Collector of Lost Things

by Jeremy Page

  ‘How often?’

  ‘But you remember! Do you have to tease me? Daily, from either side of your bedroom door.’

  ‘But on no other occasion?’

  ‘I do not want to continue with this talk, Clara. You are distressing me.’

  ‘At what other occasion did we talk to each other?’

  ‘On the day when you escaped. When I stole the key from your father’s study and I unlocked your door.’

  She sat back, apparently exhausted. But I was afraid that if I touched her, she might cry out. When she spoke, it was with a tenderness.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  There are times when I remember this, and I am sure I was crying. But other times, I imagine I replied with a steady voice. ‘You ran past me,’ I said. ‘You escaped the house and … and we found you.’

  ‘Where was I? Please tell me where I was.’

  I was worried I wouldn’t be able to say the words. ‘You were in the woods. I found you in the woods. I have tried not to think about that day.’

  ‘And my name?’

  ‘Celeste.’

  She took a deep breath. I felt destroyed, and weak. So weak. I closed my eyes. I felt her touch my cheek and, a moment later, the softest of kisses on my brow.

  ‘Eliot?’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for telling me. I can see it was a very hard thing for you to say. But this is very hard for me, too. Because you are confused, my dear friend, you are so confused.’ She looked with great sadness. ‘My name is Clara,’ she whispered, urgently. ‘It is Clara. I do not know anything about a girl called Celeste. You have described a sad story, but I know nothing about what you have told me, nor of what this other girl may have done to you.’

  My cabin was dark and silent and intense. I remembered how I had first lain upon my bunk while the ship was still docked at Liverpool, how the floating sensation of the ship had felt, disconcerting and eerie, and how I had never quite become used to it. It lifted you in fragments, questioning your reality, changing the weight of your footsteps and the lean of your spine. On the sea, or merely on board the ship, I had felt different, not entirely there.

  I could not sleep. I tried not to think about Clara and the things that she had said. Something was missing. I tried to imagine all that I had left behind. The willows that hang over a silent river as it pools and bends through an East Anglian meadow, the sound of a bee going from flower head to flower head and passing close to the ear—a delicate greeting between man and insect, or the sound of skylarks, so high they cannot be seen but their sound descends like sunshine on the meadows. The glow of mustard fields. A hand pressed against old bricks warmed by a stove, or touching the smooth facets of knapped flint, whose surfaces are always cool, whatever the season. The tall ragged crops before harvest, the angle of late summer sunlight, almost waxy in its lustre as it shines on the dry barns. Comfort and security in every texture. I thought of the sea, the North Sea off Suffolk and Norfolk, breaking in long languorous waves against a shingle shore—oh how I missed it. Or the mouths of the estuaries, where the brackish river meets the salt water in curling spines of current, braided in ribbons as it flows out to sea. Smooth-trunked beech trees, water pooled in their hollows. Bracket fungus on a fallen log. The chirping of sparrows. Peaceful churchyards, the gravestones powdery and leaning, names eroding, the iron gates that swing with heavy grace, their handles polished by decades of use. Horses dragging carts laden with hay, a scent of their horse musk and the sweetness of the hay as they pass. Brick and flint outbuildings that are dark and calm, filled with dust and tools that are seldom used, their walls held together by the single span of a cobweb.

  All that I loved. All that I missed. I thought of these things, trying to dispel the Arctic sea that I felt pressing against the ship. It was the jagged ice, out there, dog-toothed, and an icy sky too, pure and empty. We were merely floating and at any point we might tip and spin and fall into its nothingness. I grabbed my bed frame and tried to concentrate on the sounds that would remind me of where I was. My breath, the tick of my fob watch: a child’s trick, to count the small things, when he first realises life has an ending that is unavoidable. I could hear French in his cabin, still awake, writing at his desk. The scratch of his writing nib, punctuated only by the silence of the frequent dips into an inkhorn, suggested that he was marshalling a cockroach back and forth across the page. So strong was this image that I could not dispel it. I pictured him hunched over his desk, watching the insect moving, touching it with his finger until it did as he wished.

