Secrets of the Past

by Estella McQueen

  He picked up the next letter.

  ‘Mary Ellen, my dearest, I was so pleased to hear your news. I too, have similar reason to celebrate. My darling boy was born three weeks ago, and I cannot tell you how happy I am when I look at him in his crib. He is healthy and thriving, and belongs wholly to us, his doting parents. We have become quite silly, in our constant absorption. I imagine you and Samuel are the same.

  Such a merry time, you’re having. Thanksgiving does sound like an extravagant feast. You will never want to spend winter in cold, rainy England again. Your children will be happy, and you will make a very fine life for yourselves. I only wish I was able to visit. I am always excited to hear your news. Your only regret you say, since leaving England, is that you missed the Coronation. I shall give you a brief account. Imagine me struggling for a view of the platform, the flags waving in my face, the plumage obscuring my view! The whole situation was comical. I did not see a glimpse of the King! All I heard was the clatter of the coach. I fear such a crowd would have terrified you. The noise, the smells, the crush! I was quite glad to escape the whole cacophony. We heard tell the Queen was turned away at the door. And now she is dead, God rest her.

  Don’t waste time thinking about us at home. There are so many opportunities to be had over there. You made the right decision. Only now do I appreciate how much your father had trapped you and crushed your ambition and your will. I tremble to think he might have kept you at Addleston your whole life, and you never would have known happiness. You are a bird released, a butterfly escaped, a blind animal burrowing up from his dark tunnel, blinking into the light -’

  Charlie looked across at Aggy’s expectant face. ‘Her father?’ he repeated slowly. ‘Oh God, I should have known! I should have realized the connection. Mary Ellen wasn’t a servant or a companion! She was Richard Tunney’s daughter. Amelia was her stepmother. She was a Tunney who married a Seagrave and moved to America.’ Mary Ellen had concealed herself in another country, hoping that she’d covered her tracks, unaware that two centuries later the misery she’d caused would eventually be discovered.

  ‘Yes, but who was she?’

  ‘She lived at Addleston House two hundred years ago. Her diary was discovered under the floorboards in one of the bedrooms.’

  Aggy took the letters from him, re-reading them. ‘I’ve looked over these letters a whole bunch of times. They never made much sense till now.’

  But the more often he went over it, the more culpable Mary Ellen became. ‘Amelia was married to Mary Ellen’s father, Richard Tunney, but she was in love with her childhood sweetheart, Harry Bramall. Mary Ellen deliberately intercepted Harry and Amelia’s love letters and kept them hidden, until each of them believed the other had given up and stopped caring. Once the love affair had fizzled out, Mary Ellen locked the letters away in a tea casket with her diary, where they remained for the next two hundred years!’

  ‘Oh my,’ said Aggy, ‘that’s awful! What happened to the lovers?’

  ‘I don’t know! Nobody does! All we know is that the letters ceased. The diary ends – presumably when Mary Ellen took up her new life.’ He prodded the letters. ‘When she got married and lived happily ever after!’

  ‘When she came to the States,’ Aggy finished. ‘Phew-ee! This ain’t quite what I was expecting when you said you wanted to turf through my old junk.’ She picked up one of the letters herself and held it close up to her face. ‘No one uses pen and ink no more. No one writes letters like this. Everyone bashes out those electronic things. No soul!’ she said passionately. ‘No heart.’

  But pretty handwriting would not assuage Mary Ellen’s guilt. How could anyone, in all conscience, pack up like that, and flee? Leaving everything in a mess at home, abandoning loved ones in distress and ignorance? Amelia’s babies were dead, and Mary Ellen, her only companion, had been left to deal with the grief, alone.

  Charlie left the documents and letters on the table and sat for many minutes, immobile. Above him, the cobwebs on the light-fitting danced and wafted in the draught from the hallway. If only he could send himself back in time, and help Amelia.

  He’d go to the cemetery, that’s what he’d do. Find Mary Ellen. See what she’d got to say for herself.

  A shrill blast from the doorbell jolted him back to reality. Aggy was about to haul herself onto her crutches when Charlie stopped her. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Thank you darlin’. I think it’s for you anyway. Some friend of yours called me earlier…,’

  What on earth did she mean? She was obviously getting her wires crossed.

