The Woman in the Mirror:

by Rebecca James

  ‘Good day,’ I say.

  ‘Not much o’ one,’ he growls back. I had expected the man to pass without comment, such was his bearing, so I am satisfied that he stops. ‘Rain’s comin’ in,’ he says in a broad West Country accent, ‘you’re best off indoors. This in’t no place for a lady. You’re the one up at Winterbourne, are you? I might’ve guessed. You’ve got the look.’

  ‘My name’s Alice Miller. You must be Marlin.’

  ‘They already told you about me, did they? That meddling housekeeper reckons she hears the dogs at night. She’ll be lucky. We don’t go near that place any more. It’s evil. Got a bad spirit in it – or so they say. My dogs know better.’

  ‘Mrs Yarrow mentioned you walk the dogs on the cliffs.’

  ‘No fear I do,’ he says. The drizzle is coming down steadily now, an integral sort of wetness that seems to come from inside the air rather than falling from it. ‘We used to take our walks u’ there when Mrs de Grey was alive. Then it went bad. There’s a funny thing about that house, make no mistake.’

  ‘What do you mean, a funny thing?’

  ‘The dogs won’t have it. They can smell it, whatever it is. I trust my dogs. They’re just about the only things I do trust. They know when something’s wrong.’ The dogs are paddling round his boots, staying close to their master. I think of Tipper at the cellar door, barking and frothing at the mouth, his ears flat, his eyes wild.

  ‘That housekeeper don’t hear a thing these days,’ he goes on. ‘We stay down here where we know what’s what. Tide can catch you fast, be sure, unless you’re friendly with the sea. But still the capt’n tells us to go. I said to him, do you own the sea as well? I told him he’s got a bad thing at Winterbourne. We don’t want to be there no more than it wants us to be there. But he don’t own the whole o’ Cornwall.’

  ‘You said things went bad after Mrs de Grey died?’

  I hear the sound of the rain spitting against his sou’wester, and the contrasting quiet as it hits mine: I’ll be soaked. But I am absorbed by Marlin. Part of me estimates he’s senseless, while another is compelled.

  ‘Things were bad before she died,’ he says. ‘That’s why she died. The bad thing didn’t want her there. It don’t want anyone there.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  His lips part, revealing a line of brownish, chipped teeth. His grin is grisly, horribly knowing. ‘You want to ask your master about that,’ he says.

  The dogs start to yowl, a thin, reedy chorus, and the rain spits down harder.

  ‘Come along, you lot,’ says Marlin, moving off, ‘time to get home.’ He turns to me. ‘You take care, lady. You take care inside that house. And you can tell your old keeper there that she’s hearing things. Likely it’s the sounds inside ’er own head – for that’s what Winterbourne does. She’s no fear of us coming close, be sure o’ that.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ I ask.

  ‘On a boat called Old Lymer, down at Polcreath Hollow.’

  He goes back the way he’s come, and I picture the shoreline winding round the crags, an endless, rugged shoreline, all around the country, and if I were to follow it for hundreds of days I would eventually come back here, to this point where I am standing now. Marlin is mad. Mrs Yarrow told me as much. He is trying to make me fearful but I will not be afraid. The captain is the victim – of the war, of his wife’s death, of his injuries. He is a man trying to do the best for his family, which includes protecting them from local dissenters. Marlin has invented a falsehood because he is angry at being told to stay away from the park. And yet I remember Tipper at that cellar door, the way the doctor could scarcely restrain him, his bloodcurdling howls…

  Wrapping my coat tight against the rain, I mount the steps away from the beach. To the east I see the faint figures of Marlin and his dogs moving further along the tide. It is only when I round a bend in the ascent that I turn to the west.

