by James Wilson
After five minutes or so he got up again, and returned to the bench, walking with a cricketer’s lope, as if he were carrying an invisible bat.
‘You say you met her purely by chance,’ he said, as he settled himself beside me. ‘And you probably think we met by chance, too. But a Christian looks at things differently. Where you see chance, he sees the hand of the Lord at work. Or the hand of the Devil.’ He turned towards me and smiled. ‘Normally it isn’t hard to tell which it is. But just occasionally you get a poser like this one. And then there’s nothing for it but to ask the Lord Himself.’
I couldn’t think of a response that wouldn’t sound sarcastic or defensive, so I merely nodded. When he saw I wasn’t going to challenge him, he went on:
‘I had to find out why He sent you to me, you see – rather than to my mother, say, or one of my brothers. And I know the answer now. None of them would have helped you. Too much family pride for that. Too much anger. She had her chance, they’d say, and she rejected it; and she must go her own way to hell. Whereas I don’t care a fig for family pride, if it stands in the way of anyone being kept from hell. God knows my sister would never let me bring her to the rescue shop. So He’s picked you for the job instead.’
My mouth was dry. I said: ‘Well, naturally, I … I hope to be of some service to them … But I doubt if I’m quite equal to that, I’m afraid.’
‘Of course you doubt it. We all doubt it. We just have to open ourselves to the Lord, and ask Him to fill us with His Holy Spirit. Only put your trust in Him, truly, and He won’t fail you, I promise.’
I was at a loss. To accept his assistance on those terms seemed shabby, if not downright dishonest; and yet to refuse it would not simply be churlish, but would rob me of my best – and probably my only – chance of doing what I had set out to do. Before I could resolve the issue one way or the other, he unclipped a fountain pen from his pocket and said:
‘Have you got some paper?’
I handed him my notebook. As he started to write he murmured:
‘I shouldn’t tell her how you got this, at least to begin with. If she knows it came from me, it’ll only make her close her heart to you, and to God. Here.’
He screwed the cap on to his pen again, and held the notebook out to me, together with the prayer-book. But – as if, despite his protestations, he still could not suppress the queasy sense that he was betraying a family secret, and wanted to spare himself the sight of my actually reading it – he did not let go of them until he had shaken my hand, and was turning to leave.
‘God bless you,’ he said. And, without so much as another glance, started hurriedly back towards his mother’s house.
In deference to his feelings, I did not look at what he had written at once, but sat down on the bench again, and waited a few moments before finally letting my eyes drift towards the page – so casually that anyone watching me would have assumed he had given me nothing more contentious than the address of his tailor.
It was as well I did. What he had written was:
Mrs. Samuel Cooper, 109, Gipsy Hill, Lambeth.
It was so utterly not what I had expected that I had to re-read it a few times to get it clear in my head. My first thought then was that somehow Studd and I must have misunderstood each other, and been talking about different people. Cooper, after all, was the name of Mary’s guardian, not her parents. And it was inconceivable, surely, that my journey from Hampshire to Paris to Hallaton to Hyde Park Gardens should end at such a dowdily mundane destination as 109, Gipsy Hill, Lambeth?
But then I reflected that it was Mary’s old housekeeper in Cabourg who had given me the prayer-book – and that when I had mentioned its connection to a small girl abandoned by her mother thirty years ago, Studd had not only seemed entirely unsurprised, but had even provided some of the details himself. What were the chances of the same book being associated with two almost identical cases – and of the name Cooper featuring in both of them? Almost non-existent. Far more likely was that we had both been talking about Mary, but that my knowledge – derived almost entirely from Mary herself – was so limited and partial that it had given me a fatally distorted picture of her story.
I quickly looked up, and saw what I thought was Studd vanishing among the crowds that were surging into the park to enjoy the evening sunshine. I could still run after him, and make a full confession of how little I actually knew. But to do that would be tantamount to admitting that I had been acting under false pretences – which could only shake his confidence in me, and make him repent of having helped me at all.
