by Erica Brown
Slipping from his horse, he passed its reins to a sailor he recognized as having once served under him. ‘Ride to Heinkel’s Refinery. Ask for help. Tell them I sent you.’
By the time help came from the refinery, Tom’s muscles were aching with the effort of passing pails of water, hoping there was no one left on board, but having no time to count the boys or rouse them from their terrified stupor.
The men from the sugar refinery automatically formed long lines, working in unison. Conrad was there too, towering above everyone, barking orders one minute, and saying prayers the next.
Tom sent the sailor and a gang of men to the shed where the insurance company kept their horses and pumping engine, though
in his heart of hearts he already knew it was too late. He instructed an innkeeper to give the boys food and drink.
‘I’ll stomach the costs,’ he added.
Shortly before dawn, the charred timbers of the Miriam Strong crashed into the water, sending up a great plume of spray. Slowly she sank, steam mixing with smoke as she finally came to rest.
Exhausted with the effort of it all, Tom stared, his arms hanging lifeless at his sides.
Like the skeleton of an upturned beetle, the ship’s ribs stuck up through the muddied water, unrecognizable objects floating like digested food in between them.
Face caked with soot and hair singed by falling sparks, he turned away from the ship. Conrad Heinkel put a hand on his back. ‘I am sorry for this, Tom.’
Tom’s throat was too dry to speak, burned up with the dry air and thick smoke. ‘I have to tell Jeb. It was his ship. He got her years ago…’
His voice faded. What a sorry sight he must look, his hair and eyebrows singed; even his eyes felt blistered by the heat.
Conrad thrust a jug of water in front of his face and bade him drink. ‘Never mind the ship,’ he said.
Tom swallowed and looked at the boys, who had declined the innkeeper’s offer to sleep in his very comfortable rooms. They looked back at him expectantly.
‘Are you all here?’
He began counting.
One of the older boys said, ‘Mr Palmer’s not here.’
He knew already. Jimmy was the reason he’d attempted to put the fire out, even when he realized it was impossible. If Jimmy had been alive, he would have been out here, standing side by side with his boys.
Tom had known Jimmy Palmer since the minute he’d first set foot on a deck. The flat-bottomed decanter was never empty and Jimmy was a serious drinker. Tom guessed Jimmy had drunk enough of it last night to send him into a deep sleep. He had been a sea-going man, so Tom thought no less of him for it. He’d been a hard man who’d led a hard life. And he’d been a friend. Tom would miss him.
‘Are they all here?’ Conrad asked.
Tom shook his head. ‘All but one.’
He scoured the dirty faces that looked up at him, searching for one face above all others and not finding it. ‘Where’s Clarence?’
The same boy who’d answered his earlier question, spoke up now. ‘I think he got off. Don’t know fer sure though.’
Fear made Tom suddenly angry. ‘Did you see him get off the ship, or didn’t you?’ he shouted.
The boy winced.
‘The boy is frightened. Please. Be gentle.’ He could not resist Conrad’s strength and soft voice. His anger, at least towards the boys, died.
‘I saw someone,’ said a small boy with dribble hanging from the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t fink it was ’im though. Looked like a man.’
‘A man?’
Tom and Conrad exchanged looks.
Tom asked, ‘Who was this man?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Just a man. Seen ’im about though.’
Tom sank slowly to his knees until his face was level with that of the boy. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Well, he didn’t have much hair, and ’ad a boil as big as an onion growing out of ’is nose.’
* * *
Lady Verity Strong bundled the baby back to Blanche and refastened her dress. ‘Take her away.’ She’d been in a mood all morning. According to Edith, her husband had stormed out of the house the night before, after she’d accused him of neglecting her. Obviously he hadn’t come home and Lady Verity suspected the worst.
Rumour below stairs was that he had another woman who was young, possibly foreign, named Susannah, information gleaned by way of the coachman whose job it was to take Sir Emmanuel into the city and wait around till all hours of the night. Rarely did he get back in time for breakfast nowadays.
