The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  ‘Well …’ I was aware I had to tread carefully here. ‘I didn’t think a socialist would live in a house that needed so many servants, for example.’ Or, at least, I chose not to add, she would make the effort to treat them well.

  Her smile tightened still further. If I were not so sure she did not have any, I would have been convinced I had hit a raw nerve. ‘You really want to know every last thing about me, don’t you, Mr Carver? And then you desperately try to convince me you’re not reporting back to the family. Not that I care; tell them anything you like. It’s just the sneaking about that I find particularly demeaning.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I try to engage you in a reasonable discussion and you accuse me of spying. I mean, honestly, have you actually listened to yourself?’

  ‘Ah!’ She turned to me. ‘You finally show some emotion. I was beginning to think you were some sort of automaton.’

  ‘Me?’ I was too astounded by her accusation to be offended. ‘You’re the one who’s not shown an ounce of feeling since I arrived. All you’ve done is make snide remarks at best, outright insults at worst. It’s only because of Alec that I’ve stayed on at all.’

  ‘Oh, very good of you, Mr Carver. Stay in a house ten times the size of your own, with servants waiting on you hand and foot, all paid for by my husband. What a decent chap you are.’

  I stared at her. Somewhere in my brain, I registered that her hands were shaking on her sandwich, but I was too angry to take much note of it. ‘I honestly could not care one fig about any of that,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it means a lot to you, but please don’t assume the same of everybody you meet.’

  Cherry pink flashed into her cheeks. She threw down her tin and got to her feet. ‘Don’t be a hypocrite, Mr Carver. It doesn’t suit you at all.’

  Turning, she stormed off into the wood. I watched her go, my lungs clamping tightly shut. As the adrenalin left me, so did my air, and I found myself bent double on the log, gasping for breath and remembering the words of my doctor, the advice. Breathe slowly. In and out and in and out. I made a cup of my hands and breathed into it. In and out and in and out.

  It was not a bad attack. I recovered fairly quickly, took a few draughts of water and then thought of Mrs Bray. No doubt I should leave her to it, but her words still stung me. I certainly had failings, but I was not a hypocrite, and I would not have owned my cousin’s ill-omened house for all the tea in China.

  I took the path that I had seen her take, high up into the woods. The trees here quickly clung together, branches intermingling above my head, bracken underfoot. Soon the lake below disappeared, and all I heard was birdsong and the distant cawing of crows in the tops of the trees at the ridge of the hill.

  I climbed, holding on to branches for support, ducking under low-hanging ones, meandering up, hoping that she had done the same and I would come across her sooner rather than later.

  Finally, towards the crest of the hill, the trees began to thin and afternoon sunshine reached through the gaps in the wood. I came to a drystone wall, too high to see over but with the sense of space beyond. I looked about: to my left a short distance away was what looked like a figure sitting on the wall, although that was impossible as the ridges of it were upwards-spiked stones. I made my way towards the figure and saw finally that it was a woman and she was sitting on a five-bar gate facing a neatly clipped field. I also saw that she was crying.

  I stopped. If this was Mrs Bray – and who else could it be? – surely the last thing she would want was to be seen in this state. Also, I thought ruefully, I could hardly continue our argument while she was crying. Yet as I hesitated, she turned her head and saw me there.

  Her face deadened into a mask, and she looked back at the field. I sighed, and then, realizing there was nothing for it, ploughed on towards her.

  I reached the gate. She was some way above me, and still had her back to me. ‘Are – are y-you all right?’ I said, the stutter that had abandoned me all day haunting my tongue again.

  She ignored me. I put a foot on the gate, which swayed rather alarmingly, and climbed up, swinging my legs over so we were both facing the field. A collection of black-faced, white-woollen sheep looked up at the commotion and then returned to grazing. From here, the field sloped downhill to another collection of trees at one side and further fields at the other. I saw cows in the distance, more sheep, and there, on the horizon, a distant puff of smoke from a train. On seeing it, I somehow felt comforted.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ I began, ‘to think that after we’re dead and gone all this will still be here?’

