We drop Herbert at Doggy Day Care and set off early for the drive to Cambridge. It’s a beautiful day, crisp and sunny, the fields outlined by fiery autumnal trees. Even the M25 isn’t too bad. Georgie is plugged into her headphones, I listen to Radio 4. There’s a feature about sexual harassment. I try to remember how many times I’ve had inappropriate comments made to me, at school, university and work. I give up when I get to double figures. Georgie unplugs herself and asks if we’re there yet.
‘Soonish,’ I say, squinting at the satnav with its ever-hopeful estimated time of arrival. ‘About an hour.’
Georgie slumps. We stop at a service station for drinks, sweets and the loo, then set off again. We take the M11, then the wonderfully named Fen Causeway. The land falls away from us; there is only sky and the road ahead. I remember something I once heard from an American writer: ‘In Kansas you can see someone running away for days.’ It might not be days here but it would be several hours before the running figure disappeared over the horizon. My grandmother lives in the highlands of Scotland but her house is in a fishing village, with shops and a proper community. My dad got away as quickly as he could, escaping to Edinburgh for university and then to London for work. Yet I love Scotland; some of my happiest memories are of being in the Ullapool house. This is something else. A strange, sullen landscape, even on a day like this. A place that rightly belongs at the bottom of the sea.
My problems start in Cambridge itself. I can’t find St Jude’s and the satnav gives up, muttering ‘turn around where possible’ to itself. Eventually I have to stop and ask the way, causing Georgie to slump even lower in her seat. Once more round the one-way system, passing ancient portals and gateways, glimpses of another world.
St Jude’s appears with supernatural suddenness. I brake, the cars behind me hoot and I nearly hit a cyclist as I swerve through the low archway. An alarmingly large figure emerges from the porter’s lodge but it appears that I’m on a list somewhere so I’m allowed to drive on, past an emerald green quad and into a small car park.
‘Professor Hamilton will meet you by the library staircase,’ I’m told, so I park nearby, next to the recycling bins, and we get out of the car.
Georgie looks around. There are low Tudor buildings on three sides of us, leaded light windows twinkling in the October sun.
‘It’s creepy,’ says Georgie.
‘In a good way,’ I say. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go.
The library is on the opposite side of the quad. We circle the grass, and arrive at another low door. I have to duck slightly. Perhaps it’s just as well that I didn’t come here. I’d have permanent concussion. A stone staircase is in front of us, dark and curiously forbidding, but on the left there’s a sign saying ‘library’ in a comfortingly twenty-first century typeface. I’m just about to push open the door when a voice says, ‘Ms Cassidy?’
I turn round. If I had to duck, this man must have had to bend almost double to get under the door. I’m five-ten but I have to squint to look up at him, his head almost lost in the gloom of the hallway.
‘Henry Hamilton.’ A hand is extended.
‘Clare Cassidy.’ I adjust my eyes and see that Henry Hamilton has dark hair, worn slightly long, which gives him the look of a composer or a poet. He’s probably in his forties and his face, what I can see of it in the semi-darkness, is thin and sensitive-looking. He’s also about six-foot-four.
‘This is my daughter Georgia.’
Georgie manages to shake hands and mumble something.
‘How do you do,’ says Henry. ‘Is this your first trip to Cambridge?’
‘Yes,’ says Georgie.
‘I hope you’ll get to see something of the other colleges. St Jude’s is a minnow compared to King’s or Trinity.’
‘It’s a very pretty minnow,’ I say.
‘I like it,’ says Hamilton. ‘Would you like to step up to my office? I’ve made coffee. Georgia, would you like me to get one of the undergraduates to show you round?’
Georgie glares at me but doesn’t say anything. Hamilton takes her silence for assent.
We all ascend the staircase and enter a door marked ‘Professor H.H. Hamilton’. Do his friends call him HH, I wonder? It’s a tiny room but it has a view out over the quad with golden buildings all around. Otherwise the office is disappointingly mundane: metal bookcases, a computer, a desk that looks like it came from IKEA. There is, however, a cafetière and a plate of biscuits on a tray.
