A Place of Secrets

by Rachel Hore

  She sighed. This would have to do for the time being. There might be sufficient information for Bridget’s article. But still, she felt desolate. She closed the computer file containing this latest piece of transcription and e-mailed it to Cecelia.

  How was Paris? You’ll be amazed by this final bit. What do you think it could be that they found?

  Longing to hear from you.

  With luck Cecelia would get the hint.

  * * *

  When she logged on during the evening a response pinged into her inbox.

  Jude, Thank you for this, which is fascinating. I’ve read all the observation journals and I have sent you those letters you needed. It’ll be your turn to be amazed. They should be with you tomorrow. Call me when you’ve read them. There’s lots to talk about.

  Oh, and Paris was wonderful.

  On Friday morning a thick envelope addressed to Jude in Cecelia’s stylish handwriting arrived by special delivery. It contained photocopies of half a dozen letters in Esther’s italic hand, so familiar to her now.

  “They’re the ones from the Cambridge library,” Jude explained to Chantal.

  They repaired with them to the library where Jude spread them out on the table. They were all signed “Esther Wickham” and addressed to one Josiah Bellingham.

  “Remind me of who he was?” said Chantal.

  “A London watchmaker and a grinder of optical lenses,” Jude told her. “An amateur astronomer of some reputation. He lived and worked in Whitechapel in the second half of the eighteenth century. I think Anthony Wickham bought equipment from him to make telescopes. Yes, look, that’s what the first letter says.”

  14 May 1778

  Dear Mr Bellingham,

  I write to you at the instigation of my father, Anthony Wickham of Starbrough Hall, who you will perhaps remember having many times bought from you lenses and specula for spyglasses. You will be surprised at my writing instead of my father, and to learn that my purpose is not to order goods from you but to crave your advice.

  You may not know the sad news from Starbrough Hall, but on 28th January inst. my father met with a terrible accident which has left him gravely cast down. Although he has recovered somewhat, thank God, he is yet an invalid, unable to rise from his bed without assistance or to walk, unable to write or to speak more than a few words. We pray that his progress will continue.

  These last weeks he has proved hale enough to continue his stargazing, and this he has been determined to do. Many nights have we repaired to the park and now I must tell you of a curiosity we have seen. A strange object like a comet but with no tail or a nebula, but it moves, visible in the quartile near Tau Tauri. This we viewed with 460 magnifications, very well defined, and with 278 magnifications, sharp and a small star nearby.

  My father’s suggestion was to write to you as the best of his acquaintances to investigate this further. He also believes you are an honourable man.

  “So wouldn’t claim the credit, I suppose,” Jude muttered.

  Bellingham must have replied in friendly fashion, because the next letter to him was dated a few days later and merely answered a few questions Bellingham had about measurements. Jude concluded from it that he hadn’t been able to find this object through his own telescopes but was planning to visit an acquaintance who possessed a better telescope. The third letter indicated that this contact couldn’t see it either, or had concluded it was a nebula. “It’s important to watch it over a long period of time,” Esther had written. “A month, maybe, though it is now faded from the sky.”

  In July she wrote to him again, asking if there had been any developments, then again, to remind him in August.

  In the final letter, dated October, the tone had changed. Bellingham must finally believe her for she said that she’d be eager to hear back from him “as soon as you have consulted with the Astronomical Society. I have never written such a thing as a paper and fear I would need significant assistance.”

  * * *

  After lunch, when she was alone in the library, Jude rang Cecelia as requested.

  “The transcription you sent me yesterday, and Esther’s letters to Bellingham exactly confirm my interpretations of that torn diary you sent me. Jude, it’s amazing. Has the penny dropped yet?”

  “Not really, I’m afraid,” Jude replied. “You’ll have to tell me.”

  “What she saw,” Cecelia said, and Jude had never known her so animated, “was the planet we call Uranus. Just think, Jude. She saw it in 1778! Three years before Herschel discovered it and gave it a name. Though I don’t think it was called Uranus for a while. He and his sister Caroline thought it a comet at first as well, you know.”

