House of Shadows

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘Who are these?’ I ask, interested. They look more fun than the Vavasours I have encountered so far.

  There is a pause. ‘That’s Michael and Felix,’ Angie says, pointing at them. Her finger moves to the woman. And that’s you.’

  A roaring in my ears, and my hands tighten on the iPad to steady myself against the rushing sensation that threatens to unbalance me. Me. I stare at the picture, confounded. That’s not how I imagined myself at all. I thought I was tall and lanky with a tumble of thick, dark red hair. The woman in the photo was never a curly redhead, that much is clear. I want to say to Angie, Are you sure? but I stop myself just in time. Of course she’s sure.

  My entrails are looping and twisting alarmingly. I’m glad I’m sitting down; I’m sure my knees wouldn’t support me otherwise.

  ‘I thought you’d be sure to recognize that one,’ says Angie, disappointed. ‘It’s the one you keep beside your bed. We were very careful taking it out of its frame so that we could scan it in.’

  ‘No, I . . . No,’ I say. I feel as if I should apologize. I clear my throat. ‘Michael looks nice,’ I say weakly.

  ‘Oh, Michael was lovely,’ she agrees. ‘Lord and Lady Vavasour were devastated when he insisted on going to London rather than staying to learn how to run the estate, but Michael couldn’t wait to leave. I don’t know why.’ She sounds baffled. ‘He never used his title, and I don’t think he would have come back at all if he hadn’t been so ill. I suspect the Vavasours blamed you for a while, but I don’t think that’s fair. Michael always said he wouldn’t play lord of the manor.’

  I file that information away, still looking at the picture. I study the faces, longing for a spark of recognition, but I might as well be looking at a picture in a magazine.

  ‘They look happy,’ I say wistfully.

  ‘You were,’ says Angie, and there is a thread of something I can’t identify in her voice. ‘You were the perfect family.’

  The perfect family. And now Michael is dead and I am in hospital and Felix, the baby reaching so confidently for his mother in the picture, is alone. Not so perfect any more.

  ‘Keep looking,’ Angie says after a moment. ‘You never know what will make a memory click.’

  Obediently, I stroke the screen, bringing up one picture after another. There’s George and Jasper in waxed jackets, guns under their arms, black Labradors quivering with eagerness at their knees. Fiona looking gracious. Philippa on a horse. I pause when I see the horse, conscious of a faint tug, but as soon as I try to reel it in, it slips away. More photos of Michael: as a little boy in his school uniform, a gangly adolescent looking up warily from reading (‘Michael always had his head in a book,’ Angie says, uncomprehending), and a sad one of him looking terribly ill with the woman – me – beside him, the baby on her lap and a Christmas tree in the background. She is smiling but you can see what an effort it is. Michael has diminished, and he is pale and insubstantial against the festive background. You can almost see him receding from his family in spite of the hand she has placed on his knee as if to hold him with her.

  There are more pictures of Felix, of course, too, at different stages, but none of them means anything to me. I touch his face on the screen, guilt uncurling in my belly, and very aware of Angie watching me. I feel desperately sorry for him. He is a dear little boy, I can see that, and he needs his mother, but he is not the child I am longing for.

  I have asked Fiona and Jasper if they will bring Felix to see me, hoping that if I can see him for myself I will realize that he is my child and shake this terrible conviction that my son, the son I cannot picture or name but whose existence feels so real to me, is in danger.

  But Fiona doesn’t think that is a good idea. ‘You look terrible,’ she said when I raised the question. ‘Felix would be frightened. He’s perfectly happy with Angie. We don’t think there’s any need to get in another nanny.’

  When I asked Fiona if Felix needed a nanny at all, she was quite sharp.

  ‘Please don’t make a fuss about this, Kate. We don’t want one of your rants right now.’

  I’m somebody who rants? The idea pleases me, I have to admit. It’s good to know that at normal times I have opinions, that I can be difficult. I am not just someone who sits passively, remembering nothing, knowing nothing.