Hamilton plunges the coffee and excuses himself for a minute. He comes back with a gangling ginger-haired youth, his acne gleaming gently. ‘This is Edmund. He’ll be happy to show Georgia around the college while I show you the papers.’ As Georgie leaves the room, I have to swallow a ridiculous urge to tell her to be careful. Will she be safe in this creepy, gothic world? I’m also rather disappointed that Edmund doesn’t exactly look the type to fill Georgie with enthusiasm for life at Cambridge.
‘I hope that was all right,’ says Henry Hamilton. ‘I just thought she might be bored.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I want her to see what a university is like. She’s only in Year 11 but it’s never too early.’
‘Does she want to come to Cambridge?’
‘I don’t think she’s thought about it.’
Hamilton smiles. ‘I didn’t think about universities until I’d left school and was working in a chip shop. No one from my family had ever been to university. I read about Cambridge in a newspaper that was going to go round some cod and chips. It was an article about getting working-class kids to apply. I thought, “It can’t be worse than this”.’ He has a slight Northern accent that I hadn’t registered before. Not Newcastle, like Simon, but something softer.
‘My parents are both academics,’ I say. ‘They kept going on about university. You can’t get it right really.’
There’s a slight pause and Hamilton says, ‘So how did you become interested in R.M. Holland?’
‘He lived at the school where I teach,’ I say. ‘I’d read The Stranger before, of course, but there was something about being in his actual house. I’ve become quite obsessed. He’s an interesting character and there’s never been a biography.’
‘The Stranger is a great little story.’
‘Yes, it works well with students.’
‘I bet. I didn’t know much about Holland myself but, when these letters turned up, I did some research. I found a news clip where you were talking about him.’
I grimace. ‘I hate seeing myself on screen. Not that I’ve been on TV before.’
‘I was on University Challenge,’ says Hamilton. ‘We lost and my mum told me off for not wearing a tie.’
‘How come the letters turned up here?’ I say. ‘I know Holland went to Peterhouse.’
‘They’re addressed to William Petherick. You know he was the model for Gudgeon in The Stranger?’
‘Poor old Gudgeon.’
‘Yes. But, unlike Gudgeon, Petherick did not come to an untimely end. He came here to St Jude’s to teach theology. The college has always been popular with people wanting to take Holy Orders. Petherick wrote music too, and some of our choral scholars were going through his scores recently and they found these.’ He pushes a transparent envelope across the table. I recognise Holland’s cramped handwriting immediately. My own hands are shaking as I take out the papers.
‘We didn’t know at first who Roland was,’ says Hamilton, ‘but then I remembered the R.M. Holland connection.’
‘Roland Montgomery Holland,’ I say. I’m itching to read the letters. Hamilton must understand this because he says, ‘Take your time. I’ve got a couple of emails to answer.’ He turns to his computer.
November 1848
My dear Petherick,
Thank you for yours of the third. Friendship is indeed a slow ripening fruit and ours is surely now full on the bou
gh. I was very low after the death of Alice but, as you say, Mariana is a constant solace. Even so, I do worry about her. It’s no life, really, being marooned in a large, empty house in the middle of nowhere, her only companion a crusty old gentleman. Poor Mariana. Pray God her name does not prove an ill-omen. But M is indeed an angel, sweet-natured and kind. Yet still I fear she has inherited her mother’s taint. I will not keep her with me, though, like a selfish old tyrant. I will send her to my sister and her family in Shropshire. Ah, but not yet. I need her with me for a little longer.
Thank you for your sympathy, old friend. How I long for the stones of Cambridge.
Yours,
Roland
The next sheet is obviously a page from a longer letter.
. . . imbeciles in the publishing world. The Ravening Beast is strong meat, certainly, but not devoid of literary and artistic merit. They only desire more short stories in the mould of The Stranger and you know how much I regret that jeu d’esprit. Mariana thinks Beast is the best thing I have ever written, not that she’s exactly a literary critic. But she is such a comfort to me.