  What I see surprises me. I had imagined the beach to be deserted. I cannot imagine how anyone could have climbed down, as Tom assured me this was the only access for miles. But there it is. A dark shape, a hundred yards or so from where I stand; it is fleeting, there and then not, and then there again, most definitely there, flickering like a black candle in the distance. The space between us, and the now driving rain, makes it hard to decipher exactly. Squinting, I detect a lurching gait to its walk. I want to believe that it is Captain de Grey – for who else could it be, limping and lilting along the shoreline with a beastly determination? – and yet I don’t think it can be. It doesn’t appear to have a walking cane (although I could be mistaken: the shape shudders and shivers in the poor weather and gets further away from me still), and the thought of him stumbling down the harsh rocks is nigh on impossible.

  ‘Hello?’ I call out, but the rain swallows the word. ‘Hello there!’

  Still the figure ploughs on. In an instant it seems to melt against the sea, seeming to lower itself to the ground, seeming to crawl; in the next it is walking with that horrible pitching gait, a dark blemish. I blink, desperate to catch it, desperate to be clear. For a startling moment I believe it is expanding in my view, it is coming closer… and I rush up the steps, grappling the mud, before realising my mistake.

  My mistake is this. My mistake is not noticing. For, right above the figure on the beach is the spot where I saw her. The woman on the cliff. My dark companion.

  Chapter 14

  I rush back to Winterbourne and close the door behind me. My breath is strained from running, and I go to the window and watch the approach, biting my nails, convinced I am about to see her black shape advancing towards us through the trees.

  ‘My goodness, you’re soaked!’

  Mrs Yarrow makes me startle.

  ‘Get out of that coat, come along now.’

  ‘I’d like to lie down, Mrs Yarrow,’ I say. ‘I’m feeling unwell.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, miss, catching cold like that. You’ll soon have what the children have, I don’t doubt.’ She helps me out of my coat and makes me dry off by the fire while she fetches a pot of tea. ‘Take this up with you,’ she says, ‘and get some rest. I’ll keep an eye on the twins. I haven’t had a peep out of them so far.’

  I do as instructed, unable to help checking on Constance and Edmund beforehand, due to a nameless fear that they might have been harmed. All is well, of course. I think I hear a scuffle as I approach their door, but when I peer round the children are slumbering soundly in their beds, a picture of pure innocence.

  In my own room, I fall asleep quickly. When I wake in an hour’s time I feel clearer and less afraid. Suddenly the figure on the shore loses its menace: Tom would have made a mistake about the steps being the only access to the beach; it was nothing but a walker caught in the rain. The coincidence with the cliff edge was nothing more than that – an accident. There was no way I could be sure, in any case, of the direct correlation between the two, the distance was too far and the weather too bleary. I imagined the crooked gait. And yet that is the detail that haunts and harrows me, the memory of that distorted limp…

  My stomach is empty. Downstairs, Mrs Yarrow has left soup on the stove, which I eat with crusts of bread while scorning myself for my folly. The man Marlin has set me on edge. All his talk of the bad thing at Winterbourne, every word of it nonsense, made me believe in what wasn’t there. Stop daydreaming, Alice.

  Afterwards, learning that the children are playing cards in their dressing gowns in the drawing room, I help Mrs Yarrow with that evening’s supper.

  ‘Go out to the kitchen garden, would you, miss?’ she asks. ‘We need a sprig of parsley.’

  I haven’t been through this way before, and am surprised to find a side door in the pantry that leads through to the glasshouses. Like so much else at Winterbourne, they are in a state of decline. It’s akin to being inside an algae-coated fish bowl; the glass mottled and stained, the light coming through as an eerie bluish-green. Planters and vines push through in a show of resilience
particular to organic life: a crop of tomatoes in the last breath of summer, a burst of red peppers in a terracotta pot.

  I wonder if Laura de Grey tended her garden. Once upon a time, somebody cared for these glasshouses with deep affection. A pair of wellington boots sits by the door, one knocked on its side. There is a watering can with a spider’s web strewn across it, and a ball of twine which, when I reach to collect it, clings momentarily to its wooden surface, sticky with age. A seedling tray, half filled with greying soil, is discarded next to a pair of rusted secateurs. I feel as if I have stumbled into a shipwreck. Everything is masked in this sunken, pinched-out light, and I have the sense that it has been undisturbed for some time, allowed to flourish untended, the plants taking over and starting to strangle the building. At points the creepers escape between panes of glass, reappearing on the outside and peering back in. I think of Laura in her summerhouse, Laura in her rose garden, Laura in her deck chair, Laura here, her fine, pale fingers planting the saplings and pressing the soil, her smile as she watches them grow. I think she may have done all of these things, or none at all.