I looked down again at the prize I had gone to such lengths to get. It suddenly appeared as flimsy and valueless as a counterfeit bank-note. It told me where I could find Mary Wilson’s mother – but as to how I might contrive a meeting with her, or persuade her to acknowledge her long-lost daughter, it gave me not the slightest hint. And what, anyway, if I succeeded? Was it really conceivable that an anguish as profound as Mary Wilson’s could just be magicked away by a kindly word or two from Mrs. Samuel Cooper of 109, Gipsy Hill, Lambeth?
Watching the paper fluttering in the breeze, I was all at once overwhelmed by the most tremendous tiredness. It bore down on me, scattering my thoughts before I could begin to assemble them into any kind of logical sequence. There was no point in even trying to think about what I should do next until I had slept.
I trudged back to the hotel, told the owner I should not be requiring dinner, and went straight to bed.
*
At some point during the night I woke up suddenly. Or so, at least, it seemed: I can’t be certain that I wasn’t still unconscious, and merely dreamed I had woken. At all events, when I came to – or imagined I did – I was no longer lying down, but found that in my sleep I had somehow managed to get out of bed, switch on the lamp, and settle myself on the stool next to the dressing-table. Since I had never sleep-walked before, this should have surprised me; but it didn’t. So utterly unaware of myself was I, indeed, that if, at that moment, you had asked me to recall a single incident from my life, or even to tell you my name, I doubt if I would have been able to do it. All that interested me was the clutter of objects I had taken from my pocket the night before and spread out in front of the looking-glass: notebook, wallet, pen, change, prayer-book …
Prayer-book. I couldn’t have said that was what it was called, but I knew it was the thing I wanted. I reached for it, and set it on my knee. As I started to thumb through it, I was startled by the sight of my own hands. Their shape and colour looked familiar enough; but there was something clumsy and tentative about the way they moved, as if some usurper were trying to take control of them, and had not yet succeeded in fully mastering the complex machinery of nerve and muscle.
We were at the Psalms now. I was racing through the pages, flitting from one paragraph to the next but assimilating nothing. Again, I had the vertiginous feeling that my eyes had been commandeered by someone else, who was using them to look for something quite specific. But what it was, and why he wanted to find it, I had not the least idea.
And then all at once we stopped, and I found myself reading:
Cast me not away from thy presence.
Consciousness seemed to be returning to me now, like feeling to a numbed limb. And suddenly I was awake enough to realize what was happening.
‘Is that you, old fellow?’ I said.
In my temple, I heard – or sensed – a sort of involuntary gasp, as if he were astonished to have been so easily found out.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Don’t be frightened.’ And then, when there was no response: ‘I’d been wondering what had become of you. I thought perhaps you’d left.’
There was a soughing noise, like the wind whining through an empty attic.
Where would I have gone?
The voice was different: a child’s, still, but no longer babyish.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
There’s nowhere I can go.
‘Oh, I’
m sure that isn’t true,’ I said brightly. But the truth was I wasn’t sure. I had always assumed that when I had brought Mary Wilson and her mother together again, the unquiet ghost in my head would be satisfied, and leave me again. But, now I came to reflect upon it, I had had no reason to believe that. And I had given no thought at all to what would happen to it if I failed.
You are going to throw me out.
‘No, no, old fellow …’
Yes. I know it. You’re getting ready to abandon us …
‘Not at all. As a matter of fact, I’m getting ready to go and see your grandmother –’
There was a sudden thumping on the wall, and a muffled voice from the next room called:
‘Keep it down, will you! Some of us are trying to sleep!’
I thought I heard a faint intake of breath just above my ear. And then – as if it feared being taken for a trouble-maker, and expelled without further ado – the child was silent again.
‘Don’t fret,’ I whispered, as I crawled back into bed. ‘We’ll work something out, I promise.’
