The vicar introduced himself as Reverend Matlock and he shook our hands in turn. Charles hung onto the vicar’s for longer, grasping it and shaking vigorously. The vicar’s cheeks flushed pinker and I nudged Charles’s elbow. The vicar might have been uncomfortable with Charles’s fascination with touching a man, but I was secretly delighted – a poignant moment, rather than funny. It wouldn’t be his intention to offend; he had missed the companionship of men and a handshake symbolised that relationship. Charles released his grip without comment.
‘We can’t find a grave.’ I explained.
The reverend asked for the name.
‘Christopher Isaacks.’
Charles’s remained quiet, his hands stuffed in his trouser pockets.
‘Ah. That name I do remember.’ Reverend Matlock tucked a finger under his dog collar and scratched.
‘Why?’
The vicar went on to explain he had recently taken over the parish and the neighbouring one. ‘I like to familiarise myself with history of the parish, so I read the old records, the minutes of the parish councils, the diaries of previous priests. Riveting stuff. This place is blessed with a rich history, during the war—’
I fidgeted impatiently. Charles had adopted an impassive expression. He’d had much more practice at hiding his emotions than me.
‘The grave?’ I interrupted the vicar’s narrative stream.
‘Oh, yes. Some years back,’ he started towards the porch, ‘a heavy storm flooded the lower part of the churchyard. Quite unusual. Some of the older headstones toppled in the sodden ground. They were moved and placed over here.’ He followed a path that veered across the graveyard, past the Marsters’ plot. Beckoning to us, he ducked his head under a low branch of a yew tree.
Behind the curtain of ancient trees and propped against the brick wall were a dozen or so headstones.
‘One of these.’ He walked along the line. ‘This one?’ He’d stopped before a plain marker, which sat slightly lopsided and partly covered in bird excrement.
‘Thank you.’ I held up the daffodils. ‘I suppose it’s alright to leave these next to the headstone?’
‘Naturally, please.’ The vicar backed away. ‘I’ll leave you to your privacy.’
‘Wait,’ Charles said, abruptly. ‘Why do you remember this particular grave?’
The vicar paused and fiddled with his dog collar again. ‘In the records – the older ones – the vicar responsible for the burial of this man wrote about the funeral, about how well attended it had been by family and friends.’
Next to me, Charles flinched.
The vicar, unperturbed by or oblivious to the sight of colour draining from Charles’s face, continued. ‘The funeral was remarkable in that the family insisted on burying an empty coffin. You see, the fire that consumed the poor man left no trace of him. Usually, in these situations, a memorial plaque would be placed inside the church, but it seems the family wished to have a grave to visit, something of substance here in the graveyard. It’s a great pity the stone toppled. However, the family are long gone and nobody is left to tend it.’
‘So, they buried nothing during his funeral?’
‘Quite bizarre. Hence the vicar’s note in his diary and why his name stuck in my memory. I gather,’ he paused, giving unnecessary dramatic impact to his revelation, ‘they placed in his coffin a suit of clothes, as if he needed them in the afterlife.’
Charles stumbled, his legs buckling slightly, and I grabbed at his arm to steady him. The Reverend Matlock had the wherewithal to realise he wasn’t needed any longer. He said goodbye, ducked his head under the yew trees and retreated.
Charles slipped down onto both knees before the gravestone. He leaned forward, rested his hands on his thighs and hunched his shoulders. I crouched down next to him to offer him the flowers, but the limp daffodils had lost any meaning – we weren’t commemorating Christopher’s passing. Something else had happened.
His face had the same pallor he’d worn during his haunting days and his eyes appeared hollow once again having lost their brightness. I shrank back, almost expecting him to vanish before my eyes as he reverted to his former self – the shadow of a man.
‘Charles?’ I said gently, my voice wavering with tension.
His stoop shoulders shuddered, as if burdened with some immeasurable weight. My own palms had gone sweaty and in an instance, my mouth turned parched. Barely a few hours had passed since we’d passionately made love, and now, when he suffered, I struggled to touch him. I thought I’d healed him. I was wrong. My optimism was premature and lacked a deeper understanding of his mind.