  ‘You’re in hospital,’ Fiona reminded me unnecessarily, ‘and somebody needs to look after Felix. Angie offered and she’s clearly devoted to him.’ I would quite like to ask why, between them, Felix’s aunt and grandparents can’t look after him, but I decide that would be unwise. I am very aware that for now I am dependent on the Vavasours. Until I remember who I am and how to work, I have nowhere else to go.

  ‘Wait until you get home,’ Fiona decided. ‘It would be better for Felix to see you again on familiar territory.’

  Now, the more I examine the photos of Felix, the more distant he seems. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say helplessly, aware of Angie’s expectant gaze on my face. I can feel how protective she is of Felix. It’s almost as if she is his mother and I am the stranger, and I wonder what Felix himself feels. Does he miss me, or has he already transferred all his affections to Angie?

  Swallowing, I move on to the next picture. To my relief, it’s not of Felix this time. Instead, his mother – I keep having to remind myself that she is me – is standing in front of the Hall. I can see part of the carved arch over the massive oak door in the background, and a needle-fine sense of recognition darts through me. Do I remember the door, or do I just remember seeing a photo of it? It’s impossible to tell.

  In the photo, I’m holding a little wire-haired terrier, and laughing as it tries to lick my cheek. I’m right about being scruffy: I’m wearing jeans and a baggy jumper. I like the look of the terrier. It is white with brown patches and a very black nose. ‘Is that my dog?’

  ‘That’s Pippin,’ Angie says. ‘I think she was one of the family dogs, but she adopted you when Michael was dying, and now she follows you around everywhere.’

  Funny, I haven’t thought of myself as a dog person. I can only remember my little pony, Doll, and my uncle’s fine horse.

  Except that apparently I am afraid of horses and have never ridden in my life.

  ‘There are always masses of dogs around at Askerby,’ Angie is saying, oblivious to the unease that tickles at the back of my neck like a cold finger. ‘George has a black Lab he takes everywhere, and Lord and Lady Vavasour have three more, as well as Pippin.’

  She wants me to move on. She flicks through a few more photos of Fiona and Jasper at various events, smiling fondly at each, before she comes to a black-and-white studio portrait of a beautiful young woman with an extravagantly long neck and sweeping shoulders. A cloud of dark hair frames her face. Huge, dewy eyes gaze into the middle distance, and her glossily lipsticked mouth is parted in a semi-smile.

  ‘Wow, who’s this?’

  ‘Lady Margaret, as she was in her heyday. Technically she’s Dowager Lady Vavasour, but on the estate we always call her Lady Margaret. The portrait is always on display in the Hall, so we wondered if you might remember it.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She looks like a movie star, doesn’t she? Rita Hayworth or Vivien Leigh.’

  Those names spring easily to my lips. It isn’t fair that I can remember them instead of something useful, like what I need to do to ease the panicky flutter in my belly.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Angie says, ‘but I advise you not to use the word “movies” in front of Lady Margaret. According to her, “movie” is a “ghastly Americanism”. We had a terrible time last year when the film crew from Hollywood were shooting on location at the Hall and they would keep referring to their “movie”,’ she goes on, only to clap a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she says hurriedly. ‘I mean, I’ve just remembered something I need to do. It doesn’t matter. Look, here’s Lady Margaret now.’ She seems a little flustered as she moves the screen on once more. />
  The contrast between glowing youth and old age is almost shocking, but even now, Margaret is a striking woman. Her dark hair is an elegant silver, and though her eyes are sunken and her skin covered in a delicate veil of fine lines, her bone structure remains unblurred. You can still see the high cheekbones, the aristocratic nose, the unyielding jaw, but that dewy gaze has become a cold, quelling stare.

  ‘Nothing?’ Angie asks. She sighs. ‘I can’t imagine forgetting Lady Margaret once you’ve met her,’ she says when I shake my head.

  ‘She looks . . . formidable,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, she’s marvellous. You’d never believe that she’s in her late eighties. She still does such a lot for charity, while my grandmother just sits in a chair now.’

  I hope I’m imagining the faintly dismissive note in Angie’s voice as a photo of another elderly woman appears on the screen. ‘Is this your grandmother?’

