by James Wilson
I was paralysed by confusion, like a man with a broken arm and a broken leg who can’t decide which one hurts the more and should be treated first. I felt disappointed by my behaviour, and puzzled by Alice Dangerfield’s; but it would have been just as true to put it the other way round, and say that I was disappointed in her and puzzled by myself. I should not have told her about Mary Wilson, that much was plain. But why had I felt such an overwhelming urge to tell her – and why, when I succumbed, had she reacted as she had?
It took me only a few seconds to find the answer to the first question. It had been a kind of test: I had wanted her to like me, not just as the idealized author of a series of books she had enjoyed as a child, but as I was, in all my weakness and complexity. That, of course, was why I had been so dashed by her cool response. But what else had I expected? That she would be moved to tears by my chivalrous spirit, and – before she could stop herself – blushingly declare her love for me?
No, I hadn’t expected it. But, if I was absolutely honest, I had to admit that it wasn’t far from what I had hoped.
How could I have been so foolish? Perhaps Enticknap had been right, and I was simply so starved of female affection that I was bound to fall for any woman who showed the least interest in me. That was why I had become obsessed with Mary Wilson, and imagined I had been possessed by her child. That was why, like an infatuated undergraduate, I had indulged the pitiful fantasy that Miss Dangerfield could fall in love with me.
Then I remembered her kiss and her parting words to me. Didn’t they suggest that perhaps she might love me, after all?
To which, with withering contempt, the opposition would reply: it might be true that I had been a fool about Mary Wilson – but the answer wasn’t simply to become a fool about Alice Dangerfield instead. No, if the whole sorry episode had taught me anything, it was this: I should detach myself from both of them – retreat with as much dignity as I could still muster – and live out my days in wintry solitude.
For I don’t know how long these two contesting moods battled for supremacy. At some point – it must have been after two, because I remember hearing a distant clock striking the hour – it finally hit me that I was exhausting myself for nothing. The civil war would rage all night, if I let it, without either side winning a decisive victory. If I was to get any sleep at all, I must arrange a temporary truce, and try to choose between the opposing sides in the morning, when I was feeling fresher.
I did not hear the clock strike three.
*
When I came to again, it was still dark. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what had roused me. And then I heard it: an infant crying. Not the angry animal howls of a baby, but the hiccoughing sobs of a child old enough to know that it’s distressed. It was so much like the noise Elspeth had made when she had been woken by a nightmare that I almost called out: Don’t be frightened, darling.
I put my head against the wall. No, the only sound from the neighbouring room was a slow whistling snore. I went to the window. Nothing but the sigh of the waves, and the faint clip of some early riser’s horse at the other end of the town.
I stuffed my fingers in my ears. The noise grew louder.
I sat down on the bed.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Hush.’
The sobs became more agitated.
‘What is it?’ I said.
You … you … you …
‘I what?’
You’re going to leave us.
‘Why do you say that?’
I heard. I heard. I heard.
I took a deep breath. As I exhaled again, I was suffused with a tremendous sense of calm. A storm had blown me from my mooring, and sent me pitching and plunging into a turbulent sea that threatened to capsize me. Now, suddenly, miraculously, I seemed to be at anchor again.
‘It’s all right, old fellow,’ I said. ‘All just sound and fury, signifying nothing. I won’t leave you, I promise.’
Gradually, the sobs diminished, until at last they were no more than the soft regular murmur of untroubled sleep.
*
The next morning, I wrote to Miss Dangerfield, apologizing for being a morose dinner companion the night before, and wishing her luck with the rest of her tour. I made no mention of another meeting, nor did I give her the address of the auberge – so, even if she took it into her head to suggest one herself, she would not know where to find me.
I left the note at her hotel, then bought a ficelle and a Camembert and a bottle of Perrier water, and walked eastwards out of the town, along a narrow spur running between the beach on one side and a natural harbour dotted with fishing-boats on the other. After half a mile or so it became wilder and rougher: a lost kingdom of tussocky dunes, where the wind had scalloped the sand into deep smooth hollows. I found one sheltered from the breeze, and – lulled by the sea and a choir of jeering gulls – settled down to make up some of the sleep I had lost the night before.
It was almost two by the time I woke again. I ate my picnic, then sauntered back for my three o’clock rendezvous. I arrived early, and stopped short of the hotel, to avoid any unnecessary risk of Miss Dangerfield spotting me again. But then I noticed that Mme. Bournisien was already there, standing at the edge of the terrace, looking first left and then right, in hope of seeing me coming.
She recognized me while I was still fifty feet away. Her face cleared, and she smiled and fluttered her fingers.
‘Good afternoon, monsieur.’
‘Good afternoon.’
We shook hands. She was wearing a tall, old-fashioned black hat, and a black coat that flapped and billowed around her ankles. From her left wrist dangled a bulging reticule, which flew up like a kite every time a gust of wind caught it.
‘Thank you for coming,’ I said.
‘It’s nothing, monsieur.’
‘Where can we go? Would you like coffee? Or –’
‘I should prefer to be outside, if you don’t mind. I love the sea, but my duties, of course, tend to keep me indoors. So every time I can, I like to come to the beach.’