‘Talk to me,’ I insisted.
‘It’s me,’ he blurted.
‘Your stone, yes.’ He’d gone crazy, lost his mind after decades of clinging on to sanity.
His face portrayed so many emotions as if he’d rediscovered them all – shock, anger and despair – in one instance. The graveyard hadn’t brought him closure. It had snapped him open. Charles was fracturing before my eyes. He shook his head. ‘No, not this. It was always me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Nobody came that morning.’
‘What morning?’
With his fingertip, he touched the death date on the headstone – Christopher’s last day. ‘Everyone left for church, just like usual, but I couldn’t go. I hid behind the walls of the house. I was filled with shame at my disgrace, and worse, remorse. I also expected anger at her tragic death, but there was none. Nobody came.’
‘You said Beatrice’s father—’
‘Nobody, Miriam,’ he rasped. ‘She died alone. Her family didn’t care, that was obvious, because her father abandoned her at Heachley. He never planned to come back for her. A daughter had no value to him.’
‘I thought Gypsy honour—’
‘Honour,’ he guffawed, frowning deeply. ‘There was no honour or loyalty shown by her family.’
‘But the curse, if he – her father – didn’t say those words…’ I floundered.
Charles’s glassy eyes locked onto mine. His lips trembled as he spoke. ‘I said them. I cursed myself.’
I rocked backwards, almost losing my balance. ‘You?’
‘Seeing this grave – my grave – hearing the vicar tell of my mourners, who came out of obligation to my family. They came anyway. It has shamed me. I’ve buried those memories. Abandoned them like Bea.’
‘Your father—’
‘Cared about his reputation. That day, that awful day, I raged alone in the house, because nobody came. Not one representative of Beatrice’s family. I deserved to be punished for neglecting her, shunning her when she needed me most. But not one vengeful relative came.’
Vengeance is mine. The biblical quote sprang into my mind. Charles, even without a religious belief, wanted penance. He’d burdened his own shoulders with the guilt. It wasn’t fair; Beatrice’s family had left her in a workhouse.
‘That wasn’t your fault.’
He stared at the gravestone. ‘I couldn’t forgive myself because she sent me a letter. It was the last one.’
‘What letter?’ The only letter I’d seen from her was the one pleading for him to rescue her from the workhouse.
‘She wrote a scrawled note, barely legible, covered in tears and blood. The baby, our child, had died in her arms, a few minutes after it had been born. It came too early. Bea knew she was dying and that nobody was coming. In her last moments, she wrote to forgive me.’ He released a gut-retching cry of anguish, which the breeze collected and echoed about the yard.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, halting my own exclamation. ‘How did you get this letter if she wrote it the night she died?’ I asked. Charles wasn’t making sense, yet he spoke with utter clarity. His voice, although strained, was steady.
‘The workhouse sent it on. A messenger boy ran across the fields at dawn. She’d confessed my name on her deathbed, wishing to be absolved of her sins, and with the aid of my love letters, which had
been found amongst her things, the workhouse master knew where to find me. The boy arrived after the others had left for church. This very church.’ He crushed his hands into a ball. ‘I burnt the letter.’
I guessed the answer to my unspoken question – now I knew how the fire started.
‘I struck a match in my bedroom and let it burn, but not in the safety of the fireplace. I put the lit note against a thread of the rug and I nursed the flames. Let them breed and spread. I blew on them.’ He spoke with such bitterness and self-loathing. He screwed up his face, fighting back the tears.
Charles described more than an attempt at suicide: he’d committed a wanton act of destruction of his home, and for years afterward it remained his prison. ‘Did you try to escape the fire?’
‘No. People came running from the village. I watched from the window. The heat rose behind me and I turned and lifted up my arms to cover my face. Then, I ceased to be.’
His first vanishing, one of hundreds, may be thousands, that had happened since then.
Still crouched next to him, I ignored the cramp in my legs. ‘You cursed yourself, but in order for it to work you had to die.’ Had I met a mad man, or maybe, I was delusional and imagined he’d left my side when we first passed through the gate. Somehow, I had to rationalise the bizarre story into something believable.