Still hungry, the baby began to mew, her face screwed up in protest. Blanche tried to soothe the child, jiggling her about in her arms, but to no avail.
‘She hasn’t had enough,’ she protested.
Verity snapped her gaze away from the brimming breakfast tray Soames had deposited on the bedside table and glared at her.
‘How dare you! The child is mine, not yours. Now take her away. I’ve given her enough.’ She rubbed at her nipples with her fingers. ‘Besides, she hurts me. Now, where’s Prince Charles?’
The little dog leapt on to his mistress’s lap, licking slyly at her hand, which Verity interpreted as affection. It was more likely the dog could smell spilled milk, Blanche thought.
‘But if you use the lanolin—’ Blanche began.
Lady Verity’s small blue eyes were like stone above her round cheeks. ‘Mutton fat, no matter what fancy name you may give it! It may have escaped your notice, Brown, but I am the mistress here and I give the orders. Take her away. Now!’
Clenching her jaw so she wouldn’t say the things on the tip of her tongue, Blanche retreated. Leaving the baby hungry was cruel but her opinion would count for nothing. I’m getting to know my place here, she thought grimly, and I don’t like it.
Alicia May wriggled with vexation all the way along the landing. ‘Sshh,’ said Blanche, and wondered whether she dared give the child cow’s milk. So long as it was boiled first, it should be all right.
Back in the nursery, Blanche put Alicia down in her crib. She glanced at the clock, wondering if she had enough time to visit Reverend Strong. He’d been ill for the past few days, though Edith said he was a little better now.
The door swung open just as she was about to open it and make her way to the Reverend’s room.
Tom filled the doorway, and although she smiled warmly at him in welcome, his face was like stone.
‘Captain,’ she said, thinking it might be appropriate to address him formally. ‘I haven’t seen you in days.’
He clenched his jaw so hard that slight hollows appeared beneath his cheeks. ‘I have had no occasion to seek you out until now.’
‘I’m sorry about Saturday—’ she began.
‘So am I,’ he said coldly. ‘Here,’ he said, handing her the letter from Conrad. ‘This is for you.’
Whatever was eating at Tom? Was it because she had not been able to accompany him to Bristol with the children and Edith?
Faced with the sudden possibility that he’d seen her with Nelson, she felt her face burning with shame. She shouldn’t have done it. Holding the letter with both hands against her chest, she could hardly bear to ask.
For a moment it looked as though he was going to say something, his mouth moving, almost forming words, then straightening in a tight, hard line.
She watched him stalk off, his image flicking from mirror to mirror all along the landing. It was like watching ripples on a lake. It hurt to see him go and she felt bereft.
For a while she stared at the letter, presuming it was a goodbye note from Tom. When she opened it she found it was not.
Dear Miss Bianca,
My children were full of praise for your advice on making a kite. They have not stopped talking about you. Rarely have I seen them happier since their mother died. I ask you to consider taking her place and therefore a marriage between us. You need time to think about this, I know, and should give me your answer when you have consider
ed the advantages of such a match.
Respectfully yours,
Conrad Johann Heinkel
A marriage proposal!
Taken completely by surprise, Blanche sunk into a chair, the letter fluttering from her hand.
The words were touching. Hardly a love letter, almost a contract, based on her instruction to his children on how best to make a kite!
She had no doubt that Conrad was a good man and she’d have a comfortable life, with the security and comfort most women only dreamed of.
Carefully, she picked up the letter, refolded it and put it into her trinket box. She’d just closed the lid when Edith barged in.
‘Mrs Grainger’s put George up in the attic, Blanche! Do something, please do something,’ Edith wailed.
‘Look after the baby,’ said Blanche immediately.
‘What are you going to do?’ Edith asked.
Blanche set her mouth in a straight line. ‘Get him down, of course.’
If she’d been less upset about Alicia May being hungry, less angry about George being locked in the attic, she might have seen from Edith’s eyes that she was lying. But she did not, and rushed headlong for the narrow staircase that led to the attic.
The marks of many footprints left a trail through the dust. Ahead of her, a thin sliver of light fell from a door that was slightly ajar. Blanche crept forward on tiptoe and did her best to ignore her thudding heart.