I steered her towards a bench in front of the casino. As we sat down, she said:
‘Poor little Mary. I don’t think of her as often as I should, I’m sorry to say – though I do still try to remember her in my prayers occasionally. You know: at Christmas and Easter. And on her birthday. But yesterday, after your visit, I found it impossible to get her out of my head. It was very sad. A lot of sad memories. After dinner, I went to my room and sat down and tried to write them all down for you.’
‘That was very good of you. Thank you.’
She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t so hard. But none of them, I’m afraid, is going to be much help to you. I can recall nothing about her family at all. I wonder, now, that I wasn’t more curious. But I was young, and being kept in ignorance of my charge’s background seemed a small price for such an opportunity. Looking back, I can see that I perhaps paid it too willingly.’
‘Who actually engaged you?’
‘An agency. I had been head house-maid for a Swiss family in Paris. When they returned to Geneva, I might have gone with them. But I am French, and my parents still lived at Bar-le-Duc, so I decided to seek another position. My former employer was kind enough to give me excellent references. So – although I imagine Mr. Cooper was probably looking for someone older and more experienced – they finally recommended me for the place.’
‘And what about the rest of the staff? Were they appointed in the same way?’
‘The woman who came in to help with the cleaning, yes. I interviewed her myself. The governess, Mme. Groves, was found through an agency in London, I believe. But she didn’t arrive until Mary was five, of course, so she knew even less than I did.’
‘And the nurse?’
‘Ah, Mme. Lamarthe.’ She pressed her lips into a thin smile – whether of rueful affection or contempt, it was impossible to tell. ‘She was a character, that one. A real old Norman peasant. Could barely write her own name. But as cunnin
g as Talleyrand. The only time I ever saw her truly happy was after she’d been to the market. Do you know how much he wanted for these, madame? Fifteen centîmes. I told him they weren’t worth half that. In the end, he let me have them for eight – and gave me this turnip into the bargain.’
I laughed.
‘Where they found her, I don’t know. She was from Avranches originally. And I assume that’s where Mary was born, because Madame Lamarthe said she’d taken her in when she was just a day old.’
‘So she must have known the mother, at least?’
She shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. The midwife could have taken the child to her. Or the doctor.’
‘And she never said anything to suggest who the parents were? Or why they might have chosen her to look after their daughter?’
‘No. I did ask her, once or twice. But she’d only sigh, and say, oh, just two of God’s creatures, I suppose, madame, like the rest of us. And speaking for myself, I hope I know my duty better than to go asking questions, and prying into other people’s business.’
‘Do you think that means she did know something, then?’
She splayed her fingers and looked at them. She was not wearing a wedding-ring, I noticed. Madame must be a courtesy title, in recognition of her position.
‘Possibly,’ she said finally. ‘But if she did, it will have gone to her grave with her. I’m sorry, you must reproach me for not having pressed her more.’
‘No, not at all –’
She held up a hand to stop me. ‘I doubt if she would have told me even if I had. But I have found something that might help you.’ She hoisted the reticule into her lap and prised it open. ‘I used to have to take Mary to the English church in Paris every week. And she would always carry this with her.’
She pulled out a prayer-book and handed it to me. It was not particularly old, but had faded boards and a worn spine, as if it had seen a lot of use.
‘She left it behind when she went to England,’ said Mme. Bournisien. ‘And since neither she nor Mr. Cooper sent for it, I decided to keep it to show my uncle. He was a priest near Rouen, so I thought he would be interested.’
‘But he wasn’t?’
She smiled, and shook her head. ‘He said he could read English, but I don’t think he could.’
I opened the book. On the fly-leaf was written:
A birthday present to Henry Malden Studd
From his affecte
Mamma
Underneath, a childish hand had added something in pencil. It had since been rubbed out; but – when you tilted the page to catch the light – you could still clearly see the impression it had left:
Henry Malden Studd
Hallaton Hall
Leicestershire
‘How did Mary come by this, do you know?’ I said, looking up.
‘She had always had it. I had the impression it had been given to her by her parents. Or by Mr. Cooper.’
I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said, fumbling for my fountain pen. ‘Let me just make a note of the name, if I may –’
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Take the book. And give it to Mary, when you see her again, with my apologies for having kept it so long.’
XIII
Henry Malden Studd. Hallaton Hall. Leicestershire. It was little enough, for all the trouble it had taken me to get it. But, unlike the succession of maddeningly vague clues that had eventually brought me to Mme. Bournisien, it was at least admirably specific: there must be a Hallaton Hall in Leicestershire; and even if Henry Malden Studd no longer lived there, there was a strong possibility that whoever had the place now would be able to tell me what had become of him. And, childish though it may seem, as I strolled back to the auberge, clutching the prayer-book, I could not help remembering my walk from the church to the Railway Inn with She in my hand, and drawing a kind of superstitious courage from the symmetry of the thing. Perhaps, I thought, books were lucky for me, and, having been taken to Mary Wilson by H. Rider Haggard, I should find that Thomas Cranmer led me to her parents.