  ‘Yes. I included it as you used to spend quite a lot of time with Babcia. You were very good to her,’ Angie adds with an indifferent glance at the screen.

  Angie’s grandmother is clearly much older than Margaret, and no, she hasn’t worn as well, but I suspect she has worked a lot harder than Margaret all her life, too. In the photo, she’s sitting in a high-backed armchair, looking frail. I can see her scalp through the fine hair, and the hands that rest on her lap are blotched with dark spots, but she is smiling at the camera.

  ‘She’s got a sweet smile. What’s her name?’ I ask. ‘I don’t call her Babcia, do I?’

  ‘No, that’s a Polish version of “Granny”. Her name’s Dosia, spelt D-O-S-I-A but pronounced Do-sha,’ Angie tells me. ‘Not that she would care if you did call her Babcia.’ Angie wrinkles her nose. ‘I’m afraid she’s getting quite confused now. She probably wouldn’t know you if you went to see her.’

  I sigh and let my hands fall on the iPad. They settle just like Dosia’s in the photograph. ‘Well, that makes two of us,’ I say.

  Chapter Six

  It is easy to lose track of time here. I know my room intimately now. I know exactly how the light angles through the windows and moves around the room, and how the pattern on the inoffensive beige curtains changes depending on how far back the nurses push them when they open them in the morning. I know the bland prints on the walls off by heart: one is a seascape, a blurry blend of blues and pinks and greys, and blobs that are meant to be figures walking along a beach, and the other is a cafe scene in what I am sure is meant to be Paris. I spend a lot of time wondering how my brain can retain an idea of Paris, but not the most important things in my life: my child, my husband, my parents, my name.

  My name is Isabel. Secretly, quietly, I say it to myself every day.

  The days have a routine of their own: constant checks of my temperature and pulse and an endless round of cups of tea and meals delivered on a tray. For all this is a private hospital, the crockery is still thick and practical, the cups and saucers an unpleasant shade of pink. Steel covers sit over plates of tepid food which all smells and tastes the same. The meals and checks are interspersed with visits from doctors who prod and peer and from Mary, the physiotherapist, with whom I gradually explore the world beyond my room. The day I walk as far as the nurses’ station with the aid of a stick is a red-letter day. The nurses bring me a special cake to have with tea to celebrate.

  It is six weeks before I am able to manage steps. Mary says that when I can walk up and down the stairs to the next floor, I can go home. Home to a place I cannot remember at all. I long to leave this blank, bland room, but there is a part of me that dreads it, too. It will be like stepping into the unknown, into a world where the only memories I have to guide me apparently do not belong to me at all.

  I am desperate to remember something of my life as Kate, something that will help me navigate the days ahead. Is it since losing my memory that I have understood that we can only move forward if we know where we have come from, or is that something I have known all along? As it is, I fear that I will be groping through the dark, feeling my way cautiously, step by step, unable to recognize the normal cues that might remind me where I went wrong before.

  On the last night in the hospital, I can’t sleep. The visitors have gone home and all is quiet, or as quiet as a hospital ever gets. The lights are dimmed in the corridors and the constant background hum of machines and squeaky footsteps on the lino floors is so familiar to me by now that I hardly hear it at all.

  I am watching television with the sound turned down. Some police drama is on, but I am not really following the story. On the screen, there is shouting and hands are slammed onto desks, cars are driven with grim urgency. Nothing that could possibly connect with the memory that jumps into my head without warning, so clear and intense that I cannot believe I have forgotten it until now. One minute I am staring vacantly at a police car speeding along a dark street, and the next I am remembering how I peered through the squint at Crabbersett to see what was happening in the great hall.

  ‘Isabel!’ Judith tugged at my sleeve. ‘Come away. We shouldn’t be here.’

  I ignored her. My uncle had a small, secret closet off his chamber. It was forbidden to us, and perhaps because of that, it was my favourite room in the house. I’m afraid I was ever contrary that way.

  One wall had a grille over a window looking down into the chapel that meant he could listen to the service without troubling himself to dress, like the rest of the household. Even better, to my mind, was the little clover-shaped squint carved into the other wall. You could peer down into the great hall and see who was coming and going without anyone knowing you were there at all.

