‘You have put on a good show for him.’ Elsie reached out and squeezed Jolyon’s hand, keen to remove the tension between them. ‘I’m grateful.’
‘It is no more than he deserved.’
Rupert’s coffin gleamed from the hearse. Poor Rupert, trapped forever in this dismal place. Overlooked for eternity by that abysmal church with only half a steeple. When they married, Elsie had never doubted they would spend eternity buried side by side. She might have to review that plan.
As the carriages ground to a halt, she was relieved to see that none of the villagers had ventured to their windows, although it did surprise her. At home a funeral was a spectacle. Here it seemed like no remarkable occurrence.
Jolyon picked up his cane. ‘It is time.’ His black cloak swished as he climbed down the steps and offered his hand, first to Elsie and then to Sarah.
She felt fragile once she touched the ground; as light as one of the twigs blowing about the churchyard. She didn’t know how to behave.
Ma had been hysterical when Pa died. Remembering her shuddering sobs, Elsie felt an instant failure as a wife. She could not cry. She spent her days holding the knowledge of Rupert’s death at a distance, like a dagger against her throat, afraid to let it plunge in and bring with it understanding. Her only sensations were numbness and nausea.
Blasted Sarah started crying the moment she was installed on Jolyon’s other arm. The sight of her tears filled Elsie with an anger she could not justify.
‘Mr Livingstone. Mrs Bainbridge, Miss Bainbridge. My sincere condolences.’
Elsie curtsied before the vicar. Through the net of her weeping veil she made out a young man with dirty blond hair. He had a long nose and large chin that suggested good breeding, but his stole was grimy, off-white.
‘I have only had the pleasure of meeting Mr Livingstone before. My name is Underwood. Richard Underwood.’ A genteel voice, each letter enunciated. What was such a man doing with the dire living of Fayford? Surely his connections could do better for him? As he folded his hands over a prayer book and held it against his stomach, Elsie noticed holes in the sleeves of his cassock. ‘Now I must ask you ladies, before we begin, if you are sure that you feel equal to the service? There is no shame in resting at home.’
Sarah unleashed a fresh burst of tears.
‘There there, Miss Bainbridge,’ said Jolyon. ‘Are you – would you – it is as Mr Underwood says. Would you rather stay in the carriage?’ He looked over at Elsie for help. She nearly smirked. He wanted a sister with keener sensibilities, did he?
Mr Underwood stepped in. ‘My dear Miss Bainbridge, take comfort. Here is my arm.’ He detached her from Jolyon with such delicacy that Elsie was convinced: he must be a gentleman. Slowly, he guided Sarah away. ‘You may sit in the vicarage until you are restored. My maid will fetch you some tea. Salts? Do you have salts?’
Sarah made a gasping reply that Elsie did not catch.
‘Very good. Look, just here.’ His house was one of the unsavoury hovels encroaching on the burial ground – hardly a home befitting a vicar. She was almost worried about Sarah sitting in there for the length of the service; it looked as if you could catch typhoid from the place. ‘Ethel, fetch the stool. You are to watch over this lady for me. Make her a sweet tea.’
A bony hag with missing teeth appeared in the doorway. ‘But it’s the last of—’
‘I am aware of that, Ethel,’ he said sharply. ‘Now do as I ask.’
Grumbling, the woman ushered Sarah inside and closed the door.
Mr Underwood returned to them, seemingly unfazed.
‘That was very kind of you, sir. Thank you,’ Jolyon said.
‘No trouble at all. Mrs Bainbridge, are we quite safe with you?’
‘I would answer for her nerves with my life,’ Jolyon replied.
Underwood appraised her with interest. His eyes were wide but strangely hooded; they peered, rather than looked. ‘Very good. Now, Mrs Bainbridge, I will go to the door of the church and meet the coffin. That will go in first, then the mourners will follow.’
She nodded. It was all she could do.
The pall-bearers heaved the coffin onto their shoulders and shuffled forwards. Wind crept beneath the black velvet pall, flapping it in time with their steps. The Bainbridge crest waved in flashes: blue, gold, blue, gold then an axe.
She tugged on Jolyon’s arm. ‘I need to sit down.’
