I think about this and I feel for your sister Harriet, but it also makes me wonder about Sarah. If John Groome decides that he loves her, then does she really not return his affection, or is she simply denying her own feelings for her sister's sake? Can she really be so noble? And is it really worth it? Is this why she doesn't marry until so late in her life?
Florence goes on to add that, although Sarah was frequently sought in marriage and loved one suitor if early life she saw in him only vacillation and weakness and her common sense asserted itself She decided their union would not rise to her ideal of married life.
Is this suitor John Groome, then? John Groome who treats her sister Harriet badly and whom Sarah can't help judging as bad husband material as a result?
Either way, the mention of Robert Suckling's visit to Woodton and his subsequent engagement to your sister Anna, that all makes sense to me.
Until I see that, here in the original manuscript, the text is subtly, shockingly different:
The sisters used to tell us about their different engagements, especially I remember Mr Suckling's first call at Woodton on a later occasion, and the walk in the woods, and the engagement. Poor Mary! But her engagement did not come off in a marriage and she died not long after.
Poor Mary. Poor Mary! Her engagement did not come off in a marriage. We know that Anna and Robert get engaged, but is there another engagement first? Are you the one who Robert proposes to on that famous first walk in the woods? Is it possible that he fell in love with you first?
In the dark room, with the dog at my feet, my fingertips are cold.
She died not long after. Is it even possible that you were engaged to be married to Robert Suckling when you died?
Going back to the published version, I now see what I'd managed to miss. A chronological clue that has actually been there all along.
In the winter of 1838/1839, still mourning the loss of you and Jane in the summer, the family travels to Dawlish, where they are to watch poor Sophy slip away. A month or so later, in the spring, returning to Woodton, your sister is sought in marriage by the eldest son of the owner if Woodton, Robert Alfred Suckling.
I see now that this bit of chronology - something I paid no attention to when I first read the book - is very important. In that spring, Suckling proposes and Anna says yes. But by then you have been nine months dead. A respectable amount of time has passed. What seems likely now is that he proposed to you the spring before, the spring of 1838, months before you died. Is this what really happened? Is it possible that, whatever Suckling eventually feels for your sister Anna, however happy their eventual marriage, does she - and everyone else - have to live with the knowledge that he loved you first?
Mary comes in. Mary Sanders-Hewett.
So how are you doing? Are you OK in here? Hey, have you got enough light?
I lift my head and the room swims into view.
So how's it going? Is it any use? Are you finding anything?
I tell her I'm finding out a great deal.
She smiles.
Brilliant. I'll leave you to it, then. God, though, look at how dark it's got. You wouldn't know it was July, would you?
She flicks on the light for me and fuzzy electric light floods the page. I thank her. And am sucked straight back to Woodton.
It makes perfect sense, of course, that Florence chooses to leave all of this out of the published book. I keep forgetting, she has an agenda of her own.
Your sister Anna marries Robert Suckling, and they have a son called Thomas - Captain Thomas Suckling, Florence's future husband. But what if they don't marry, what then? What if Suckling marries someone else - you, for instance?
In the end, what it boils down to is this: you need to die in order for Thomas Suckling to be born. Life is like that, a series of domino knocks, a rattle of consequences. And why should Florence Suckling, family historian par excellence, bother admitting what a close call it was? How this so very nearly did not happen. How her long marriage to Captain Thomas Suckling owes its entire life and existence to the long-ago death of a twenty-one-year-old girl.
Actually, it's worse than that. It's bigger. Because, you know, if you hadn't died on that terrible summer night in Ipswich in 1838, if you had lived and married and had babies, then the whole Baron-Suckling history might have taken a different turn.
You, not Anna, would have been Mrs R.A.J. Suckling, mistress of Barsham. It would be your furniture, not Anna's, crowding Patrick Baron's Norwich apartment. Except, of course, there would never even have been a Norwich apartment at all. Because, if you had lived, Patrick Baron and his daughters would never have been born.
So there you are. It's easy. Florence only has to omit a dozen or so words - hardly a crime - in order to obliterate this inconvenient love affair. Your only love affair.
And who's it going to harm, after all, if the girl in question is long dead? If a person dies so young, so unrealised, then does it really matter what people write about her? Who's going to care about that person's right to an emotionally honest biography?
Your only love affair. That's what I just said. But going back to Jane Coulcher's unedited letter, there's more, and my heart stops all over again:
Mary Yelloly and Charles Tyssen were said to be attached to each other, but Mary in pique engaged herself to Mr Brown. This was broken off
You and Charles? Your cousin Charles? Charles who inherited Narborough whenever it was, and built a watermill there but, as far as I know, never married? You and Charles, one of the cousins you grew up and ran around with at Narborough, playing and shouting in the earthworks and - perhaps? looking out over Norfolk from that secret attic door on the rooftops?
Did you love him, then?
And if so, who was this Mr Brown and what was the pique all about? I've only just got used to the possibility of your being engaged to Robert Suckling. How many lovers did you have?
