Lost Among the Living

by Simone St. James

  I lay in bed one night as I was recovering, listening to the rain out the window and watching the wall. The signs had come that day that once again I was not pregnant. I would not have Alex’s child. I was alone.

  Someone should write a poem, I thought, about the women. Not just about the men marching bravely to war and dying, but about their wives, their girls, their mothers and sisters and daughters, sitting in silence and screaming into the darkness. Unable to fight, unable to stop it, unable to tell the war to fuck itself. We fought our war, too, it seemed to me, and if it was a war of a different kind, the pain of it was no more bearable. Someone should write a poem about the women.

  But I already knew that no one ever would.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  We were approaching All Hallows’ Eve, the tail end of autumn, when the last drifts of wet, loamy scent left the air and the world began to lose color.

  “I’m sorry you got dragged into this, Cousin Jo,” Martin said. He tugged his scarf tighter around his neck. “You must know it wasn’t my idea.”

  “I know,” I replied. We were standing outside, waiting for Cora. Martin and Cora were to go walking, and I was to accompany them, the awkward old stick of a chaperone. It wasn’t the first time.

  “She’s rather nice, you know.” Martin turned and looked back toward the house, where the front door opened and the figure of Cora, swathed in a wool coat that looked expensive even from a distance, emerged. “I think I may ask her today.”

  I hadn’t thought I would be surprised, but I was. “Are you certain?” I asked.

  “Mother has a schedule,” he said with a hint of humor. “In any case, I think we’ll get on well enough, for as long as I’m alive.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been saying that to her,” I said. “It’s hardly the ideal way to court a woman.”

  That made him smile. “I haven’t, I promise. Though I hardly know the ideal way to court a woman, do I? I’ve never done it.”

  “I’m sure you’re doing fine.”

  He gave me a curious look. “How did Alex court you?” he asked.

  The memory gripped me heavily for a moment, fraught with emotion, then let me go. “He took me to dinner,” I replied.

  “That was all?”

  “That was all.”

  Martin gave a low whistle.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Manders.” This was Cora, approaching us with her hands in the pockets of her expensive coat, a perfectly matched cloche hat on her head. Despite the sophisticated clothes, her gait was awkward, the coat hanging heavy on her gawky frame. She looked almost pretty, the cold air flushing her thin cheeks beneath her tilted eyes. She gave me a smile of even, white teeth.

  “Good afternoon, Cora,” I said. If she insisted on addressing me like an ancient matron, I might as well act like one.

  Martin glanced back at the house, where undoubtedly at least one parent was watching us from a window. “Let’s head off and figure out today’s route.”

  He offered Cora his arm, and she took it, squeezing it a little and turning the smile on him. Martin said something to her as they walked, and Cora laughed, the sound honking over the trees. “You’re a funny one,” she said, her voice drifting back to me where I followed behind them. Then she leaned in toward him and said something I couldn’t hear.

  I sighed. Chaperoning was positively the worst job in the world, worse than taking Dottie’s abuse in the library or listening to Casparov’s innuendoes. So far, I’d had to sit out of earshot as the two of them strolled among the abandoned stables and the overgrown tennis courts. I’d brought a book with me the second time, when it became clear I didn’t particularly need to stare at the courting couple as they sat side by side, talking quietly, Cora occasionally laughing at Martin’s jokes. Today they’d decided to walk in the woods. I swallowed my dread and tried to appear calm about it. It wouldn’t do for the dried-up chaperone to go raving about mists and dogs barking and Martin’s dead sister at the crucial point of the courtship.

  When we were well into the trees, Martin stopped and Cora dropped her hand from his arm.

  “Where d’you want to go?” Martin asked her.

  Cora snapped her sleeve smartly and checked her watch. “I don’t know. How long will satisfy them?”

  “Forty-five minutes or so,” Martin said. He turned to me. “What do you think, Cousin Jo?”

  I shrugged. “Forty-five minutes sounds good to me.”