  “So Esther really was becoming a skilled astronomer.”

  “Building on her father’s expertise, yes. If she hadn’t so good a telescope she wouldn’t have been able to see it. I should also add that she wasn’t the only one before Herschel to have reported seeing this strange object. Herschel was the first to study it properly, though, and to draw official attention to it and that, I suppose, is the really important thing about a scientific discovery—to recognize its possible significance and to follow it up. Think of Isaac Newton staring at that falling apple. People have always seen apples falling but no one before saw it as anything but commonplace. But he had the background knowledge and the intellectual curiosity to go away and experiment endlessly and construct from it the theory of gravity.”

  “So why is it important that Esther saw this comet or planet or whatever you are saying it is? After all, someone else discovered it a couple of years later, named it and took all the glory.”

  But Cecelia wasn’t to be swayed. “In the history of astronomical discovery I suppose it’s not important. But in the context of the story around this collection you’re selling it’s fascinating. And being an historian of astronomy, I am really interested. It’s part of the whole endeavor of scientific discovery at the time and Esther, let’s face it, is unusual being a woman. You know about Herschel’s sister Caroline, I suppose?”

  “Not really,” Jude confessed.

  “She’s a prime example of both the possibilities and the limitations for women operating in the man’s world of intellectual discovery. William Herschel was able to escape a very restrictive upbringing in Germany and set up by himself as a musician and amateur astronomer in Bath. But he had tremendous trouble being allowed to bring his little sister to join him—she was expected to be the family skivvy. When she eventually came, her job was to be his assistant in what was often grueling physical work. He ground his own mirrors and built his own huge telescopes—like Wickham—and she had to help, and she was only this tiny little woman. She took part in the stargazing and noting what they saw. She did get public recognition for her contributions and even became something of a celebrity for discovering a comet—the first ‘lady’s comet,’ as the writer Fanny Burney put it. But part of the celebration of her was the fact that she was a bit of a freak—a female astronomer—and it was more common to hear her referred to as ‘the great William Herschel’s sister.’ It might even have helped her cause that she was so modest and tiny and self-effacing.”

  “I wonder whether Esther was,” said Jude with a little smile. “The way she must have bossed that household about to do things for her father!”

  “Yes, considering she was, as your latest transcriptions told me, a foundling and might have been regarded as the lowest of the low, she seemed to earn everyone’s respect and obedience. If she was spirited she must also have been very clever and tactful. It is interesting to speculate what might have happened if her father hadn’t had that accident. They might have made discoveries that rivaled Herschel’s. It’s useless to speculate, of course. It’s much more interesting to read the correspondence with this man Bellingham. I wonder whether he did anything more about the matter of the strange object she talked about.”

  “I don’t know.” Jude felt despairing. “There is no more of Esther’s account to read.”r />
  But when she ended the call and thought about all that Cecelia said, she felt brighter. At last there was something significant to write in her article. Esther and her father had made an important discovery, and their work deserved to be presented to the world. She could hardly wait to sit down and revise the synopsis of her article and let Bridget know. But there wasn’t time for that right now. She had offered to cook the evening meal.

  * * *

  Their meal was early to accommodate the twins and because Robert had to rush off to chair an open meeting of the parish council. Chantal was to go with him. While doling out strawberries and cream, which followed roast chicken—the twins’ favorite—Jude volunteered to put Max and Georgie to bed so that Alexia could go too, but she gently refused.

  “It’s not really my sort of thing,” Alexia confessed. “Robert will do very well without me. Why don’t you go, Jude? You won’t be able to vote or anything, but you do know about the folly. And you’ve done enough, cooking us this lovely meal.”

  Robert added, “Yes, you’d be useful actually, Jude. Would you mind saying a little piece about the folly?”

  Jude, who sometimes had to address auction rooms, agreed.