I was interested to hear of your new arrangement of the Kyrie. How I would like to come to Cambridge and hear it sung. But, as you know, I travel little these days. If only I . . .’
There’s no more. I read the pages again and look up to find Hamilton’s eyes — very deep-set and dark — on me.
‘These are . . . interesting,’ I say.
‘I hoped you’d think so,’ he says.
‘The mention of Mariana,’ I say, ‘and the implication that she’s Alice’s daughter . . .’
‘Tell me about Mariana,’ says Hamilton. I half expect him to steeple his fingers in tutorial mode.
‘Holland married a woman called Alice Avery,’ I say. ‘She was an actress. We don’t know how they met because Holland hardly ever left Sussex and, after Alice died, he rarely left the house. He writes about Alice in his diary. He was dazzled at first but it soon starts to go wrong. Alice seems to have had some sort of mental instability. Holland called it “hysteria”. A very common diagnosis in Victorian times, as I’m sure you know, and always used of women. They were only married four years when Alice died. He describes her taking a “dying fall” and I’ve always imagined that she fell down the stairs at Holland House, where the old part of the school is. Holland’s marriage and Alice’s death are noted in the family Bible but there’s no mention of a Mariana. However, in another letter, he says, “my sweet child Mariana”. Then there’s a poem, “For M. RIP”, about his grief at Mariana’s death. She can only have been about thirteen. But there are no other mentions of her and she’s not buried in the graveyard at Talgarth.’
‘There’s a graveyard at your school?’
‘Yes. It’s out-of-bounds but as you can imagine, it’s a popular destination.’
‘The perfect place for an illicit cigarette.’
‘And the rest of it. But in this letter, Holland writes about Mariana inheriting “her mother’s taint”. That seems to imply that she was Alice’s daughter.’
‘Maybe he did send her to his sister in Shropshire?’
‘It’s possible. Holland’s sister, Thomasina, was married to a clergyman and she wasn’t one for letters or diaries. But they had a family Bible, too, and it lists all of Thomasina’s children, including the two that died in infancy, but there’s no mention of Mariana.’
‘It’s a little creepy,’ says Hamilton, ‘all that stuff about him needing Mariana with him.’
I’m struck by his use of the word ‘creepy’. Not only is it distinctly unacademic but it’s the word Georgie used to describe the college earlier.
‘It’s very odd,’ I say, ‘but then Holland was odd. And he took a hell of a lot of opium towards the end.’
‘They all did,’ says Hamilton. ‘Wilkie Collins took so much that when his valet celebrated his bequest from Collins’s will with a small dose of laudanum, an eighth of his master’s daily intake, it killed him.’
‘And there’s Miss Gwilt in Armadale: “Who was the man who invented laudanum? I thank him with all my heart”.’
‘I’ve never read Armadale.’
This makes me feel slightly smug although he says it a bit like he’s read every other book in the world. ‘You should,’ I say. ‘It’s got a great villainess in it. I’ve heard the valet story before. I wonder if it’s true. It sounds almost too Wilkie Collins somehow.’
Hamilton laughs. ‘Fair point. What was The Ravening Beast? An unpublished book?’
‘Yes. There are some notes about it in his diaries. It’s about a beast that lives in the wood and sometimes descends on a lonely village and drags off young women to kill and eat them. But there’s some ambiguity as to whether it’s an animal or a crazed madman, maybe even the narrator himself. Holland says it’s a cross between The Hound of the Baskervilles and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’
‘Does the manuscript still survive?’
‘It’s not with his papers at Holland House but Holland quotes from it in his diaries. He’s a great quoter. And there are several rejection letters from publishers in his files.’
‘That’s what he was talking about in the second letter?’
‘Yes. The book certainly sounds as if it was “strong meat”. There are several quite explicit passages. The parts I’ve seen read a bit like one long opium-induced nightmare. But, as Holland says, publishers only wanted more short stories like The Stranger.’
‘And he says he regrets writing that.’
‘Yes. He wrote it when he was still a young man. He’d just left Cambridge and was living in digs in London. He hadn’t inherited Holland House then. The Stranger was published in a weekly magazine and later it was part of a collection of ghost stories. Holland grew to resent its success. Maybe he also felt sorry about killing Gudgeon, especially as he seems to have stayed friends with Petherick.’
