The Room Beyond

by Stephanie Elmas

  There was a big crowd around someone in the middle of the room. I craned my neck to try to see who it was.

  ‘Hey,’ Seb squeezed my hand. ‘Meet Raphael.’

  Something made me catch my breath as I was suddenly confronted with the two of them standing there together. They were about the same height, one fair one dark. Seb, with his purple suit and astonishing blue eyes, seemed to shine out next to Raphael, who was fully dressed in black like before. And yet one powerful glance from Raphael made me flush up with the oddest sense of having forged some sort of union with him: we have secrets together, it seemed to say.

  ‘We met last night actually. I discovered Serena searching for my art,’ he explained, musingly.

  Seb looked alarmed. ‘Oh you don’t want to do that.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I told her. How are you getting on with Beth then?’

  ‘She’s just fabulous. Very mature for her age.’

  ‘She’s a tyrant,’ laughed Seb. ‘Beth knows more about what goes on in this house than all of us put together.’

  A waiter sailed towards us with a silver tray and Raphael scooped up three glasses of champagne. ‘Let’s sit over there.’

  We squeezed past the crowd in the middle and I caught sight of the person at the centre of it. Her head, wrapped turban like in a red scarf, was turned towards a group of young men. It wasn’t...?

  ‘Are you suggesting I don’t know how to tango?’ she burst out, sweeping her astonished eyes across the crowd around her. ‘Robert, go and find some music!’ A loud cheer rose up in response.

  Yes, it was Arabella.

  ‘This is quite a party,’ I said to Raphael. ‘You must have been away a long time.’

  ‘About six months. I’ve been in Europe mainly, attending exhibitions and talks about art. I’ve just got back from Berlin actually. I went to see a display of Habsburg gems which was due to open there.’

  ‘Wow, they must have been beautiful.’

  ‘Yes I’m sure, only the exhibition never happened.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The stones went missing in transit, stolen. An extremely professional job it seems.’

  ‘God that’s awful.’

  The champagne bubbled on my tongue as we sat down. Seb was next to me, his leg just a tantalizing inch away from my own. He could have been chatting up any girl in the room.

  ‘Why?’ Raphael was studying me challengingly, his chin resting on the tips of his fingers beneath pressed together palms.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why is it awful?’

  ‘Oh! Because no one can appreciate those gems now. For all we know, they’ve gone forever.’

  ‘How do you know they won’t be appreciated? I would appreciate them.’

  ‘But would you steal them?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Cigarette?’ Seb waved a packet in front of me.

  Raphael shook his head and then fixed his eyes on me, so intently that I felt as if we were staring at each other through a tunnel. For a moment Seb’s hand blurred out of vision. ‘Most beautiful things are stolen; it makes them more captivating,’ he murmured.

  ‘Like Helen of Troy,’ broke in a female voice that made me start. We all turned to find Eva standing before us. ‘Hello Serena.’

  But before I had a chance to say anything to her a hush suddenly fell across the room and then the slow-paced and almost eerie reverberations of violin music filled the air. The crowd dispersed as Arabella took to the floor, thigh-to-thigh with a young man.

  We all pulled away to give them space; Arabella in her exuberance wasn’t taking any prisoners and as she arched her body back and flung up her sickled neck to the man’s lips I found myself squashed up against Robert.

  As usual he was looking rather shy and uncomfortable, although I could certainly see why on this occasion.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Lovely music!’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not really my sort of thing though.’

  I glanced over to see his mother’s face glide startlingly close to her partner’s groin.

  ‘Yes I can understand that,’ I replied.

  Across the dance floor someone was trying to push through the crowd. People shifted to either side with annoyed expressions. Over to my right Eva, Seb and Raphael had formed a disapproving little huddle. Arabella bolted across the floor, her turban coming loose and her hair tumbling across her shoulders.

  ‘Look here,’ said Robert, quietly. ‘I don’t really like to get involved in... family stuff, but none of them know what to do with you. Do you see? They’ve all got different opinions.’

