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The Night Visitor

Page 23

by Lucy Atkins


  I close it and look at the cover. It is quite tasteful, I suppose: the portrait, with the word ‘Annabel’ in bright yellow lettering above it, Olivia’s name below. I have been sorting through Lady Burley’s papers and I now know for sure that she got the portrait at auction in 1989. She paid £180 for it.

  The text on the back of the jacket talks about the ‘selfless and remarkable journey of one of Britain’s unsung feminist heroes’. This makes me think, somewhat bitterly, of the information I got from Mrs Sparrow in Hounslow on the day Bertie died. Olivia suppressed that, too. Another inconvenient truth.

  With all the dreadful business with Bertie, it was a few weeks before I was able to talk to Olivia about Mrs Sparrow’s assertions.

  We were in the bakery. Olivia looked youthful and relaxed in a blue-checked shirt. Her face was un-made up, her hair pulled back. I, in contrast, had not slept in weeks. My visitor was assailing me almost every night. I was not eating well either. I probably looked quite poorly. She was obviously concerned about me. She fussed around, trying to get me to have cake, asking if I was cold, or hot.

  When I’d told her Mrs Sparrow’s story I said, ‘She says Annabel was a Machiavellian narcissist.’

  Olivia gave faint smile. ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘So can you delay publication?’

  ‘The thing is, Vivian, anything’s possible – and she has no proof of this, does she? Nothing written down at all. There are always going to be alternative stories and interpretations, gossip, hearsay, people with grudges. But I’ve got a good draft now that just needs polishing and tightening. The story works. It’s fantastic the way it is. It would only muddy the waters to go down this sort of route.’

  I looked at her. ‘Are you saying you don’t even want me to try to find out about her baby?’

  She shrugged and pushed back some loose strands of hair and then she just changed the subject. ‘But listen, I’ve got exciting news!’ she said. ‘I had dinner with my agent last night and we’ve had some interest from a Hollywood film company! They think Annabel might make a great feature-length drama.’

  And that was the end of it. I didn’t contact Mrs Sparrow again and nor did Olivia. She shut it down.

  And so, I suppose, did I. Perhaps I was spellbound. Perhaps I am particularly susceptible to the Sweetman charisma. Or perhaps I was too upset about Bertie to care.

  I still have not decided exactly how I am going to bring this to a close, once and for all, but I do know one thing: I will not use social media. I do not have the stomach for it, after what happened to me.

  I am agitated by that memory even now and I have to remind myself that it will not happen to me ever again. It cannot, because my name is nowhere. I have left no trace of myself whatsoever on Annabel. I get up, go over and grab the hardback from its shelf and turn to the acknowledgements. I need to reassure myself that I am not there, even though I have already checked it twice.

  I remember the discussion we had about the acknowledgements last year as we walked round Hammer Pond. It was a little edgy if I remember correctly. It was not long after Bertie vanished so I was probably quite raw. Even the glorious sight of the bluebells failed to cheer me.

  Her initial stance, I seem to remember, was righteous. ‘But you’ve contributed so much, Vivian. I have to thank you publicly. I can’t not put you in the acknowledgements, it wouldn’t be right.’ She pushed strands of loose black hair out of her mouth and fixed her eyes on me in the intense, searching way she has when she wants something.

  ‘It wouldn’t be right to mention my name if I don’t want it mentioned.’ I looked away, at the rusted hunks sticking out of the pond we were passing, lumps of iron ore, known locally as ‘bears’. I allowed my mind to massage the word bear: to bear a hardship, bear weight, bear the pain, unbearable. Without Bertie, I decided, this walk was dismal.

  ‘All I’m saying is we should be honest and open about your contribution to the book.’

  I thought about this for a moment. ‘If honesty is the issue, then perhaps we should be credited as co-authors.’

  Her face turned pink. ‘I … We … Well …’ she stammered. ‘I think … that might, um, you know, muddy the water a little bit … The publisher … My name is …’ She tailed off.

  ‘That was a joke.’ I said. ‘I was joking.’

  She did not bring up the acknowledgements again.

  I read down the list of people she is thanking publicly: Joy, Carol, various contributors, friends, her family members. She has honoured my request and my name is absent. Vivian Tester does not exist.