  * * *

  About fifty villagers gathered in the village hall opposite the church. Euan was an early arrival. He sat with Jude and Chantal but was immediately engaged in conversation by the woman sitting on his other side. Jude, in between nodding and smiling at Chantal’s many acquaintances, was glad of a quiet moment to scribble a few notes on what she needed to say. As Robert called the meeting to order, she looked around for John Farrell or Marcia Vane, but there was no sign. Whether or not they knew about the occasion, she saw that they wouldn’t have been welcome. For once the meeting started it was clear that most villagers were against the development, and certainly all of them hated the idea of the folly being knocked down. “It’s our best-known landmark,” one of the parish councilors put it.

  Here, Robert invited Jude to speak, referring to her somewhat vaguely as an “historical expert” from London. Jude, at first hesitantly, duly described how the tower had been built for stargazing and that significant discoveries had been made from it that added to the bank of knowledge at the time.

  “Don’t forget, too,” she went on, warming to her subject, “it’s an important piece of architecture. Follies, as you might know, were a feature of the eighteenth-century great house, a way by which landowners demonstrated their wealth and sophistication. Starbrough folly is a particularly fine, listed, example.”

  After this, Euan spoke out against the development, beginning, “This application is another example of the creeping destruction of something vitally important: our rural heritage. Bite by bite, we are eating away at our precious wild places. If we start interfering with the habitat of the red admiral and the bee orchid we will lose them. And lose them, remember, forever.”

  When he’d finished and the applause died down, Robert chaired a general discussion then summarized by saying, “It’s fairly unlikely that the planning authorities would allow the area to be built on extensively, but we can’t rely on that supposition. I propose that we resist the demolition of the folly and the development plan in its entirety. However, Farrell might fight back, asserting that, given the folly, there is a precedent for building there.” It wasn’t long before this proposal was enthusiastically accepted, then Robert agreed to draft the necessary letter and the meeting was closed.

  “Like a lift up the road, Euan?” Robert asked him as they walked to the car.

  “Thank you,” he replied. In the back of the car, his arm stretched across the back of the seat, Jude felt terribly aware of him.

  Robert was praising his contribution to the debate. “It’s a vital aspect of the defense,” he said. “Perhaps I can consult you when I write that particular paragraph.”

  “Sure,” Euan said.

  “In fact, would you like to come to dinner tomorrow night? We can sketch it out then. I’m not as good on bee orchids and whatnot as you are.”

  “I can call in tomorrow during the day, if you like,” Euan said, “but I’m afraid I’m busy during the evening.”

  He said to Jude. “Actually, Darcey, Summer and Claire are coming around. Summer finally got me to agree to her sleeping in the caravan, and Claire’s gamely volunteered to borrow my tent.”

  “Oh, that sounds fun,” she said. Her sister hadn’t said anything about this when she’d spoken to her on the phone earlier, and, once again, she felt oddly left out.

  Euan, perhaps sensing this, said, “The tent’s got two sleeping compartments. Why don’t you come, too?”

  “Thank you,” she replied, then regretted it, not feeling sure whether they really wanted her there. “Perhaps I ought to say no. I’m not great in tents,” is what she should have said. But Euan was so enthusiastic when he said, “Great! We’ll have a barbecue. My sister and her husband might be free, too.”

  * * *

  It was just a kids’ sleepover, Jude remonstrated with herself as she lay awake later that night. But Claire was being so odd at the moment, and she guessed she’d be intruding.

  She’d warned herself to stand back, though it was ridiculous to think she needed to. Just a couple of weeks ago she had broken off from Caspar because of her allegiance to Mark; it didn’t make sense to be resentful of Claire’s interest in Euan. And … now it came back to her, what she’d tried so hard to forget, the very thing Claire must have been hinting at when she said Mark hadn’t been perfect. Jude had trampled it down in her mind for years, believing it best, the only way forward if she wanted to keep Mark. And of course once Mark died, forgetting was part of the process of his sanctification in her memory. And now she’d taken the lid off the memory, there was no replacing it.