  I looked up into his pale face. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he shrank back. ‘Perhaps you should leave... this house I mean. OK, just forget I said anything.’

  The music stopped abruptly. Edward had appeared opposite at the front of the crowd, his lips set in a thin smile. I looked back at Robert but he was moving away and now I was being pushed in the other direction towards Eva.

  ‘We shouldn’t have let her do it... and she’s all tanked up as well,’ I heard her murmuring to Raphael. ‘Sasha’s upstairs. He’ll have a good probe whilst her tongue’s loose no doubt. Yuk.’

  Arabella curtsied to tumultuous applause as Edward led her gently away by the hand.

  ‘We have to send that cretin back to Russia somehow,’ replied Raphael. ‘Can’t your new man lend a hand, maybe they come from the same town or something?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Eva turned and her eyes fell on me, narrowing at once.

  ‘That’s a very pretty dress,’ she said through tight lips.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Have you cut something off it?’

  ‘No.’

  Seb emerged from behind them, grinning broadly at me. ‘Enjoy the show? Eva’s not bad at the tango either, are you?’

  Raphael smirked. ‘She’s too busy for all that now, eh? Spends all her time eating caviar with her new man.’

  ‘Shut up darling,’ said Eva, rolling her eyes.

  Seb burst out laughing, Raphael egging him on.

  ‘... So that’s the black diamond he gave you eh?’

  ‘He mined it himself no doubt.’

  ‘In his lunch break probably.’

  ‘Do oligarchs get lunch breaks?’

  Gradually they squeezed a smile out of her and then even a laugh as she started to jibe back at them, their faces full of mock indignation. But I gave up listening to any of it. Around me the room began to buzz with white noise and all I could think about was Robert’s strange words, and the image of Edward escorting his wife from the room.

  I nudged my way through the chattering groups in search of a silver tray, my shoulder brushing against a sweaty shirt front on the way. Above it a face like a West Highland Terrier glowered down at me.

  ‘And who are you?’

  He was in his thirties maybe, his lips shiny and moist; I could smell the drink on his breath.

  ‘I work here. Sorry, excuse me.’

  ‘You work here!’ he exclaimed, grabbing at my hand. ‘What, polishing the saucepans?’

  ‘No, I’m a nanny.’

  ‘Then shouldn’t you be Latvian or something!’ he bellowed.

  ‘But I am. How did you guess? Was it my outrageous foreign accent?’

  He looked baffled for a moment and I snatched my hand back.

  ‘Ah, there you are! Are you ready for your escort back to Latvia?’ said a voice behind me. Seb’s voice. Just the sound of it made my whole body soften like hot wax. ‘I have a carriage waiting outside.’

  I began to giggle and the man knitted his fuzzy eyebrows together in even greater bafflement.

  ‘Come on,’ said Seb, his lips soft against my face. ‘Stop picking on the weak. Let’s go to bed.’

  His hand clasped mine and we let the noise of the party disappear into an underworld beneath us. My feet barely touched the stairs; up through the house together,
my hand against the banister and then strumming tenderly up his spine. And then Seb, my Seb, stripping me of that bloody dress and falling onto my bed with me in his arms. I gripped his face between my hands and plunged through the deep blue water, no longer alone. And then I hid my face in his cool neck, my fingers buried in his hair.

  He turned me onto my back, his body as gentle and enveloping as a shadow. I wrapped my arms and legs tightly around him until his skin felt like my own. He whispered my name and tears, happy tears, forged canyons down my cheeks.

  That night I watched him sleeping next to me, his face even more carved and Aztec in the blue light and the sharp sweep of his ribs and hips beneath the white sheet. I pressed my back against his chest and his body curved itself around mine.

  And then, much later in the night, just before the first haze of early morning, I think I had the strangest dream. A man came into my room. At first I thought he was Seb; the eyes were so similar, even in the shadows. But I could still feel Seb’s body around mine and his breath on my shoulder. No, this was someone different and the sight of his gaunt shadowed face made my throat catch with the force of a stranglehold.