  Charlie kicked the curled up rug from under his feet and padded down the wooden floorboards towards the front door. He undid the chain and yanked the juddery door open. Astrid was on the doorstep. ‘Sur-prise!’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m in a hotel a few streets away.’ She looked hopefully up at him. ‘I thought I might be able to help. If not, I’ll mooch around the neighbourhood or something till you’re done.’ She eyed the peeling paint, the weathered window ledges, Aggy’s battered wheelchair gathering leaves and dust outside the door. She’d come all the way to Peabody on a whim?

  ‘Well… seeing as you’re here,’ he said. ‘See that church spire above the rooftops?’ He pointed over her shoulder. ‘That’s where I’m going.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘you really know how to show a girl a good time.’

  Chapter Twenty One

  ‘You’ve been suspended?’ said Charlie. ‘But that’s outrageous. You weren’t in the wrong.’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ said Astrid. ‘The truth is I found myself at a loose end, and what better way to fill my time than fly out and see you? It’s a leave of absence really, nothing to get worked up about.’

  ‘What about Matthew?’

  She didn’t answer. The church was bounded on three sides by the cemetery, the last side, overlooking a small stream, remained strangely clear of graves as though it was an area that somehow wasn’t sacred. The rest of the site was choked with gravestones. ‘If only we had one of Addleston’s battery powered trimmers, we’d make short work of this tangled mess,’ said Astrid as they trampled a pathway through the tough grass.

  None of the graves were recent and the older parts of the cemetery were deep in neglect. Right up against a part of the old church wall where the bricks had exploded beneath the force of an aggressively invasive plant, was a large, slate grey headstone, embellished with ornate lettering. The wording, although delicately applied, was just about legible. Ellen Seagrave, beloved wife of Samuel, adored mother of Edward, Anne and Lucy, buried here this day January 15 1843.’

  ‘She’s changed her name,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Wouldn’t you, if you were trying to escape your past?’

  And even as he contemplated the pathetic, worn, lopsided gravestone, it was hard to feel any sympathy for the elusive woman. Charlie felt strangely detached. This woman was part of the Addleston’s history, but Mary Ellen was a bad apple and he refused to forgive her. He owed it to Amelia and Harry to hold Mary Ellen in abeyance.

  ‘Who is this?’ said Astrid. ‘Julia Seagrave, 1939 – 1965, Sleeping with the angels’.

  She was standing next to a gravestone decorated with fresh flowers in oddments of glazed pottery and glass receptacles.

  ‘Oh, that must be Aggy’s daughter, Julia.’

  Almost immediately a young woman appeared close by, wearing cropped trousers and a red head scarf and balancing a wicker basket on the crook of her arm. He recognized her from the photos. Moving towards the shelter of the far churchyard wall Julia lit up a cigarette. The red scarf on her head fluttered in the breeze as she put her face up to blow away the cigarette smoke. ‘I can see her right now,’ Charlie said, ‘she’s over there.’

  The layout of the cemetery seemed to shift and change as he experienced the subtle alteration of his surroundings, and the present morphed into the past.

  Julia brushes her fingers ac
ross her cheek, removing a stray hair, before wandering along the pathways, cigarette in one hand, basket in the other. She hovers at the gate, waiting.

  A young man arrives; upset, Julia rushes towards him, and words are exchanged. She tries to physically push him away, he remonstrates, holds onto her arm. ‘Julia,’ he says, ‘come on now. I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she says, dropping her basket, the contents tumbling to the ground. ‘I’ve done enough for you.’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else, this place creeps me out.’

  ‘I like it here. You can go now.’

  ‘But you’ll come find me afterwards?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You promise?’ says the man.

  ‘I promise! Just go!’

