by Sophia Tobin
‘Too late, too late,’ Edmund said, under his breath. Amusement and diversion; these were the things that made his life bearable. If his father, a silversmith and an artist in his way, had bequeathed him something, it was exactness: a precision which had served him well in the building and keeping of his fortune, and was at odds with his otherwise relaxed nature.
Fretfully, he went over to the window and lifted the drape. Dense, blue-black darkness greeted him: it was perfect night in this seaside town, deeper and darker than any city night. He could not hear a sound, not even the cry of a gull. He wondered if it was the trees, waving in the growing breeze, that swathed the parsonage in such complete darkness; but after a minute or two he saw there was a gap in them, a line of sight intermittently blocked by their movement.
He saw a light.
He tilted his head and took a step to the right. Across the narrow road at the end of the driveway, someone was standing on the step of one of the cottages. He narrowed his eyes at the pale column and made out the figure of a woman, holding a candle, shielded from the sea breeze by a glass shade; he caught the glint of it. He raised his hand, but the pale shape showed no sign that she was aware of his presence. She stayed still, seeming to stare straight ahead. He had no idea what she was looking at; the building he was in was surely cloaked in leaves, a mass of darkness to her eyes.
He waved a little more, until he felt foolish, and dropped the drape. He took a turn around the room and closed his letter. Then he could not help himself; he went to the window and looked out again. But the figure was gone. There was no light behind the shutters of the cottage, no sign that anyone was within.
He undressed and got into bed. The balminess of the day had quite gone; the bed was cool, and he was aware that his heart was beating hard, and that he wanted to know who had been watching the parsonage. ‘It is a quaint little place,’ Venning had told him, ‘but do not listen to the local people: they can talk only of wrecks, and they try to scare the ladies, speaking of sea-monsters and ghosts.’
Ghosts, thought Edmund. Foolish, so foolish. He closed his eyes and thought of his childhood, imagining that he was in his parents’ cottage again, his mother stirring a pot on the range. He thought of the London streets, the chaos and energy, the messenger boy running to him, bringing news of the money he had made through no labour of his own. He heard the chink of Mrs Craven’s wine glass as she set it down on the silver salver bought by her first husband. And at last, as he fell asleep, he saw the pale shape of a woman on a step, and the dark and glittering sea.
CHAPTER TWO
The summer of 1851 seems as distant to me now as my childhood. It is as though a different Delphine Beck lived through that time. My cousin Julia and I began the year in London, but as the world flocked there to visit the Great Exhibition and see its novelties, we knew it was time for us to leave. Just as the world opened up, we went to Broadstairs because it seemed to be the perfect place to hide. A place for invalids, for those who hoped to convalesce, and those that never would. The town was known for its retired nature, and we thought that if we stepped quietly amongst its residents they would never notice us.
Broadstairs was one more resting-place on the ceaseless journey Julia and I had taken since the autumn of 1841, when we left New York for England on the Great Western. We had spent ten years touring Europe, travelling as much as our small income would allow. We thought this quiet sea-bathing resort would be no different from the spa-towns or the lakeside villages we had seen, where we kept to ourselves, careful not to make connections.
We arrived in May, before the season had begun. The days were long and bright; the light hard and clear, sometimes even cruel in its merciless exposure of every flaw. Going to sketch on the beach in the early mornings, I thought that I had never seen such light before.
Night fell differently there, too. Raised in New York, I was surprised by the swift way in which it descended: the sharpening air, the total darkness, only broken by the sweep of the lighthouse’s lantern at North Foreland and the flashing signals of the lightships marking the Goodwin Sands out at sea. Coming out of our cottage, I would never know which way to turn: towards the darkness of the foreland, or towards the town, where the locals sat in the taverns and conversed by the light of flickering candles.
I often wonder what that summer would have been, without the deaths. Would we – a group of strangers – have been thrown together with such intensity? Our loves, our hatreds, focusing in the presence of death, giving every word, every touch, a sense of urgency. It seems so strange when observed at a distance, now that time has passed. We could have been like any other group of travellers, passing and grazing each other lightly, with polite conversation and the occasional cutting remark. Instead, we were a conflagration, or perhaps that conflagration was only within me.
Delphine went to sketch on the sands at Main Bay, going early, before anyone else was there apart from one or two fishermen on the pier. She was seated with her back to the town, and the bathing machines were not yet drawn to the water’s edge, so she saw only the sea, the clouds and the sun. When the first walkers came, she closed her sketchbook and left the beach.
Harbour Street and the clifftop promenade were still quiet. Delphine walked for some way until the path verged upon a cornfield, which went right up to the cliff’s edge. On its most far-out point, she looked down upon the whole bay; the perfect view for a painter. But already, more people were out, and she knew it was time to go back to Victory Cottage, her home for the season.
Her route back took her through the town and past the Albion Hotel. It was a large square building, solid as a dowager and with the same pretensions to stateliness, despite evidently having been battered by the sea winds that winter. It was the foremost of the town’s hotels and associated with Charles Dickens, though he had long since decamped to Fort House, a private residence, for his summer seasons in the town. She paused to look at the hotel with the interest of a stranger’s eye – the lantern over the large entrance and the little ornamentation cut into the stones – to consider whether she wished to sketch it.
