by Emily Gunnis
She had sensed it the first day as she walked along the stone hallways: there was a nervous atmosphere in the house. The servants moved quickly, not catching your eye, and the house was cold in every way. There was a strange musty smell about the place and, despite the owners’ tactile behaviour during her interview, there was a feeling of unease which appeared rooted in a lack of respect for Cecilia. A Georgian mansion with fires and flowers in every room, but it lacked warmth and homeliness and held a sense of discontent which was infectious. Harriet picked up her pen and began to write.
Dear Diary
It has been five months now since I became Mrs Barton’s lady’s maid at Northcote Manor and, despite its vast size and household staff of twenty-four, it has the feel of a tiny rowing boat at sea in a fierce storm.
Mrs Barton is the most unusual mistress I have ever worked for. She hasn’t a snobbish bone in her body and appears utterly blind to class difference. She takes very strongly towards or against people, despite their background, and cares genuinely for me and all the servants. She is totally indiscreet and often tells me things about her husband that make me blush and wish for the ground to swallow me up.
Charles often comes in from riding while I am doing a dress fitting or drawing her bath and makes it patently clear what he has been thinking about all afternoon. I can barely get out of the room quickly enough before they’re on the bed in a state of undress, and I often trip over Mr Barton’s riding boots in my haste to get out.
It worries my lady greatly, however, that despite the enormous amount of time they spend fawning over one other, my lady isn’t yet with child. She grills me most days about my childlessness and, though I try not to share too much with her, I have become incredibly fond of her and I do not wish to lie to her. She was in tears when I told her about my last miscarriage and insisted on clutching me to her bosom for an uncomfortably long time. I come from a family where affection was limited to handshakes, so Cecilia’s passion for clinging to people is something I have yet to adjust to. I have insisted that she is in wonderful health and that, when the time is right, she will fall pregnant, and that I will make the greatest fuss of her, which makes her start up again with her tears.
She is very keen on asking me about Jacob also, and I know she spends a lot of time talking to him about the war. It breaks her heart what he has been through and, though I am grateful for her concern, it worries me when the other servants notice them talking. I know that her heart is nothing but pure, that Cecilia loves her husband with every breath she takes, but there are dark forces at work at Northcote. There are those who do not like the way Cecilia runs the house and wish to cause trouble for her.
They come in the form of Charles Barton’s two sisters, Jane and Margaret, and though Cecilia makes me laugh heartily with her impressions of them eating like pigs out of troughs and asking for my help to squeeze their ‘huge’ frames into dresses too small for them, the two women make me very nervous.
I have heard them talking, and Cecilia is unaware how much they detest her. Their power over Charles makes me very uneasy. Blood, after all, is thicker than water. They have huge influence also over the servants, some of whom have worked for the family all their lives and, despite Cecilia’s genuine love for her staff, that love is seen as weakness.
It is a mistress’s role to be strong and firm with her staff, not to be cruel but to instill a respect which commands a sense of stability. Cecilia gives no such sense of stability to the house, and her affection for those who work for her is often mocked in the servants’ quarters. I chastise those I overhear, but I know the Barton sisters encourage it, and so it bubbles away under the surface. They feel she is a joke, a plaything for their rather immature brother until he finds a more suitable wife.
And as long as Cecilia doesn’t fall pregnant, she cannot give him the heir which will give her security.
Mr Barton, I can tell, is slowly picking up on these undercurrents. Indeed, he has confessed to me that his sisters are formidable creatures of whom everyone is terrified, and that he is used to the women in his life taking control. I can see that Mr Barton married for love and to bring some tenderness into his life but, unfortunately, a young girl with little life experience and a carefree disposition was perhaps not the best choice to deal with all matters to do with Northcote while he spends his days hunting and roaring around in sports cars.
In between his violent outbursts Jacob has become totally withdrawn from me. He no longer speaks of the demons of war still haunting him, although from his sleep-talking I know that they do. He sits by the fire every night drinking whisky until he falls asleep, never coming into our bed. Mr Barton seems to be very pleased with him, mostly because he never rests. He is convinced that the Germans are trying to get on to the property, and he obsesses about booby traps in the garden and dangerous radio waves in the house picking up every conversation the Bartons have. I seem invisible to him. When I try to speak to him, he just looks through me.
In Cecilia Barton, however, he seems to have found a kindred spirit. I have seen them talking in the gardens. I watch from the window until I am noticed, and Cecilia waves up at me cheerily. Jacob stares at her, the way he looked at me before the war.
‘Could I trouble you to help me with this blasted clasp, Hattie?’
Harriet, who had been sewing at the French windows, watching Cecilia and Jacob talking intensely to one another in the grounds, turned to the open door of Cecilia’s bedroom, where Charles’s sister Jane stood.
‘Of course, Madam.’
‘You are wonderful, Harriet. Everyone is so pleased with your work here,’ Jane said, smiling in a way that Harriet didn’t trust.
‘Thank you, Madam.’ Harriet’s stomach knotted as she wrestled with the clasp at the neck of Jane’s dress. In contrast to Cecilia, who had porcelain skin, Jane’s was like a lizard’s despite a film of sweat always permanently oozing from her skin. She also had a slight spattering of hair above her lip which moved when she spoke. Harriet could feel Jane watching Cecilia and Jacob.