  “All right,” Martin said. The wind blew through the trees, and the tips of his ears were already growing red with cold. He turned to Cora. “That gives me enough time to take you over the rise toward the village before we have to turn back. It’s a bit steep in places, though. What do you think?”

  She bit her lip, her eyes on Martin’s face. “I’m dressed nice and I didn’t eat much breakfast,” she said. “Can we do something easier?”

  In that moment, I began to like Cora Staffron. Despite her thin frame and no doubt knobby knees, she was hardy and could have done the walk—or even a longer one—without losing her breath. It was Martin who would struggle. I silently applauded her.

  “Easier? Yes, I suppose.” Martin thought it over, oblivious to the subtext. “We’ll go toward the village. Then I’ll bring you around the back way by the path through the woods. No rocks that way. Sound good?”

  “Well, sure,” Cora said.

  Martin turned back to me. “Right back here in forty-five minutes, then. Do you have somewhere to go, Cousin?”

  I paused in surprise, and his cheeks flushed. It had been demeaning enough to follow them about before, but now I was to be overtly abandoned. I recovered myself. “Yes, of course,” I said.

  Cora looked at me brightly. “You should have brought some birding binoculars. You could have smuggled them under your coat and no one watching would know.”

  I stared at her. She really did see me as ancient. “Or perhaps I should have brought a flask.”

  She only laughed. “Wouldn’t that be funny!”

  I agreed it would be, and we went our separate ways. It was a relief of sorts—I realized as I stepped into the shadowed silence that I had been straining even to make the most meaningless small talk. But I did not want to be alone in the woods, even on a sunny day. When they were out of sight, I paused on the path, and my gloved hand slipped into my pocket and touched the piece of paper there.

  Keep it together, Jo.

  The fear closed around me for a full moment as I listened to the soft sounds of the forest, the wind rushing through the trees, the far-off calls of birds. I could not go back to the house, or everyone would know that Martin and Cora were alone. And I could not follow them and intrude.

  So I kept walking. Martin had told me once of a particularly nice vista over the sea, in the other direction from the village, so I took the path away from my charges. I made my way over the treacherous ground on numb feet, stepping over ruts and puddles, sweating beneath my coat and hat as I climbed a rise, the wind chilling the thin perspiration on my forehead.

  When I finally reached the place, I stopped in silent wonder. I was at the very western edge of the woods, on the side facing away from the house and the village, at the place where the trees ended. Just past my feet was a clearing that fell off and sloped sharply down, and beyond it the rocky terrain wound along the coast toward the horizon. The ocean was gray and cold below me, the shore sharp and forbidding, but still the view was breathtaking. I let the wind buffet the brim of my hat and the collar of my coat, taking in the vast expanse.

  Just visible several miles down the shore was a low and blocky set of buildings, clustered within a fenced-in square of land. It sat quiet and dull in the sunshine, placed right on the edge of the water, where several small boats were moored. This must be the Ministry of Fisheries, where Colonel Mabry claimed to be assisting somehow. It lo
oked sleepy and silent, and I saw not a whisper of movement.

  I turned back to look at the water. There were no pleasure boats, no sloops or neat little sails. This was choppy water, deep and cold. Far on the horizon was the silhouette of a large ship, its smokestacks belting into the sky. Seabirds crisscrossed the shoreline, calling to one another in high, shrill voices. I saw not one other human figure.

  I am alone, I thought.

  The wind stung my eyes, but the tears on my cheeks were not from the cold. Here, in this remote place where no one could see me, I did not wipe them away, but let them dry, salty, on my skin.

  Keep it together, Jo.

  I pulled the letter I’d received this morning from my pocket, unfolded it, and looked at it for the hundredth time. The wind flapped the page sharply, but I held on, watching the words blur.

  We are very sorry to inform you that Mrs. Christopher passed away last night in her sleep. There was no warning, and she spent yesterday as usual, so the doctors have declared that her heart stopped as she was sleeping. Though this news must grieve you, please accept our assurances that Mrs. Christopher went to her Maker peacefully, without struggle or pain, and that she rests now in the arms of Heaven as innocent as a child, as all of our patients do.