In the back of her mind she had noted the swift approach of a carriage from the distance, but it was only when the growing noise of hooves and wheels intruded into her thoughts that she became truly aware of the danger she was in. The horse and carriage had come from the top of the town; it was downhill all the way, with the Albion at the bottom. The horse had bolted. It was hurtling forwards, head high, eyes rolled back as its driver struggled with it. As she turned, the sudden vision of it arrested her where she stood; frozen, one hand against the wall of the hotel.
So this is how it ends, she thought, after a journey of a thousand miles. And in that single, endless moment, she closed her eyes.
In the blackness she heard the carriage draw up with a fearful, skidding sharpness, scattering grit so that some hit the windowpane of the hotel past her head, and the horse gave a painful whinny. She waited for the sound of splintering wood, the scream of the animal.
The sounds did not come.
She opened her eyes and saw the proprietor of the Albion, Mr Gorsey, come running out of the front door, a young woman in drab clothes on his heels, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Michael!’ Gorsey shouted. His voice quietened as he came nearer; it would be foolish to scare the horse more. ‘Damned idiot!’ He caught sight of Delphine. ‘Forgive me, madam – Polly, see to the lady.’ He reached for the horse’s head, as its driver jerked viciously at the reins.
The girl who had followed him turned to Delphine, straightening her hair as she did so. The triviality of the gesture almost made Delphine laugh out loud. ‘I am unharmed, thank you,’ she said.
The door of the carriage opened. ‘Madam – are you hurt?’
It was the first man who climbed out of the carriage. He was at her side in two steps. Her shocked mind took in every detail of his appearance: a pallid wide face, black eyes, and lank black shoulder-length hair. He was dressed
in the finest of the London fashions, but in a dishevelled way, as though his clothes had been flung on rather than arranged. On his lapel a pin glittered: a white enamelled skull, with ruby eyes. Delphine knew the price of many things, and she certainly knew Parisian jewels when she saw them. Before she could draw away, he had taken her gloved hand in his.
‘Mr Dean lost control of his horses. Mr Ralph Benedict RA, at your service,’ he said, with a bow. She looked down; he was still holding her hand. ‘Madam, do speak to us, and tell us you are not harmed. This young lady will find you some tea.’ He smiled briefly over Delphine’s shoulder at the young woman who worked in the hotel.
His touch had violated the space that Delphine normally kept around her, and she felt his gesture to be a mark of disrespect, an advantage taken of her shock. There was something else, too: a fleeting irritation at his confidence. She withdrew her hand, saying coolly, ‘I am well,’ and turned to walk away.
‘And your name, so I may enquire after you?’ he said, with a quickness that irritated her further. She wondered how he could say it in such an unperturbed way, when she had her back to him.
‘As I said, I am quite well,’ she replied, turning back. ‘There is no need to enquire.’
‘Will you come into the hotel, and rest for a moment?’ he said. But she merely curtseyed, and moved off.
She heard the uproar of Mr Gorsey’s rage begin again; the sounds of trunks being pulled down. She walked away as swiftly as was decent, keeping her head up, trying to quell the strange emptiness of shock which was rising in her.
‘I know who she is,’ said Michael Dean, who had finally climbed down and seen off the admonishments of the hotel-keeper with a few swift curses. ‘Her name’s Mrs Beck. I unloaded her trunks when she arrived the other day. She’s come here with another lady.’
‘I thank you,’ said Mr Benedict, with a glance at his ashen-faced servant, who had finally emerged from the carriage interior. ‘But that’s not quite enough to earn my forgiveness for the ride you’ve just given us.’
As the others unloaded the carriage, he kept his eyes on the lady who was walking away from him, until she finally disappeared around a turn in the road. Then, and only then, did he turn and smile at the young woman who was ushering him into the hotel.
Victory Cottage stood opposite Holy Trinity Church. It had been renamed forty-six years before, after the Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, but was that indeterminate age known as old, at least a hundred years, but probably more. It was built of the local flint; courses of circular stones hewn in two to reveal smooth dark grey or black with the restrained, occasional glitter of polished jet. There was a naïve quality to the building. Three small panes of glass at the side of the front window were white, green and red for no apparent reason, and the front wall was decorated with a square section of blue and white Delft tiles depicting ships at sea, in stark contrast to the dark flint around them. It had, unusually, a lantern turret; a small watchtower piled on top of the cottage, as though it had been built to watch the sea.
Victory Cottage was dumb witness to Delphine’s distress as she hurried through its gate and opened the front door. She had believed the carriage would hit her, and was still shaking, despite her resolution to be calm.
As she walked into the small hallway, she almost tripped over a large girl on her hands and knees, who was scrubbing the tiled floor.
‘I’m glad to see you again, Martha,’ said Delphine, putting her sketchbook on the hallstand and unpinning her cloak. With relief, she heard the timbre of her own voice: low and firm, as though everything was normal.