*
I awoke, in the morning, with the consciousness that there was some momentous decision I had to make. As soon as I tried to focus my mind on it, however, I felt giddy with panic. So I gave up, and walked to my lawyer’s in Gray’s Inn Square to collect my letters instead.
The clerk, a thin, fidgety man with a prematurely lined face and a fine dusting of scurf on his collar, put on a great charade of searching for my post, scanning shelves, and peering into piles of documents that looked as if they had been there since the eighteenth century – all the while making exasperated little tck-tcks with his tongue that suggested his time was precious, and he really shouldn’t have to waste it doing something so menial. At last he tugged open the bottom drawer of his desk, and, after rooting around for a few seconds, drew out a modest bundle held together with a rubber band.
‘There you are,’ he muttered, jabbing it towards me.
‘Thank you.’ I slipped it into my pocket, then retreated to a bench in the Inn gardens, where I knew I should be able to read undisturbed.
I had ten letters in all, which seemed a meagre crop for the time I had been away. The first was from Jessop, asking whether I had got home safely from Langley Mill, and was recovered from my illness. Most of the others were predictably dull: a bill from Dr. Enticknap; another nagging note from my publisher; and a letter from some poor fellow trying to establish himself as a wine merchant who would be honoured to receive my order for almost anything that comes in a bottle. One, though, I saw – there was no mistaking the hand-writing this time – was from Miss Dangerfield.
I set it aside until I had finished ploughing through the others, and returned them to their envelopes. Then, with a tiny tremor of excitement, I slit it open. Inside were two closely written sheets. I unfolded them and read:
My dear –
I have been debating for days how I should begin this letter. ‘My dear Mr. Roper’ sounds so coldly formal; ‘My dear Corley’ dreadfully familiar. I even consulted an etiquette book – only to find, of course, that it was all about calling cards and how to address a baronet, and had no useful advice to offer a young woman in my situation at all. This morning it finally dawned on me that I might knock the question back and forth for a year without finding an answer, and that if I meant to write at all, I must do so without one. So, as you see, I have left a blank, which you may fill in as you please.
I wanted first to thank you again for a delightful evening in Cabourg: it was very good of you to take pity on me, and gather me up as you did. And second, I feel I owe you an apology for my conduct that night. You did me the honour of confiding in me; and the manner in which I responded must have appeared cold and unsympathetic. My true feelings, I promise you, were neither of those things. But I did not express them as I should; and for that I ask your forgiveness.
I am back in London now, and will be staying at Fleming’s Hotel until April 25, when I at last sail for America. It seems barely credible that in less than a month I shall be in Albany again, surrounded by people who have never seen the Eiffel Tower or Piccadilly Circus, or met you. I have no idea where you are, or how – if at all – this letter will find its way to you. But if it happened to reach you in time, and you felt inclined to let me know how you are, and how your quest is progressing, I should be very happy.
Very sincerely yours,
Alice Dangerfield
I re-read it twice. And then – as gingerly as I could, so that even the strange presence in my head should not be alerted to what I was doing – I folded it up again, and slipped it into the inside pocket of my coat.
Its almost imperceptible pressure against my chest, as I made my way back to the hotel, was curiously reassuring, for some reason. It seemed to work on me like a talisman, soothing my doubts, and allowing me to start thinking lucidly again. By the time I reached Sussex Gardens, I felt sufficiently calm and clearheaded to confront the huge unresolved question that I had left in abeyance since the previous evening: how was I going to approach Emily Cooper?
XV
There was a small writing-table in my room. I sat down at it, and took a thick sheaf of paper from the drawer. Then I started to make a list of everything I knew – or could confidently guess – about my quarry.