‘You,’ he murmured, ‘brought me back.’ He reached over and captured my clenched hand between his shivering ones. ‘By allowing love back into my life and having it returned, I forgave myself. If Beatrice could forgive me at such a terrible moment, then I must accept what I did. She died alone, but here in her grave, she found the peace I’ve sought for years.’
A mellowness descended over him. I watched him shift from the rigidity of shock to sombre reflection. No longer was he hiding abandoned memories. He was embracing them. I had to look to our future. The past had folded back on itself, releasing Charles in its wake.
‘You had the ability to curse yourself into becoming a kind of ghost. Would you do that again?’
He laughed, softly under his breath. ‘I’m not a magician. I know what you fear. Is it important – knowing how it happened? I can’t explain it. But I know I feel it in my heart: I will live out my life and die. I don’t doubt that end. Do you have faith in me?’ He snared me with those translucent, frankly enchanting eyes of his and held my gaze. I didn’t flinch.
‘I do have faith in you.’ Such a simple statement, but it settled my nerves.
We scrambled to our feet and he enveloped me in a swift embrace, the kind of hug that nearly crushed me. Then it abruptly weakened. ‘I will keep you safe,’ he murmured and he patted my back gently. ‘And you can show me the world – if you’ll take me?’
Charles had offered an arrangement no previous boyfriend could ever have given me. I liked it.
I eased myself off his shoulder. He looked exhausted. Fatigue had drained his body of energy. With fingers interlocked, I led him out of the churchyard. We said little as we returned to Heachley Hall. He’d recalled a huge hole in his life and filled with it with raw emotion. What magic he had conjured up on the day of the fire, I couldn’t fathom. Perhaps the house lay at the heart of it. After all, the place had held him captive, almost protecting him with its mist and walls for decades. However, he was right, it didn’t matter. We had each other.
The instance he collapsed onto the sofa, he fell asleep. I fetched a blanket and draped it over him. Fearing he might think I’d abandoned him, I left a note on the armrest explaining my plan. The hard part was going back to the log cabin. I really didn’t want to see that place again and imagine the multitude of fragmented instances he’d spent there. I rummaged underneath the slight trundle cot and retrieved the paper bag. Inside it were countless bank notes.
I laid them on the bed, spreading them about. Amongst the current tender were a few older currencies showing the heads of bygone monarchs. I extracted the recent ones, the notes I’d paid him and counted close nearly a thousand pounds. I pocketed the whole amount and abandoned the old currency.
Leaving behind the sleeping Charles, I drove to the largest supermarket in Hunstanton. There was a sufficient range of clothes and shoes to make a selection on his behalf. I had noted his shoe size before I’d left the house. I spent nearly half the amount, which included other things he might need, and not required in the past: toiletries, a razor and a wallet to keep his own money.
Returning home, I drove fast; he shouldn’t be left alone for too long. As soon as the car wheels skidded on the gravel Charles hurried out of the front door and shouting, ‘Miriam. Miriam.’ His hair was ruffled, cheeks flushed, but the shadows under his eyes had gone.
I retrieved the shopping bags from the car boot. ‘I left you a note.’
‘Yes, I saw it.’ Together we carried the bags into the house. ‘I wondered if I’d scared you off and the note was a flimsy excuse.’
‘Really?’ I huffed indignantly. ‘Have more faith in me.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just this is the first time I’ve been left alone at Heachley in over a hundred and fifty years.’
I halted. The bags knocked around my ankles. Had he never been alone? I’d not thought about it that way. I’d assumed his entire existence had been a lonely affair.
‘You lived in that cabin in the woods.’
‘It’s like I’m a reclusive neighbour. Sometimes I’d come up to the house at night and look at the lights, the smoke pluming out of the chimney. It comforted me to know that you were in there.’
The two of us living alone without ever knowing we could have kept each other company day and night. What if under different circumstances a boyfriend or even a husband had visited – Felicity’s will had been drawn up some years ago when I was barely an adult – would I ever have uncovered the truth? Possibly, but it would have required greater suspicion on my part and Charles would probably have spent more time adrift and invisible. A horrible thought. And, worse still, I wouldn’t have been free to love him, perhaps only able to help him survive as a trapped man just as my great-aunt had done. Felicity had gambled with my future and it had paid off. I had been there for him.
