“. . . Sylvia?”
Cecily was still holding the photograph in her hand and Sylvia thought she had perhaps missed a question. “Mr. Fox died . . . passed away last year,” she said, presumably for a second time, and quite as though Sylvia and he had been close.
“Oh dear, how sad.”
She went on, and Sylvia realized that she was working her way through those in the photograph, and beyond it, to a village, bustling and busy, going about its business. That summer’s day—that moment, that second—when they had all smiled at the camera and Mr. Trigg had hit a switch, they had been frozen in time, together, forever.
Sonia Brownlow married Jack’s friend, Noel, Cecily was saying now. But he had been killed in action only weeks after their wedding. She had married again, another army man, and was living out in India, Cecily thought. “And did you see Marjorie, Sonia’s sister, in the newspapers?” she asked.
Sylvia shook her head. “No, was she married?”
Cecily laughed. “No! She was arrested, at a suffragette parade. But I believe she’s been released.”
“Arrested,” Sylvia repeated. “Gracious.”
It baffled Sylvia why these women did such things, why they wanted to vote. Some things were better left to men, she thought: politics, fighting, voting; making decisions.
“Whatever happened to Miss Combe?” Sylvia asked. “I rather liked her.”
“Poor Miss Combe,” Cecily said. “You know, she never got her electricity. She passed away quite suddenly, unexpectedly, during the very first days of the war.”
“And your friend, the one from the shop, the post office, where is she now?”
The farmer—or farmworker, as it turned out—that Annie had been waiting for finally arrived and married her the year before war broke out. They produced three children before he was killed in action in 1917. And though Annie remained a widow, there was someone in her life, Cecily said.
“And your mother . . . your sister?”
Cecily’s sister, Ethne, was married to the new rector, a Mr. Meredith Ballantyne, and Madeline continued to live at the same house, the one her husband had built. Rosetta had moved in, Cecily said, after Ethne moved out. But Bramley had changed, people had gone, businesses had disappeared. “It is all different,” she said, “not at all as you’ll remember . . .”
They spoke about various other people in the village. Cecily mentioned a few names Sylvia could not recall, and, bizarrely, Sylvia mentioned names Cecily could not recall.
“I imagine you saw the details of the sale?” Cecily said.
“Yes, I did. But it strikes me as a great shame,” Sylvia replied, noting the “CC” ring on Cecily’s finger. “I’m not sure she would have wanted it all going under the hammer.”
“But we can’t keep it”—she shrugged her shoulders—“we just can’t. We don’t have the space.”
“But surely if you lived there, at Temple Hill . . .”
Cecily smiled, shook her head. “No, it has to be sold, I’m afraid. You see, there was little to no money, and we certainly can’t afford to run a big house like that, not on the money I earn. I don’t think Cora had any idea quite how impoverished she was . . . and probably just as well.”
“She was never very good with money,” said Sylvia.
“It’s so sad that the two of you never saw each other again after that . . . that little upset you had.”
“Upset? Oh, but we never fell out, not really. I loved her, loved her dearly, and I think, I hope, she knew that . . . but yes, I wish I had seen her again. Just once, once more.”
Cecily looked away. She said, “I’m afraid she was very confused at the end, had absolutely no idea who anyone was. It was a blessing, really.”
“When did it start, the confusion?”
Cecily shook her head. “Oh, years ago, during the war. She simply couldn’t accept what happened, what was happening around her. It was very hard for her.”
“Yes, of course.”
“But she had become forgetful, a little confused, even before that time.”
“Yes,” Sylvia said, remembering.
“She thought she was back in Rome, thought she was young again . . .” Cecily leaned forward, stubbed out her cigarette. “It was sad,” she added, closing her eyes for a moment, shaking her head again. “Because she was so . . . so vulnerable, so . . .” She glanced up at the ceiling and then laughed. “You know, she began to wear her hair down,” she said, looking directly at Sylvia and wiping away a tear.
“Down?” Sylvia repeated.