It turned out that I had more than I had expected – enough, in all, to cover nearly three sides: her maiden name; her family circumstances; her childhood in Hallaton; and the fact that her return there as an adult was somehow connected with the disgrace of the local doctor. Thanks to John Pick and C. T. Studd – whose accounts were strikingly similar – I had some idea of her character. I had seen the enormous trouble and expense she had gone to to keep Mary in ignorance of her identity. I knew her current name and address, and had strong grounds for believing – however improbable it might seem – that the man she had married was also Mary’s guardian.
These were only isolated fragments, of course; but – just as a few random highlights can sometimes be enough to give you the whole shape of a wild animal crouching in the shadows – they could be assembled into a more or less coherent pattern, from which it should be possible to fill in some of the gaps, and get a sense of what kind of a plan of attack was most likely to be effective.
It was obvious, to begin with, that I was dealing with an obstinate, strong-willed woman, who had ruthlessly set out to create a life in which she would be insulated, as far as possible, from the consequences of whatever it was she had done more than thirty years before. And it was equally clear – otherwise, what was I doing here? – that she had very largely succeeded. To take the conventional route, therefore, by writing and asking for a meeting, would be as useless as trying to seize a besieged castle by knocking on the portcullis: if my letter told her everything, and ended with a passionate plea for her to acknowledge Mary, she would simply ignore it, as she had presumably ignored appeals to her better nature in the past; if, on the other hand, I hinted darkly that I knew something about her life that I wished to discuss with her, she would naturally assume I was threatening her, and become even more defensive. I should face exactly the same problem if I managed to cultivate an acquaintance with one of her friends, and contrive an introduction to her at some social event. As long as she was on familiar ground, and could easily retreat behind the barriers she had erected to protect herself, I was doomed. My only hope was to wait for her to emerge for a moment into the open, as it were, and then take her completely by surprise.
But how? That was where my limited stock of knowledge finally failed me.
On an impulse, I pulled on my coat and set off for Victoria, where I was just in time to catch the 4.10 for all stations to Stoat’s Nest.
*
I had never been to Gipsy Hill before; but I imagined it – despite the romance of its name – as one of those soulless Victorian suburbs where the buildings are so uniform that they look as if they have been taken out of a giant toy-box, and spread across the
landscape with no thought of what had been there before. And I was not far wrong, as it turned out: after an uncomfortable half-hour journey wedged between two heavily sweating gentlemen reading newspapers, I emerged to find myself in a long sloping street lined with squat, frumpy houses and parades of identical flat-fronted shops that stretched almost unbroken to the horizon. Even on a pleasant spring evening, with birds singing and hazy sunshine mottling the endless progression of unadorned brick with faint patterns of light and shadow, it made a depressing sight. We’re plain, practical people here, it seemed to say, who understand the way of the world, and you shan’t fool us into parting with a penny for what you’re pleased to call beauty.
A quick glance at the buildings either side of the station told me that number 109 must be down the hill. It took me only a couple of minutes to find it: an utterly unremarkable red-brick villa, set well back from the street, with the name Oaklands engraved on the gate. There was a pleasant garden, with a couple of little bridges, each covered by a rustic pergola, leading across the herbaceous border separating the gravel sweep from the front lawn; and the house itself – tall, and square, with steps up to the door, and a generous bay under a steep gable jutting out to one side of it – looked comfortable enough. But it seemed too large for its plot, like a fat schoolboy jammed into a row of equally ungainly fellows; and, fanciful though the idea was, I could not help imagining that – for all its effort to appear imposing – it was somehow aware of how pitifully it compared with Hallaton Hall and Hyde Park Gardens, and the knowledge had made it sour.
I looked around for some vantage-point from which I could observe the place unnoticed. Facing it, on the other side of the road, was a long, narrow strip of greenery fringed with trees. Thinking I might find a bench there, where I should be able to sit and pretend to read without drawing attention to myself, I crossed towards it – only to discover that it was not a modern public park, as I had supposed, but a strange little remnant of farmland, hemmed in by a wire fence, and with a five-bar gate at the top, that had somehow been left behind in the rush to transform Gipsy Hill from countryside into suburb.