  There was a silence, and I thought that perhaps she would continue to ignore me until I’d clambered back off the gate again, but finally she said in a cracked voice, ‘Most men, if they see a lady who clearly does not want to be disturbed, would return from where they came and pretend the whole incident had never happened.’

  ‘Then I’m obviously an utter brute,’ I said. I dug in my pocket and found an old tin, left over from last summer. I opened it out to her. ‘Mint?’

  She looked at the crumbling beige specks, made a tiny sigh that could almost have been a laugh, and took one. ‘You are.’

  ‘Glad we’ve established that, then.’

  We sucked on our mints in silence. Mrs Bray cleared her throat and said in a small, quiet voice, completely unlike one I had ever heard her use before, ‘The thing is, you see, I … well, I lost a baby.’

  I paused as I absorbed not just the news, shocking enough in itself, but the fact of the confidence. I wondered what I had done to encourage it. I did not dare look at her, but I said, ‘R-recently?’

  ‘Five days before you arrived.’

  I hung my head, remembering her pallid demeanour the first time I’d seen her outside the drawing room and her rasping, spiteful words, and knew she was right, I was a brute. ‘I – I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘If I’d known, I would never have come to stay at all.’

  I sensed her shrugging beside me. ‘My husband …’ she began. ‘I asked him to write to your family, but he … I think he would do anything if it antagonized me, and I suppose he thought allowing you to come would do just that.’

  ‘When I get home I’ll pack my bags.’ I sensed that she was about to speak. ‘No, I will. And I’ll leave by the first train tomorrow.’ I thought, with a slight regret, of Lizzie, but I would write, and we had no understanding, after all.

  ‘Don’t go.’ A warm hand was placed on mine. I looked up, surprised, and saw her face for the first time. Her eyes and nose were red, her eye make-up had blotched soot-like on her face, and her bobbed hair was drooping and frazzled. ‘I don’t want you to go, not on my account.’

  I blinked at this turnaround. It was almost as if one Mrs Bray had left the lakeside and another was up here on the gate beside me. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m not that enamoured of the house and the servants and … all those things. Really.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, I just said that to upset you. You were right, anyway. I’m the one who wants it. Castaway, I mean. And all the rest of it: the servants, the never having to worry about … well, about anything, really.’

  ‘Absolutely. I mean, that is, I understand.’ And I did, I realized; I did understand.

  ‘You see, Mr Carver, believe it or not, life has been better since you came to stay. Obviously, at the beginning I didn’t want you there at all. But now … your presence seems to have a civilizing effect on both of us. If it wasn’t for you being here, Alec and I would have torn each other’s throats out by now.’ She attempted to laugh. ‘Of course, I understand that preventing murder isn’t the most relaxing summer you’ll have.’

  I felt awful now, thinking of how Alec had denigrated this woman to me, how I had colluded. I could hardly believe that my cousin could be so callous: even if his marriage were not as sun-bright as it had once been, surely he owed it to his wife to look after her when she needed him.

  ‘I’m just so sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Plea
se, don’t be.’ Her voice was high and brittle. ‘Women lose babies all the time. Mrs Eagle has lost almost as many as she hasn’t, and some after they were born. Which is far worse, of course.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ I murmured. ‘But all the same …’

  ‘It was to be my salvation,’ she said. ‘You see, I’ve done some pretty shoddy things in my time, and the baby was going to make my life all right again. And now … well, the likelihood is I won’t be able to have any more. He was five months in when he … when he went. My son. Perhaps another three more and he would have been all right.’

  The gate trembled. I worried she was going to cry again. I could hardly believe nobody had mentioned it to me – but then again, I could. The servants would not have been told officially that Mrs Bray was even expecting, and as for Alec, perhaps he had been respecting his wife’s need for privacy. Perhaps.

  I thought of what I knew about Mrs Bray’s life, before her marriage. Had she really gone to bed with half of London, as Alec had said? I thought with shame of the girl last night – the girl whose name I had never even thought to ask, and I wondered if that was the sort of shoddy behaviour that Mrs Bray had thought the baby would rectify.