Weather-beaten gravestones lined the path to the church door: their inscriptions crude. Three memorials in a row bore the name John Smith with dates barely two years apart. Then came another pair, beside a rosebush, both Jane Price, 1859.
Elsie kept her gaze lowered. She did not want to see the mourners climbing out of their carriages or meet their commiserating gaze. Just months ago she had walked in the other direction, decked in silk and myrtle with the peal of wedding bells behind her. She had looked down at her white dress and known that the spinster Miss Livingstone was gone forever. Here stood Mrs Bainbridge, a fresh creation, newborn.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. How quickly fortune turned. The woman who walked into church after this coffin – who was she now? Livingstone, Bainbridge? Maybe neither. Maybe she was not a person Elsie wanted to know.
‘It was a lovely service.’ A fat gentleman took her hand and pressed it against his moustache. He reeked of tobacco.
‘Yes. Just – lovely,’ she said for the thousandth time. ‘Thank you for coming. Please, won’t you take a memorial card?’ She slipped her glove out of his sweaty grasp and replaced it with a piece of black-edged card. Then she moved on to the next one.
They looked ridiculous: these men of the City with their fine hatbands, braying voices and cigars, huddled together in a dilapidated graveyard. What must they think of Rupert’s family seat and his factory wife?
The sun had faded to a primrose disc yet still she paraded up and down the line of strangers, thanking them. Handing out Rupert’s life, compressed to a bare set of facts on a monochrome card.
In affectionate remembrance of
Rupert Jonathan Bainbridge
Who departed this life 3 October 1865 in the forty-fifth year of his age
Interred in the family vault, All Souls Church, Fayford
MEMENTO MORI
Jolyon played his part, passing from group to group, accepting their condolences. It was him the guests had come to see – few of them knew her. Would they really notice if she slipped away? Perhaps she should go and find her old companion, the starved cow. At least that miserable creature had shown some interest in her.
She stood for a moment, gazing abstractedly through the net squares of her veil. Birds she did not even have a name for called in the trees beyond. Fat, inquisitive ones that looked like London pigeons except they were beige. Bold, black scavengers. Rooks? Jackdaws? Ravens? She had never really known the difference. One she did recognise – a magpie – rattled at her from the lychgate. The cobalt stripe on his tail pointed to the poorest of the gravestones: lopsided, devoured by lichen and thistle.
‘You are wondering about the gravestones.’ The voice made her start. She swivelled round to see Mr Underwood, standing unobtrusively by her side. His hands were tucked under his surplice; either he was cold or he was hiding the holes in his sleeves.
‘Yes, I was. There seem to be an awful lot with the same names.’
He sighed. ‘There are. And no matter what I say to my parishioners, there continue to be. The people . . . Well. I need not dress it up for you, Mrs Bainbridge. You see how the village is. The people do not have hope. They do not even hope that their babies will live, and so they reuse names. Over there,’ he pulled out a hand and gestured to the Jane Prices she had seen earlier. ‘Those two little girls were alive at the same time. The elder was ailing and the babe was born sickly. They died within a month of each other.’
‘What a terrible thing. Those poor girls! But at least their folk remember them with a stone.’
‘A slim comfort.’
&
nbsp; ‘You think so? Have you ever been to London, Mr Underwood?’
His brow furrowed. ‘On occasion. Before I took my orders.’
‘Then you will have seen the burying grounds? Twenty-foot shafts, one coffin stacked atop another, all the way to the surface. Horrible places. I’ve heard of bodies being disturbed, even dismembered, to make way for fresh corpses. So I say it is a mercy to be laid in your own plot of land under a stone with a name, even if it is a borrowed one. There are far worse things a parent can do.’
He peered at her, reassessing her. ‘To be sure.’
She judged it prudent to turn the topic. ‘My maid told me that a skeleton was discovered on my own property, years ago. Would you happen to know if that is buried here also, Mr Underwood?’
‘Which skeleton would that be?’
She blinked. ‘I do not understand you.’
‘There have been . . . a few,’ he admitted. ‘But it is a very old house, Mrs Bainbridge. There is no cause to be alarmed.’