  Through the other side and out into the courtyard, a trough of soil relinquishes Mrs Yarrow’s herbs. It takes no time to find the parsley. I decide to head back round the front of the house to avoid returning the way I’ve come.

  Before I reach the north front, I catch sight of the captain. He is across the yard, at the old stables, leaning on his cane.

  ‘Captain,’ I go to him, ‘good afternoon.’ It strikes me as awkward that I’m still holding the parsley, as if I am presenting a bouquet. I tuck it into my apron.

  ‘Good afternoon.’ He turns to show me the unmarked side of his face, and I note how he winces with discomfort at the movement. ‘How are the children?’

  ‘They’ll be right as rain tomorrow.’

  There follows a scuffle behind the stable door, a warm stamp of hooves, and when a horse puts its head up to greet us I can’t help but gasp with pleasure.

  ‘I had no idea!’

  ‘She belonged to my wife.’

  I smooth the animal’s nose, its hot, soft muzzle and silken ears. Her eyes are blue-black and full of soul and kindness in the way that horses’ are, and her coat is the most exquisite shade of silvery ash, lightening to white on her flanks where her age is catching up with her. ‘She’s absolutely beautiful,’ I say. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Storm.’

  ‘Nobody told me.’

  ‘Nobody really thinks of her any more, apart from me. I like to tend to her myself, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘My wife loved her.’

  ‘I can imagine. Did she ride a lot?’

  ‘Every day.’ The captain’s mouth lifts in a half-smile, and he is lost for a moment. ‘Storm hasn’t been out riding in years,’ he says.

  ‘The twins aren’t enamoured by her? I would have been, at their age!’

  ‘Constance took a fall when she was young. She funked it after that. And Edmund, well, he doesn’t like animals.’

  I make a mental note to rectify this through our studies, getting the children out to experience wildlife as well as read their way to enlightenment. No boy of mine – or rather, no boy under my charge – will grow up so gravely mistaken.

  The captain runs a hand through Storm’s silver mane, his forehead so close to the horse that they are nearly touching. I notice the holes in the elbows of the captain’s jacket, and his crumpled shirt. His hair needs a cut. For a wild moment I imagine my hands on him as his are on Storm: a potent creature, barely restrained, burning with passion yet quiet with dignity and grace. I have to look away.

  ‘You met my doctor the other day,’ he says.

  ‘I did indeed. I found him very amenable.’

  ‘He found you very amenable, too.’

  I meet his eye. ‘I beg your pardon, Captain?’

  ‘I’ve known Henry for a long time. He’s a bachelor, as I expect you gathered.’

  ‘I hadn’t considered it,’ I reply.

  ‘He visited again this morning and was hoping to see you.’

  ‘I was out for a walk.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says the captain, his eyes still fixed on the horse. ‘Nevertheless I would like to remind you that a…dalliance of any kind would be wholly inappropriate while you are occupying this post. The children require your full attention and I would not permit any distractions from your devotion to their case.’

  ‘It hadn’t crossed my mind – and certainly won’t now.’

  The captain drops his touch from the animal and leans on his cane. I see him fighting the pain, unwilling to disclose it.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ I ask, and as I ask it I realise the request is for me as much as for him. I fight a strong desire to reach out and touch him. I want to make him better. I want to care for him, as I am caring for his children.

  ‘I’m fine.’ He steadies himself. Storm nuzzles his shoulder. It is a relief when he begins to talk about Laura again because my inappropriate thoughts lurch to a halt. ‘It’s more than the leg, isn’t it,’ he says grimly. ‘It’s more than the burns and it’s more than the leg. It’s the state of things. It’s this house. It’s the house that Laura died in.’