  But I had no idea, not really. I knew nothing. I heard a click and a scraping sound, and then I smelled burning tobacco leaves. ‘I owe you an apology, Mr Carver,’ she said. ‘For boring you with all this dreariness.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘it’s about time you called me Robert. And believe me, you’re neither boring nor dreary.’

  ‘I haven’t been …’ She paused, as if weighing words in her mouth along with tobacco smoke. ‘I haven’t been myself lately. Well, not since my marriage really.’ She laughed, a coarse little hiccup of a sound.

  ‘It’s early days yet,’ I said, feeling too young for a discussion about the mysterious state of marriage and Mrs Bray’s place within it.

  ‘I’m sure you know what Alec’s like: he’ll chase after anything in a skirt.’ She sighed. ‘Not that I mind. It’s par for the course with a chap like that, isn’t it? It’s when he has dealings with the servants that I’m not too keen.’

  I goggled. ‘The – the servants?’

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued blithely. ‘I’ve treated you abominably ever since you arrived, and for that I really am rather sorry.’

  I bowed my head, smiling at the apology I had never thought I would receive, yet confused at her abrupt change of subject. ‘I’m sorry too,’ I said. ‘If I’d known about … about your condition, I would never have been so insensitive. Arguing with you about socialism.’

  She waved a hand dismissively. ‘Oh, but it’s true, as I said. The thing is, Mr Carver – Robert – I was a red-hot firebrand in the Actresses’ Franchise League before I married. And now I live a very comfortable bourgeois life and that’s that, thank you very much.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. ‘I saw you delivering those goods to Princes Street. And I’m sure you’re fair to … to your servants.’

  I was hoping she would clarify what she had meant earlier about Alec’s dealings with the servants, but she merely tossed her head and said, ‘Absolutely not. At least, not when they complain. The thing is, you see, I know what it’s like to be poor – poorer than most of them have ever been – and I can’t bear it when they moan about their silly little problems.’

  I swung my legs on the gate and risked another stab in the dark. ‘Agnes, for example?’

  She groaned, but in a relieved sort of a way, as if we were moving away from tricky subjects. ‘Don’t talk to me about that girl. She’s impossible. Rabbiting about evil and ghosts and suchlike.’

  I looked at her. ‘It was pretty awful what happened though, wasn’t it?’ I hesitated, hoping she would not think I’d been prying again. ‘The parlourmaid who hanged herself.’

  She shook her head. ‘She didn’t hang herself. It was an overdose of a sleeping draught, I believe, or something like that. Still, you know how rumours get about.’

  ‘Oh.’ But of course, Mrs Bray had known the family at the time; she would know the truth of it better than little Agnes.

  ‘I’m sure it was awful for the girl’s family, absolutely, and Alec’s mother – well, she took it fairly badly. But all the same, it was nine years ago. The room’s been completely redecorated. In fact, it’s a fairly comfortable room, and Agnes has a hysterical imagination, no doubt egged on by the other girls. As far as I can see, the only solution is to not let it become an overriding concern.’

  ‘All the same,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if I’d like to sleep in a room where somebody had killed themselves.’

  She tutted. ‘You probably have,’ she said. ‘All houses have history, you know. And to be quite honest, Robert, this is really nothing to do with you.’

  I paused. In the far distance, I heard shouts. It sounded as if people were calling our names. I looked at the twinkling ball of the sun and realized we had been away much longer than I’d imagined.

  She turned away from me and swung herself back over the gate. ‘All right,’ she growled, ‘I’ll see if I can change the girl’s room.’

  I dropped to the ground just behind her. ‘Perhaps it would be for the best.’

  She opened her handbag. ‘Would you … could you go on ahead and tell them I’ll be there shortly? I need to sort out my face.’ She gave me a swift glance. ‘They don’t know about the baby. You see, beneath it all I’m as terribly little England as anyone else, keeping everything under wraps.’

  I nodded, impressed yet again with the weight of the confidence, and overwhelmed with the import of it. In mock solemnity I said, ‘Of course, Mrs Bray.’

  She pulled out her compact and flipped it open. ‘Call me Clara, for goodness’ sake,’ she said, peering into it and pulling out a powder puff.