“Yes, down. And sometimes with a moth-eaten plume or an ancient paste clip in it, but she looked so pretty, quite beautiful with that long white-white hair,” she went on dreamily. “Yes, very pretty.”
“It’s how she wore it when she was young.”
“And right up until the end she was always dressed, always in one of her costumes, as though about to go somewhere, or receive someone.”
“It’s how it used to be . . .”
“She was sweet, childlike . . . and very talkative, too. Do you remember her queer accent?”
Sylvia smiled, nodded. How could she forget?
“You know, when I first met her, when she first came to Bramley,” Cecily continued, “it seemed to me as though she was always . . . delivering a speech, harking back to Rome, to what once had been. I was really quite awestruck—I rather think we all were, then,” she said wistfully. “She was so intriguing, so enigmatic, and oh, how we all hung on to her every word!”
Yes, Sylvia thought, how I hung on . . .
“And she always seemed so . . . so extraordinarily wise . . .”
How people had fawned and courted her, Sylvia thought—even then.
“And forgiving. She was forgiving, wasn’t she?”
Sylvia smiled, nodded. Yes, she was forgiving. She forgave him; despite everything, she forgave George. And now Sylvia was pleased she had given them that time, those final few months together.
“I was so sorry . . . when I heard, heard about Jack. It must have been hard, very hard for you,” Sylvia said, and not without empathy. “And you know, I did write. I wrote to Cora at the time,” she added.
Cecily nodded. “It was hard for us all,” she said and sighed. “But by then everything had changed. The village had thinned out, altered its shape and character. And so too had she. You see, it was then, during that time, that she dispensed with her title, decided she wanted to be known simply as Mrs. Lawson. She didn’t go anywhere, hardly ventured outside. And people began to say that she was mad, quite mad. They said that the place was haunted, that she lived amongst ghosts and spoke more with the dead than with the living. And perhaps it was true. But then she lingered on there for so long, for so many years, too long, surrounded by all her statues and bronzes . . . lost in her memories.”
Yes, Sylvia thought, picturing Cora’s dust-shrounded paraphernalia, how dark the house must have been: dark and dusty, and filled with things no one would ever dream of having indoors nowadays. How could she not have gone back, stuck there, surrounded by it all? But she had the name, the only name she ever wanted, in the end: Mrs. Lawson.
Cecily continued. She had called on Cora regularly, she said, but the place—the house and Cora herself—appeared sadder and shabbier on each occasion. Like Dickens’s Miss Havisham, it seemed to her as though Cora was trapped in time, “in a moment—a day, a month, a season, a year—she simply couldn’t let go of or release. She became a relic, a relic of a bygone era.” But even before this, Cecily said, she had witnessed Mr. Fox and a few others alter tempo. The tide turned, and just as though they—the very same people who had once been mesmerized—had been jilted at the altar, as though they had been wooed and courted and then somehow let down, they turned on her. They began to say that she was and always had been deluded, that she had simply made things up,
and that she was nobody special.
By the time the war ended, she had gone, Cecily said, closing her eyes for a moment. “She was lost . . . and I suppose we were all browbeaten, disenchanted, uninterested in titles and former lifestyles, or any tales that did not involve a Military Cross.” No one associated old Mrs. Lawson with any famous names; no one was interested, she said. One decade had altered everyone’s perspective, and Cora, the Countess de Chevalier de Saint Léger, her connections and memories of Paris and Rome, had been forgotten. “No one knew she was there.”
“In these past few years,” Cecily continued, “since the war, she just seemed to . . . shrivel up, literally shrink. Mrs. Davey stayed on with her, of course, and Mr. Cordery, too. But she had few if any visitors, apart from yours truly. And she had no idea who anyone was anyhow, no idea what time she was in.”
Cecily told Sylvia that Cora’s bed had been moved downstairs, into what had been her drawing room, and a live-in nurse employed to take care of her. The canvas of her life, which had once been epic—in miles and scale and vista—grew smaller and smaller, until it became nothing more than the view from that bed.