  Eventually there was nothing I could do but go into the saloon and gently knock at his cabin. The noise of the writing stopped at once. I heard him push his chair back and, just before he opened the door, I heard a lock being slid.

  ‘I cannot sleep,’ I told him.

  He looked beyond me—involved and confused by the work he had been doing—into the darkened saloon, with its single night lantern hanging above the table.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Late.’

  ‘Or early?’ he quipped. ‘Depends. Come in.’

  I felt so lost, in such need of company, that I was greatly relieved by his offer. I entered his cabin and sat on his bunk, while he turned his chair from the writing desk and sat to face me. There was little legroom between us.

  ‘I heard you writing,’ I began, although behind him his escritoire was now noticeably clear. ‘I hope I am not disturbing you.’

  He shrugged. The only object upon his desk was a candle, set in the middle, burning brightly.

  ‘What are you writing?’ I asked.

  ‘A letter. Why can’t you sleep?’

  ‘I feel a long way from home.’

  My frankness caught his attention. ‘Yes. Well, we are. We couldn’t be much further.’

  ‘Does it not play on your mind?’

  ‘A little,’ he said. ‘But I don’t really have a home: not on shore. My home has always been ships.’

  ‘Why did you leave the navy?’ I asked.

  French laughed, putting a hand to his mouth. A dark, venal expression passed across his face. ‘I had, let us call it, an entanglement.’

  ‘With another ship?’

  ‘The object … was not another ship.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I asked you that. It was quite rude of me.’

  ‘Well, it is the middle of the night. It is the best time to be rude, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ The candle burning behind him made it difficult to see his expression. ‘You place your candle very close to you, Mr French. Does the light not pain you?’

  He smiled and as he half turned towards the candle I saw its light flash across his profile, making him as untrustworthy and false as a theatrical performer.

  ‘You might wonder why I adore the flame of the candle so much, Saxby,’ he said. ‘I shall tell you. It is an exercise of mine. I stare into the flame for as long as I might take it, in the wish that the fire will fill me. Do you follow? So that it might purge me from within.’

  He leant across his desk and opened a small cupboard that my cabin did not have. Inside it, he had several bottles. He poured a mixture of liquids into two glasses, stirred them with a finger, and handed me one.

  ‘To the night,’ he toasted, licking his finger.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, accepting the drink. When I tasted it, I was once more unsure of what I was drinking. It had a dark conker colour, and a blend of syrupy and woody tastes that made it impossible to identify.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked.

  ‘Arctic liquors,’ he replied, smiling slyly. I saw the points of teeth between his lips.

  ‘To the night, then,’ I replied, downing the drink and knowing, instantly, that I shouldn’t have taken it. Mr French does not drink: that was what the captain had said, a day into the voyage, and I knew that French had no intention of touching the Arctic liquor he had poured for himself. He had licked his finger, but the glass remaine
d untouched, in his hand.

  ‘I will go,’ I said, standing.

  ‘I hope you sleep, Mr Saxby,’ he said.

  At the door I turned back: ‘Only the innocent sleep.’

  I returned to my cabin knowing that I had been drugged. The pressure that bore upon my head was similar to when I had drunk from Bletchley’s flask. I lay on my bunk, fighting sleep, wondering what connections I might have overlooked between my fellow passengers, fighting against the thickened cloak that descended on my thoughts, realising I was going to have a vision. I felt afraid.

  ‘Who’s there!’ I called. It was the middle of the night, and my cabin was almost completely dark. I had awoken with a jolt and had pulled myself upright to stare at the shadowy wall at the foot of my bed. The shape of a man, I was certain of it, was sitting there. The thing remained, as still as a jacket that I might have hung, except I knew there was no hook or nail in that place.