  I turned away and crunched over fallen leaves. She had no idea, of course, that I had already called her Clara last night, inadvertently, and as I walked down the hill I found a false memory of her, leaning over me, unbuttoning my shirt, leaning into my ear and whispering my name.

  I shook it away, embarrassed, and made my way through the trees to where various members of the painting party were waiting. I allowed them to berate me for having worried them so, imagining we may have fallen into the lake and drowned, a scenario so unlikely I found myself covering my mouth in an effort not to laugh.

  Nothing could dampen my high spirits, and I did not stop to consider why they might be so high. Not Clara’s reappearance, freshly powdered, with a spiky laugh that excluded me as she gathered the ladies round her in secret feminine jokes. Not the drive back to Helmstone, squashed yet again beside Mrs Eagle, whose hand crept up my thigh as she told me unlikely narratives of which she was the star. Not even when Clara and I emerged from our separate motor cars, waving off the others, and she said, ‘What are your plans for the afternoon?’ and I was forced to tell her that I was already late for tea at the Featherses’, and I sensed, behind her brusque manner, that another invitation had been lurking.

  Better to parse out these intimacies, I thought as I trotted up the steps to the Featherses’ front door. I already had enough to ruminate on later; I was happy that I had an explanation for Clara’s previous coldness, that she did not want me to leave – that, in fact, I was a bonus to the house.

  We stood either side of the low wall that divided the two buildings. She stood in her cloche hat with her head bent, waiting for Scone to open the door. When he did so she turned, nodded once in almost military fashion and entered the house.

  All the female Featherses were in the drawing room for tea, and I was received with alacrity, Maddie jumping up from her seat and ushering me inside.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re here, Mr Carver,’ she said. ‘We’re in dire need of somebody to entertain us. Mother’s so deathly boring, I’m afraid.’

  I looked at Mrs Feathers apologetically, who was holding the sugar tongs absent-mindedly.

  ‘I’m sure she’s not,�
�� I said.

  She glanced up and smiled vaguely. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Carver,’ she said, and went back to peering at the tea tray.

  The room, bereft of last night’s party, seemed to glow in the memory of it. It was a pleasant, feminine sort of a room, with plants in pots at studied intervals and odd sticks of velvet-upholstered furniture dotted about the place. It was, of course, far grander than the little terrace I’d grown up in, but stood much less on ceremony than Castaway. I imagined Lizzie as a child here, running down the staircase, a doll clutched in her fist.

  Adult Lizzie was on the sofa now, reading. I winked at her as I was ordered on to a plumply cushioned chair facing her and was rewarded with a smile. I supposed I was forgiven for abandoning her last night.

  ‘How was your day, Mr Carver?’ asked Mrs Feathers, handing me a cup.

  I regaled them with the antics of the painting circle, which caused Lizzie to giggle, Maddie to squawk with laughter and Mrs Feathers to smile vaguely.

  ‘Lizzie says you were dragged off into the darkness by Mr Bray last night,’ said Maddie, shoving a slice of lemon cake into her mouth. ‘What happened? Was it all terribly seditious?’

  ‘Madeleine,’ cautioned Mrs Feathers. ‘You mustn’t ask things like that of guests.’

  Maddie rolled her eyes.

  ‘It was rather dull actually,’ I said, dangling the teacup between thumb and forefinger, remembering my stiff, caked trousers that I’d scrubbed at in the bathtub myself. I took a sip of tea; it was Darjeeling, and pleasant in a Mrs Feathers sort of a way. ‘I left as soon as I could and came back home to bed.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s a lie,’ said Maddie artlessly. ‘And you needn’t tell me off, Mother; I know that’s not the sort of accusation one levels at guests.’

  ‘Honestly, Mad, you’re such an embarrassment.’ Lizzie set down her teacup with a clatter. ‘Come on, Robert, let’s take a walk on to the balcony.’ Her skirt swished about her as she walked past, scattering the scent of rosewater in her wake, and as I followed I saw Maddie stick a tongue out at her sister. I grinned at her, and she shrugged good-naturedly.