Mabel’s words made more sense now. It would be silly for maids to steer clear of the house over a single skeleton, but she could understand they might be put off by multiple discoveries. No one wanted to come across a pile of bones while performing their duties.
‘I am not alarmed, only . . . surprised. My late husband did not know much about the history of the house.’
‘It is a strange one. The estate was left empty during and after the Civil War. Then, with the Restoration, the family began to come back. Never for very long, though. The Bainbridge family had a nasty habit of losing their heirs, and the house often passed to second sons who never returned to claim it.’
‘How very sad.’
‘Business kept them away, I expect.’ He folded his arms. ‘There are many records in Torbury St Jude; I would be happy to fetch some if you have an interest?’
From the sound of it, the history would read like a bad penny dreadful. The last thing she wanted was a tale of death and skeletons. But Mr Underwood looked so earnest as he offered, she did not have the heart to rebuff him. ‘You are most kind.’
They fell silent, watching the graves. No hothouse flowers adorned the ground. Instead, thistles prickled. Their purple blooms were fading, turning to clutches of wispy seed.
‘Perhaps, Mrs Bainbridge, I will go and fetch your cousin for you,’ he said at last. ‘I trust she will be recovered.’
‘Yes. I hope she will. Thank you.’ She inclined her head as he strode away, his blond fringe bouncing around his temples.
The magpie had flown. She stared at the gate where it had sat, thinking of the little Jane Prices. Her veil fluttered in the breeze and made it look as if their graves were undulating. Waving to her.
Elsie awoke in a bad mood. For a second night, she had not slept well. The infuriating hiss had begun again, although it only lasted for an hour. After it stopped she had lain uneasy, teasing her mind for a way to help the village, and remembering poor Rupert in the chill crypt.
The bed was far too large without him. Although she was not the sort of wife that slept curled up around her husband, there was something reassuring about Rupert’s presence beneath the sheets and the occasional creak he made as he turned. It was as though he was guarding her. Without him, the other side of the mattress yawned cold and sinister. So much space, so much opportunity for something else to slip in.
Without any assistance forthcoming from the maids, she dressed herself and managed to pin on her widow’s cap before making her way downstairs.
Mr Underwood’s words continued to trouble her. There must be something she could do for Fayford. She hadn’t seen any of the children, but judging by the state of the cow they would be skin and bones. Who knew what domestic horror they faced? Yet if their parents were afraid of the Bainbridges and their skeleton house, she could hardly go barging in with her goodwill basket and a condescending smile. It would be better to—
Motes danced in the air before her, making her cough. She stopped and glanced down at the steps. Her black skirts had brushed up a cloud of the stuff: a powder, unlike ordinary dust. Denser. She bent down, pinching a speck between her thumb and index finger. The grains were beige and coarse.
She raised her fingers to her nose. Her nostrils flared with scents that took her back to the factory. Something sharp and clean: linseed. And beneath that a deeper, nutty aroma. She sneezed. Yes – it was sawdust.
Here?
Sawdust, phosphorous, the whirl of the cutting blade . . .
Hurriedly, she brushed it away and slapped out her skirts, not wanting a trace of the stuff upon her.
Perhaps it was the beams supporting the ceiling; they might be crumbling, like everything else at The Bridge. She would have to ask Mrs Holt later on.
As she stood, the stairwell wobbled – she was going to faint. Leaning against the banister, she tottered down the last steps. Breathe, breathe.
Sometimes it happened like that; the slightest thing would hurtle her back in time, resurrect memories and reduce her to the state of a frightened child.
With the blood roaring in her ears, she reached the Great Hall and sucked in a ragged breath. She was here now, safe.
The past had taken enough from her already – she would not let it have her adult years too.
She took the door to the left of the fireplace and entered the dining room. Jolyon and Sarah were already seated at a mahogany table, the dandelion-gold brocade on the wall throwing a sickly shade over their skin. They took their napkins off their laps and rose to their feet as she entered.
‘There you are.’ Jolyon dabbed his mouth. ‘I am afraid we started without you. We were not sure if you would be down.’
The grandfather clock chimed.