  There are certain arrangements to be made . . .

  I lifted the letter higher, watched it flap in the wind. I thought of my mother, her beautiful hair, her porcelain skin, the fine bones of her wrists, the dark half circles under her eyes like bruises. All of those years with the refrain in the back of my mind—Where is Mother? What is she doing? Is she all right?—were over. She had been a mystery, a labyrinth of rooms I could not know, and now she was gone, unknowable forever, and I had no one left to worry about. Had she remembered me, even as she died? Had there been any memory of me at all?

  I doubted it. Mother and I were strangers; last night I had been in my bedroom at Wych Elm House, reading a book by lamplight, as she had been dying. But without Alex she was all I had, the only thing mooring me to the earth. With Mother gone, I suddenly felt as insubstantial as the leaves in Wych Elm House, as transient as Frances Forsyth’s face printed in nitrate on a piece of paper. Someday I would vanish, and no one would ever know I’d been.

  Where is your Mother?

  The wind tried to snatch the letter from my hand, but I would not let it go. Eventually I folded it again and put it back in my pocket. Then I wiped my eyes.

  I turned my steps away and walked back toward the path, to meet Martin and Cora as they came my way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It was a surprise to no one that Cora and Martin emerged from their walk in the woods engaged. In the jubilation that followed among both sets of parents, I kept the news of Mother’s death quiet, privately asking Dottie for time off to travel to Hertford for her funeral and to sign the papers from the hospital.

  Dottie had been distracted as I spoke, but when I came to my reason for the time, she turned her gimlet eyes on me with perfect focus. “That is a shame, Manders,” she said. “You may have the day. Take the motorcar and driver.”

  “I will, thank you.”

  “Are there any financial concerns?”

  It took me a moment to realize she was asking if I was capable of paying for Mother’s funeral. “The hospital is burying her in their chapel yard,” I said. “It’s where many of their patients go. The expense is modest.”

  “They’ll bury her properly, then,” Dottie said. “Make sure they do. If any of the arrangements are unsatisfactory, have them telephone me.”

  She was awful—she had granted me only a single day off, and in a moment she would forget about me altogether as she planned Martin and Cora’s engagement party—but my eyes stung with embarrassing tears. She had buried Frances properly and had likely had to fight to do it. She was willing to fight the same fight on my behalf for Mother. Why Dottie made it so hard to befriend her, I would never know.

  “Thank you,” I managed.

  “Eight o’clock Thursday morning, Manders,” she said in reply. “Look sharp, as we’ll be busy. I detest maudlin emotions.”

  “Yes, Dottie.”

  As it happened, the hospital did bury Mother properly. Their chapel yard was calm and green, well tended, with a view over the rolling hills. They gave her a small stone, with her name and dates, and the simple word BELOVED. Aside from the hospital’s chaplain and one nurse on behalf of the staff, I was the only one in attendance.

  It was on the ride back in the motorcar, as I half dozed beneath a headache of grief, that I suddenly realized I would no longer be paying Mother’s hospital bills. The expense that had burdened me for so many years—that had driven me to work for Casparov, and therefore meet Alex and change my life; that had driven me to work for Dottie, and to change my life again—was gone. I would still have to support myself, but I now earned enough to put a few pounds into savings. The relief was so hideous that I wept in horror at myself, with no witness but the silent driver. By the time we arrived back at Wych Elm House, I was myself again.

  • • •

  The engagement party was to be grand, the first social affair Wych Elm House had seen since Dottie’s father had bought it for her. The bride’s parents had offered to host it, as was custom, but Dottie had insisted; she used the excuse that Martin’s health prevented him from traveling, which was accurate, but the truth was she wanted badly to show off.