‘Cecilia was rather lost before you came to Northcote, and you have done wonders for her. You and your husband.’ Jane stood at the window and stared down at Cecilia and Jacob as Cecilia reached out her hand to touch his arm. As they spoke it started to rain and one of the maids ran across the garden but the two of them stood rooted to the spot, oblivious.
Jane turned and smiled, showing her slightly yellowing teeth. ‘I do commend the way you don’t suffer with jealousy. You really are a good sort.’
Harriet felt her chest tighten, panicked at the warning bell that Jane was giving her, that Cecilia and Jacob’s behavior had been noticed. ‘Madam,’ said Harriet, curtseying, desperate to escape the trap Jane was trying to set for her. ‘Will there be anything else?’
‘No, thank you.’ Jane put her hand briefly on Harriet’s arm before walking slowly from the room.
Harriet nodded, unable to speak for holding the tears back. She pulled on a coat and boots and ran out into the rain. Cecilia and Jacob had vanished. Harriet ran to the outbuildings calling out Jacob’s name, until she eventually found him in the hay loft of the old barn.
‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked, out of breath, pulling her coat tightly around her against the cold.
‘This is where I’m sleeping from now on,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I can’t be in the house.’
She looked at him, his hair bedraggled, his clothes dirty and wet, his face drawn. ‘Jacob, what do you mean?’
‘The house is bugged. The Germans are watching us. I’ve seen them in town, the people that tried to kill us in Normandy. They followed me back here. I need to sleep here so that I’m ready when they come.’
Harriet covered her mouth and fought back the tears, then took several breaths, trying to calm herself. ‘Jacob. You can’t stay here. You’ll get ill from the damp. What about when winter comes? You’ll die of cold.’
‘Then you’ll be glad,’ he said simply, looki
ng up at her.
‘Jacob, what do you mean? I love you. I would never want anything to happen to you.’
‘You’re one of them. I’ve seen you talking to them in town about me, the people watching me. You wanted me to go to war. You would have stopped me going otherwise.’
‘Jacob! I never wanted you to go to war. You’re my husband, I love you. If you hate it here, let’s leave. How are we ever to have a baby if we do not sleep in the same bed?’
Jacob stared at her and frowned, then stood and walked over to her. His breath smelt of alcohol.
‘Why is all that matters to you to have a child? To have a son who will be sent off to be blown apart in another war? Or a daughter who has a life of servitude like yours?’ He paused then and as he walked closer to her, his eyes narrowed. ‘There’s no baby because there is no love between us now. You only wish that they would come and take me away now so you can be rid of me. I see the way you look at me.’
‘Jacob, that’s not true.’ Harriet stepped forward and took Jacob’s hand which he pulled away. ‘I love you. I would do anything to go back to the way we were and be happy again. If you could take your eyes from Cecilia for one moment, you would see that.’
In a flash of rage, he struck her. She tried to right herself but he had hit her so hard that she spun round and with nothing to grab hold of she lost her balance and fell into the stable door. She felt a sharp pain splinter through her temple where she landed against the wrought iron hinge and she felt her heart thudding hard in her ears, pushing her blood out through the break in her skin. She stood up in a daze and put her hand to her head as the blood oozed slowly out across her palm.
When she looked over at Jacob he was staring at her with cold steely eyes; no remorse, no concern and as he walked towards her, she flinched, terrified that he would hit her again.
But instead he kept walking, a small smile of satisfaction on his face as though he were pleased that she had finally been taught a much-needed lesson.
And she had.
As small droplets of blood splashed onto the pale hay of the stable floor, she knew with absolute certainty, that their love was gone. That the old Jacob had died on the beaches of Normandy and was never coming home to her.
And if her beloved was dead, so too was any hope of her one day becoming a mother.
Chapter Thirteen
Iris
12:30 p.m. Wednesday, 19 November 2014
As Harvey Roberts left the room in which the press conference had been held and the roar of camera shutters finally died down, Iris Waterhouse clicked the stop button on her Dictaphone and looked down at her notes.
It had been almost ten years since she had last seen him, but Harvey was clearly a man in a great deal of turmoil. Even though it had been a fairly short statement, he had still had to compose himself twice, the first time as he talked about what a natural mother his daughter was to baby Elizabeth, the second after telling her she had nothing to fear by letting someone – anyone – know where she was. Iris had made sure she had stayed at the back of the room, not wanting to be spotted by Harvey, but she needn’t have worried. He seemed to be in another world entirely and, despite the way he had treated her mother over the years, her heart went out to him.
He was still a handsome man, tall and slim with broad shoulders, but his silver hair was thinning, his face weather-beaten, and heavy crow’s feet lined his blue eyes.
She wasn’t sure if it had been the police’s intention to make him look dishevelled, but if it was, they had succeeded: shirt unpressed, cheeks gaunt and stubble visible. Liz had died two years ago, and Harvey Roberts certainly looked like a man who was desperately missing his wife – and now his daughter and granddaughter too.