  He watched me for a long time; his gaze all-consuming, and I screwed my eyes up tightly against him until I heard the brush of something leaving. But the image of his face stayed with me and then I remembered where I’d seen it before. Not in the kind beauty of my lover but in paintings hidden in the quiet corners of the house; dark paintings that had turned my skin cold. The dream slid past, but even though I knew he’d gone I kept my eyes tightly shut until sleep returned again.

  1892

  It was the same as always. Her mother was wearing her linen nightgown, her hair plaited into two grey ropes hanging pendulously over her shoulders.

  ‘Miranda darling, get me my medicine.’

  She didn’t like being in charge of mother. The medicine cupboard was so high up that she had to drag the biggest chair in the kitchen over to it and even then her childish legs could only take her so far, even on tiptoe.

  She strained her arm towards the bottle with such force that she thought her ribs might tear apart.

  ‘Hurry Darling!’

  The voice was getting thin and watery; she smarted at its urgency and imagined the cracked lips through which it had travelled. Her hand fell on a bottle and she grabbed hold of it, her feet falling back flat on the chair and her heels just saving her from performing a clumsy backflip onto the stone floor.

  The bottle looked alright; full of brown gooey stuff. And wasn’t Mummy’s medicine just like that, brown and gooey? She gazed up again at the cupboard, it seemed to have stretched even further away, and then back at the bottle.

  ‘Coming!’ she shouted.

  Miranda let her eyes flicker open. The room seemed full of darting lights: sunshine dazzling her through the window pane. Something about her left cheek felt as if it didn’t belong to her. She ran her fingertips along it and found a long bumpy crease where her face had been pressed against the cushion. The drawing room slowly came back into focus.

  The sunshine was a surprise; just when she thought that summer had well and truly died. She stumbled to the window. Outside the wind had found a flurry of dead leaves. It scooped them up and then vomited them violently across the pavement, over and over again.

  Today was Thursday. She tried to count back; had it been Saturday or Sunday when she last saw Tristan, his eyes red and his shirt collar ripped and stained? She gazed at the growing mountain of his correspondence on the table. From the top of the pile a fresh letter from Switzerland glowed whitely at her, their address on the front written in his father’s hand.

  There was a rumbling of wheels. A carriage passed her by, drawing to a halt outside Mrs Eden’s. She cringed back behind the curtains and peeked out to see Mr Eden’s expansive form emerge from the carriage door. His face seemed as benign as ever and from within his grey overcoat came the glint of one of his bold waistcoats: emerald green.

  He knocked abruptly at number 36. No one opened. Then she heard the jangle of keys. They scraped and croaked about in the keyhole, one after another, but there was no sound of the door giving way. He muttered something under his breath and then suddenly the walls shuddered with the most almighty pounding. Miranda jumped away from the window, pressing her back against the wall.

  ‘Lucinda, let me in! I want to help you!’

  The pounding came to a halt as abruptly as it had begun and his retreating footsteps crunched back down the path. And yet there was no click of a carriage door, no hooves or sound of departing wheels. If anything his footsteps seemed to be getting louder again...

  A determined rap now shook her own front door. Her fingers darted to her hair, the creased line across her face. Mrs Hubbard was approaching.

  ‘It’s alright, I’ll open it. It’s just an old neighbour of ours.’

  ‘As you please.’

  ‘Mr Eden! How nice to see you again.’

  ‘Please excuse me. Am I interrupting anything?’

  His eyes were moist and pleading. He seemed older than she remembered him, standing there alone on her doorstep.

  ‘No, do come in. Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Many thanks but no, just a moment or two of your time.’

  He floated behind her like a large cloud into the drawing room, surprisingly soft-footed and rather dainty in the way he perched on the edge of one of the chairs.

  ‘I’m rather concerned about the welfare of my wife Lucinda. Have you seen her at all recently? Or perhaps her maid Sarah?’

  ‘I have rarely seen your wife over this past year I’m afraid. She came for dinner some months ago but left with a headache. I used to see her servant girl quite regularly but well, now that I’m thinking about it, I haven’t spotted her around for weeks.’

