The Widow's Confession

by Sophia Tobin

  Thinking of the past made her feel trapped, and feeling trapped made her angry; it woke violence in her. Somehow, knowing that a woman had been behind an attempted murder on the beach made it worse, for it seemed that Mr Steele was right, and there was a pattern in the deaths. The authorities might not be interested – ‘for who cared,’ Mr Steele had muttered, ‘for working-class children?’ But now there was a woman, moving like vengeance through the brightness of a summer’s day, seeking out something. But seeking out what? And Delphine could not help but identify with the darkness, the bitterness, and the capability to wound.

  She rubbed her face and held Julia’s hand in the evening light, hearing the sea breeze stir through the cracks of the house like a lament. She remembered a friend of her grandfather’s coming to stay in New York when she was a child. He liked telling Delphine stories, for she was his most appreciative listener. He came from the South, and when the others weren’t listening he would tell her the stranger, darker stories he thought she could take. Where he came from, he said, the sun could burn so hard as to kill you, and the rain fall so hard as to raise you again. What did he mean? she asked. He had been to a funeral, he said, one day, when it had rained hard the night before: he had seen the coffin lowered into water. Delphine imagined it as he described it: the hot, humid air, the thick green of the moss in the trees, the sloshing as the casket hit the water. ‘We were real hopeful,’ he said, ‘that the creek wouldn’t burst its banks, and the water drive up the dead again.’

  Could that happen? the little Delphine thought, and he saw the question in her eyes and nodded. ‘The moral of the story is, little lady: bodies do not stay buried.’

  And as she looked at Julia, she thought, Nothing does. Not the past, not the children we never had. Their ghosts follow us every step of the way.

  After all that had happened, Edmund thought there would be no more excursions, or attempts at outings. After Bessie Dalton, Theo locked himself in the study and only came out the next day for church services and to lead prayers at the local school. That evening, Martha, her eyes full of concern, placed a tray outside the study on the black and white tiled floor. Edmund passed it, and saw the steam rising from the soup as it cooled. He stood outside the door, his hand poised to knock, as Martha had knocked when she had placed it there, but there was something in the quality of that velvet silence, thick, impenetrable, which made him step back and return to the drawing room. Martha, he supposed, knew Theo’s ways.

  The next day, Theo appeared at breakfast, and as Edmund took his place and tucked in his napkin, he said: ‘Do you remember that place we spoke of – Reculver? The ruined church, with a history going back to Roman times?’

  Edmund speared the yolk of his egg with the tip of his knife, and watched the yellow seep over his plate. ‘I believe so,’ he replied. ‘You said there was a new book on the archaeology of it?’

  Theo smiled. ‘I have been reading it, this last day or so. It is most comprehensive and – in truth – I almost envy the writer of it. Strange, when one glimpses the other lives one might have lived, if one were not called by God.’

  Edmund opened his mouth to speak, but immediately realized there was little he could say without offending his host. He had thought that Theo was someone who did not care to dig too deep into anything, and he understood it – for surely faith was a matter of grace, not to be examined too closely, a glorious mystery. He knew that Theo collected sea grasses, and some butterflies, and he wondered at his contradictory desire to categorize and describe things, and how he could rejoice in finding something beautiful, and then cause its death. Though Theo often spoke of the glory of God’s creation, Edmund somewhere deep inside could not reconcile this with the pinning of dead things to boards, for he viewed faith and love as things to be lived, rather than set down and described.

  ‘I would like to go there,’ said Theo. ‘I am feeling weary, unwell. I could prevail upon the curate at St Peter’s to take my services for two days. I believe the trip would do me good.’

