She came to a decision. ‘I shall go on,’ she told Ben. ‘When the pony is ready, come down to the mill.’
‘But, ma’am, shouldn’t I go with you?’
‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘I wish you to wait for the pony.’
She set off at once, not allowing her resolution to wane, knowing that Ben would be looking after her, with that worried expression on his face. He had wit enough to know that his master would have preferred him to accompany his mistress.
In the track to the mill, the air smelled strongly of garlic because ransoms grew thickly in both verges. She walked more slowly now she was out of sight of Ben and the blacksmith. She was not carrying a watch, but she knew from the position of the sun that it could not be long after midday. It did not signify. If no one was in the way at the mill, which seemed unlikely, she would find somewhere to wait in the shade. To be by herself in public, even in this remote place, was a form of freedom. All her troubles were behind her in Cambridge – this business with Sylvia, her husband’s illness and threat of a return to friendless poverty. Here she felt almost drunk with liberty, with the sense that she might do anything and there would be no one to stop her, no one even to witness it. She had not felt so happy for months. Not since Sylvia died.
Soon she would see Mr Holdsworth. Frank, too, of course, but he was just a boy. How odd that she had only known the man for a fortnight; it seemed much longer.
The track passed through a little copse of limes and chestnuts, their leaves blindingly fresh with the green of early summer, and rounded a bend. Suddenly she was at her destination. In front of her was a gate, beyond which was the mill and its cottage. Smoke rose from a single chimney. In the shadow of the horse trough lay a ginger cat. It was watching her.
She opened the gate and crossed the cobbles. The enclosed yard was very warm. A path led her past the end of the cottage to an overgrown garden. The principal door of the house was on this side, and the windows into the downstairs rooms. She peered inside.
No one was about. There were signs of occupation, though – candlesticks, a pewter tankard and a book on the table; a coat flung carelessly over the back of a chair.
The door was ajar. She pushed it fully open and called a greeting, first softly and then more loudly. There was no response. After a moment’s hesitation she went into the cottage, thinking that perhaps she would find Mulgrave in the kitchen, which she assumed must be the room at the side with the smoking chimney. But no one was there. She felt unpleasantly like a spy.
For the first time she also felt a hint of unease. Here she was, an unchaperoned woman in an empty house in the middle of the country. True, her servant knew where she was, but he was hundreds of yards away and out of earshot. Anything might happen to her and no one would be any the wiser.
She went back into what seemed to be the room they used as a parlour and for a moment even wondered whether she should arm herself with one of the candlesticks. She picked up the book that lay beside it instead – a copy of Young’s Night Thoughts. She took it outside, intending to turn over the leaves while she waited.
The sunlight made her blink, for her eyes had already adjusted to the relative gloom of the cottage. The garden stretched down to the water; there was long, lank grass, tall weeds, foxgloves and, near the bottom, a ragged huddle of unpruned fruit trees and then a willow beyond. Something was moving among the branches of the trees, for there were flashes of white among the green. Perhaps Mulgrave had washed the shirts and hung them out to dry on the branches.
Then, as her eyes grew used to the light, there was a strange intermediate moment when she saw quite clearly what was only partly concealed by the branches on either side. The whiteness was not the whiteness of a shirt. It was skin, and the skin belonged to a tall, naked man.
Someone was speaking. The man half turned towards the sound, raising his arm and revealing more of his long, lean body. Drops of water flew away from him, scattering diamonds in the sunlight.
Elinor drew back into the shadows of the house. Her brain at last contrived to marshal the jumbled perceptions of the last few seconds and come to a conclusion.
John Holdsworth was in the garden. He was soaking wet and stark-naked.
29
‘You see?’ Frank said behind him. ‘You did not sink.’
Holdsworth turned. He was still trembling, and the drops of water flew from his body, glittering in the sunlight. ‘Only because your arm supported me.’
‘Not all the time.’ Frank dragged himself from the water and stood up, waving his arms to dry them. ‘You floated. More than that, you kicked your legs –’
‘I did not mean to. It was the act of a desperate man, and I was quite unconscious of doing it.’
