Amy Snow

by Tracy Rees

  I know she is right. I know that holding on is a fool’s errand; I learned that from wishing with all my heart that Aurelia might not die. Still, I should like to choose my own errand, even if it were that of a fool.

  The hours pass and we arrive into Marlborough. I look out of the window as we roll to a halt outside the inn and my heart sinks, acknowledging that my pleasant interlude with the Wisters is behind me. How I should like the luxury of trying, and failing, to hold on.

  Part Three

  Chapter Forty

  The next morning we set off early from Marlborough. William tells me we will arrive in Bath in time for luncheon. I seem to have formed a habit of arriving at new households in time for luncheon.

  I have not slept well but already I am a different traveller from the girl who left Hatville, who had never taken a train, nor a coach, nor ever stayed at an inn. Now I am dressed as fine as can be in a gleaming travelling costume of deep claret trimmed with sky blue. I have a fortune of five thousand pounds, which I carry with me (not because I am unaware of the hazards of doing so, but because I lack a viable alternative). I am not bowed by grief and winter, although both are recent memories and both will come again.

  But for now, it is spring. It is a beautiful morning. Bath will be a wonderful experience.

  I practise saying so, all the way from Marlborough to Chippenham, where we make a brief stop when one of the horses throws a shoe. I cannot restrain myself from sticking my head out of the window and watching the hastily summoned smithy do his work. This is why I will be so transparent in Bath, which is much more fashionable than Twickenham. I am sure a lady should loll in her seat, intolerably bored.

  Two barefoot little girls on the side of the road point and whisper at the sight of my huge bonnet, with its cascade of pleats and ribbons. When they see me looking at them, they stick their pink tongues out at me and I return the courtesy. They gasp and run away, then come back and sidle closer. Their hair is matted and their clothes don’t fit. One hangs back, but one is bold and comes right up to the carriage.

  ‘Please, miss, do you ’ave a penny?’ asks the bold one.

  ‘I’m afraid not, not for you,’ I reply. Her face draws into a ferocious scowl. ‘For you, I only have half a crown.’ I watch her mouth fall open.

  ‘Here.’ I open my purse and hold out the coin. ‘And here is another for you,’ I call to the second urchin, who is too petrified to move.

  The first girl snatches it and tosses it to her.

  ‘Thank you, miss, oh, thank you!’

  ‘On our way, Miss Amy!’ cries William, and so we are. The children stand in the street gaping after us and blowing kisses. I should like to take them with me and wash and dress and love them.

  *

  I had not thought to find the area so beautiful. The city of Bath is built in a circlet of hills, now green-clad and lovely in their springtime garb. The gentle undulations are dotted with farmhouses and church spires. Swathes of sunlight and peaceful pools of shadow define the landscape, carving it into the most pleasing reliefs. Perhaps it will not be so bad, I tell myself as my winding road takes me onwards.

  Why then, at my first sight of Bath, am I filled with dread? I cannot explain it, but as my eyes light on the first pale-golden buildings, shimmering in the sunlight, a sharp sense of danger pierces me, just as it did at St Paul’s. Perhaps it is the memory of Lady Vennaway’s letter; it haunts me. How can I relax when I feel myself pursued? I scour the lanes for highwaymen; of course there are none and the carriage rolls into the city along a smooth, wide road. It is lined on either side with sweeping terraces of gracious townhouses. I have never seen the like.

  At least it is not Derby, I comfort myself. If my business concludes here, as I had hoped, I will only be a two-day journey from my friends. It could be worse. I should not have liked to go so far north.

  Further into the city we go, past shops and fine homes and a small but sumptuous abbey. We turn right up a steep hill and I feel the horses tug and prance. Now I can see the hills only in snatches between buildings. I am enclosed by limestone and civilization.

  A left turn, it transpires, is Rebecca Street. We draw to a halt and I clamber out. The terrace is not so grand as those I saw earlier. The street is not so wide. The air feels closer.

