The Night Visitor

by Lucy Atkins

  She couldn’t even begin to argue with him about the issue of trust. It was too absurd. She went into the bathroom to get away from him. She took a shower, shaved her legs, removed her toenail polish – spent as long as she could in there – and when she came out he was sleeping, or pretending to.

  She was far too wound up to sleep. She lay twitching and tense for a long time. Next to her, on his back, David let out a satisfied, glottal snore. She got up, furious, shoved her feet into her plimsolls and grabbed a shawl from the back of the chair. She swept up the American proofs of Annabel as she passed the desk. If she was going to be awake all night, she might as well get some work done.

  In the stuffy kitchen, she opened and closed cupboards, picking out a handful of salty cashews, sloshing cognac into a glass from a bottle she found at the back of the cupboard. As she stepped out into the fragrant night air, she was halted by the sky; stars pulsed out over the blackened hills, and the ghostly wash of the Milky Way swept in a great arc beneath the constellations. The stars made her think of the slides her father had liked to show her under the microscope in his lab, specks of life in hectic motion. He had been so disappointed when she’d chosen the arts over science. Perhaps that was why she’d been so driven to succeed. Perhaps she was still, even now, trying to prove to her father that history mattered.

  She put the American manuscript down on the table and covered her legs with the shawl. The night air felt close and still. Moths flapped and fluttered against the outside lamp. Somewhere below the olive groves a dog barked; another answered, rhythmically, from far across the valley. Cicadas whirred and clicked like the mechanics of a sprinkler system, a sound that seemed to vibrate in the back of her skull. She felt the tickle of a mosquito on her neck, a needle stab; she slapped it away but the spot throbbed and immediately began to itch.

  She scratched at it with a fingernail and stared at the American manuscript. She realised that she had never even told Vivian about the American publishing deal, and she was not sure why. She had a feeling Vivian would be anti-American, and make some sort of fuss. If she’d known that Vivian would be so tricky to manage, would she have embarked on this book at all? She really wasn’t sure. The appeal of the diary would always have been overwhelming, but it had been obvious, from the very start, that Vivian operated marginally outside the social norm and therefore would be difficult.

  She’d seen that even at their first meeting. The bakery was the only neutral place she could think of that would allow dogs and Vivian had told her in an email that Bertie could neither be left in the car, nor stay home alone. As soon as she’d sat down she’d realized this was not the right place for Vivian, it was too trendy, too noisy, but Vivian hadn’t invited her to Ileford and instinct told her not to have Vivian at the Farmhouse; she needed to keep her at arm’s length.

  Vivian entered the bakery exactly on time, her black dog cradled like a baby in her arms. Its wet, wiry coat was flecked with steel, its paws and muzzle tipped with grey, its eyebrows streaked and bushy like an old man’s, drooping at the edges, giving it an air of great apprehension. Vivian was cube-shaped in a damp Barbour jacket. She moved bulkily past the other customers, her mouth set and her wind-slapped cheeks raw.

  Olivia got up, smiling, and held out a hand, but the dog flinched, so she took it away again. Vivian did not seem perturbed. ‘Now, then, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, be nice.’ The dog fixed Olivia with its nervy button gaze.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you again, Vivian. Thanks so much for coming in this awful weather. I hope you aren’t soaked?’

  Vivian looked puzzled. ‘I have a weatherproof coat.’

  ‘Right, yes. Good. Well, I wish I had a more sensible coat – I got a bit wet. It’s pretty awful out there.’

  Vivian nodded and sat down on the bench opposite. She looked uncomfortable. Droplets of rain clung to her cropped hair.

  ‘So – what can I get you? Coffee? Cake?’

  Vivian looked at the blackboard for a long time, anxiously weighing up her options. Eventually she said, ‘A pot of tea for one.’

  Olivia had come straight from a meeting at Channel 4 and was wearing heeled boots, her dark blue leather jacket and some make-up. This suddenly felt like a mistake. She should have washed her face and changed into wellies and a jumper – she didn’t want to make Vivian feel awkward. ‘Look, it’s really kind of you to come out to meet me.’ She smiled across the table.