  * * *

  Their father had died nearly eight years before in October 2001, just after she and Mark had become engaged. He was sixty-one, their mother still only fifty-four. Mark and Jude, who were due to marry the following June, spent practically every weekend between the funeral and Christmas visiting Valerie, and Claire often deserted her rented bedsitter to keep their mother company. What Mark must have thought of this household of weeping women, he was too sympathetic and tactful ever to have voiced, but he noticeably took every opportunity to get out of the house by volunteering to make supermarket trips, fill Valerie’s car with gas, fetch dry cleaning or go on myriad other errands. These were all tasks that Valerie’s long-suffering husband had performed and which Valerie had neither the energy nor the desire to attempt herself yet.

  Claire tried to help by washing and ironing and helping their mother with her hair and makeup, but all too often she found herself snapped at and rebuffed.

  “You have a go with her, then,” she’d moan to Jude and retreat to her old bedroom with her tarot cards and a box of tissues. Valerie didn’t try all that harder with Jude, but Jude didn’t mind so much and kept calm.

  She was very much aware that Mark seemed able to manage Claire. He’d tease her in what Jude had assumed was a brotherly manner; he would put his arm round Claire easily. He had a sister, Catherine, a year or two younger than himself, and showed a friendly way with women that Jude had always appreciated. So she didn’t take much notice of how he and Claire were with one another.

  But it was now that a certain cameo rose out of the confused images of that awful period, a period that she usually tried to blot from her mind.

  She and Valerie had left to drive over to Gran’s for the afternoon, but a mile or two out of the city, Valerie realized she hadn’t got her handbag and insisted Jude turn around to fetch it. Jude was annoyed; why couldn’t her mother exist without her handbag for the afternoon? She slewed the car to a halt out in the road, then, remembering that the key was in the handbag and Mark was out seeing an old school friend, stomped down the side path to find the spare key in its hiding place in the greenhouse. She glanced in through the living-room window and a flicker of movement caught her
eye. She stared, and Mark stared back. He was lying on the sofa, and Claire was stretched out across him. Numb with shock, Jude got the key, grabbed the handbag from the hall and tore off without speaking.

  Later that evening he insisted to Jude that Claire was exhausted from crying. He had been preparing to go out when she had come to the front door, and finding everyone out had sat down to talk to him about their father and how difficult Valerie was being, and ended up weeping uncontrollably. What else could he do but comfort her? That was all. Jude was overreacting.

  Jude was so angry and uncertain, she spent that night on the sofa bed in the tiny spare bedroom. She just wanted to be on her own, she told Mark, while she thought things out. But as Mark stuck to his version, and her memory of what she’d seen faded into all the other confused events of that time, she came to accommodate it and let the matter go. Anyway, Claire started referring to someone called Jon she’d met through her evening job behind the bar in the arts center and soon the crisis was over.

  It’s funny. It was only now, thinking about Claire and Euan, that she remembered it at all. If Claire had been trying to bring the matter up, what on earth were her motives—kind or unkind? Was it really some strange attempt to knock Mark off his pedestal and make Jude come to terms with the fact that he’d gone? Was she trying some trick of one-upmanship in the game of love? Or was there something else she was trying to convey?

  The revelation that struck her then was too awful to be borne, and she thrust it away.

  CHAPTER 28

  On Saturday morning, Jude felt tired and grouchy. Tonight she’d agreed to go camping and she didn’t think Claire would be that pleased. She was weary. In some ways she thought she’d be better off going away. She’d been at Starbrough Hall two weeks, two of her precious three weeks of working holiday, and she ought to decide what she was going to do with the rest. It was difficult to see how she could take a proper holiday as such. She could pass the time in Greenwich, she supposed. There was research she could do from there, then make arrangements for the books and the scientific instruments to be packed up and brought to the office. Yet part of her felt bad at the idea of leaving Summer when she was so troubled. And there were so many ends left untied—the business of Tamsin Lovall, for one.