  ‘I’m so very sorry about your wife.’

  ‘You can’t be sorry; you didn’t know her.’ But then he appears to remember my confidence on the last occasion we spoke and his voice softens. ‘Would you believe me if I told you that things were very different before? When we were first married, before the war; before Constance and Edmund, we were happy?’

  ‘I believe it,’ I say.

  ‘But then things changed. The house got into her.’ His brow drops, his eyes veiled by dark confusion. ‘The house was always against her. It bided its time; it let us embrace our happiness and then it ripped it away. All these years I’ve tried to unravel it, Miss Miller; I’ve tried to remember what happened, but I get so far and the rest is blank. Henry Marsh calls it shellshock, great swathes of time unaccounted for, holes and cracks where the picture should be entire. I dream about my hands – my hands, Miss Miller, held in front of me in a corridor, shaking and reaching out.’ He looks to me but I cannot speak. ‘Only, I do not know what for. And sometimes I do not recognise these hands as my own, for they are softer and younger, like Laura’s hands only different. And I believe in the blackest, truest part of my heart that these hands have been here all along, claiming people and claiming lives and there is nothing I can do to stop it. My parents before me and their parents too, right back to when Winterbourne was built! They each fell prey to tragedy, their lives stolen, like Laura’s, too young. I look about me now and I see it taking us all, one by one, every part of what we were until nothing will be left, nothing at all…’

  I am dismayed by his trouble and shocked at his words. ‘You mustn’t think that,’ I whisper. ‘Winterbourne is magnificent. The children adore it.’

  The captain shakes his head in disgust. ‘The house is falling down around us, a brick at a time. It’s a weight around my neck, a damned money pit. I feel it mocking me, now that I can’t leap to repairs as I used to, waiting for me to fail, laughing at my failure. I wish I could leave. I wish it had never been mine in the first place.’

  ‘Why don’t you, then? Why don’t you leave?’

  ‘And let it win?’ he answers. ‘Let my ancestors laugh down the ages at me, at my failure, at my incompetence, at my surrender?’

  ‘But if you’re worried for your safety and the children’s…?’

  It pains me to pose it, to consent to his madness, for his thoughts are raving and illogical with grief and cannot have any foundation in fact. Yet he appears so desperate, this strong, brilliant man brave enough to show me his weakness.

  ‘The house will get us either way,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter where we go. It’s caught me like a moth on a pin, afraid to let my children out for fear of an accident befalling them; equally I’m afraid to
keep them here. We’re despised.’

  ‘You can’t mean that, Captain.’

  ‘Can’t I? Winterbourne has dismantled my life, piece by piece. It’s made me…do things.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Things I can’t remember. Things I don’t want to remember.’

  ‘Captain, if I might be so bold, but Winterbourne is bricks and mortar. Might there be truth to Henry’s conclusions of shellshock? I can only imagine—’

  He slams his fist on the stable door, making the horse startle.

  ‘Bricks and mortar!’ he mimics, showing me his full face now, the misshapen, melted side that contorts in imitation of my gross naivety. ‘You’ll say that now,’ he rasps, ‘but you’ll soon understand. Do you suppose that Winterbourne likes you? You might believe it does, and it might let you think that for a while, because that’s what it does, don’t you see? Look at what happened to Laura. Look at what’s happened to me. It’s bitter. It wants you to suffer. It will show you joy for the sole pleasure of robbing you of it—’ He tails off, blinks and moves back, as if awoken from a dreadful possession. He reassembles himself. ‘Forgive me, Miss Miller. Forgive my outburst. I – it’s a bad day for me. I’m struggling with the bank – and now, seeing Storm, I…’

  ‘There’s no need to explain.’ But it’s hard to hide the fact that I’m shaking, by turns afraid of and enthralled by his fervour. The way his blue eyes flashed danger.

  ‘Please, go,’ he says, and I realise he cannot make a swift departure himself and how horribly ensnaring this must be. ‘I wish to be alone.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And, Alice,’ he stops me before I do, ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.’