‘That don’t signify. You kicked your legs and moved in, or rather on, the water. We call it swimming, Mr Holdsworth. That is the technical word for it.’
Laughing, Holdsworth unhooked his breeches from the branch of the pear tree beside him and pulled them on. ‘We had better prepare ourselves, Mr Oldershaw. It must be after noon.’
Frank’s face lost its cheerfulness. ‘I wish Mrs Carbury weren’t coming.’
‘There’s no help for it.’ Holdsworth dropped his shirt over his head, and it fluttered around him, the cotton muffling his voice. ‘Her ladyship wishes to know how you do – that’s natural enough in all conscience.’
‘What will you say?’
‘It is more a question –’ Holdsworth broke off. As his head emerged from the shirt, he happened to be facing the open door of the cottage. He was almost sure that something was moving among the shadows inside. Hurriedly he turned round, now facing the water again. ‘Damnation, I think she may be here already,’ he said in a low, urgent voice. He hurriedly tucked in his shirt. ‘Where the devil’s Mulgrave? Why hasn’t he warned us?’
When they were decent, if not respectable, in shirts and breeches, the two men walked barefoot up to the cottage, with Frank lagging behind. As they approached the doorway, Mrs Carbury rose from the chair by the table, with a book in her hand.
‘A thousand apologies, ma’am,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Have you waited long?’
‘I was before my time,’ Mrs Carbury replied, her eyes on Frank, who was standing to one side and looking at the ground. ‘The wretched pony cast a shoe, so I left him with Ben at the smithy and came the rest of the way on foot.’
‘You must be fatigued, ma’am.’
‘Oh no – I wanted exercise.’
There were hurried footsteps on the path from the mill. Mulgrave appeared, straightening his necktie and smelling strongly of tobacco. Leaving him with Mrs Carbury, Holdsworth and Frank went up to their rooms. When they returned, suitably dressed for a lady’s society, they found Mulgrave serving tea. Frank went to stand by the window, for all the world like a sulky schoolboy obliged to be civil to the grown-ups but burning to play outside. Elinor’s colour was a little higher than usual, Holdsworth noticed, which suited her to perfection. He could not understand how he had ever thought that her appearance was merely striking. Even a fool could see she was beautiful.
‘Well, Mr Holdsworth, how do you and Mr Oldershaw like Whitebeach? Do you find it agreeable?’
‘It serves its purpose admirably, thank you.’
She gave a little cough, as if clearing an obstruction from her throat, and took a sip of tea. ‘Mr Frank,’ she said. ‘I should like to take a turn in the garden. Would you be so good as to escort me?’
Frank gave an awkward bow and allowed himself to be led outside. Holdsworth sat down at the table and watched them walking down the path towards the water, with Elinor’s hand resting lightly on Frank’s arm. Her face was turned up to his, and she was speaking; but Frank was staring at the ground.
Holdsworth admired the elegant shape of Mrs Carbury’s body as it swayed from side to side. A woman in motion was a lovely thing. During this visit he would have to speak privately with her. It would not be an easy conversation. Whatever they talked about, or failed to talk about,
he would always be wondering whether she had seen him naked in the garden.
The question on Elinor’s mind as she talked to Frank Oldershaw in the garden was one that she could hardly raise with him, or indeed with anyone else. Had Mr Holdsworth realized that she had seen him as naked as Eve saw Adam before the Fall?
Even the desire to ask was mortifying. As it happened, she had never seen a fully naked man, apart from statues and in paintings, which did not count. It was true that members of the lower orders had offered her the occasional glimpse of those parts of their anatomies that decency usually concealed. But when the disordered clothing of a drunkard or a beggar revealed something of this nature, it was both easy and desirable to avert one’s eyes. The trouble was, she had seen Mr Holdsworth naked in his entirety. She had seen all of him, white and hairy, in the sunshine beside the fruit trees, and part of her had not wanted to look away. Indeed, she had found the spectacle curiously fascinating.