  I struck a match. But in the flare of light I felt the blood drain from my face, for it was not Huntsman that I saw, but a woman, a young woman, her face pale and drawn and her hair soaking wet, with river weed clinging to her clothes and her eyes shutting, shutting, as water poured from her mouth. I gasped, dropping the match as it burnt my fingers. The cabin became intensely dark. I breathed harshly, staring at the wall. Whether she was still there or not, I could no longer tell. I laid my head on the pillow and turned away, knowing with sudden clarity that it was a vision that I’d had many times before, and I brought the blanket up to my face and then over my head.

  23

  CELESTE HAD TOLD ME where the key to her bedroom door was kept. ‘In my father’s library,’ she had whispered. ‘He works at a bureau by the window. You must look inside the central drawer. The key has a pale blue ribbon tied through it.’

  She had given me these instructions as I leant my head against the cold paint of her door, the empty corridor stretching either side of me like a small pathway. I should have been downstairs. I had no business at the top of the house. The attic floor of a Norfolk manor in the late throes of autumn is particularly quiet, I had thought. Through the window at the end of the corridor I could see the fields, bare after harvest; the soil and grasses had a withered look, as if waiting for the frosts that would soon come. Solitary rooks flew across the landscape, landing heavily in the tops of the oaks, where they would lurch angrily from branch to branch, noisy and restless. A few remaining leaves clung to the ash and sycamores, but mostly the leaves were blown and heaped in wet piles along the hedges and across the lawn.

  The house had smelt damp, as if the plaster had soaked up this autumnal breath, loosening the wallpaper and bending the floorboards. It had become a creaky and depressing place.

  ‘He walks after lunch, you must have noticed it. He has strict routines. First he follows the hedge and disappears behind the trees and his route returns across the pasture and meadow. It always takes him three-quarters of an hour.’ This is what she told me. ‘It will be your chance to go into his study.’

  While she spoke I remained silent, unable to reply, knowing my time in the house was virtually over and knowing I had become unhealthily drawn to this bedroom door. I was unable to sleep well at night, I thought of Celeste constantly, I planned my day around the rare glimpses I would have of her being walked across the lawn, where the small pattern of her daily exercise had begun to leave a worn mark in the grass. I found myself whispering her name at my workbench. I had finished my restoration of the egg collection, and had been busy for several days trying to create more work for myself, relabelling, reclassifying, and I had even broken an egg, purely with the intention of having to restore it, gluing it, sanding it, filling the cracks with gesso and painting across the hair-like joins with a miniature brush.

  ‘Will you do it, today?’ she had urged. ‘I would love to see your face. I think about you often. The time passes so slowly in here.’

  I had returned to the conservatory, descending in stockinged feet the second staircase and taking a route through the kitchen passage to avoid the main areas of the house. I had greased the hinges of the doors with linseed oil, and trod only at the edges of the steps where they joined the wall. I had enjoyed the challenges of navigating around a house without being seen, creating a silent path, knowing where the boards were noisy, ducking beneath the window-panes, listening for the rapid walk of the housekeeper as she marched back and forth. There were spaces where I could sit for hours, if it was necessary, where I was never seen. A corner recess beyond a window where a dusty vase had been placed. A shadowy corridor where the air was several degrees cooler because the rooms were used only for storage.

  That day, I had sat in the conservatory, beneath the dying geraniums, arranging and rearranging the alignment of several pencils on my desk, but imagining the moment I might enter the father’s study, the moment I would find the key, the moment when I could open the door and meet Celeste. When I saw him walk briskly past the conservatory, dressed in his long boots and thick coat, I was already picturing where I would be in a few minutes’ time, running towards his study without my boots on. My actions seemed unavoidable and planned. Even while I could still hear his footsteps crunching on the gravel of the drive, as he headed towards the lake, I had moved swiftly to the door.

