then. Keep it still. She maneuvered herself into a sitting position, then slowly climbed to her feet, nursing her wrist defensively against her chest. The figures down on the beach had gone, of course, and she looked back up the hill, wrist throbbing. And started trudging up and up, much more carefully than she’d gone down.

  In her head she began composing the dignified, cold lecture she would give her husband when he got home. About marriage vows and how God would judge him. To think that Jasper wouldn’t touch Tilly, wouldn’t take her to his bed, but had raced to meet with this other woman and put his hands on her body so . . . comfortably. She realized she was crying, open-mouthed crying like a tiny child, with tears and mucus running over her face. She stopped, took a few deep shuddering breaths, and applied her handkerchief to her damp cheeks and mouth. Her heart was thudding from the walk, her wrist filled with a dragging pain, her head crowded with thoughts and phrases. How could you? Who is she? My coat!

  Tilly continued up the path. She needed to get home, to her bed and rest her wrist, and wait for Jasper to finish with his lover and come home to Tilly’s fury.

  •

  He didn’t come. The hours passed in agony. He didn’t come. When had he stepped off the ship? How long did it take to . . . service that woman? Why wasn’t he returning home to his wife?

  Mrs. Rivard rang the bell for dinner and supper and Tilly stayed in her room. She had no appetite and her wrist hurt too much to lift a fork. She watched in horror as it swelled to nearly twice its normal width. She found a clean pillow slip and folded it to a narrow strip, then using her good hand and her teeth, wrapped her wrist tightly. She needed a doctor, but she wouldn’t call one. Let Jasper get home, late and guilty, and find her here injured and in pain. Then perhaps he would regret his actions.

  Night came, but still he didn’t arrive. A darker, sharper thought: what if he had never been away at all? What if it had all been a story so he could spend time with the other woman? Tilly heard Mrs. Rivard leaving. The house settled into the grim, dark quiet she had become used to the last week. She lit no candle, she barely moved, she prayed for sleep but it would not come. A dozing fit here, a long period of quiet in her head there, but mostly the night passed in whirling thoughts and hot pain and the knowledge that he was not in his own bed because he was in somebody else’s.

  Just before dawn, she startled awake, surprised that she had slept at all. Her curtain was still open, and she could see the sky was losing its inky darkness. Footsteps on the stairs, but it was too early for Mrs. Rivard to be here. That meant Jasper was home.

  Tilly leapt out of bed, ignoring the hot throb in her wrist, ran out onto the landing, and caught him at the bottom of the stairs.

  “What happened to your wrist?” he said, indicating the pillow slip.

  “Where have you been?” she shrieked. Red fog had built up behind her eyeballs and her fury poured out of her. “What hour do you call this to come home?”

  Jasper gaped at her, seemed about to answer, but she cut him off with her tirade.

  “Who is she? Do you think me a fool? Do you think I will put up with any kind of foul treatment? When I think about the times I have pressed myself upon you for physical affection only to be rebuffed and judged—judged—by you! And all the time, you were—”

  Both his hands went in the air. “Stop it!” he roared, and Tilly could have sworn the whole staircase, the whole house, shook from the force of his words. “Stop it, you foul creature. What on earth are you saying to me?”

  “I saw you!” she cried, tears flowing. “I saw you with that other woman. She was wearing my coat, the one you said you needed to sell! I saw you down at the beach yesterday afternoon.”

  “Tilly, I am twenty minutes off the steamer from Dublin.” And his face was a completely open book: he looked bewildered, offended. He looked innocent.

  Tilly gulped back a sob. Her chest jumped with the effort of trying to get breath in her lungs. The anger was retreating along her veins now, leaving them cool and frightened. “What?” she said quietly.

  “The steamer. I have been on it all night. I barely slept a wink and I had to walk miles to my own door and . . . what is this? What are you saying to me?”

  “I saw you,” she said. Two hundred feet is a long way. “At least . . . I thought I did.”

  He ran his eyes over her clothes. “And here you are, covered in mud and grass stains. Are these yesterday’s clothes? Is this what I am to expect as a greeting from my wife, when I have been away so long, putting a roof over your head?” With one swift movement, Jasper reached for her, picked her up as easily as if she were a wooden doll, and put her over his shoulder.

  “Put me down!” she shouted.

  “You have clearly lost your mind,” he said, as he carried her to her room. He dropped her on her bed, making her cry out in pain as her wrist bumped against the mattress.

  He held up a cautionary finger. “Sleep. Think about what you have said to me.”

  He stalked out, slamming the door behind him. She gingerly picked up her wrist, retightened where the pillow slip bandage had become loosened. Then heard a strange noise in the corridor, a light thud at her door.

  Tilly went to the door and tried to open it. She couldn’t move the handle. But she knew there was no lock. Reality swam. Was she really losing her mind? How had he locked her in without a key?

  She dropped to the floor, peered under the gap between door and carpet. She could see the legs of a chair. So he had barred her in. The door handle didn’t move, just as last time. And he had done it swiftly and easily. As though he had done it before.

  He had lied about locking her in the first time. He was a liar.

  Or was this more of her temper getting the better of her? Girls ought not rage and shout.

  Tilly returned to her bed, lay on her side, and gazed at the window with aching eyes. She tried to recall what she had seen yesterday in better detail, but already the figures were dissolving at the edges, turning to sand. A flash of golden hair, a man who touched the woman’s waist with knowing tenderness. That was all she could be sure of. And had she really run after them down a rain-slick hill, over stones, and not expected to hurt herself? Tilly closed her eyes, desperate and desolate, realizing she no longer knew what was real and what was a product of her own troubled mind.

  •

  She woke a few hours later when the
door opened gently. She turned, hoping to see Jasper, concerned and kind. The face she saw was concerned and kind, but it wasn’t Jasper’s.

  “Mrs. Dellafore?” he said. “I am Dr. Hunt.”

  She sat up, nursing her sore wrist. He put his big leather bag down next to the bed.

  “Sit on the edge of the bed for me.”

  “Who called you?” she asked, moving into place.

  “Your husband, of course. He’s worried about you.”

  “He is?”

  Dr. Hunt didn’t answer. Instead he gently unwrapped the pillow-slip bandage. Even though the swelling was a little better, Tilly was shocked to see her wrist was almost black with bruising.

  “Can you still move it?” he said.

  She nodded. “Please don’t make me show you.”

  “I believe you.” He smiled up at her through a thick gray mustache, and she was put in mind of Father Christmas.

  “All your fingers work?”

  “They do.”

  “Does it hurt if you hold it still? Or all the time?”

  Tilly held her wrist very still. “No, it only hurts if I move it.”

  He reached out and gently bumped her forearm. “Did that make it hurt?”

  “A little. Not much.”

  “I don’t think it’s broken or even fractured. I think you’ve sprained it badly. I’m going to bandage it up properly and I insist on complete rest for at least a week.”

  “So I can’t use it at all?”

  “It’s your left wrist, so you can eat soup and bread. I hear Mrs. Rivard makes a capital vichyssoise.” He opened his case wide and pulled out a silver hip flask, which he offered to her. “Brandy,” he said. “For the pain.”