  Vivian lifted the dog off her lap and onto the floor, then unzipped her Barbour to reveal the same navy blue, brass-buttoned cardigan she’d worn in the museum.

  *

  Beneath the table Olivia felt the wet dog brush her leg, moving around, settling himself. She kept her own legs very still, half expecting to feel sharp teeth clamp onto her ankle.

  ‘I also really appreciated you letting me come back last week to study the diary,’ she said. ‘It’s just an amazing source. Annabel’s completely captured my imagination now and I can’t stop thinking about her.’

  Vivian nodded and stared at her hands. She clearly did not do small talk.

  ‘So anyway, as I said in my email, I’d love to write something about Annabel and the diary, if you’d consider letting me do that?’ She was not sure whether to tell Vivian that she was envisaging a biography. She didn’t want to scare her off. She glanced down at her notebook. ‘I was really just hoping, today, to get a fuller picture of who Annabel was, you know, to find out some background, what you already know about her and the Burley family, if that’s OK by you?’

  ‘Yes, you said that in your email.’ Vivian frowned.

  ‘OK. Great. Good. Well … shall I just fire away then?’

  Vivian nodded.

  ‘Right then … So, let’s start with Annabel’s medical background, shall we? You said she trained at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women?’

  ‘That’s right. She enrolled there in 1899, graduated in 1904, then she got her MD from the University of London, in 1910. I have copies of the paperwork. She became a house surgeon at Garrett Anderson’s New Hospital for Women.’

  ‘A surgeon! Excellent, God, this is wonderful.’ Olivia wrote all the dates down. ‘So she enrolled at medical school just a year after her husband, Lord Burley’s, death? A year after she wrote the diary? Do you think she’d tried to persuade him to let her become a doctor and he wouldn’t let her? My goodness – maybe that’s why she killed him!’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Vivian’s face was blank.

  ‘Right. OK. So, Annabel was, what, in her early forties when she enrolled at medical school?’

  ‘She was thirty-three.’

  ‘Oh! She was quite young, really – though of course she’d have been considered middle-aged and past it. It was such early days for women doctors, Vivian. I don’t know how much you know about the history of women in medicine? Elizabeth Garrett Anderson qualified as a doctor in 1865, but she only managed it by exploiting a loophole, which the authorities then swiftly closed. Garrett Anderson was pretty much on her own until she co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women ten years later—’

  ‘Nine years,’ Vivian said, sharply. ‘The London School of Medicine for Women opened in 1874.’

  ‘Oh, yes, right, nine … So, the point is, it would have taken enormous determination for Annabel to enrol and become a doctor at that time, without family support, without any real status—’

  ‘She had some money.’

  ‘The Burley fortune?’

  ‘What was left of it.’

  Vivian’s eyes were fixed on a bush-bearded man at the next table. Olivia wondered whether she knew, and didn’t like, this person. But he seemed oblivious to Vivian’s hostile gaze.

  The waitress arrived with their drinks. Vivian reached for the teapot, opened it, and peered in. Her fingers were thick and weathered, her knuckles slightly swollen, nails short with a crescent of dirt, soil from the garden probably, under one thumbnail. No wedding ring. Olivia had not until now though
t about Vivian’s existence outside the museum. She realized that she didn’t particularly want to know about Vivian’s private life.

  She sipped her cappuccino, then picked up her pen again. ‘So shall we talk a bit about Lord Burley, Annabel’s husband? He built Ileford Manor in the 1880s for his first wife, didn’t he? It must be a lovely house?’

  ‘It’s a neo-Gothic monstrosity,’ said Vivian. She poured her tea slowly, stopping a few times to check how full the cup was. ‘But the architectural style was fashionable at the time. He built it to allow the family an escape from London because their daughter’s health was fragile.’

  ‘That’s right, Annabel talks about this in the diary, doesn’t she? Lord Burley had buried his wife and two children when she married him? That sort of loss is unimaginable, isn’t it?’ It was fantastic, she thought, that Lord Burley’s back story was so heart-wrenching. When Annabel married him he must have been deranged from grief. She could make a lot of that – it gave Lord Burley real depth. The loss of his first wife and two children didn’t excuse Lord Burley’s brutality to Annabel, but it did make his alcoholism and unhappiness understandable. ‘This is quite a back story, Vivian.’