I could have done the journey from Cabourg to Leicestershire in three days; but that would have meant arriving rumpled and travel-weary, with a trunk full of dirty clothes. So I decided to stop in London for a couple of nights, to allow enough time to get my washing done and my suit cleaned, to have my hair cut, and to replenish my stock of collars and ties. The outcome of my visit to Hallaton Hall was, I knew, largely in the lap of the gods; but I could at least marginally improve my chances of success by ensuring that I turned up looking the part.
What I should find there, of course, I had not the slightest idea. As I sat in the train, first in France, and then in Kent, and then steaming steadily north into the grey flat Midlands, I told myself half a dozen stories about Henry Malden Studd: he was Mary Wilson’s father; he was her grandfather; he was the clergyman who had baptised her, who – horrified at her parents’ callousness towards her – had wanted her to have his own prayer-book. None of them seemed entirely plausible – and yet I couldn’t help feeling it was equally unlikely that the man had no link with Mary Wilson at all. A prayer-book, after all, is a private, personal thing; if you give a child someone else’s, rather than buying one new, surely it can only be because the previous owner has some special significance for her, or her for him?
After the seaside giddiness of Cabourg and the beauty of Paris, it was depressing to find myself being drawn inexorably further and further into the sooty heart of England. But when I reached Market Harborough, and changed to the Melton Mowbray branch for the last ten miles of my journey, my spirits started to rise again. The line ran through an elysian landscape of lush pastures and dark huddled woods pricked with spring green, which seemed to grow lovelier with every mile. Finally, as we were drawing into Hallaton itself, I stuck my head out of the window and saw, through the gouts of smoke, one of the prettiest villages I have ever set eyes on: a glorious, tight-knit jumble of thatch and whitewash and brick and stone, spread – like a kind of roughly made cap – over a low hill at the edge of a grassy valley.
A porter opened the door and helped me with my luggage. As we were walking along the platform, I asked him:
‘Do you know where I might be able to get a bed for the night?’
‘What, here in Hallaton, you mean, sir?’
I nodded. He pursed his lips.
‘Well, there’s the Royal Oak. That’s where gentlemen usually put up, if they’re not stopping at the Manor or the Hall. But if it was me, I’d go to the Bewicke Arms. More old-fashioned than you’re used to, I dare say. But you’ll eat well there. And there’s nowhere’ll make you welcomer.’
‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘Thank you. I’ll try the Bewicke Arms. How far is it?’
‘Far end of the village, sir. But that’s no great matter, in a place the size of this. Theo there’ – nodding at an old fellow waiting in the station yard with a pony cart – ‘will have you there in no more’n ten minutes.’
He was right. The Bewicke Arms was barely bigger than a cottage, and squeezed like an afterthought into an odd corner at the edge of a patch of green at the bottom of the high street; but the landlady – a large woman of fifty or so, who emerged from the kitchen wearing an apron powdered with flour – greeted me with such a show of relaxed friendliness that you’d have thought she’d been expecting me. She led me to a tiny room just large enough for a bed and a washstand, gave me a little handbell to ring if I needed anything, and – with a sweet smile, and a bob of the head – asked me what time I would like my dinner, and whether I’d prefer steak pie or rabbit stew.
After she’d gone, I opened the little casement, and peered out under a heavy brow of thatch at the view across the valley. It was idyllic: a sloping meadow, fringed by trees and burnished to a brilliant green-gold by the afternoon sun. For a long time I stood there, listening to the song of a thrush in a nearby garden, trying to fit this arcadian scene into the same reality as Mary Wilson’s blighted life, and failing.
Then I put on a clean collar, brushed my hair, pocketed the prayer-book, and went out to look for Hallaton Hall.
*
Some instinct of caution made me wary of asking my landlady for directions. If she knew where I was going, she might naturally enquire the reason – and then I should have either to lie, or to explain that I was looking for Henry Malden Studd. And if – as seemed a fair bet, given the way I had come by it – the name was associated with a scandal of some kind, then even to mention it might rouse her suspicions, and send the whole village into a defensive spasm. News, after all, would travel through such a tiny place at telegraph speed; and I might turn up at the Hall only to find the people there forewarned, and determined not to help me. And its very smallness meant it could not be too difficult for me to find the house on my own.
On the green in front of the inn was a curious old conical stone structure, which might have been the stump of a mediaeval cross. Around the base ran a low seat, where two boys sat playing marbles. I casually asked one of them if he could tell me how to get to the Hall.
‘Up there,’ he said, pointing towards the high street. He shut his eyes, and waved his hand from side to side like a fish-tail, trying to remember his left from his right. ‘Then you just jog over a bit,’ he said, looking at me again, ‘and it’s straight in front of you.’
I thanked him, and slipped them threepence apiece. Five minutes later I found myself peering through the gates at a square, stately stone-built house set well back behind a long wall that seemed to run almost the entire breadth of the village. I had been prepared for a certain grandeur, of course; but nothing quite on this scale. It wasn’t the size of the Hall itself that took me aback: rather the extent of its grounds and outbuildings, and the way the main front was turned at right angles to the road, as if it had deliberately averted its gaze from hoi polloi to enjoy the spectacle of its own woods and gardens.