The Night Visitor

by Lucy Atkins

  ‘Olivia,’ I say, but not too loud. She startles and turns. I am quite shocked by her appearance. She is very pale despite the make-up. Her eyes look hollow and bruised. I can see the strain that recent events have had on her: she looks thinner and older; her face is very drawn. I can see the fear playing out beneath her skin.

  ‘Oh, Vivian! There you are.’

  ‘Yes, here I am.’ I stop at the foot of the front stairs and watch her come down to me. ‘I thought we could go for a short walk before we have tea,’ I say. ‘I haven’t been out all day.’

  She looks down at herself, frowning. ‘I’m not really dressed for a walk.’

  ‘It’s still half an hour till teatime and it won’t get dark till then. I have wellingtons you can borrow and a coat if you need one.’ I see her grit her teeth. ‘Come along.’ I march back round to the scullery door.

  After a second’s hesitation, I hear her follow.

  In the gunroom I get her to sit on the bench and then watch her try a few pairs of wellington boots until she finds a fit. ‘You should borrow a coat too.’ Her leather jacket looks thin and she is only wearing a flimsy grey sweater underneath it. It looks like a rag, but probably cost hundreds of pounds. She will be far too cold in the woods.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She gets up.

  I hear my father’s voice in my head: ‘I didn’t ask if you’re fine, I asked if you need a coat.’ But I don’t say the words out loud, I simply say, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’

  ‘It’ll be getting dark soon so we won’t be going far anyway, will we?’ She zips up her jacket. Her scarf is large, though that, too, is made of gauzy material. Does she not realize it is October and cold, with rain threatening?

  ‘Will we, Vivian?’

  ‘Will we what?’

  ‘Be going far.’

  ‘Sunset is at 4.11,’ I say. ‘We have half an hour, so no, not far.’

  My Barbour isn’t on its hook, I must have left it in the kitchen, so I have to take the overcoat I wore the night before, my city overcoat. I slide off my shoes, then lever my own wellingtons on. I wince as I do this and wish that my knee were less sore. I lead her out of the gunroom then and lock the door. We cross the courtyard side by side. The clouds are lowering, darkening, presaging a night of wind and rain.

  I make sure that we walk right by the well. She looks away as we pass it and says nothing.

  We go into the woods by the muddy path behind the outhouses. The bleak light fades further as we enter the blotting canopy of oak and ash, our footsteps muffled by layers of dead leaves over clay. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Somewhere above us rookeries are filling with returning foragers; their croaks and caws echo round the otherwise still woodland.

  I find that I still can’t come here without keeping my ears pricked for Bertie, even though I know that he is not trapped and never was. It is as if, over the past eight months, I have internalized Olivia’s lie and a part of my mind cannot stop believing that he is still here somewhere, still needing to be saved.

  It is, I’ve realized, entirely possible to hold two realities in one’s mind simultaneously, and to believe them both at a visceral level.

  Olivia walks with her shoulders back and her hands shoved into her jacket pockets. ‘Well,’ she says in a clipped, efficient voice. ‘I’m glad we could meet at last. You’ve been avoiding me.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  She glances at me, perhaps surprised by my honesty. ‘I’m guessing you’re still upset with me?’

  I say nothing.

  ‘It’s just, you didn’t come to the launch so I assume you are upset still,’ she continues, ‘though I wish you weren’t.’

  ‘Yes, I expect you do.’

  She slows down. ‘OK, look,’ she says. ‘We could go round and round in circles again, I could say sorry again, but can we shelve all that, just for now? There are some really important things that I need to discuss with you.’

  ‘More important than Bertie?’

  ‘Would you like me to apologize again?’ She gives a brittle smile. ‘I will if you want me to.’

  ‘I don’t need you to say sorry again.’

  ‘OK then.’

  The track narrows as we go deeper into the woods. We are still side by side and scratchy hazel branches claw at our bodies but she just shoves them out of the way.

  ‘So Vivian,’ she says, ‘I was wondering. Why did you tell me Lady Burley had dementia? I’ve been to see her, you know.’