  Edmund’s first mistake was to mention the possible journey to Mrs Quillian. He had felt sure that, as the trip was arduous in comparison to their other, short excursions, necessitating an overnight stay in Reculver, she would not feel any interest in it, but he was mistaken. She flew at the idea with even more enthusiasm than she had shown for the earlier trips. Soon a note was received: Miss Waring and Alba were eager, and Mrs Beck and Miss Mardell too, though Mr Benedict had gone to be with his family – understandable in the circumstances, it was agreed. Still, there were many more people now planning to visit Reculver than Theo had anticipated, and Edmund felt a little guilty about involving them. Although Theo was polite about it, Edmund had seen his face fall at the mention of others joining them.

  On the morning of the trip a note was received; Mrs Quillian was unwell. So it was with a disconsolate Miss Waring at its head that the group set out.

  Reculver sat on the coast. It had once been inland, but as the sea persuaded its way in on the soft cliffs of the coast, so it neared the place, which had first been a Roman outpost, then a monastery, then, at last, a decaying parish church, too grand for its purpose, its air struck through with echoes of the past – the cries of babies, the local people said – until being abandoned at the turn of the century. So it contained disparate elements; there were tombstones from its time as a parish church, and still the remains of what had once been a great abbey church.

  There had been discussions about travelling to the ruins by sea, but these had been eschewed by Miss Waring, who resolutely refused to be in the water; she had seen the lights blinking on the Goodwin Sands, she said, and the hazard of it all was high in her mind. Therefore, the journey was undertaken by carriage for the ladies, and horseback for the men. As they approached the coast, they travelled through farmland, passing a mill and a cottage here and there, until they were in narrow lanes bordered by high hedgerows.

  Alba read to the ladies as they travelled, heedless of her travel sickness. She told them the story of the two sisters – Frances and Isabella – and of how they were shipwrecked. The elder, an Abbess, was saved. The younger was brought ashore and died, and so the towers were restored by the elder, with the purpose of warning shipping. She was buried in the shadow of them with her sister. Ever since, mariners had referred to the towers as the Twin Sisters, or the Two Sisters. As Alba read this, slowly and languorously, Delphine felt a shiver run the length of her spine.

  ‘It is all nonsense, of course,’ said Miss Waring, not unkindly.

  ‘I do feel a little unwell, Aunt,’ said Alba.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Miss Waring. ‘Another good reason why I refused the idea of travelling in a boat – imagine, my delicate Alba in a boat!’

  ‘Have you travelled much, Miss Waring?’ asked Julia.

  ‘A little, here and there,’ said Miss Waring vaguely. ‘But I spent much of my youth caring for my stepfather and stepbrother, so my time was ordered by them.’

  Delphine looked out of the window to see Theo, looking forwards, his face impassive as he rode.

  They disembarked at the King Ethelbert Inn, which stood near to the towers, and made their way up the slope to the promontory where the towers loomed over them. The Isle of Thanet was visible just along the coast, but to Delphine it seemed as distant as the sight of heaven from the damned in a medieval church fresco; this was an entirely different place. The two square towers were not built of the black flint of Broadstairs, but of a solid, densely packed grey flint, set with high spires to warn shipping. The pointed stone section between them had a high circular aperture and two curved arched windows either side of it, all empty of glass so that, standing there below it, looking up, the clouds moved where the stained glass had once been. On that exposed spot, only the toughest grasses remained, thick and bushy and windswept; the pathway spotted with hard unyielding lichen, pale grey. Beneath them, the sea beat at the shore.

  Delphine stood at the edge of the ruins and watc
hed the choppy water; it was a hard blue, the colour of a bad sapphire. Its rise and fall, its network of small, sharp waves, the sheer violence of it as it drew against the cliff, all of these things made it seem entirely different from Broadstairs, even though the cliffs of Thanet could be seen from where she stood. The sea, and the hard cold air which blustered against this foremost point, seemed to be attacking the land, as though it had taken against the church and was eroding the ruins day by day, hour by hour, with the harsh sea winds shot through with salt. She drew her cloak around her, and imagined what it must have been like to live here, as a monk, with the wind and sea raging outside, trusting to God’s providence; and even when Alba told her, reading from her guidebook, that the sea had been half a mile from the church at that time, she could not stave off the sense of isolation and fear that had settled over her.