  I ran into the main drawing room, where a glorious fire was burning in the grate. A thread of steam still rose from the coffee cup he had sipped, after lunch, and his pipe lay forgotten, to one side of his armchair. I remember pausing, knowing that he might come back for this, but also feeling a momentum that was impossible to refuse. Did I wish to be caught? I wondered. His study was silent and lined with books, with family portraits hung on the walls, each one of them a severe reproach for the action that I was bent on undertaking. Generations of Cottesloes, a similar vein of meanness running through their expressions, condemning me as I ran beneath them. His chair, his desk, his private papers. As I touched the brass handle of the central drawer it felt as though I had been stung by a nettle, it was so wrong. When I pulled it open I saw a pouch of gold coins, letters tied in a soft bow of silk, and, just as she had described it, the small key with the pale blue ribbon.

  From several windows—as I climbed the back stairs towards the attic rooms—I saw the dark tall figure of her father, paused on the river meadow beyond the drive, checking his pockets, looking back at the house. I stopped to watch him, attempting to influence his decision with the power of my thought. He leant forward on his stick, poised, keen as a hunter, and I saw his attention caught by the same rooks I had studied earlier. They were thrashing about in the tree above him, dark as devils.

  ‘Go on, damn you, go on,’ I had whispered, the feel of the key in my hand almost singeing my finger. I had imagined Celeste, standing by her own window, looking at her father with a similarly tense attitude, urging him on.

  ‘I have it! I have it, Celeste,’ I said, breathlessly, a little louder than I should have done, when I reached her door.

  ‘Wait!’ she replied, from within. Was the key already in the lock? I cannot remember. I recall how it had felt, once the key was in, the tension of the bolt being held by my fingers. Just an extra half-twist and the door would open.

  ‘Now, Eliot, do it now,’ she whispered. Her voice was tight, excited, strained by the months of her captivity, my own obsession with it, and my transgression, all now converging at the point of the key in the lock. And as soon as the bolt clicked, the handle had turned, the door had sprung open, recklessly, with no regard for the noise it made, and Celeste was suddenly exactly where the door had been, tall and urgent and searching for me and pushing forward so that I was forced back on my heels. Her eyes settled briefly upon mine, but with an expression that was as quick and as nervous as a trapped bird. She was wild and unknowable as she leant against me. I braced her, her soft warm weight, her hair pressing against my face so that I had to close my eyes. I felt the silk gown that she was wearing as it turned and slipped and vanished through my fingers and
when I looked it was as if she had never been there. I saw a glimpse of her room through the open doorway, shadowed by blinds and drapes, with clothes strewn across the floor, and a sensation of urgent movement made me look back: I saw Celeste, barefoot, at the end of the corridor, running headlong down the stairs.

  I had pursued her, as fast as I could, as she fled noisily through the building. At a landing on the main staircase we both passed the housekeeper, who pressed herself into the corner with a startled expression of horror. My flight through the house said it all. I was a doomed man, even at that moment, or at the next, when, as Celeste threw open the main doors, she virtually knocked over her father as he climbed the stone steps, returning for his pipe.

  Celeste did not stop, she fled like a sheet caught in a wind, streaming across the wet lawn. It was I who was halted, fixed by the sheer presence of her father who had been flung against the stone balustrade. He glowered at me, hatefully off balance, insect-like, his eyes burning with accusation and contempt.

  ‘She … she escaped,’ I blurted out.

  He straightened his jacket and stood, erect and commanding, his entire authority and condemnation brought together into a single word:

  ‘How?’

  I stood dumbly, fixed to the spot, out of breath. We were both aware of Celeste, who was vanishing into the trees at the end of the lawn. But despite the urgency, he was keen to indulge in this moment. He had me pinned, a man he could watch being destroyed in front of his very eyes, and he was going to enjoy it.

  ‘I shall ask you again, Master Saxby. How?’

  There was no possible explanation, other than to admit I had let her escape. Behind me, the housekeeper had joined us, adding weight to my guilt. I shook my head, unable to speak.

  If a man is able to snarl, then I believe I saw it then. His expression clouded, as if a pain was forming within him, and I thought he might strike me with his stick. Possibly only the housekeeper’s presence prevented it. ‘So,’ he said, savouring every second. Every part of every second. ‘Can you run?’