  The arrangements were many: flowers, china, additional servants, champagne, music, food. Dottie and I were kept busy morning and night, and though it was dull work, it was a blessing, because there was no room to think of anything else.

  Though Martin and Cora were the feted couple, they had nothing to do with the arrangements. I rarely saw them. Martin had taken a turn for the worse again, as if the effort of courtship and proposing had taxed him, and Cora took to reading to him in the back study as he lay on the sofa with a blanket over him. Her voice was grating, her pronunciation terrible, and her reading hardly expert, but still he lay there hour after hour, his eyes closed, as she read on.

  Though I was no longer on chaperone duty, I had been tasked with occasionally satisfying propriety and checking on them. The first time I did so, Martin saw the look on my face and took my hand. He gave it a brief squeeze and shook his head once in silent communication. He was not back on morphine, then. I squeezed his hand in return.

  Robert, now freed from the work of courting the Staffrons, fled the house in his motorcar. He spent evenings at the neighbors’ again, though he sometimes stayed home for dinner and curbed his all-night assignations. He never looked at me or spoke to me, for which I was grateful. As soon as the ink was on the marriage certificate, we might never see him again.

  Life went on. I slept as little as ever; my nightmares were vivid and horrible. I watched the pageant before me, made lists of linens and silverware, flowers to be ordered and invitations sent and responded to, and at night I paged through Frances’s sketchbook, looking at the shadows she’d drawn over the town I visited and the house I lived in, staring at the face she’d drawn in the window of my bedroom. Twice I ventured to the upper gable again, standing and waiting, hoping Frances would tell me how it had happened, who had done it. I lived separate from the family, alone in my visions and dreams. I wondered if I was suffering from what Mother’s doctors had politely called “nervous exhaustion.” I vaguely realized I had begun to let go of my life, to let it march without me.

  And then the morning of the party dawned, and I decided to take out my camera again.

  • • •

  I hadn’t planned to do it. After the encounter with Robert—I could still remember the shock of seeing the figure of Frances past his shoulder—I had packed the camera away and left it. But I lay awake as dawn broke one morning and remembered that Frances had placed the camera on the floor of my room that day. And when I had taken the camera out,
she had appeared. It was the last time I had seen her.

  I could feel her somewhere close to me, watching, waiting. Perhaps the camera was the key.

  I rose and dressed quickly, putting on layers to keep warm. Thick stockings, the plaid skirt Dottie had forbidden me to wear, and both a blouse and a sweater over my chemise. I twisted my hair back in an unkempt bun. Then I took Alex’s camera from its case and, shoeless, crept out my door into the hall.

  The corridor was silent; there was no sound behind Cora’s closed door, or from her parents’ room down the hall. The servants would be up soon, so I moved quickly.

  Downstairs, I padded through the kitchen to the back door. In the vestibule there, I pressed the small button for the electric light and looked at the array of outerwear hanging from hooks and lined in rows along the floor. I did not own shoes that were warm or thick enough for November in the countryside. Setting down the camera, I rifled through the belongings of the Forsyth family, looking for something that fit. I ended up with a slick black mackintosh that was tight in the shoulders—Dottie’s, perhaps?—and a pair of large, ungainly rubber boots that fit my feet perfectly and came halfway up my calves. I contemplated the boots as I wiggled my toes in their chilly interiors. I could not imagine Dottie wearing rubber boots even at knifepoint, and they were too small to be Robert’s. It was quite likely that they had been Frances’s.

  I found a mismatched green woolen scarf, tucked it around my neck, and set out.

  It seemed that morning that I had the world to myself. The air was pungent with cold, frosted leaves, and my breath plumed in the air. Dawn had lightened the sky just enough so I could see the knobbed trunks of the trees and the path as it wound into the early-morning mist before me. The night’s chill fog still shrouded the woods, so that the trees seemed to vanish upward into unseen eternity, and cries came from invisible birds. The few leaves left on the trees dripped water with a persistent wet sound, and the loamy path sponged frostily beneath the soles of Frances’s rubber boots.