  Mr Eden rested his chin in his neck. He looked as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t quite sure how. She tried to focus on the gold button of his waistcoat.

  ‘Is your husband at home?’ he asked eventually. ‘Perhaps he might have seen one or the other.’

  ‘I’m sorry but Mr Whitestone is working. I very much doubt whether he’s seen them as he’s rarely here. He works incredibly hard you know.’

  He smiled kindly at her, his eyes soft and pleading again. ‘I have a letter here for Lucinda,’ he said, handing her a crisp white envelope from his inner coat pocket. ‘It’s rather important and I have a feeling that if I put it through her door it will simply sit there gathering dust. May I leave it with you? If you see her for any reason I implore you to give it to her.’

  She glanced down at the envelope in her hand. ‘How urgent is it? It is rather a responsibility.’

  ‘I’ve often noticed you at the window. You sew there, don’t you? I think you would be the most likely person to spot her if she is around.’ He shook his head and stared down at the floor. His lip appeared to be trembling. ‘My apologies, this is wrong of me. This is a very private matter and I shouldn’t be involving you.’

  ‘No, no. Of course I’ll pass it on if I can.’

  But he still looked agitated, fidgeting about and unable it seemed to meet her eye.

  ‘May I ask? Is your wife in danger of any kind?’ she asked, quietly.

  He scratched his head, scowled at the floor again, pulled all manner of awkward faces. The letter began to burn in her hands like a hot coal.

  ‘I think she is mixing with a rather dangerous individual,’ he replied. ‘But it isn’t my business to talk to you about this Mrs Whitestone. Please, please, don’t let anyone else see the letter. And do contact me at the theatre if you see or hear anything. I’m so sorry I interrupted you.’

  ‘No interruption at all, I’m sorry for your concern.’

  As the carriage wheels groaned into the distance, she turned the envelope over in her hands. It was an innocent enough looking thing: light, small, no more than a couple of pages inside perhaps. And just one word on the front: Lucinda.

  She
sewed at the window for longer than usual that afternoon, pricking her fingers at the merest hint of a moving hinge somewhere on the street. But no, no Mrs Eden. It was quite ridiculous really to expect to see the woman now after so long, just because that letter was smouldering away upstairs in her dresser drawer.

  The light was starting to fail much earlier now. She retreated to her room and devoured some of Mrs Hubbard’s home-made bread and butter under her warm bedcovers. There was no need to pretend to be busy at night; she could read novels until hers eyes itched and drift off into sleep without having to move a muscle. Even now her eyes were closing down like shutters. Her book slipped to the floor.

  Riawwwww. A wail. A screech like something inhuman. What time was it? Gone two o’clock in the morning. The room was full of shadows, she hugged her knees tightly under the blankets. Riaaawwwww. It was somewhere inside the house, as sharp as a blade edge cutting through the night air.

  She had to do something, get help, but her body trembled at the thought of leaving her room. Agwwwwwwww. The bronze statue of Minerva glinted on her dresser. She grasped it and it felt cold and reassuring against the palm of her hand.

  Out in the dimly lit corridor all seemed silent and still. She peered around her, gripping the statue so tightly that she could feel her knuckles turning white.

  Suddenly there came the sound of a loud brushing jolt from downstairs, followed by something sliding across a floor. Agh agh agh agh. She panted for breath, her hand muffling her sobs. But her feet kept on, one trembling step at a time down the stairs, her shoulder pressed firmly against the wall and the statue now clutched against her chest.

  ‘Oh, Tristan!’ she gasped.

  He was lying beneath her on the hallway floor. She couldn’t see his face but he was breathing heavily, as if he were asleep, the clothes on him as tattered as a vagrant’s. His shirt looked yellow, stiff with dirt. And near his foot was a hessian bag tied up with string.

  Something in the bag began to move. It squirmed about, with what looked like limbs extending here and there, struggling to get away. A... baby perhaps? She retched, clasping at her throat.