Old boards untrodden for years creaked beneath her feet. There were ghosts up here, according to Edith, and all the servants agreed. Blanche didn’t need to believe in ghosts purely on their say-so. She’d seen enough in Barbados to scare her into believing that this world was not the only one.
‘Might be a mad relative hid up there,’ Edith had said, and Blanche had laughed. But what if Edith was right? She shivered and told herself not to be a fool. Shabby, dull and dreary, but no sign of mad relatives. I’ve seen stone shacks kept better than this, she said to herself. The paint on the walls was dull. Dust lay on the window ledge to her left and the door ahead looked dry and narrow, untouched for some time. It squeaked like a dying mouse as she pushed it open. Before her courage failed her, she stepped into the attic.
‘George?’
Her voice echoed among the dust-covered furniture, discarded portraits and leather-bound chests.
Not a sob. Not a murmur.
A flurry of wings against a shuttered window made her jump.
‘Just a bird,’ she said, her hand against her heart as she waited for it to stop racing.
‘Silly,’ she said, clicking her tongue at her foolishness. ‘There’s no one up here.’
Saying it out loud reinforced her courage. And then it was gone. Her heart almost stopped, or at least it felt that way, as she saw a figure standing silhouetted against a large, round window.
She gasped, half expecting it to be the mad relative Edith had insisted was imprisoned up here. She stepped backwards and bumped into the door.
The figure stepped away from the window, features forming as he stepped into the light.
‘Blanche?’
Nelson held out his arms.
‘Blanche,’ he said again. ‘I’m sorry I got Edith to lie, but I thought you wouldn’t see me otherwise. I get the impression you’ve been avoiding me, but I don’t understand why. And I want us to be friends again. I want us to lie on the beach in Barbados and make love in the sun.’
Shaking her head, she knew without a doubt that the magic of those evenings in Barbados was gone for ever. The man who’d made love to her in the churchyard was different from the man who’d made love to her in Barbados. This man before her was different again. His eyes stared. His skin glistened and was pale. Purple rings circled his eyes and his voice was strange, as if he no longer owned it. Apollo, her golden god, had become Pan her demon lover.
‘The doctor told you not to take opium,’ she said softly.
He laughed. ‘Cook’s biscuits, the special ones she makes for me. It’s the leaves, you see. She thinks they’re sage or caraway seeds.’ He pulled her close, laughing at her struggles, saying something about taking her to paradise, lying naked beneath silken sheets, tented roofs, and seas of midnight stars.
‘You’re mad,’ she said, still struggling and dragging herself to the door. She thought she was getting the better of him, was almost there, until he kicked it shut behind her.
He knocked her arm as she reached for the handle. ‘I’m not mad! I’m sane. You’re mad for not wanting to be with me in Barbados. Who else would you want to be with? Tom?’ He laughed. ‘You can’t have Tom. My sister wants Tom. Don’t you know that?’
She decided to humour him. ‘I’ll go with you to Barbados in time.’
‘In time?’
‘Not yet,’ she said, smiling up at him as if she really meant to reconsider. ‘Besides, we don’t need to be in Barbados, do we? We can be together here.’
He gathered her close, his lips brushing her hair. ‘We could indeed,’ he said dreamily, his eyes closing. ‘And I could paint you and write poems to you – with the help of Cook’s wonderful biscuits. “Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.” ’
‘Those aren’t your words. That’s not your poem.’
Nelson laughed. ‘That’s not the point. I can write poetry as visionary, by smoking or chewing a little hashish, just as Coleridge did.’
Blanche backed away, shaking her head, and feeling foolish that she’d let him make love to her. ‘No,’ she said, now flat against the door. ‘No.’
‘Blanche, if we don’t run away to Barbados, I will have to marry my lacklustre cousin, whose mother dictates everything she does?’
Blanche almost laughed. ‘Everything?’
Nelson made a po-face. ‘Imagine the honeymoon!’