‘Friendship is a slow ripening fruit,’ says Hamilton. ‘That’s Aristotle, by the way. I looked it up.’
‘It’s a rather unpleasant image. Fruit either withers or goes bad in the end.’
Hamilton looks slightly surprised, as if he didn’t expect literary critique from a humble Bristol graduate. But then the door opens and Edmund ushers Georgie back in. He mutters an inarticulate goodbye and departs. Georgie looks after him thoughtfully.
‘Thank you very much for your time,’ I say, standing up. ‘Could I take copies of the letters?’
‘Of course,’ says Hamilton. ‘I’ve very much enjoyed our chat. Will you let me know if you find the truth about Mariana?’
‘I’ll send you a copy of the finished book,’ I say, slightly tongue-in-cheek.
‘I’d like that very much.’
We have lunch at a nice vegan cafe and wander round the public bits of some of the colleges. Georgie tells me that quads are called courts in Cambridge, which seems to be the only piece of information that she has picked up from Edmund. ‘Is that really a college chapel?’ says Georgie, staring at the soaring gothic windows of King’s. ‘It looks like a cathedral.’
‘It’s a bit bigger than the chapel at Talgarth High,’ I say and, as I do so, I remember that Ella’s parents want to hold her funeral there. Talgarth is non-denominational but the chapel is still in use, mostly as a wedding destination. Despite the horror of the modern buildings, some people actually choose to get married at the school and it’s a much-needed source of revenue. I just can’t imagine a funeral being held there, the coffin being carried up the main steps, the mourners walking along the corridors with the GCSE art on the walls. I can’t think about it. I won’t.
On the way home, Georgie surprises me by asking what was in the letters. She’s never shown any interest in Holland before.
‘They were interesting,’ I say, ‘and there was a mention of the mysterious daughter, Mariana. Something abou
t worrying that she has inherited her mother’s taint.’
‘What was that, do you think?’
‘Madness, I suppose.’
‘Was his wife mad then?’
‘Probably not. Women could be put into mental institutions in those days if they were suffering from post-natal depression or if they disobeyed their husbands. There are even cases of women being locked up for “excessive novel reading”.’
‘That’s you done for then.’
I laugh. ‘Women were often diagnosed with “hysteria”. It’s from the Latin word for womb . . .’
But Georgie is looking at her phone and I sense that I’ve lost my audience. As we join the M25, I say casually, ‘What did you think of St Jude’s?’
‘It was OK,’ says Georgie. ‘That Edmund was a bit of a freak. He’s studying Classics and he rows. You know, like in the boat race that they have on TV.’
‘I know.’
Georgie giggles suddenly. ‘I liked Professor Henry though. And he liked you.’
I am manoeuvring my way through three lanes of traffic but, when I can, I say, ‘What do you mean?’
‘All that “I’d like that very much”,’ she adopts a deep, patrician voice. Incidentally nothing like Henry Hamilton’s. ‘He wants to see you again.’
‘Nonsense.’ But I can’t help being slightly pleased. I think about Henry’s assumption that my book will be published one day. I suppose that’s the world he lives in. You write a book and it gets published. It’s not like that in the real world. I wrote to a few agents when I got the idea of writing about R.M. Holland and one was fairly interested. But I haven’t got a contract and sometimes I don’t think the book will ever be finished. I’ve written about sixty thousand words and on low days I think fifty thousand of them are utter shite.
A few miles later, Georgie says, ‘Can Ty come round tonight?’
I try to keep my voice light. ‘I thought we’d just have a quiet evening. We could get pizzas in.’
‘Ty likes pizza.’
I say nothing.
‘We can’t see each other tomorrow because he’s working.’ Ty works at a pub in the village. I suppose I should be pleased that he does something (that he’s not a ‘layabout’) but somehow it’s only a reminder that he’s not only old enough to drink legally, he can actually work in a bar.
The Stranger Diaries Page 4