  If I wanted to I could stop this. I could just give it up, fade away, not go to the party, say nothing. Sometimes I want that more than anything.

  But then I remember what she did to Bertie.

  Olivia

  Three Elms Care Home, East Sussex

  A Slovakian carer showed Olivia into the communal area, a pleasant and high-ceilinged Georgian living room that looked onto lawns and trees. Lady Burley was in a wing chair facing the garden. Silver faerie hair waved around a crumpled and pretty face that lit up as Olivia came in.

  ‘Professor Sweetman! Well, you’re just as attractive as you look on television.’ She gave a sweet laugh and held out a tiny crepe-paper hand.

  For a second, Olivia was speechless. This bright-eyed person was not what she had been expecting at all. She pulled herself together and stepped forwards. ‘Oh, it’s lovely to meet you too, Lady Burley.’ The hand felt as frail as a kitten’s paw; its tiny bones slid beneath downy skin.

  ‘Do sit, sit, please.’ Lady Burley waved at the chair next to hers. ‘Shall we have some tea?’

  ‘That’d be lovely.’

  Lady Burley craned to signal a young woman in a pink uniform. ‘I’m so glad you came, Professor Sweetman.’

  ‘Oh, please, it’s fine to call me Olivia.’ She had been bracing herself for sickness and confusion, possibly distress, but Lady Burley, though obviously frail, seemed perfectly compos mentis.

  ‘I kept telling Vivi she must give you my telephone number, but she didn’t seem to think you’d need to talk to me just yet. I’m awfully thrilled that you want to now.’

  Olivia nodded and smiled. She knew that people with dementia could have moments of clarity, but surely not like this.

  There was some fussing about biscuits and what sort of tea, India or China. The carer went off again to fetch it.

  ‘So, do tell me what you’ve found out so far about Annabel Burley,’ Lady Burley said. ‘I’m absolutely fascinated. Vivi hardly tells me a thing. She’s very naughty. I told her to give you whatever access you needed to the Burley archives, but I have a few things here you’ll be interested in, and I expect you’ll want to interview me properly at some point, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh … But I … For …?’

  ‘For the book of course.’

  ‘But … Gosh. The book …’ It was possible that Lady Burley was less on top of things than she seemed. ‘The book’s finished,’ Olivia said, softly. ‘I’ve actually brought you a copy, as a thank you gift.’ Could someone with dementia appear normal like this, but in fact be losing her mind?

  She leaned down, opened up her bag and pulled out the hardback.

  Lady Burley looked at it and her face fell. ‘But I don’t understand. You’ve written the book already?’

  ‘Yes, look, this is it.’ Olivia smoothed her palm across its shining carapace. The portrait gleamed, as did the title: Annabel: The Shocking Confessions of a Victorian Surgeon.

  Lady Burley reached for the book, but it was too heavy for her and it dipped. Olivia shot out a hand to catch it. She pulled the tray closer and laid it down. Lady Burley stared at it. She seemed baffled.

  ‘Didn’t Vivian tell you?’ Olivia said.

  ‘This is it? You’ve finished it already?’

  ‘Yes, well, it was quite a rapid process. Vivian’s been helping.’ She remembered Vivian saying something about Lady Burley having a flexible sense of time.
‘She said you were too ill for visitors. I would have come to see you if I’d known you were … like this. I need to talk to you about Vivian, actually. That’s partly why I came today.’

  Olivia stopped. Lady Burley looked so distressed, her bird hand tightened around a lacy handkerchief and she was breathing fast. ‘That’s not even Annabel.’ She pointed at the portrait.

  The carer reappeared, then, with the tray of tea things and Tunnock’s wafers, and began pouring. Olivia tried to think of a time when Vivian had, specifically, told her that Lady Burley had dementia. She couldn’t pinpoint any actual conversation but she was sure that Vivian had said so. Or at least, strongly implied it.

  The only thing to do at this point was to tell the truth. Lady Burley needed to know that Vivian had put her off or she would – rightly – want to know why on earth Olivia had not come in person before now, to meet and interview her about her family. She felt queasy. She had to head this one off. What was Vivian playing at?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Olivia said, when the carer had gone again, ‘I think I owe you an explanation. You must think I’m horribly rude – negligent, in fact – to have written a book about a member of your family without coming to see you. But you must know that Vivian told me, very clearly, that you were too ill to have visitors. She expressly forbade me to bother you. I did write to you, I hope you got my letter? Vivian told me you’d given permission for me to write the book but she gave me the impression, the very strong impression, I’m afraid, that you were suffering from dementia. She told me it would distress and confuse you if I tried to speak to you. She’s very protective. I honestly had no idea, none whatsoever, that you were so … so well.’