  The house at which I am to present myself is the last at the far end. Larger than its fellows, it bristles with turrets and gables. There is even a lead-covered flèche that leans as though it, like me, strains to be elsewhere. A front portico advances onto the street as if intent upon meeting any callers and seeing them off. I am distracted by the words carved into the columns on either side of the door. Heavily leaded, they leap out black and forbidding from the limestone: Hades House.

  ‘Lord, Miss Amy!’ says William at my shoulder, making me jump. I have been standing staring, oblivious to all but the house.

  ‘Lord indeed, William,’ I agree.

  The door is opened by a person so regal that I am entirely confused – she is dressed in the simple grey garb of a housekeeper, yet I have never seen a servant carry herself with such hauteur.

  ‘Are you . . .? Is . . .? Excuse me, is Mrs Ariadne Riverthorpe at home?’

  ‘May I take your card?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have one, but I believe she expects me. Would you be so good as to tell her that Miss Amy Snow is here?’

  ‘Miss Snow, of course. Come in, and have your men bring your belongings. I am Ambrose.’

  I hold out my hand. It is not the done thing, I know, but my ladylike demeanour cannot erase my habitual manners. I step inside and stare around me at lofty, ornamental ceilings, a narrow staircase disappearing into shadowy heights and a hall like a river, with three grey stone columns emerging from the depths.

  Ambrose waves imperiously at my coachmen, then leads me to a small drawing room.

  ‘You can wait here for Mrs Riverthorpe. I’ll have your luggage taken up.’

  But I want to say goodbye to the men so I return to the vaulted hall. I am taking my leave of Jack and William when Mrs Riverthorpe descends the staircase.

  My first thought is of the Wisters’ parrots. Her face is deeply yet delicately lined and the hand that grips the stair rail is hooked and fierce. Her eyes are grey and beady. She wears a deep-purple gown with flashes of emerald green on the bodice and shoulders. It is obviously costly, and looks brand new although the style is some twenty years or more out of date. Her hair is piled high into a crest, which bobs and quivers as she makes her painstaking way towards me, leaning on a cane. She is bent like a question mark.

  ‘’Bye, Miss Amy.’

  William and Jack duck and disappear into the sunlight. I swallow as the heavy grey door slams shut on my last link to Twickenham.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The woman looks at me for a long while without speaking and the silence does not seem strange, here, in this echoing, sombre passage.

  ‘So you are Amy Snow.’

  I nod. I suppose I am.

  ‘Aurelia’s little Amy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ambrose settles us in the drawing room. The walls are covered with portraits of gentlemen and, strangely, detailed pictures of large, colourful moths. The furniture is old but beautiful. We are served glasses of Madeira, even though I am hungry more than I need wine. I find myself tongue-tied for the first time in a long while. It was one thing to feel confident and at ease when I was surrounded by friends but this cold, dark vortex of a house seems to have sucked away all evidence of my recent blossoming. Here I feel anxious all over again.

  ‘Miss Snow. I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Vennaway four years ago. She has asked me to keep a letter for you and to allow you to stay in my home whenever you should alight here. I take it then that she is dead?’

  ‘Yes. In January. I have been in Twickenham.’

  ‘No doubt. I am sorry to hear it. She was one of life’s originals. I do so like an original. Tragedy all round. What is life if not one
great long shambling tragedy?’

  It takes a while for me to realize that she actually expects an answer.

  ‘Well, I . . . I hope there may be some periods of happiness and stability at least, along the way, Mrs Riverthorpe.’

  She curls a lip. She is still waiting for an answer – a better one.

  ‘Um . . . I cannot say it is one long tragedy, madam. Certainly it is shambling. And I’ll grant you it contains tragedy and in no small measure. But it contains other things also, I gladly believe.’

  ‘Such as?’

  A cold draft blows in through the door, which has been left ajar. I look out at the cavernous hall for inspiration. ‘Why, friendship. The beauty of nature. Great literature. Happiness, even if just in small patches and in the oddest places.’

  Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘You believe in all of that, do you?’

  ‘I must. Why would anyone carry on if not? How could one keep one’s spirits?’