  I put my eye back to the squint. ‘The Vavasours are here,’ I whispered for Judith’s benefit. ‘They are dressed very fine. That is my cousin Lawrence, there in the blue doublet.’ I drew back so that Judith could see, but she only wrung her hands.

  ‘We should go before anyone finds us.’

  ‘Oh, pooh, they are all downstairs gawking at our grand visitors.’ For days now all the talk had been of my Lord and Lady Vavasour and how they were coming to Crabbersett.

  And why.

  It was Judith who had told me, when we lay in bed one night. ‘I heard your uncle and aunt talking,’ she had whispered. ‘They think to make a match for you with Edmund Vavasour.’

  ‘But I do not want to be married!’ Scrambling up, I pushed the hair out of my face in dismay. A bar of moonlight fell through the casement window and turned Judith’s golden hair to silver.

  Since she had climbed into the hayloft ten years earlier we had never been apart. Judith was the dear friend I had always wanted, even though we were as day to night, as sunshine to storm. Where I was gangly and plain and untidy, Judith was small and neat and fair. I was restless and unruly, and she was so quiet that oftentimes folk forgot she was there at all and spoke unguardedly; she learnt all manner of things that maids like us were not supposed to know.

  My aunt Marion approved greatly of Judith, who sewed a neat seam, unlike my own careless, looping stitches, and was diligent about her prayers, while I fidgeted and cast longing glances at the door. I teased Judith that she was like a cat, twitching her paws at the first sign of wet. I could not understand how she could prefer to stay inside rather than be out, and she could not understand the pleasure of riding over the moor, face lifted to the wind, while the skylarks darted above the heather.

  For all our differences, we fitted together like fingers in gloves. We knew each other inside out. In summer, we chased butterflies around the garden, and caught them between our cupped hands for the pleasure of letting them go. We lay in the orchard and spat cherry stones to see who could send them further. In winter we skated on the frozen pond, holding each other up, shrieking and laughing while the cold stung our cheeks.

  Every night I brushed Judith’s hair until it gleamed gold, and she did her best to tame my wild curls. Together, we puzzled over ciphering. Judith untangled the silk threads in my needle case and unpicked my seams, and
I sang loudly to disguise the fact that she was an indifferent player on the virginals.

  When Judith fell ill with the pox, I sat holding her hand while she burned with fever, and refused to be separated from her. No sooner did her fever break than I caught it. We shared even the pox. Afterwards, Judith was barely blemished – a single pockmark on her temple – but I was left with a scatter of marks high on my cheeks that my aunt bemoaned forever after, though it seemed to me that they could have been much worse and I cared little for my appearance anyway.

  ‘You do not need to,’ said Judith, who was always groomed to a nicety. ‘You are an heiress, while I have only my face to recommend me.’

  That was true, although my fortune did not spare me regular beatings as a child. My aunt despaired of taming me. ‘What am I to do with Isabel?’ she would lament. ‘How will we ever find a husband for her when she will not sit still for two moments together but must hop around like a flea?’

  Why could I not be more like Judith? was her constant complaint. Judith told me not to mind her. I had my fortune and needed nothing else. A few pockmarks would not deter a suitor with an eye to my dowry, she told me, and so it proved.

  The night when Judith told me that my uncle and aunt were discussing my marriage, I was restless and uneasy. I had known, of course, that it would happen one day, but it had always seemed a prospect that belonged to the distant future, not to now. I did not want to move away. I loved Crabbersett, the Manor with its bustling household, and the village where I knew everyone from Ellen the goose girl to Sir Thomas Hunter the priest.

  I still took an apple to Doll, long outgrown; but in her place I had a spirited grey mare with lovely liquid, dark eyes. I called her Blanche. Blanche had a heart as big as the sky, and I rode her every day I could. I hated to be confined. I knew every beck, every wood, every dip and hollow of the high moors where the sheep grazed in the summer and where the dour shepherds would greet me with a nod. It was my home and I trembled at the thought of leaving it all behind to be married and bear children.