  ‘I know you have. I never told you she has dementia.’

  ‘Yes, you did!’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well … I don’t know exactly when but you definitely … If you didn’t say it outright, you certainly very much implied it.’

  ‘I can’t control what you think I’m implying, Olivia.’

  ‘Oh my God, Vivian, you know what I mean!’

  ‘I’m not sure I do, Olivia. I’ve always given you the facts. Lady Burley has occasional memory lapses, probably as a result of the medication she’s on. She can get a bit confused about timescales and names. She also gets very anxious and fatigued.’

  ‘Can we stop playing games now, Vivian, please?’

  She sounds exasperated, but I don’t understand why. ‘I don’t play games. I’ve never lied to you about Lady Burley. She’s eighty-six, she has cancer for which she has to take a lot of medication. The doctor says she hasn’t got long to live. These are the facts, how you choose to interpret them has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But – it’s … You’re … For God’s sake, Vivian, you know exactly what I mean. You’ve been obstructive!’

  ‘Have I? I’ve just been doing the right thing. If I’d let you bother Lady Burley for the past eighteen months you would have dominated what’s left of her life and I couldn’t possibly allow that. It wouldn’t be fair to her. She’s probably only lasted this long because she’s been so happy and comfortable at Three Elms. She loves it there. I just want to make sure that whatever time she has left is peaceful. I had no idea that she’d survive until publication, of course. Over a year ago the doctor said she might not even make it to Christmas. It’s a miracle that she’s still alive now. I’ve done what I believed was right, maybe not for me or for you, but for Lady Burley.’

  Olivia stops walking. ‘Whether or not you lied specifically to me about Lady Burley, you’ve put me in a very difficult position, Vivian. If I’d have known she was compos mentis I’d have—’

  ‘What? Demanded interviews, begged for materials and stories, required access to this, that and the other, pressurized her into letting you poke around her private things, revealed to her that one of her relatives was an alcoholic brute and the other a murderer?’

  ‘No! I’d have been open and honest with her!’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, darkly. ‘Yes. I forgot. You’re big on that aren’t you? Honesty. Integrity.’

  ‘What on earth’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I acted with integrity,’ I say.

  ‘OK. Whatever. I’ve given her a copy of Annabel now.’ Olivia starts walking again, pulling ahead of me and shoving her hands back into her pockets.

  I interrupt. ‘She won’t read it. She hasn’t read anything other than a Georgette Heyer in decades. Her eyes aren’t good enough to read a book now, even if she wanted to, which she won’t.’

  She snaps – ‘That’s really not the point!’ – and I feel how fragile she is beneath this outrage, how close she is to crumbling.

  And who can blame her? Her marriage is obviously in trouble – she isn’t wearing her wedding ring – her children are out of control and her career could well implode. Even though she is behaving as if she has the moral high ground, I suddenly feel sorry for her. She looks so shaken. I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure I want to do this.

  ‘Lady Burley has two photos of Annabel. You know how badly we needed those,’ she says crossly.

  I had no idea she had photos of Annabel. Lady Burley alw
ays did have a devious streak and I rather admire her for it. I imagine she wanted to save that little piece of glory for when Olivia eventually came to see her. She’d probably planned to whip the photos out and watch Olivia’s face light up, then soak in all the gratitude.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re smiling, Vivian. She had all sorts of other things too, she remembers Uncle Quentin talking about Annabel’s wolfhound. She had a story – an actual direct memory from Uncle Quentin – of Annabel performing an autopsy on the dog on the croquet lawn. That’s a gold-dust story. But anyway, none of this is what I’m most bothered about. This isn’t why I had to speak to you. What I’m really, really bothered about is the dog.’

  ‘The dog?’ I have to hand it to her, she does have an eye for detail.

  We are deep in the woods, now, crossing the creek where Bertie loved to splash. The light is thick and muted, as if an old military blanket has been dropped over the treetops.

  ‘You must know what dog!’ Her voice is hard. ‘Thoby. The terrier in Annabel’s diary.’ She stops and stares at me. The tip of her nose is red and despite the gloom her irises are bright. ‘Thoby, Vivian?’