‘But, darling,’ I balanced on tiptoes and gave his lips a tender peck. ‘While I was gone shopping, you didn’t disappear on me.’
He smiled softly at first, then as the realisation dawned on him, it gradually transformed into a broad grin. ‘True.’
He liked the new clothes and tried each of them on. ‘Such soft fabric, and the shoes stretch about my feet. What is it about the soles? They’re springy.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s just the materials used.’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind and thoughtful.’
Something about his endlessly polite manner touched me deeply. I never wanted to lose that part of Charles to the modern world out there. Which made me think – where next?
‘What do you want to do?’ I asked.
He straightened up and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his new trousers. ‘I’d like to see the sunset over the sea again.’
I knew exactly where to take him.
THIRTY-FOUR
‘You can let go of the car seat now.’ I patted the back of his hand. For the entire journey, he’d clawed at the car seat turning his knuckles white whilst his face had developed a green tinge.
It was like taking somebody on their first rollercoaster ride. Aware of his increasing anxiety, I’d kept my acceleration gentle, my braking gradual, but to Charles, who’d only ridden a horse, the speed was too much. I’d driven slowly and in doing so, I’d collected a small queue of cars behind me. Every time I’d picked up speed, Charles winced as if struck and clutched the edges of the seat. I’d nearly laughed at his petrified reaction to his first trip in a car, but didn’t. It must be a strange experience: the speed, the constant change of scenery flashing by the window, and even the confusing traffic systems that forced me to halt without warning – at least from his perspective.
I
came around to his side of the car and opened the door. He staggered and uncoiled his long legs. Before we’d left, Charles had bathed and washed his hair using the toiletries I’d bought, and when I pointed out they weren’t particularly fashionable, he’d shaved off his sideburns. He’d eyed the modern razor nervously, peered at his reflection in the warped mirror and slowly scraped off the stubble. I’d observed, mesmerised, appreciating the significance of such a small daily routine.
‘Amazing,’ he muttered, stepping away from the car. ‘Is it normal to feel sick?’
I offered him my best sympathetic smile. ‘Not at thirty miles an hour.’ I glanced at my watch, conscious of the time and approaching sunset.
We weaved through the dunes of Old Hunstanton beach. Charles’s new shoes sank into the sand, his hand in mine as it had been for much of our waking day. The cloudless sky remained blue and with the approaching dusk it had deepened into a richer azure. The air was pungent with seaweed and salt. We emerged from the rolling dunes just as the sun touched the horizon. Charles halted. He inhaled deeply. I watched him and not the sea. I was fascinated by his animated expression of delight.
Finding a comfortable spot, we settled on our bottoms. Nearby the shallow waves rippled and caught the last rays of bright sunshine, reflecting it in all directions. Dazzled by the orange sun, I shaded my eyes with my hand. Charles tucked his knees up and rested his chin on the kneecaps, hugging his legs with his left arm, his right wrapped around my shoulders. We’d not let go of each other as if we both feared he might vanish once more.
During my dash out to buy him clothes, I’d time in the car to re-visit what he’d told me in the graveyard. All those jaw-dropping spikes of adrenaline-induced emotions had flattened out, allowing me to think clearly.
I nudged my shoulder against his. ‘Charles?’
‘Mmm,’ he stirred.
‘Why do you think you believed that Beatrice’s father had cursed you?’ I waited; he didn’t rush to answer.
‘It took thirty years for me to emerge from where that fire took me. It was immensely confusing, overwhelming, trying to find me, who I am, where I was. That awful rage had gone, the anger at myself and what I’d done. If I imagined that day, I couldn’t picture the details, especially how the fire began. I conjured up Bea’s father, a man I’d never met, but I knew through her sad stories to be a neglectful, cruel father. I wanted him, for her sake, to be a loving one. My father was loyal and caring – at least within the confines of the traditions he rigidly followed. He’d had my future planned out and it was filled with opportunities, but no lover, and certainly not a Gypsy girl. She should have had the support of her family.’
The Women of Heachley Hall Page 34