  ‘I don’t have dementia. I’m perfectly fine.’ Lady Burley looked at her over the rim of her teacup. ‘Except for the cancer.’ She lowered the cup, shakily, into its saucer. ‘Did Vivi really tell you that I have dementia?’

  ‘Well, I’m not … I think so. She definitely strongly implied it.’

  Lady Burley looked out at the garden, at the stretch of lawn, the burnished trees and granite sky. Her eyelids flickered. ‘The trees are rather spectacular, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, yes, they’re lovely.’

  ‘I’m terribly fond of Vivi, you know. I’ve known her almost all her life. She’s terribly efficient and so good with the administration and the finances. She’s a godsend, though she’s not what they call a “people person”. But underneath it she’s a kind, sweet soul. Dear Vivi. She looked after me so well.’

  It seemed cruel to leave Lady Burley thinking that she had been betrayed. ‘She’s obviously very fond of you, too. I’m sure she just wanted to protect you. I’m just so sorry, so very sorry, that I didn’t come to see you before. If I’d had any idea you were OK, I would have …’

  ‘It’s a very big book.’ Lady Burley looked at it.

  ‘It’s a wonderful story. You mustn’t worry, I fell in love with Annabel. She was such an amazing woman. I’ve written about your family with the utmost respect.’ She thought, then, about her portrait of the drunken Lord Burley and the sections on the wayward Uncle Quentin with his unhinged Ileford parties, his financial eccentricities, his vicious dancing bear.

  Lady Burley looked at her. Beneath the folds of skin, her eyes definitely seemed less friendly. ‘You didn’t even try to see me?’

  Olivia felt her face grow hot. To her, Lady Burley had been a non-person, disabled by cancer and dementia, close to death. ‘I am so, so sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I really am. Vivian said not to.’

  ‘Do you always do what people tell you?’

  Olivia couldn’t think how to answer this.

  ‘Well, I wonder what you’ve left out of this big book of yours. It is rather a shame that you didn’t come to see me because I have two photographs of Annabel that you might have liked to include. I didn’t give them to Vivi because I wanted to give them to you myself. I had Zuska get them out this morning after I spoke to you on the telephone. I have some family stories you won’t have heard from Vivian, too.’

  ‘You do?’ She felt weak.

  ‘Uncle Quentin remembered his stepmother quite well, you know and he had some very lively tales to tell. You could have used them in your book, had you thought to come and see me.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say …’ Olivia took a sip of the Earl Grey, swallowing hard to force it down. She had so wanted photos; the lack of photos of Annabel had troubled her all along and Vivian knew that. How could she do this?

  ‘Pass me that … the – that – there, would you, please?’ Lady Burley pointed to a brown envelope next to the tea things. With shaky hands she lifted onto her nose the large, thick glasses that were around her neck on a gold chain and fumbled with the envelope. Olivia raised a hand to help, but then thought better of it. After what seemed like hours of slippery skin on manila Lady Burley extracted a photograph and handed it to Olivia. With her eyes magnified by the thick lenses, she reminded Olivia of a grasshopper.

  She looked down at the photo. ‘This is Annabel?’ This was not how she had pictured Annabel at all. The woman staring up at her had wide-apart eyes, a small, solemn, cruel mouth and a lot of thick, dark, curly hair. She was not beautiful, in fact she was distinctly odd-looking, with quite a long neck. A scraggly wolfhound leaned against her leg, looking up at her with comical devotion while she stared directly – challengingly – at the photographer. The name of the photographer was embossed on the mount with the words, ‘Lady Annabel Burley with Filcher, Ileford Manor, June 1898.’ It was the very year that Annabel was writing the diary. ‘Oh. I wish Vivian had shown me this.’

  ‘I don’t believe Vivian’s ever seen it. I was keeping a few treasures for when you came.’