  Eventually the man leaves her, slowly, unwillingly. Julia watches anxiously, shooing him on now and then, until finally he disappears down the street. As soon as he’s gone, she begins crying, stumbling about. She makes no attempt to pick up the shopping strewn on the ground. Instead she clutches at her shirt collar as if the button is done up too tight around her neck, and pulls something from her pocket. She leans her head back, screwing up her eyes as if bracing herself for pain. A flash of something silver whips in the air. What is it? A knife? Julia gives a sudden lurch and slumps against the wall, her knees bent. She switches hands and does it again. Dark spots appear on the pale shirt and then large reddish brown stains begin to spread across the fabric of her trousers. Her face wears an expression of blank indifference, despite the vast quantity of blood now smeared across her arms.

  Julia staggers to her feet; using the wall to support herself she makes her way as far as the gate, pushes through it and disappears into the street beyond. She is looking for someone, calling out to him. ‘Daddy!’

  Like a warning on the news report - some viewers may find these images distressing – Charlie had a prurient urge to expose himself to the full gruesome details. Following Julia out of the gate and beyond the cemetery walls, at first he could see nothing. He was about to turn back when he caught a small movement at the corner of his eye.

  Julia is on hands and feet, edging further and further along the wall’s edge; the red scarf has fallen away from her head and now hangs loosely at her neck. Finally she runs out of energy and drops face down in the long grass. She doesn’t move again.

  As quickly as it arrived, the image disappeared. Charlie stumbled back along the cemetery paths, trying to make sense of the scene. Julia had felt singled out, that’s what Aggy said. There were repercussions, a price to pay. She’d rather take her own life than accept her lot.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Astrid was touching his arm. He flinched, feeling the hair on his skin stand on end. ‘What did you see?’

  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Not what we’re looking for.’

  ‘You look terrible,’ she said. ‘Shall we go somewhere else?’

  Charlie was beginning to lose heart. Mary Ellen was refusing to be seen. Why?

  He struggled to get his thoughts straight. ‘According to Aggy, Mary Ellen’s house was near a local school, but it would be a hundred and fifty years old. There might be some trace of her left. It might be worth a try.’

  ‘It’s better than nothing,’ said Astrid.

  Following Aggy’s directions, they made their way across town until they reached an insalubrious side street faced on one side with a long row of corrugated iron panels. Beyond the panels lay a small cluster of derelict buildings framing a disused school yard, but the metal boundary was too high to comfortably see over. All that was visible from street level was the upper part of a crumbling bell tower. A wooden hoarding on the edge of the site was painted white and plastered with a large artist’s impression of a new supermarket. ‘Looks like we got here just in time,’ said Charlie. ‘They’re about to bulldoze the whole street.’

  Nipping across the street to the opposite pavement, he stood on tiptoe in the vain hope of a better view.

  ‘Getting anything?’ Astrid called, squinting into the sky.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Not even a hint?’

  ‘All I’m getting,’ said Charlie following a route down the school steps and into the rubble strewn yard, ‘is Little House on the Prairie.’

  She laughed. ‘Laura Ingalls with her lunch pail running out the gate?’

  He crossed again and ran his fingers along the corrugated iron sheets until he found a small rusted hole which gave a compromised view of the school front. Through it he could see yellow tape criss-crossing the front door and windows blocked up with wooden sheets. By nailing shut the building’s eyes and mouth, the developers naively assumed it would fall asleep forever, incapable of being woken again. By the looks of things they’d been waiting some time – perhaps some financial or legal irregularity had postponed the building’s destruction, and a reprieve was imminent.

  ‘Soon there’ll be nothing left,’ said Astrid.

  ‘Not true,’ said Charlie. ‘Not if you look in the right places.’

  Realistically, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the fate of their nineteenth century lovers bordered on the prosaic. Maybe when Amelia’s passion for Harry blew itself out, she settled down quietly with her lawful husband. Maybe she succumbed to some fatal nineteenth century epidemic, and that was why Richard Tunney died heirless.

  ‘It was worth a try, but there’s no conflict here, nothing to see. Mary Ellen made a new life for herself. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Didn’t she just?’ said Astrid. ‘So, what do we do now?’

  ‘Time to go home, I guess.’

  ‘Fine, but do you think we could eat first? I’m starving.’

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Was this what Mary Ellen sailed the ocean for? Charlie mused later, in the Blue Bar and Grill. Is this the new life she was so excited by? Would she have caught the next boat home if she knew what American bounty really meant?