Mr Holdsworth had seemed perfectly happy with his nakedness, too. Even Dr Carbury, her own husband, had never revealed himself for what he truly was beneath his clothes. At the beginning of their marriage, on those very rare occasions when he had come to her in the night-time, it had been under cover of darkness; and, presumably to make absolutely sure that she saw nothing untoward, he had not removed his nightgown either. For her part, she had been glad of it: she had no desire to see her husband naked, any more than she wished him to see her in the same state.
All these considerations filled the back of her mind, heavy and stifling, like the atmosphere on the night of the great rainstorm. She tried to ignore their tiresome presence, reminding herself that she was here for a purpose.
This was the first time she had seen Frank Oldershaw since he had been removed to Dr Jermyn’s house. She was surprised by how normal he seemed. She had expected to see him unshaven, with hair unkempt, in his shirtsleeves, and perhaps with his limbs confined to a straitjacket. Instead, she walked up and down the little garden with what seemed to all outward appearances a perfectly respectable and healthy young man. Frank’s hair, still damp from the river, had been neatly arranged. He was plainly dressed in a dark coat and his manner, though subdued and uncommunicative, had nothing out of the ordinary about it. When she asked him how he did, he turned his head away and muttered that he did very well.
‘And do you prefer your present situation to Dr Jermyn’s?’
‘Yes,’ he mumbled.
‘And do you feel your health improves, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Her ladyship will rejoice to hear it. She is most anxious about you, of course, and she will want to know everything I can tell her. But she would be so glad to have a word from you directly. Is there a message I may give her from you? Or even a letter?’
He shook his head violently. He was a very good-looking young man and if anything his recent experiences had improved his appearance, for in the last few weeks he had eaten and drunk far less than usual, and exercised more. But now he looked like a child in a fit of the sulks.
‘Her ladyship lives only for you,’ Elinor said in a low voice. ‘She will be so happy to see you at her side once more. May I not at least say that you hope soon to be restored to her?’
Frank stopped walking and turned to face her. He swallowed, opened his mouth and moistened his lips. She waited patiently for him to speak.
‘Quack, quack, quack,’ he said. ‘Quack.’
Suddenly he was running down the garden. Still quacking, he waved his arms in a parody of flapping wings. He sprinted through the fruit trees and jumped into the water.
Holdsworth ran down the garden and stood on the bank. Elinor felt the air move against her cheek as he passed her. Mulgrave followed more slowly.
Have I driven the poor boy to take his own life?
Holdsworth called out something to Frank. She could not make out the words. But he sounded irritated as much as anxious.
The boy swam calmly in a wide circle, and then came to the bank, pulled himself out and allowed himself to be led up to the cottage. His sodden clothes clung to his body. He had lost one shoe in the water, and Mulgrave carried the other. Frank looked gawky and bedraggled, like an ill-made scarecrow caught in a rainstorm; he was no longer handsome. He did not look at Elinor as he passed her.
She walked up and down, feeling foolish, relieved and useless. At length, Holdsworth came out to her. She turned eagerly to him. ‘How is Frank?’
‘You look more distressed than he does, madam.’ Holdsworth was close to her now, and she would have liked to lean against him, as one leans against a tree. ‘You must sit down and recover. Would you like more tea, or perhaps brandy?’
She shook her head. ‘I will do very well as I am, thank you, sir. Are you sure he is unharmed?’
‘He is none the worse for making himself wet again. I am very vexed with him for frightening you, though. Mulgrave is upstairs with him, helping him change into dry clothes. I hope he will apologize to you in person before you leave. But in the meantime I do so on his behalf and my own.’
‘There is no need,’ she said. ‘He took me quite unawares, He seemed almost his old self at first, though subdued.’
‘What were you talking about when he lost control of himself?’
‘I mentioned his mother, and how much her ladyship wished to see him. That was when he made that foolish noise and ran off. It’s as if he’s afraid of her.’
‘We cannot hope to have him cured in just a few days, madam. I wish we could. What will you tell Lady Anne?’
‘I hardly know yet.’
She felt suddenly very weary and allowed Holdsworth to escort her back to the cottage. She stumbled as she crossed the threshold, and immediately his hand was under her elbow, steadying her. For an instant she let him take more of her weight than she needed. She felt less steady than before. He guided her to a chair.