  ‘So you believe not what you believe but what you need to believe. Would you say that makes you a fool, Miss Snow?’

  ‘On the contrary, I should say it makes me extremely practical.’

  She barks a short laugh and I realize I have not had a debate like this since losing Aurelia, although Aurelia was vastly more charming in her delivery. I do not relish Mrs Riverthorpe’s manner and yet I remember that she is Aurelia’s friend and that she must have qualities beyond rudeness and scorn to recommend her.

  ‘We shall return to the matter at another time, Miss Snow. Let me explain something of what your stay here is to be. Aurelia has decreed that I am not to give you her letter until you have been here three weeks. Today is April eighth, therefore on the twenty-ninth of April you will be free to leave, although you may stay longer if you choose, I’m sure I do not care. This is a large house and there is no need for our paths to cross if we do not wish it.’

  I can feel my shoulders slump and I haul them back to the vertical. It would not be mannerly to display my true feelings but my heart sinks at the prospect. I tell myself – not for the first time – that three weeks is not a very great deal of time. Only, as I stare around at the pictures of men and moths, at the unlit fire, black with coal dust, at the thin light filtering through murky glass, it feels like for ever.

  ‘That said, I require you to join me tonight – I have people coming for dinner – and tomorrow afternoon for cards. There is a tedious ball on Friday and an archery meet at Tuke’s on Sunday – you shall attend both. Aurelia has charged me with exposing you to Bath and making you a little more sociable while you are here. I can see at once I will not succeed, but there we are. How are you to decide whether to loathe my world if you do not experience it? Beyond Sunday, if you wish to keep out of my way and use my home as a sort of free hotel, you may. Or you may continue to accompany me, providing I have not found you too tedious.’

  Between my warm reception when I arrived in Twickenham and this yawns a vast chasm that my mind cannot ably bridge. I look down at my hands, clasped in my lap. ‘I see. Er, thank you.’

  She barks again. ‘Oh fiddle, you think me rude and strange; you’ve travelled a long way and you’d far rather have some kind words, a thoughtful gesture and a soft gaze. But kind words are worth less than nothing in this world so I’ve grown unpractised at them and as you can see, my face isn’t designed for soft gazes. Never stopped men aplenty gazing on it though. And they did a lot more than gaze, besides.’

  Her steely gaze is pinned upon me and I look away. The gaping hall, the maw of the fireplace, Mrs Riverthorpe’s wicked smile . . . my eyes light on one after another without relief.

  ‘What have you to say for yourself, Amy Snow? What d’you make of it all?’

  I hope she cannot read my mind. ‘I make very little, as yet, ma’am. I do not know why Aurelia sent me here, so I shall do as you say and wait for my letter. I am grateful to you for any help you have given my friend. Beyond that, I make nothing. I have been here but five minutes.’

  ‘Ah, you’re one of those that needs time to make something of something, are you? Me, I know exactly what to make of a thing the moment I encounter it. Take you, for instance: timid, downtrodden, wearing a new frock. Loyal to a capricious friend who’s too dead to be much use to you now. Forced to live when you’d rather hide. Too polite to tell me what you think and longing to escape to privacy so you can start the long, arduous process of working out what you make of it all.’

  I bow my head stiffly – she is uncanny.

  ‘But you have the advantage of me, madam,’ I finally retort, my sense of justice aroused. ‘You knew Aurelia, therefore she must have spoken of me. Your instincts have been primed. I never heard of you until two days since and her only comment about you was an apology.’

  The moment the words are out of my mouth I long to snatch them up and stuff them back in.

  But she barks for a third time and nods. ‘That is like her, the minx, and well done, Miss Snow. It’s true, I have heard some stories of you. Well now, I expect you’d like some lunch before you unpack, would you not?’

  ‘Madam, I am famished. And I hope I do not upset you by observing that the offer of lunch seems remarkably like a thoughtful gesture.’