  I try to make my face impassive. I can smell the rotting leaves beneath our feet. A squirrel undulates across our path, clutching a nut, scoots up the tree trunk and vanishes into the tangle of branches above us. I move off. She follows.

  ‘Annabel’s dog, in 1898, was a wolfhound called Filcher. He’s in the photograph. Lady Burley says the Burleys only ever had wolfhounds. And this is where it gets really unsettling: she told me your childhood dog was called Thoby.’

  So, they talked about that, too. She really must have worked it out now.

  Her skin looks translucent in this half-light, as if she is beginning to dissolve from the inside out. There is something about her face that makes me think of my mother and I feel a familiar jolt of longing mixed with fear. Of course, my perception of my mother’s physical state is very muddied because when she visits me at night she is always so mutilated and frightening. My mother’s face is the colour of parchment, her eyes are ink smears; you cannot see her irises and the gash on her forehead seeps.

  Olivia is talking again. ‘What I can’t get my head around is how expert the diary is, if it’s a hoax. It’s been authenticated.’ She sounds as if she’s talking to herself, trying to lay it all out in order to persuade herself that her fears are misguided. ‘The ink shows the right compounds for the kind used in the late 1800s. The paper’s definitely from the period and the handwriting, the phrasing, it’s all completely authentic too.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. The path has become muddy; clay sucks at our boots. Ahead, I can see my hollow oak and the little mound at its feet, and I remember how, in summertime, I used to happily sit in its shade and watch Bertie on his frantic search for rabbits.

  ‘Is it a fake, Vivian?’ She half-whispers it, as if we might be overheard in the middle of a Sussex wood. ‘Was it Uncle Quentin? Is that what this is? Was he trying to destroy his stepmother’s reputation?’

  It is interesting to see Olivia struggle with the facts like this. It must take quite an effort for her not to articulate what, deep down, she must know. I can see her fear tenting, inflating, threatening to take off. ‘I know you know,’ she hisses. ‘Tell me!’

  I bring her to a halt by the neat mound of earth, but she doesn’t even notice it. She is too busy being frightened of the truth.

  ‘She shoved Quentin in a boarding school aged three; he hated her. He could have had a Victorian notebook lying around Ileford, he could have had some Victorian ink too. He was a storyteller, wasn’t he? Did he fake the diary, then change his mind about going public with it?’ Her skin has shrunk around her eyes, making them bulge. Suddenly, her voice rises, sharply. ‘Vivian! You have to tell me the truth. Have we lied? Have we duped the public – my public?’

  It is almost a childlike cry and it startles the rooks; they fling themselves into the sky, panicking, their rasping caws echoing across the tree canopy that stretches above us.

  She hasn’t even noticed where we’re standing. I suppose the headstone is quite small, but it was the biggest I could carry to this spot with my bad knee. I carved the words into it myself using a screwdriver, so perhaps they are a little hard to make out. But she doesn’t so much as glance down. Her eyes are fixed on me.

  I look away. It is too much to meet her gaze. I suddenly remember my teenage obsession with collective nouns. I used to make lists of them: a watch of nightingales, a stare of owls, a mutation of thrushes, a murder of crows. I look at my hollow oak and I think of all the life teeming inside her, unseen, concealed, unappreciated but vital.

  When I manage to look at Olivia again her face has screwed itself up like a crushed ball of paper. ‘Jesus Christ, Vivian! Talk to me!’

  ‘Do you know,’ I say. ‘Some people maintain that the collective noun for beetles should be a “fondness”? It came from a famous saying that God, if he existed, must have had a distinct fondness for beetles because he made so many of them – about four hundred thousand known species and goodness knows how many that have not yet been discovered. It’s a rather pleasant collective noun, isn’t it? Unlike that for crows.’

  ‘Why are you talking about this now?’ she cries. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Mad? I don’t think so. I just think people should know that one in four species on this planet is a beetle. It’s staggering when you think about it. They’re everywhere, they make our planet function, but we rarely even notice them.’