  Vivian stared at her tea and said nothing.

  ‘And do we know how Lord Burley’s two children died?’

  ‘The daughter, Blanche, had consumption. Burley built the house because he thought the country air would cure her. But it didn’t: she died soon after they moved into Ileford.’

  Olivia shuddered. She imagined Lord Burley and his first wife, Violet, desperately trying to protect their daughter – going to such lengths to get out of London, constructing their big, modern house as a place of safety, only to lose little Blanche anyway, almost immediately. It was a heartbreaking genesis for a house. She scribbled on her notepad: ‘Ileford house/tragedy: building – hope – despair and loss.’ Then she looked up. ‘And what about their other child?’

  ‘Their eldest son, Walter, drowned at Eton a year after Blanche died. He was thirteen years old.’

  ‘Oh my God, Vivian, this is devastating stuff! Those poor parents. And then Lord Burley’s first wife died too – of grief, presumably, for their two children?’

  ‘No. Lord Burley’s first wife, Violet Burley, died in childbirth.’

  ‘Oh! They had a third child? Did it survive? Was Annabel a stepmother? There’s no mention of any child in her diary …’

  ‘He did survive. His name was Quentin. The current Lady Burley always calls him “Uncle Quentin”. He died in his seventies.’

  ‘Uncle Quentin. Well. My goodness. So Annabel was a stepmother!’

  ‘Yes. Uncle Quentin was three years old when Annabel married Lord Burley. She sent him to boarding school immediately.’

  ‘At three years old?’ Olivia shook her head as she wrote this down. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it, a toddler in a Victorian boarding school?’

  Vivian blinked, but didn’t comment.

  Olivia did a quick calculation. If Uncle Quentin died in his seventies that would have been some time in the 1960s. This was brilliant – there might be actual stories passed down from Uncle Quentin to the current Lady Burley. That would be biographical gold dust.

  ‘There’s a shrine to Violet and the two dead children in the ornamental garden,’ Vivian said.

  ‘Is there? How sad. I’d love to see it some time. I’d really love to come and see Ileford.’

  Vivian did not offer an invitation.

  ‘OK, so. Can we go back a bit, for a moment, to Annabel’s early life? I think you said she was married before, as a very young woman? Do we know what happened to her first husband?’

  ‘She married a young Cambridge doctor, but he died of an arsenic overdose just two years later. Annabel came from Cambridge originally.’

  ‘He committed suicide?’ This was getting better and better. Olivia imagined a chapter on Annabel’s first marriage – passionate first love ending in tragedy.

  ‘It was an accidental death,’ Vivian said. ‘I have a copy of his obituary and death certificate.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Well, Victorian men did sometimes take arsenic as a recreational drug.’ Her instinct had been right then – Vivian had already done considerable research into the Burley family and Annabel’s early life. She liked Annabel as the tragic young widow forced to remarry a rich older man. Vivian really was going to be useful if she’d unearthed all this background stuff already. ‘Arsenic …’ she said. ‘It could have been murder!’

  ‘The death certificate doesn’t say that.’ Vivian pursed her lips and looked down at her hands. ‘It says accidental death.’

  ‘That might mean suicide. Sometimes the family would hide a suicide out of shame. I mean, attempting suicide was actually a crime in Britain until the 1950s. That’s why it’s “commit” – like you commit a crime?’

  Vivian stiffened. ‘I don’t know why Annabel’s first husband died of arsenic poisoning, I’m just giving you the facts.’

  ‘Right. Yes. Of course.’ Olivia put down her pen. Vivian, she realized, did not respond to speculation. ‘Well, either way, it’s extra tragic that Annabel was a widow when she came to Ileford to marry Lord Burley. You’ve done such a lot of work on this, Vivian. I’m so impressed by how much you’ve found out about them all already.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m in charge of the Burley family archives. It’s part of my job.’