A young photographer with a goatee and a large grin asked her, ‘So Adam’s the baby’s father? Where’s he been, then?’
Iris smiled awkwardly. ‘He’s a travel photographer, I think, and he’s away with work,’ she said, adding that it was gossip she’d overheard in the toilet.
The young man nodded but said nothing. Iris hated being with the pack, mostly because of her inability to banter. She would stand in silence, her mind blank, watching the new recruits with envy as they darted about in conversation, making everyone laugh and getting titbits of useful information in the process.
It was the side of journalism she loathed, preferring instead to hide away at her desk in her role as health correspondent, doggedly doing her research, attending medical conferences and meeting with obscure contacts. All things that took time and commitment, neither of which she’d had much of lately. As such, she hadn’t come up with any strong, leading stories for the best part of a year. And her refusal to cave in and revert to the new way of doing things – regurgitating press releases and calling it journalism or camping out on some poor soul’s doorstep until they gave in – was what had caused Miles to run out of patience.
He must have called her two dozen times, asking for an update. Word from the pack huddled in the cold outside the hospital was that not one member of the hospital staff – medical or otherwise – or any of the discharged patients who had left the maternity ward at St Dunstan’s Hospital that day had given an interview to the press. On top of which, all the sightings of Jessie and her baby had turned out to be dead ends.
Meanwhile, public interest in the story was gathering pace with radio stations running the story all morning, and social media awash with the CCTV images the police had released of Jessie walking out of the hospital into the bitter cold with baby Elizabeth wrapped in nothing but a blanket. The press conference had been rammed with news crews from all over the south of England, and by the time the lunchtime news aired, Iris had no doubt that the entire country would know Jessie’s name.
Although no one dared say it, it felt as if the expectation was that there would at some point be an announcement that their bodies had been found in some dreadful setting.
The focus at the newsdesk didn’t seem to be on finding Jessie but on assigning blame; scapegoating whoever was responsible for letting Jessie walk out of the hospital and hanging them out to dry.
And Miles was relying on her – and her contact: Mark Hathaway, an A&E consultant based at St Dunstan’s Hospital.
The problem was that she hadn’t spoken to Mark for months, since they’d snuck out of the British Medical Association annual representative meeting and gone for a rather drunken dinner together – after which Mark had kissed her. Despite the fact that her husband had left her for a woman half his age, and Iris definitely fancied the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed doctor whom she had known since university days, she had bolted and sobbed the entire journey home in a train carriage full of chanting Chelsea fans.
And it seemed that Mark had been – understandably – confused, as they had spent several months flirting outrageously with each other and exchanging indiscreet banter over email – all of which fell deathly silent after the unfortunate encounter, despite Iris’ best efforts to resurrect them.
She missed him. They had been friends since attending their first post-mortem at medical school in Bristol when he had clocked her turning green as the rotting corpse had his kidney pulled out, and he’d slipped her his hip flask which she’d gratefully taken a slug from in the toilet.
After that, they had bonded, often bumping into each other in the student bar or the library, until one fateful day Mark had introduced her to a latecomer to the course who had been kicked out of University College London and had decided to try his luck on the Bristol course instead – turning her world upside down in the process: James Hennesey.
The police press room was emptying fast. Most of the news crews were already gone and footage would be winging its way to newsrooms, to be broadcast on the lunchtime news within the hour. After that, the phones in the incident room would be ringing off the hook with possible sightings and tip-offs.
Iris pulled out her phone and saw that she had four missed calls on her mobile: two from Miles at the news des
k, one from her solicitor and one from Mark. Rushing to get away from the noise as the press packed up, she made her way out into the hallway and past the incident room, where rows of call handlers were being briefed by DCI Bell before the onslaught began following Harvey’s appeal due to air on the lunchtime news.
She sat on the steps outside the station and raced through the other messages until she reached the final one from Mark. Her heart jolted into life when she heard his voice, although he sounded slightly cautious. ‘Hi, Iris, thanks for your message. Hope you’re well. Sorry, I only just finished my shift and then they called us into a meeting about this missing girl and her baby. We’ve been given strict instructions not to speak to anyone from the press.’ Mark paused. Iris felt her heart sink. ‘But as it’s you, obviously, I will meet you briefly. But please don’t tell anyone. It will have to be strictly off the record.’
A small smile broke on Iris’s lips. There was hope, after all. She tapped into her phone the name of café Mark said he would meet her at in less than an hour and just as she finished it rang again. ‘Mum Mob’ flashed up.
‘Hi, Mum. You okay?’ she said.
Silence.
‘Mum? Are you there?’ Iris pressed the phone to her ear as the traffic roared past.
‘I’ve just seen Harvey on the news,’ said Rebecca. Iris could tell her mother had been crying. ‘I should have been there beside him. What if Jessie thinks I don’t care about her?’
‘Mum, she would never think that.’
‘The policeman here with me is asking me all about my parents and the night they died. I hate talking about it, Iris.’ Iris could hear her mother’s voice breaking.
‘Why are they bringing that up? What’s your parents’ death got to do with Jessie?’ Iris held her breath, waiting to hear if her suspicions were correct.