It was hard not to be amused, but the look in Tom’s eyes haunted her. She’d hurt him, she could see that now. He’d been to Bristol that day, and she’d been with Nelson. He must have seen them. He must have.
As she was distracted by her thoughts, Nelson took advantage and dragged her back towards him, pulling her dress from her shoulder and exposing one nipple. The sight of it seemed to inflame him. She twisted away, but he spun her round and tried to knock her legs from under her as he rained kisses upon her neck and shoulders. If he hadn’t stepped on a loose dustsheet and revealed a painting, she would have continued to struggle. Instead she froze. If she hadn’t known she was looking at a painting, she would have thought she was looking into a mirror. The woman looking out at her had her own grey eyes, the same dark hair and even the same mole under her right eye, but her clothes dated from years before. It wasn’t her but someone who looked like her.
Nelson’s head fell on her shoulder, but somehow she found the strength to push him away.
‘Who is it? Who is that woman? Is it me?’ she asked, her voice trembling as she pointed at the painting.
Nelson blinked away his blurred vision and stared. ‘She looks very much like you, doesn’t she?’
‘Who is she?’ Blanche shouted, curtailing the urge to slap him.
Nelson looked shocked. ‘I’m trying to remember…’ He tugged the painting forward. ‘Verity had a lot of family portraits removed and replaced with mirrors, but I believe Father insisted they were all catalogued and notes made of their identity on the reverse of each painting, though this one looks as if it’s been up here a lot longer than the ones she had removed.’
Apprehensive, but also excited, Blanche stared at the painting.
Nelson’s face became still as he noted whatever was on the reverse. ‘It seems that Verity was not the only second wife to remove family portraits.’
All passion gone from his face, Nelson’s gaze flitted nervously between Blanche and the painting.
‘This lady is our grandmother.’
Amazed that her parentage was at last confirmed, Blanche exclaimed, ‘So I am Otis Strong’s daughter.’
Nelson shook his head. ‘No. You’
re not.’
She looked down at the painting, the clear eyes, the tumbling hair. It was her and yet it wasn’t her. The woman was paler skinned, but that was all. She was almost her double.
‘Patience Strong,’ Nelson read out.
‘What is it?’ Blanche asked, sensing that something about the painting was troubling Nelson.
In a wavering voice, he managed to say, ‘Patience Strong was my father’s mother. Samson Strong’s first wife. Uncle Jeb and Uncle Otis were the children of his second marriage. Just like my father marrying Verity and having all those brats,’ he added with a light laugh that almost seemed to choke him.
As her legs turned to jelly, Nelson looked at her, the same realization that had come to her reflected in his eyes.
Clutching at her stomach, Blanche backed towards the door shaking her head. Otis Strong was not her father. Emmanuel was. She and Nelson were brother and sister.
Suddenly, she wanted to be anywhere excepting here at Marstone Court. She ran from the room, the heels of her shoes clattering like pony hooves over the stairs and along the landing to her room.
‘Blanche!’ Nelson ran after her, but fell flat on his face before reaching the first landing.
Blanche heard the thud as he hit the floor, but didn’t stop. She’d lain with her own brother, the ultimate sin. All this time she had believed that Otis Strong was her father and Nelson her cousin. Now she knew why Emmanuel had averted his eyes rather than look into her face; not just because she was a servant, but because he remembered his mother and knew that she was his daughter. Lady Verity knew it too. She’d known of the painting’s existence when she’d first married Emmanuel and had replaced some of the Strong family portraits with mirrors. Deep down Verity hated the Strongs. Small acts of sabotage made her feel better, including smearing mud on the tomb.
And George had probably known too, sweet, lovable George who had loosened the sheet from the painting, recognized Patience as looking like Blanche, and perhaps cuddled up to it for comfort. Her mother, had she known? She remembered the perfume coming once a year on the Barbados packet from Bristol. She must have known. That was why Nelson had been sent away in the first place, though it seemed as though Viola and Otis had kept that particular secret to themselves. The Strongs would never have allowed her at Marstone Court if they’d known the truth about what had happened between Blanche and Nelson in Barbados.