The fair-haired girl sitting on the wall, swinging her legs and eating apples, has faded and a new one has taken her place: serious-eyed, delicious, ready for anything.
Ready to be loved. Or to love. Ready to be happy or sad, uncertain, excited, seduced, desired. Ready for the thrill of being wanted. Certainly nowhere near ready to die.
It's almost lunchtime and the rain has just about stopped when I come to the last revelation in this unedited manuscript. Or, OK, may be not quite a revelation - more a quick sketch of Yelloly life lived on after your death. may be that's the reason it moves me so much - because you had no part to play in these months. Because you just weren't there any more.
It's another Yelloly journal, or extracts from one anyway, dated May-December 1839. It doesn't say who wrote it, but because you, Jane and Nick are all dead and everyone else seems to get a mention, it has to be Harriet.
These are strange days, sunny and bleak by turn. Poor Sophy is often quite unwell, but her fiance the ever-devoted Robert Groome calls often to take her out for drives, or else to sit with her. Plenty of friends seem to call either to dine or play games.
There's battledore and shuttlecock outdoors, or in the big oak room on rainy days. Your mother takes painting lessons. It turns warm. A woman is killed in a thunderstorm at Bungay. And a second thunderstorm demolishes two sheep. Your sister makes a solemn note of this.
There's sadness too. Sadness about you:
In the evening we went to the church to see the Tablet to the memory of my two dearest sisters, Jane and Mary, and to weep over their graves and that of my dearest brother Nicholas; though we trust they are now in perfect happiness through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Weep over their graves. But which graves and where are they exactly?
Meanwhile, Miss Lucy Suckling and her brother Robert start calling. Yes, that's the same Robert - the Robert who may have loved you first. Does he still think of you like that, I wonder? Has he cried about you, does he still mourn? Or has he moved on?
I have to tell you that he and his sister seem to find all sorts of e
xcuses to call at Woodton. First they stop by to varnish some pictures. Then Robert begins a drawing of the curious picture over the oak-room chimney piece. He begins, which of course means he must keep on returning, If he hopes to finish it, that is.
On another occasion he stops by to read The Siege of Corinth. Or, he and his sister come and walk in the woods and everyone sits down to tell stories. I assume that everyone includes your sister Anna.
One day, Lucy Suckling comes over alone and has a long and serious talk with your mother about her family's affairs. She and Robert have had a blow-up with their father at Barsham. This makes some sense because the Revd Alfred Inigo Fox Suckling was a notorious spendthrift who almost ruined his family. It's only your father's later sensible handling of Anna's marriage contract that saves the Sucklings from complete ruin.
The next day, though, Robert calls at Woodton to sit under a tree and finish reading The Lady of the Lake.
After that, it all happens quite swiftly:
12th, Robert Suckling called; a very rainy day. He stayed in oak room and afterwards played battledore and shuttlecock with Anna in the Hall. Robert Groome left us, and I sat with dear Sophy in the drawing room after he was gone.
13th, Robert Suckling came into the front of the house and looked at Papa cutting laurels. Anna and I were dressing to dine out at Mr Howe's with Papa and Mama.
14th, Tony and Robert Suckling called, also Mr Howes. After luncheon Robert and Anna, Sarah and I walked in the Shrubbery, when the announcement took place between R. Suckling and Anna. I trust God's Blessing will attend their engagement and that they may be very happy. He had a communication with Mama on his return, and in the evening with dear Papa, when he came to drink tea, and seemed the happiest of mortals.
I wonder what they say to each other, Robert Suckling and your father, as he snips away at the laurels? Do Anna and Harriet, upstairs dressing, snatch furtive glances out of an upstairs window, fully aware of what must be going on down there? Two men standing on the gravel, heads bent, earnestly talking. Are there embraces in that upstairs room, laughter, tears of happiness?
And what about your father? What does he really feel? Pride, excitement, or a touch of sadness? Is his joy for Anna eclipsed, however briefly, by his memories of your own all too brief love for this man, by the still raw fact of your young death?
The summer is full of joy, it must be. But November finds them all at Dawlish with the now severely ill Sophy. Meanwhile, Anna gets measles. Ellen also becomes unwell. And then there's a long break in the journal when Harriet herself succumbs to fever.
She gets better. So does Anna. So, for the moment, does Ellen. But on 10 December:
Dearest Sophy confined to her bed and very ill, the Clergyman came and administered the Sacrament to us all. She got into the water bed but did not like it. Robert Groome arrived, saw her for a moment, I went down for the first time since my illness. Sophy better - continues Improving.
The journal ends here, but I don't really need any more. I know what happens next. Sophy doesn't continue improving. This is it. She dies a month later on I I January. Just six months after you.
What's a water bed? Is it a normal thing in those days - used to prevent bed sores, perhaps? Or is it somehow associated with death? What's wrong with it, exactly? Why doesn't she like it?