‘I still believe that the only way to restore him to his senses is to find out what caused him to lose them in the first place,’ he said quietly when she was seated. ‘I think he trusts me a little now. Not much, perhaps, but it is a start. We need more time, ma’am. It is easy to forget how far he has already come.’
‘I shall tell Lady Anne as much.’
He sat down beside her and leaned closer. She stared at him. There was a terrifying sense of inevitability about what was happening. Was this what Sylvia had meant? To have this absolute need for someone? A compulsion to draw closer, an irrational power of attraction which had no more to do with will-power than gravity itself.
‘Madam? Shall I fetch you a glass of water?’
It was as if she had fallen from a cliff. The one thing she could not do was return to the clifftop and continue with her old life, with its familiar comforts and inconveniences. It was now merely a matter of wondering when she would hit the ground and what the impact would do to her.
Heavy footsteps were approaching on the path along the front of the cottage. Elinor drew aside from Holdsworth and took up Night Thoughts, which was at her elbow. He sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table. Neither shifted their position more than by a few inches, but there was a suddenness about their movements, as well as an unsettling symmetry.
The doorway filled almost entirely with Ben’s large figure. He blocked the light, and it was as if evening had come upon them with tropical rapidity.
He made his obedience. ‘Pony’s done now, ma’am.’
30
It was at supper that Frank began to drink. He proposed toasts, he sang songs. He encouraged Holdsworth to match him, glass for glass. Holdsworth thought this must surely be a sign of returning health. It was, he reasoned to himself, natural for a young man to want to drink deeply. Frank, under Jermyn’s care since March, had had little opportunity to do so for three months.
Mulgrave had set up a table for them under the fruit trees. They drank first one bottle, then another. Frank called for a third and ordered a fourth to be brought in readiness. They
talked in bursts interspersed with comfortable silences that grew longer as the evening slipped away.
Frank was cheerful enough, increasingly loquacious and as rational as the wine would let him be. His manner see-sawed between that of a lordly host and that of an awkward, confiding boy, but there was more of the latter than the former. He described episodes from his childhood; he dwelled in particular on his long visits to his grandfather Lord Vauden’s home in the West Country. When he spoke of the management of estates, he showed knowledge and enthusiasm. He asked Holdsworth about his apprenticeship, and Holdsworth found himself talking at length of the times he spent on the river with Ned Farmer and of their trips up the Thames.
With the third bottle, they grew quieter. It was still light, but only just. The air was soft and smelled sweet. Water rustled faintly. Mulgrave had gone to his bed in the kitchen. A solitary candle burned in the window of the cottage. There were pinpricks of light in the grey sky.
‘When did it happen?’
Holdsworth looked up. ‘What?’ He could no longer make out Frank’s face. It was as if a shadow had spoken. ‘When did what happen?’
‘Your wife, sir,’ Frank said, his face a blur. ‘Your son.’
Holdsworth did not reply. He heard the chink of glass on glass and the gurgle of wine.
‘You see, I wondered what it must be like to drown when Sylvia died,’ said the voice in the darkness. ‘And I suppose you must wonder, too. I – I do not wish to pain you. I wish to understand.’
‘My wife died last March, my son the previous November,’ Holdsworth said.
‘What were their names, pray?’
Holdsworth stared up at the sky. He caught the glimmer of another star. ‘Maria.’ He drained his own glass and stretched a hand out for the bottle. ‘Georgie.’
‘How did they die?’
Holdsworth told him. He told this rich, spoiled, mad boy things that even Ned had never heard. He told him about the little family on Bankside and the shop in Leadenhall, about the ghost light from the river, and about the day Georgie died at Goat Stairs. He told him about Maria’s search for Georgie and the charlatan who had preyed on her, about The Anatomy of Ghosts, the barrow of second-hand books and the headstone he could not afford until her ladyship had given him her money. In the darkness, his voice might have belonged to someone else, and he himself was standing aside, listening but paying little attention because the story was already familiar.
The Anatomy of Ghosts Page 24