  ‘Poor Annabel. A young widow, packed off to a remote Sussex manor house to marry an old, violent alcoholic.’

  ‘Lord Burley was not old.’ Vivian’s cheeks reddened. ‘He was only sixty-three when she married him.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, not old, of course – not old! I just meant … he was a lot older than Annabel.’ Embarrassed by her own tactlessness, she decided it was best to move on. ‘So, what happened to Annabel in the end? How did she die?’

  ‘Acute rheumatic fever, January 1919.’

  ‘Ah.’ It was a slightly prosaic death. It would have been nice to have something a bit more heroic or dramatic. ‘Young then? She was only in her fifties?’

  Vivian nodded.

  ‘And did Uncle Quentin inherit Ileford Manor from Annabel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So. The current Lady Burley, the woman who owns Ileford, your boss? She’s Quentin’s daughter? Lord Burley’s granddaughter?’

  ‘No, no. It’s a very sparse family. Uncle Quentin never married. Lady Burley is his second cousin.’

  Olivia wrote all this down. The line from Burley and Annabel to the current owner of Ileford really was delightfully short. It made this Victorian story feel even closer and more tangible.

  ‘I’d love to talk to Lady Burley some time, Vivian. Do you think I could arrange to visit her in her care home, maybe?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Vivian’s spine stiffened. ‘I told you – I can only allow access to the diary on condition that you don’t bother Lady Burley with this. No interview requests or requests for information, she’s far too fragile. It would only make her anxious. I don’t want this to dominate the short time she has left.’

  ‘Of course, no, please – sorry – we must do whatever you think’s best.’ This was the first time Vivian had admitted that she was intending to allow access to the diary. Olivia tried not to let her excitement show. She felt as if any display of emotion, at this point, might drive Vivian away. She finished her coffee.

  Beneath the table the dog began to whine. ‘Bertie needs his walk.’ Vivian bent and hauled him back up onto her lap. He looked around, fretfully.

  ‘But you haven’t drunk your tea?’

  ‘It’s almost four o’clock. I always walk him at four.’ Vivian stroked the triangles of her dog’s ears and after a moment he nestled edgily into her arms. The two of them seemed to communicate all the time, silently, and the dog obviously took great comfort in Vivian’s presence. It was quite touching to watch.

  ‘Well, OK.’ Olivia forced herself to sound relaxed. ‘Maybe we could meet again late
r, after your walk? I’ll probably stay here and do a bit of work now. I’m just finishing a paper.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Oh, this paper? I’m looking at the language used about Victorian women who were put in asylums by their husbands.’

  ‘Did that happen a lot?’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately it did. It was remarkably easy for a man to get his wife institutionalized, all he needed was a single witness and he could have her locked up.’

  Vivian’s face suddenly creased into an ungainly smile. ‘I can see why you’re so interested in Annabel then.’

  Olivia leaned forwards, rolled up her sleeves and rested her elbows on the table. ‘I really am, Vivian. She’s fascinating to me. This is my period, my interests exactly, and to have the diary – an actual murder confession – well, it’s just … It’s incredible.’

  Vivian shifted. She was about to leave, Olivia could tell. It was now or never. ‘The thing is, I’ve been looking for a subject for a book, not an academic book but something more popular. A historical biography would be perfect. Annabel is pretty much my ideal subject.’

  For the first time, Vivian looked right at Olivia. ‘You want to write a book? I thought this was for an academic paper?’

  ‘Well, originally that was what I was thinking, but there’s just so much here, isn’t there? Annabel’s backstory is colourful, then there’s the complexity of her marriage to the brutish Lord Burley and then of course the murder – that’s just sensational. And to have her rise from all this tragedy and make it to medical school then become one of Britain’s first women surgeons, well, it’s just such a triumphant story, isn’t it? So I really would love to write a biography of Annabel, if you’d let me, Vivian? I know this might sound a bit overblown but I kind of feel like I owe it to Annabel – to all the women like her who were such incredible trailblazers really – to tell her story. Would you – do you think – would you consider letting me do this?’