“But I’d like to talk to you,” Cecily said, turning to Sylvia, altering her tone, “about something she told me . . . something she told me on one of the last occasions I visited her.”
It had been shortly before that final, rapid decline, said Cecily. Cora had sat in her usual chair, overdressed, tiny and hunched. She had asked Cecily about her journey, whether she had had a good crossing. And Cecily had smiled and nodded. What else could she do? Cora had asked her the very same question on her previous visit. She was confused, thought she was back in Rome, and there seemed little point in attempting to dislodge her from her dream. She told Cecily that she was glad not to be in England, “so cold at this time of year,” and then she leaned forward in her chair and said, “I shan’t ever go back there, you know. Not now.”
“Well, you can be wherever you wish to be,” Cecily replied.
“He wants to visit Cyprus in the spring . . .” she said, absently.
“That would be nice.”
“We might go to Egypt, see the Nile, the pyramids.”
“How lovely.”
“But I’ll never go back there. I can’t ever go back there.”
“No.”
“You understand, don’t you?”
Cecily nodded.
“And he shan’t go back either,” she continued. “He prefers it here, you see. Oh yes, he always did . . . he never wanted to leave me, but he had to. It wasn’t because of Freddie. He didn’t know . . . had no idea,” she added, lifting her hand to the locket round her neck.
None of it had made any sense to Cecily. And she was herself distracted, keeping an eye upon the time, glancing to the clock on the mantelpiece. And the muddled ramblings of a deluded old lady had not been compelling enough to unravel. Not then. The same names came up again and again: Freddie and George, or Georgie, and Jack and Fanny. All jumbled in with “he” and “she” and “him” and “her,” and “they.” How could it make sense? A lifetime spewed out without any chronology; the names of people long since gone, and—bar one—never known to Cecily. It was sad, pathetic, and the events of the preceding decade had washed away any romantic ideas Cecily might have had about the elderly woman sitting in front of her. Reality had arrived in 1914, futility in 1917.
“Did you see him?” Cora had asked, moving in her chair, tilting her head to peer at Cecily.
Her spine had curved with age, pushing her head forward so that it hung down and appeared too large for her small frame. Mrs. Davey said she barely touched food, and though she had long given up smoking, Mrs. Davey told Cecily that she still enjoyed the occasional glass of wine.
“See whom, dear?”
“Well, Jack, of course. They’re outside . . . They’ll be back at any minute. I said to them not to go far, said you were coming . . .”
And thus it went on, this movement back and forth in time, and names, and words, and words and words. Then silence. From time to time the flicker of amusement crossed her face, and she almost laughed; and then she would frown, appear perplexed or bewildered, move about in her chair, scanning the room with her eyes, searching for . . . sense? Order?
She said, “He was a shoemaker.”
“Who, dear?” Cecily asked. “Who was a shoemaker?”
“He was . . . Uncle John . . .”
“Uncle John?”
“Do you remember him?”
Cecily shook her head. “No, I never knew him. Was it a long time ago?”
“Best forgotten,” she said, then added, “You mustn’t tell her, don’t tell Fanny we’ve spoken of him.”
“Of course I shan’t tell her . . . but what happened to him?”
She didn’t answer. She disappeared back to that place Cecily couldn’t reach. But the pain—on her face, in her eyes—was easy enough to see.
“What happened to Uncle John, Cora?”
She winced, closed her eyes and shook her head. “Mustn’t tell.”
“Mustn’t tell what?”
She opened her eyes, and without looking at Cecily, staring down into her lap, she whispered, “I killed him.”
For a moment Cecily said nothing. She was unsure what to say. “I’m quite sure you did not kill anyone,” she said at last, in an unusually condescending tone.
Cora looked up at her. “Oh, but I did. I hit him over the head with it!”
“With what? What did you hit him over the head with?”
“It had to be done . . . had to be done. He was a brute, a monster . . . and I didn’t understand. We went to Jersey,” she went on, her eyes half closed, lowering her head. “Yes, Jersey . . . to the Lebruns’ . . .” She raised her head again. “Do you recall them, Philip and Mary?”