She got into the water bed but did not like it.Why is it that those words fill me with such particular dread? Why do they seem to bring home more vividly than almost anything I've read so far the panic and confusion and terror of a young woman's final illness, the terrible, yawning momentum of loss?
Before I leave, Mary and I go to the pub across the road for lunch. Ten minutes later, her husband Paul joins us. The rain has stopped now and the trees are dripping. The air has the slightly chocolate smell of wet summer leaves.
Mary and I order fish and a glass of wine and Paul has the pie (I always have the pie!). They tell me that their son Sam Tyssen Sanders-Hewett has just got engaged. And we talk about all the Yelloly and Tyssen treasures that have been lost.
I tell them how I read in the manuscripts that your sister Anna's jewels - the Yelloly-Tyssen family jewels - were in her handbag, on their way to the mender's, when it was stolen at Cheltenham Railway Station, never to be recovered.
And Mary laughs, and then Paul tells me how the manuscripts themselves were almost lost in a flood at her parents' house in Sussex ten or fifteen years ago.
Yes, Mary says. He drove down there to rescue everything and I said to Paul, whatever you do, for God's sake get the books!
They were in a cabinet in the sitting room, Paul says. Fortunately high enough up to be unharmed. But it was a close thing. A few more inches of water and that would have been that.
A few more inches if water.
Your romantic and emotional history was nearly obliterated by a bossy Victorian historian with an agenda of her own in 1898. And a hundred years or so later, a Sussex flood almost finished off the job.
ROMANCE
How brilliant this life is,
with all its ways to wander.
New people to meet,
new problems to ponder.
In a million dusty years,
a new pair of shoes,
will scuff this sidewalk,
breathe in and capture
perhaps pick up a pen
and capture.
Do all the things I did,
when I was confused.
Suffer at the hands of idiots,
ripped up and abused,
but still smile when
love comes round the corner.
Still see the girl with ivory eyes,
and need her, want her.
Never ever know where to begin,
dream till your head is all in a spin,
think wishful of all the things
you could have been,
but still know that whatever becomes
you'll never give in
Till it's Romance that's won.
9
OUR BOY HAS finally dropped out of school. Or at least, he does not actually drop. It is more that one day the strings of absences just join up together and become an absence so long, so extended that the school informs him that, unless he turns up on a certain day just to speak to them, he will no longer have his place.
He's dropped out of school but he still has his phone. It's the only thing he does have. I call him about every four or five days. Sometimes he answers and sometimes not. Sometimes he says he's busy and hasn't got time to talk. Other times he seems never to want to hang up.
Every time his phone goes straight to voicemail, or else rings and rings and there's no answer, I worry. I see him lying in a dark alley somewhere, frightened and alone, unable to move or call for help.
His father says that's ridiculous. He says he's no more or less likely to come to harm than any other eighteen-year-old boy. Less, probably, because he's smart, streetwise, strong and actually incredibly healthy.
Yes, I think, but the trouble is, in the life that our boy now leads - not going to school, not living in any fixed place, not having anywhere, in fact, where he regularly has to be - it would just be so easy for him to slip from view. Who would notice If he didn't drop by? Who would think anything of it if they didn't see him for a week or two?
I can't keep this idea in my head for long without starting to feel sick.
Then he finds a room in a house in Brixton. A man from Sierra Leone has a room to let. And the rent is cheap and his Benefit should cover it. The only problem is that, when he was evicted from the last flat, he never bothered informing the Benefit Office, even though we begged him to.
You're committing fraud if you don't tell them.
Well, what the fuck am I meant to do?
Tell them!
But my phone's out of charge.
Then go round there. Go today.
I can't go today. I've only just got up.
He never went. And we stopped aski
ng him to.
But now at least he has an address again. I ask if! can come and see his new place. I could bring him some bedding.
Not quite yet, Mum. Let me get settled first, OK?
A week passes. Then another week. I call him one evening around eight and feel relief when he answers. I can hear noises in the background.
I'm on a train, he says.
A train where?
Just, you know, back to Streatham.
Not Brixton?
On my way to Brixton, yeah.
Overground?
Yeah.
It's easier for him to fare-dodge on the overground trains, I think.
He sounds tired. I ask him what he's been doing and he launches into another long, muddled story about how the Housing Benefit people have lost all his details. How first they told him he was eligible for back payment of Benefit and how then some stupid fucker lost the piece of paper and said he wasn't. And now they're changing their minds all over again. But they still can't say when they'll pay him or how much.
Well, you did a really stupid thing, didn't you, I tell him. When you didn't let them know you'd been evicted from the flat.
The words are hard. The words are true. But I know that my voice is soft.
But, he says, the phone reception cutting in and out, what the fuck did they expect? Have you any idea how hard it is, trying to manage your life when you've got nowhere to live?
I decide to move on.
So how're you paying your rent?
Well, at the moment, to be precise, I'm not.
But - doesn't your landlord mind?
The Lost Child Page 22