  The two steeples of the towers had come down, and been raised again, and now bore beacons to warn shipping, and as Alba wandered away, Delphine thought of the Goodwin Sands, of which the group had often spoken, and of the fear and misery of mariners caught in the violence of those seas.

  ‘It is blowing a fearsome gale.’ Theo’s voice startled her. She had last seen him some yards away, as he pointed out aspects of the landscape and the Roman settlement to Edmund. He stood beside her on the edge of the cliff looking out to sea, his notebook and pencil clasped tightly in one hand, and she saw in his face some of the same haunted aspect that she had felt as she looked out there. She wanted to be able to laugh at him, this clergyman with his wide-brimmed hat and his neat black coat billowing in the strong wind, who always watched her so solemnly, but she could not. She realized that he had spent much of his time not wishing to be looked at; constantly in movement, or masked by politeness and discharging his duty as a priest. There were times when his face truly seemed to be carved in stone like the face on a crucifix. Now, he was just a man, and she observed the disturbing blue of his eyes, and the scarred texture of his face, as though she had never seen him before. He was a man, she thought, not the icon he perhaps wished to be.

  ‘Have you recovered from the other day on the beach?’ he said. ‘I had no time to speak to you before you left.’

  ‘As much as one can,’ she said. ‘It is a disgrace that Dr Crisp does not wish to look into the deaths further.’

  Theo nodded. ‘He is jaded, I am afraid. He is no stranger to the deaths of children. He told me that he has often seen parents refuse treatment for a child because they are enrolled in a burial club, and will receive money if the child dies. And he is encouraged – nay, pressed – into not pursuing expensive inquests, which the coroner has to cover from his own pocket, and which the magistrates will not pay back. He wishes to have his own life; he wishes to marry. He has seen many young children die in suspicious circumstances; he cannot pursue them all under his own purse.’

  Delphine had a lump in her throat. ‘I find it hard to believe,’ she said. ‘I cannot excuse him on the basis that he says the poor do not love their children.’

  ‘Do you know anything of poverty, Mrs Beck?’ he said. He did not accuse her with the words, but his gaze grew in intensity as he spoke. ‘In the course of my work I have seen families with more children than they can count. I have seen squalor and despair, and the brutality that can cause. Many people do love their children; a few are so brutalized by loss and hardship that they dare not. I have not lost hope, but Dr Crisp has, and I do not think we should judge him for that.’

  ‘This is a different kind of case, surely,’ she objected.

  ‘But the victims are not,’ he said. ‘Mr Benedict can scream and shout all he likes; there will be no investigation unless something more marked happens.’ He finished with a nod that seemed to speak of finality, as though in agreement that they would bury the subject. They stood in silence for some time before he spoke again. ‘Our painter friend would like this aspect, don’t you think?’ he said, without moving his eyes from the horizon. Delphine could not read him; his voice was completely neutral, but she was surprised that he would mention Mr Benedict to her again.

  ‘I disagree, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I believe, for all his sketching of the cliffs and fields, his main object is to study people. I am told he excels at crowd scenes, at large compositions, sharpened by his attention to detail, textures and expressions.’

  ‘Could he paint that spray, I wonder?’ said Theo, as a wave hit the cliffs below them and sent a whip-curve of spray high into the air. ‘Capture its real qualities? He would say that I should be in the water to see it properly – that is what he meant. He said I did not feel anything truly, or I believe that was his meaning.’

  ‘I can hardly say,’ said Delphine. ‘I do not know what is in his mind.’

  ‘I thought he was your good friend,’ he said.