‘I must go on as usual, I suppose.’ Her voice shook. She slumped into the chair Jolyon pulled out for her, just in time.
Servants lurked by the sideboard – the shabby maid Mabel and an older woman who must be Helen. She was a stout, jolly-looking thing, her face flushed in a permanent strawberry hue – no doubt the effect of standing over hot water for many years. Wisps of ginger hair escaped her cap at the temples. Elsie guessed her age at around forty.
Supervising both maids was a tall grey-haired man. He looked as if he had never smiled in his life.
Jolyon poured coffee while Helen served up buttered eggs on toast with herring, but the sawdust smell had turned Elsie’s stomach. She took her fork and toyed with the wobbly pile of egg.
‘Miss Bainbridge was just telling me about her time in the vicar’s house.’ Jolyon lifted the tails of his coat and sat back down beside her.
Sarah blushed up to the roots of her lanky hair. ‘Wasn’t it good of him, Mrs Bainbridge, to take me in like that? When he was so busy?’
‘Yes.’
‘He strikes me as a superior sort of man,’ Jolyon observed. ‘Not bred for the church, I think. At any rate, not a church in Fayford.’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ Sarah gabbled, warming to her subject. ‘He left a rich family and an inheritance to try and do some good. His father cut him off without a penny, but he had a little of his own money. He used it to get the living at Fayford. Did you ever hear of such a noble thing?’
Elsie placed a morsel of food in her mouth and chewed slowly. It was a mistake – the texture of the egg made her want to gag.
‘Are you well, Mrs Bainbridge?’
‘Yes, yes.’ She touched a napkin to her mouth and discreetly spat out the egg. ‘But what about you? Have you recovered from your faintness yesterday?’
‘Yes, thank you. I am much stronger today.’
‘I am glad to hear it. I expect you have had enough of funerals, after the death of Mrs Crabbly and your parents.’
‘Yes.’ Sarah took a shaky sip of her tea. ‘Although I didn’t attend Mrs Crabbly’s burial. She was awfully old-fashioned like that. She would have turned in her grave to know there had been a woman present at her funeral. But my parents . . .’ She stared into her tea.
> ‘Rupert did not tell me much about your parents,’ Elsie said gently.
‘Well, I can scarcely tell you more. I expect Rupert was better acquainted with them than I ever was. They put me out to Mrs Crabbly when I was eight, to train as a companion. We were never wealthy, you see, on our side of the family. Something to do with an argument between my grandfather and his father. So we all worked. My parents did not have a great deal of time for me.’ Sarah took another gulp of tea, as if to give her strength. ‘And then they were gone. There was no money for a funeral. I couldn’t have buried them if Rupert had not . . . He was always so good to me.’ Her voice thickened. ‘I wish . . .’
Embarrassed, Elsie picked up her fork and shredded her herring. She was beginning to regret treating the girl so flippantly. Sarah may be dull as ditchwater, but she had suffered. ‘I am so sorry.’
Jolyon cleared his throat. ‘We understand, Miss Bainbridge.’ He did not meet Elsie’s eye. ‘We also lost our parents at a young age.’
Sarah shook her head, hair slipping from her chignon. ‘It doesn’t do to dwell upon it. But you can see why I was so grateful to Mr Underwood and his servant for looking after me. Did you know that Mr Underwood gave me the very last of his tea? I felt awful taking it. His cupboards were so sparse. Only a sliver of sugar, and absolutely no milk!’
‘Milk!’ Elsie speared a piece of herring triumphantly. ‘Of course, that is the answer. That is how I can help the village! Jolyon, you must make enquiries. I am going to adopt the cow.’
Jolyon snorted into his coffee. The maids shifted by the sideboard. ‘What cow?’
‘The cow I saw on my way here. Poor old beast, it looked quite done in. The more I think on it, the more I believe she was asking me for help. If I buy the cow, I can bring her here to get nice and fat, and then she will produce milk. We can make cheese. And I can give the milk and the cheese to the villagers, for free.’
‘You are a goose, Elsie.’ He placed his cup down. ‘Why not simply call on the villagers with a basket?’
‘It will feel less condescending this way. Don’t you think?’
The Silent Companions Page 5