“No. I never knew them.”
“We couldn’t go back, you see. No, not ever, she said. But Mr. Staunton was a good man, such a good man.”
“Mr. Staunton? Jack’s grandfather?”
None of it made any sense.
“Did Mr. Staunton know any of this . . . about Uncle John?”
But she didn’t answer, didn’t seem to hear. “Fanny warned me. But I never thought they’d find me.” She glanced up at Cecily. “It was my brother, you know, my eldest brother, Samuel . . . he ended up there, in Jersey . . . working for the Lebruns. I suppose Mary thought she was bringing us back together. But he wanted money, nothing more. He said he’d write to the newspapers, tell them.” She shook her head. “My aunt had only just married again . . . become a contessa. I suppose he thought I was rich . . .”
“You mean to say you were blackmailed . . . by your brother?”
“He said he’d tell him . . . tell him where we were, how to find us. But how could he tell him if he was dead? And I had killed him . . . Fanny told me. Yes, it wasn’t bigamy, she said, because he was gone . . . it was only bigamy if I had not killed him, you see.”
No, Cecily did not see. Could not see. It was all coming too quickly. Bigamy, blackmail, murder, it was bizarre, too preposterous to contemplate, almost impossible to comprehend.
“She was his housekeeper, you know,” Cora was saying, “and he was such a good man . . . Mr. Staunton.”
“Mr. Staunton?”
“Yes, Mr. Staunton . . .” She lifted her head and looked at Cecily. “Have you had your hair done, dear?” she asked.
When Cecily stood up to say goodbye, moved over to her and took her hand, she said, “But you don’t have to go upstairs yet. Fanny will be with the little ones, will have put them to bed by now.”
In the hallway, Mrs. Davey appeared.
“She’s very confused,” Cecily said.
Mrs. Davey nodded. “They’re all here with her. She can’t escape them, or the past. But she’s happy enough . . . happy
to be amongst them.”
“I’m not so sure,” Cecily replied, putting on her gloves. “She has some uninvited guests, I think.”
“Do you think any of it is true?” Cecily asked Sylvia now.
Sylvia took a moment, then she smiled and said, “Well, of course it’s not true! Oh, there may have been an Uncle John, once, somewhere in her family, and he may have been something of a brute, but I’m afraid everything else is complete nonsense. She was clearly deluded, as you say—very confused.”
“But where on earth did it all come from?”
“From her imagination . . . she was always one for a story. You should know that. Don’t you remember all her tales about Rome and Paris?”
“Yes, of course I do, but they were true, weren’t they?”
“Hmm. Not all of them, no. Cora liked to add her own twist, embellish, add a little detail here and there. She adored drama, and the truth of the matter is, she could not recall her childhood even twelve years ago. But it’s sad, makes me very sad, that she was so lost at the end . . . so estranged from reality.”
“Yes, yes. You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” Cecily glanced to her wristwatch. “Gracious, I should be going soon.” She reached for the paper bag on the table: “I’ve brought you the letter, and my manuscript,” she said. And Sylvia, thinking she had misheard her, almost laughed. “Your manuscript?”
“Yes, I mentioned it to you on the telephone, remember?”
And just as the sun slowly rises, the horrendous reality of the situation began to glimmer and break in Sylvia’s mind, the word “manuscript” echoing once more down a crackling telephone line. She said nothing, and Cecily handed her an envelope with the words “Miss S. Dorland” written on the front in Cora’s hand, and underlined twice. Cecily said, “I’ve had this letter for so long, seems rather strange to be finally handing it over to you.”
Sylvia tried to smile. “I shall look at it later,” she said, putting it to one side, watching Cecily as she pulled out a small pile of paper held together by a red elastic band. “And here is the manuscript,” she said, rather triumphantly, Sylvia thought. And she pushed the bundle across the table toward Sylvia. The capitalized title on the frontispiece read, A Desperate Heart.
The Memory of Lost Senses Page 28