  When he turned and looked her full in the eyes, the fierceness of his gaze silenced her. The sight of it not only surprised her, but made her fear for a moment, the true intensity of those eyes. She turned away, and they both faced the sea, standing alongside each other, buffeted by the wind. As the minutes passed, she felt something grow between them, like the threads of silk woven by a spider, a sense of communion, as though they were there alone. She did not want to move and break the threads, the voices of the others behind them lost in the strong sea wind. They were, for those few minutes, companions on the edge of something, as they had been on the day they had half-fallen down the slope at Dumpton Gap together, and the sea itself laid out in front of them with its threat and adventure.

  ‘Mr Hallam! Mr Hallam?’ It was Miss Waring. She was standing on the grass, in what had once been the great nave of the abbey, as solid and immovable as a standing stone. ‘Miss Alba is becoming over-excited; this is a sombre place to spend so much time.’ Beyond her, Edmund was reading the inscription on one of the eighteenth-century gravestones.

  ‘If you wish, we can leave you here,’ said Delphine softly to Theo. ‘Mr Steele can accompany us to the inn.’ She sensed that he did not want to leave; that coming here had been some kind of pilgrimage. She felt sorry that they had intruded upon it.

  ‘No, I must see you all to the inn, and ensure the accommodation is comfortable,’ he said. The familiar blankness had returned to his eyes, and she knew then that he had broken the threads between them. His words were not a rejection, but his expression and manner were. He straightened the collar of his coat, though it did not need meddling with, and began to walk through the grass towards Miss Waring, moving his limbs slowly, as though he was wading through water.

  My dear Charles,

  You will not expect this, but it is a letter from Reculver – a missive sent with the hope that your warm good cheer will be sent by return and be waiting for me at Broadstairs, so I may shake off the cold and melancholy of this place. We have come here on a trip which I thought would raise Theo’s spirits, but in this dark little inn which, despite its warm fire and good food, is supported on all sides by the sounds of the sea and its attendant gales, those same spirits seem much depressed.

  He had talked with enthusiasm of this place; of the archaeological explorations here, and its claiming from the Romans as a place of sanctity. But now we are here, he does not talk of those things at all, and if I mention them to him, he answers me with a politeness which, if not curt, is lifeless and without any of his previous warmth. He took dinner with the rest of the party, but did not eat; sat himself at the head of the table, at a distance from the others, and said Grace as sombrely as one in church on Ash Wednesday. The accommodation here is cramped. There are only a hundred or so souls in this whole place, and they are scattered to the lands, fearful of the incursions of the sea. As a result, Theo and I are sharing a room, and when I found him – for he retired early – he was on his knees, praying, and continued in a low voice. When at last I blew out my candle, I fancied he was still praying in the darkness, and I sensed the noiseless movement of his lips as he spoke to his God. It worries me, and worries me deeply.
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br />   I do not doubt that the events of the last weeks have affected him, though he is a man used, surely, to minister to the dead and the dying. The sight of that little girl struggling to live on the beach, and the awareness that some wretch of a woman had done this to her, affected us all greatly.

  I spoke about this to Mrs Beck this evening. She and I are both greatly disturbed by the event, and she is dwelling on the mystery that the words MARY and WHITE, White as snow, have been found near the bodies. Of course, you will have heard of the Mary White yourself, as she and her boatmen are of national fame, but connecting such a great blessing to these deaths feels wicked. We talked it through, and tried to decipher its meaning; and of course none of the lifeboatmen can be called into question, for they are beyond reproach, but the presence of those words haunts us, and talk as we did, we could go no further with it.

  Being here in this inn, as I looked around this afternoon at my companions, it struck me that we are all haunted, in our own ways. Perhaps it was the low light in the room – the way the shadows fell – but we all seemed burdened by things, the burdens usually hidden, but brought alive by the fatigue of the journey and the terrible events of the past weeks. The only countenance that was clear of these things – well, it was Alba’s, as clean and fresh as a piece of parchment not yet written on. And it is for this reason that some of us love her, and in some of us her very innocence – which is not her fault – raises impatience. She alone does not seem troubled by the near-death of that girl on the beach.