  ‘Haaaaa!’ she crows. ‘You are wrong, Miss Snow, all wrong. That suggestion required no imagination whatsoever, only a basic knowledge of biology. Do not convince yourself that I am all tenderness under my feathers or you will be sorely disappointed. I shall see you at five for dinner. Explore all you wish, make free of the house. I have no secrets. Or rather I have a great many, but they are so scandalous that everyone knows them.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  After an awkward repast, spiked with challenging conversation, I escape with some relief to the privacy of my room. It echoes softly, and a little sadly. I try not to think of my room at Mulberry Lodge. This is perhaps more grand but, to my tastes, less pleasing in every particular. It has the strange proportions of an isosceles triangle; the eaves swoop so steeply that even I, short as I am, bump my head more than once whilst I unpack. The colours are sombre – brown and grey and burgundy – and the view is of the street. I do not wish to be pessimistic before my time here has properly begun, but I cannot imagine ever relishing rest or solitude in this pointed prism. I stand my books on top of a chest in a vain effort to feel at home.

  Once I have stowed my clothes in a tall, creaking wardrobe, I explore the house as invited, trailing without enthusiasm from room to room. It is a very strange place. Not only is there a tower and a great many cranium-defying eaves but it is dusky and baleful and I cannot relax in it. It feels somehow . . . unwholesome. Every room is decorated with pictures of moths. There are sketches of men, too, not all of them clad.

  One room appears to be a sort of study devoted entirely to moths. Drawn to the bookshelves, as I always am, I find only moth-related titles such as The Life Cycle and Habits of the Moth; Rhoperosera: A Study and, interestingly, Moth and Man. I cannot imagine what could fill so many pages on the subject but doubt I shall muster sufficient curiosity to read them and find out. There is a glass case filled with pinned moths, but strangely they are almost all of the same small, brown variety and so do not present a varied collection. Why moths, I wonder, frowning; they strike me as an unusual decorative motif. Perhaps Mrs Riverthorpe has an interest in lepidoptery. She does not seem the sort but then she is surprising in every particular.

  *

  At five, wishing I could be almost anywhere else, I present myself for dinner as commanded. Mrs Riverthorpe takes one look at my emerald-green dress, carefully chosen to honour the occasion, and bids me change at once.

  ‘Don’t you have anything more . . .?’ She flaps her hand in a manner that suggests my appearance is unbearably dull. She herself is clad in scarlet poplin that clings to her figure or, more accurately, her bones, dipping astonishingly low over a thin and wrinkled bosom. The effect should be disturbing but her iron self-assurance goes some way to carrying it off or, at least, m
aking it clear the dress is here to stay.

  ‘I don’t wear these clothes because I am old and unaware that they are out of date, you know,’ she says suddenly. ‘I kept up with the fashions until they refused to keep up with me. I cannot abide these hideously demure dresses of today, designed to cover us up as if we never had a lustful thought, never had a breast or a shoulder or an elbow. We are women, not oranges!’

  I had not before considered my beautiful green dress with its round collar and long, full sleeves in quite that light. I wonder if perhaps she is a little mad.

  Smoothing down my lovely skirts, I decide that I will not change to please her. ‘They suit me very well, Mrs Riverthorpe.’

  ‘Yes,’ she sniffs, ‘I dare say they do.’

  A knock at the door prevents further discussion. There are three other guests, making me an awkward fifth in the party, and they are the oddest combination of society imaginable. As the drawing room fills, I can feel myself shrinking. They all talk across each other, apparently trying to be very impressive and clearly vying for Mrs Riverthorpe’s attention.

  There is Mr Pierpont, a gaunt, eagle-eyed gentleman of around seventy who speaks endlessly of his glory days as a competitive rower, and Mr Freeman, a flamboyant young dandy who flirts shamelessly with Mrs Riverthorpe all night. His contribution to the wider conversation consists only of tales of his drinking exploits. Since the third guest is Mrs Manvers, active in the Bath Temperance Association, my own conversation is reduced to platitudes as I try desperately not to cause offence to any party.

  *

  It is not an enjoyable evening and afterwards I cannot remember what we ate or how the wine was; all I remember is the sensation of tiptoeing over broken glass. To be alone in my room again is an improvement, but not a great one.