  Olivia sensed a passive-aggressive engine humming inside Lady Burley’s frail exterior. She gazed at the picture. Even the dog looked superior, with its horrid, elongated features. She could barely bring herself to ask, but she had to. ‘You said you had another picture?’

  ‘Yes, there’s one of Annabel as a doctor.’ Lady Burley fumbled around in the envelope again. She laid the second photograph on top of the book and took her glasses off again.

  It was recognizably the same face, but changed. She was probably in her fifties, much more thickset, sitting behind a desk in a white coat. Her eyes were hidden by small round glasses and her features had coarsened, her jaw was set, her hair chopped off. She looked mannish, determined and forbidding.

  Olivia turned it over, but there was no date. She had longed for a photograph of Annabel as a doctor but had never pictured her like this. Annabel didn’t look like someone who had found fulfilment in helping others and she didn’t look very heroic. Perhaps they would not have used this photo even if they’d had it. It rather spoiled the romantic image, though it did fit the brutal obituary in which she had been described, by male colleague, as a woman of ‘striking intellect’ who ‘disapproved of lipstick’ and was unpopular with colleagues, though she always had ‘the highest possible standards’.

  ‘She was unpleasant; quite ruthless,’ said Lady Burley. ‘You know about Lord Burley’s previous wife, Vera, of course, and the poor children?’

  ‘You mean Violet? Violet Burley?’

  ‘Violet. That’s right, not Vera. Vera was my own sainted mother, God bless her. You’ll have seen the shrine, I suppose, to Violet and the children, in the ornamental garden at Ileford?’

  ‘Yes, I have, it’s lovely, very sad.’ Vivian had at least taken her to see that. They had included a photograph of it in the book. ‘So, did Uncle Quentin tell you about Annabel?’

  ‘Oh yes, Uncle Quentin. He wasn’t my uncle, by the way, he was my second cousin, but we all called him that. He was rather a dear actually, totally batty, of course, a raging queer, but such fun – a prankster. Did Vivian tell you about his dancing bear?’

  ‘Yes, the one that bit him? She said he kept it in the cellar.’

  ‘A riot!’ Lady Burley gave a brief, girlish laugh. ‘He l
oathed Annabel, of course. She stuck him in boarding school when he was tiny, sometimes didn’t even get him out in the holidays. She hated children. Loved dogs, though. Terribly British of her.’

  Olivia did not really want to hear any of this. She looked at the first photograph, of the young Annabel and the dog. ‘That’s quite a hound.’ Her eyes rested on the dog’s name: ‘Filcher.’

  ‘Would you like to hear another story?’ Lady Burley said, sweetly.

  Olivia nodded, despair lapping at her heels.

  ‘I have no idea if this is true, Uncle Quentin could be a bit of a fantasist, but he told me that when Filcher died Annabel performed a … what do you call it … on the dog – on the croquet lawn.’

  Olivia shook her head, confused.

  ‘You know, where they cut you up after you die?’

  ‘An autopsy?’

  ‘That’s right!’ Lady Burley’s laugh tinkled out. ‘Autopsy! Imagine! He came out into the garden one day to find his stepmother kneeling on a blanket in the sun with her sleeves rolled up, drenched in the dog’s blood. She’d laid its intestines out on the lawn.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course, who knows if it’s true!’ Lady Burley blinked a few times, rapidly. ‘Uncle Quentin did love to make things up.’

  Suddenly Olivia realized what was bothering her. It was the dog. This was the wrong dog. In the diary, Annabel talked about her beloved little terrier, Thoby. There was no mention of a wolfhound called Filcher. ‘Annabel had a terrier, too, didn’t she?’ she said.

  ‘What, dear?’ Lady Burley fiddled with a hearing aid. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘In the diary she doesn’t mention a wolfhound, but she talks about a terrier.’

  Lady Burley’s hand fluttered near her head. ‘No, no, dear, it’s Vivian who had a terrier.’

  ‘That’s right, Bertie.’

  ‘No, no, Bertie’s her dog now. This was long before Bertie, when she was a child.’

  Lady Burley definitely seemed to be mixed up. Perhaps she did have mild dementia. She’d even forgotten that Bertie was dead. Unless Vivian had never told her. Olivia leaned closer and enunciated clearly. ‘In the diary, Annabel’s dog is a little terrier called Thoby.’

 

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