The girl smiled broadly. ‘Of course, madam. I said I’d come, did I not? I’m happy to be of use to you for the season, or until my sister is well again. I have to go to the parsonage first in the mornings, but they finished breakfast early this morning. Even if I can’t be here much, I’ll be sure to make you something cold for supper every day.’
‘Don’t exhaust your strength,’ said Delphine. ‘We are quite independent, you know; if you cannot cook for us, we can make other arrangements.’
‘There’ll be no problem, madam,’ said Martha, with the serious, direct stare Delphine had come to associate with her. ‘I’m as strong as an ox, that’s what Pa says, and if you do not mind that I am not here often, I will char as best I can for you. My sister may be well again in a week or two, and then she will come and do it.’
‘As you wish,’ said Delphine. She walked into the back parlour, where her cousin was eating breakfast.
Julia said tightly, ‘I thought we agreed that I would go out with you in the mornings. I hardly need to point out to you how improper it is for you to be wandering around on your own.’ Her blue eyes flashed as she poured the milk.
Delphine shuffled into a little space next to her. The round gate-leg table took up most of the room. They had fallen in love with the cottage and its small rooms, smelling of the sea, but they had not yet adjusted to the lack of accommodation for their clothes and their belongings. Their trunks lay largely unpacked. The two ladies travelled alone and were used to hotels, so when Martha, a local girl, had turned up on their first evening and said she had been sent to lay the fire in place of her sister, who normally cared for the cottage, they had engaged her for the season without a moment’s hesitation. Delphine wondered whether she would have cause to regret it: the girl had proved to be far from the average servant, with her irregular attendance and cheerful inquisitiveness.
‘Delphine?’ Julia put her cup down. ‘You are trembling. What has happened?’
‘Nothing of any consequence,’ said Delphine, with a laugh that sounded false, even to her own ears. ‘I was nearly run down on Albion Street by a carriage and a bolting horse. I fancied for a moment that the estate agent might have hired someone to end my life.’
‘You poor thing.’ Julia put her hand over Delphine’s. She raised her voice. ‘Martha, fetch Mrs Beck a glass of Madeira – quickly, please.’
Martha did so, and Delphine drank it back swiftly under the concerned gaze of the two women.
‘It was nothing of consequence,’ she said.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, madam, did you say you had trouble with Mr Aiden?’ said Martha.
‘A little,’ said Delphine, ignoring Julia’s warning glance. ‘He struggled with the idea of renting a cottage to a lady. It mattered not that I had a letter in my hand written by Mr Lock, my agent in London. I suspect also he did not like my accent; he mentioned an accident – I believe the word “lugger” was used?’
‘The Mystery,’ said Martha, pouring a second, healthy amount of Madeira into Delphine’s glass without asking. ‘One of our luggers, run down by a London-bound schooner which was American.’
‘Ah,’ said Delphine, resisting the urge to light a cigarette. Julia had made her promise to smoke only when they were alone.
‘It’s hardly your fault what some other Americans did,’ said Martha. ‘Where in America do you come from, if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve been itching to know.’
Delphine stared at the tablecloth, and the delicate sea knots worked into it in white embroidery silk. She wondered why she had not engaged a proper maid: silent, and discreet.
‘New York,’ she said.
‘New York!’ said Martha. ‘How I should wish to go there! And why would you choose to come here?’
‘By accident,’ said Julia, a little too quickly, though there was no sign of suspicion on Martha’s good-natured face. ‘We considered Margate first, and then thought better of it.’
‘Margate is fine enough,’ said Martha.
‘I suppose it is,’ said Julia, ‘if you do not care whether you catch cholera or not.’
At that moment a gust of wind buffeted the house, setting the slates rattling, for it was as though the house, sturdy as it was, lived and breathed with the weather. Martha smiled at the look on Delphine’s face. ‘No need to worry,’ she said. ‘This cottage has been here longer than you and me.’
‘Mrs Beck is not used to the elements,’ said Julia. ‘And I admit, last night, the sound of the sea seemed close to me, and the whisper of the wind almost ghostly. I even thought I heard someone out there, and went to look.’
Julia’s remark lit a spark in Martha’s eye. ‘We are good at ghost stories, round here,’ she said. ‘But you must not go out, madam. When I was a girl my mother always told me never to look from the window if I heard a horse and cart passing by in the early hours; that it would be the ghost of old Joss Snelling, the smuggler, bringing his contraband into the town.’
‘And we thought this would be a sleepy place,’ said Julia.
‘This Joss Snelling interests me,’ Delphine said. ‘I have heard there are wild tales of smuggling on this coast. And we must have more ghost stories, please – are there no wailing women, dressed in grey? Pale little wraiths, haunting the coastal caves?’
All of a sudden, all the cheerful pleasure Martha had taken in the conversation drained from her face. She looked suddenly sad, and stilled. Mutely, she shook her head. Julia raised her eyebrows at Delphine, questioningly, but Delphine decided not to ask more, for she knew not to press a person in sorrow. She had spent years fending off questions from interested strangers, and had no desire to inflict the same on this young woman.
‘I’d best be off, ma’am,’ said Martha. She went without a curtsey, suddenly preoccupied, and they let her go. When Delphine went out into the hall, she saw the girl had left her straw bonnet behind.