  Two puce spots have appeared on Olivia’s cheekbones. ‘I’m not going to start talking to you about beetles, Vivian! I can’t even go there with you right now. That’s a whole other conversation we need to have, but not now. Definitely not now.’

  I consider telling her that the collective noun for historians is an argumentation, but instead I say, ‘Uncle Quentin didn’t do this, Olivia.’

  Her face drains of any remaining colour. She stares at me with dark eyes.

  I look down at Bertie’s mound. I almost feel that I should give her some privacy, now, let her get there on her own, which she will, because a part of her has been there for eighteen months.

  Olivia is astoundingly good at lying to herself. It is perhaps her greatest talent.

  I notice a dead branch next to Bertie’s stone. Clumps of black-fingered, white-tipped candlesnuff fungus have pushed through the pores of the wood. They look both sinister and beautiful.

  Her voice is low and shaky. ‘What are you saying, Vivian? What do you know?’

  ‘What do I know?’ I shove my hands in the deep overcoat pockets. Here we go. ‘What do I know? Well, quite a lot, as it happens. I know that it is possible, though not easy, to source a Victorian notebook – some auctions or antiquarian bookshops, including one in Lewes, have them. Finding an unused one is tricky, but you can always tear a few pages out. I know that it’s relatively simple to source ink from the 1890s in auction too. You can even get it on eBay, believe it or not, though I wouldn’t have relied on that. I know that the writing of that era can be close to a modern hand and that it is actually quite hard to disguise your own handwriting, even with a lot of effort, using an unfamiliar dip pen. You have to think carefully about the construction, spacing, pressure and size of each letter, and to keep it consistent. But, like most things in life, if you are dogged, if you really put your mind to it, focus, stick at it and master the detail, then it is perfectly possible to develop great skill in calligraphy and expertise in forgery.’

  Her hands are covering her mouth now; her long white fingers, punctuated by dark nail polish, press against her lips.

  ‘I also know that if you read enough Victorian letters in the British Library archives, then you will find that eventually the idiom of a spirited lady of the period comes quite naturally, though it is always best to double check phrases and words in the Oxford English Dictionary to be sure that the citation comes before the date from which you are composing.’

>   High above us the disturbed rooks wheel and caw, reluctant to return to their rookeries.

  ‘I also know, Olivia, that narcissism, egotism, the desire for glory, trumps good sense. Privileged people, I’ve found, are particularly prone to this failing. The more superior a person considers themselves to be, the less trouble they have believing that wonderful things will just drop into their laps. They call it “fate”, or “kismet”, “destiny”, “karma”. They say things like, “The universe just wants me to do this.” They accept an improbable gift horse because have an unshakable belief that they’re special and therefore special things will happen to them.’

  She is rooted to the spot, ghoulishly white.

  ‘I also know that integrity seems ever so black or white until it’s tested, at which point it quickly turns very grey indeed.’

  She cannot speak. I really do feel sorry for her now. I always thought that when I taught her this lesson, showed her my proof, I would feel triumphant. I do not. I actually feel very uncomfortable. Her eyes are huge and horrified. I want to stop but I can’t because all this has been stacked inside me for a long time and the truth needs to come out, even though the telling is unpleasant for both of us.

  ‘It suited you not to question the diary too deeply,’ I continue, ‘just as it was convenient for you that I did most of the legwork. It suited you to ignore certain facts and to invent things and leave things to me. I’m the only person who knows the truth about all this. That probably makes you very nervous. You’re wondering if I’m going to go public.’

  I can see my revelations darting over the surface of her mind like whirligig beetles, chaotic, uncatchable, too fast to pin down. She has been holding it all together, but now it is all coming down around her. Suddenly, her posture collapses. She looks hunched and battered. I don’t want to see her this way. She looks damaged. I don’t really want to hurt her like this. I’m fond of her. I realize that, in fact, I want to help her.

  And all at once I know how to do that. I can see a way out – for both of us. There is a way forward that would suit us both perfectly. It would mean putting the past aside. It would mean forgiveness. A challenge, but perhaps we are capable of it.