  He contemplated the fifteen oz burger lying on the oval platter where it nuzzled up against a mountain of spicy potato wedges. ‘Back home you could feed a family of four with that. For a week.’

  He grabbed the burger with both hands and bit down, hard. Shards of mayonnaise slimed lettuce and onion slipped from the bread and splatted on the plate and the tablecloth below. It had to be a joke, right; it had to be a challenge? Could one person really demolish a 15 0z burger, all by themselves?

  Astrid picked at her griddled chicken burger and salsa topping and tried to keep his masticating jaws out of her eyeline. Yes, it appeared they could.

  ‘Fancy a game of pool?’ Charlie asked, wiping the sauce from his fingers and discarding the screwed up napkin.

  ‘No thanks, I’m rubbish at it.’

  ‘Come on,’ he wheedled, ‘it’ll be fun.’

  With music from the sound system dully thumping in the background, she followed him over to an empty pool table. It felt like a date. For Charlie this was unfamiliar territory; this was what normal people did.

  He handed her a cue. ‘Ladies first.’

  As predicted, she lost the first game in less than five minutes. ‘Told you.’

  ‘A bit more practice maybe. Go again?’ He was already setting up.

  Glancing down at the baize, Charlie cracked off a shot that scattered the pool balls to all four corners. After that he began deliberately mis-cuing the easiest of shots in a vain attempt to give her an advantage. It made no difference to the outcome. She was still hopeless.

  Against the backdrop of bleeps and tweets and coloured lights from the jukebox and the one armed bandits, he became aware of an oddly incongruous figure close by. A young woman, her hair and make-up somewhat messed up, her clothes dishevelled, was weaving her way between tables. Followed by a young man in scuzzy jeans; she was hurrying to get away from him; he picked up speed, determined to reach her before she could make good her escape.

  ‘Julia,’ he said, ‘don’t you run away from me
. You come back here, you hear me?’

  She refused to look back. ‘I ain’t coming with you. I told you already.’

  ‘But we need each other Julia; we’re goin’ places, you and me!’

  The young woman shook her head dismissively, hurrying on; soon she was opening the door, and the daylight flooded in.

  Charlie fought against it, tried to repress it. How come he failed to see anything when he deliberately wanted to, and yet the minute he relaxed and was at ease, his thoughts were hijacked?

  ‘You’re miles away,’ said Astrid. ‘Am I boring you?’

  ‘I just saw Julia again. Aggy’s daughter.’

  ‘What, here? What was she doing?’

  ‘Trying to avoid some guy. I think it’s her boyfriend. He wants something from her.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s dark-haired, weaselly looking.’ Out of sequence, the image made no sense. Julia was already dead. ‘No. Sorry. I can’t tell what’s going on.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Astrid said, leaning on her cue, ‘there’s no need to apologise. So… vision over. What shall we do next?’

  It was a loaded question.

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  She replaced the cue in the rack. ‘I suggest… going back to the hotel.’

  *

  The hotel bedroom smelt strongly of cheap fabric softener. ‘It’s to mask the stench of the guests,’ said Charlie, motioning her towards the bed. ‘Here, take a seat.’

  She did so, sinking down into the frilled and flounced white and yellow bed linen. ‘Matching curtains,’ she noticed. ‘Nice touch.’ The last time they’d been together like this, it was on top of Amelia’s beautiful quilt.

  Charlie put his hand on her knee. ‘I missed you, you know. Very much.’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  His hand continued to rest on her bare flesh. Her skin felt warm underneath his. The beer that she’d been drinking smelt sickly sweet under his nostrils. With his other hand he stroked the area beneath her earlobe, then tilted her chin up and kissed her on the mouth. She leaned in towards him, kissing him back before he changed his mind. It was good, it felt nice. They fell back into the bed and began kissing more energetically, fumbling with buttons and zips. He pushed her dress up towards her waist. It wasn’t difficult, it was a floaty diaphanous thing, there was no weight to it, no structure. He hooked his fingers under the elastic of her pants and began to wriggle them down towards her knees. His fingers brushed the sensitive skin on the insides of her thighs and she tensed.