by Kim Wilkins
Virgil returned with the crystal bottle which sat beside our bed, and proceeded to pour out a measure of the red liquid to all four of us. I picked up my glass and sniffed it gingerly, but could smell no Sin. Rather, the liquid smelled faintly of cinnamon and eastern spices. Charlotte and Edward held their glasses to each other’s lips, quickly downed the tincture and then pressed their mouths together in a passionate kiss. I returned my attention to Virgil. He was gazing at me solemnly, his eyes nearly black in the candlelight, so beautiful that my breath stopped in my lungs.
“Gette?” he said quietly, holding his glass close to my face.
“I’m frightened,” I whispered in return.
“I would never let anything bad happen to you,” he replied.
I looked once again at my own glass, then boldly held it up to Virgil’s mouth. At the same moment, I felt the cool of his glass touch my own lips, and we tilted in unison, the bitter-sweet drink passed over my tongue and I swallowed it. Virgil put our glasses aside and kissed me, but not in the animal way that Charlotte and Edward kissed, just a slow, gentle touch of warm reassurance.
“What now?” I asked.
“We wait,” Edward said, pulling Charlotte on to his lap.
To my dismay, they returned to ordinary conversation. I felt no immediate difference, except perhaps a light sickness of the stomach. But within ten minutes (and some of the following descriptions may not make sense) it seemed as though the whole room began to pulse, as though with an unnatural heartbeat, and the candlelight seemed to glow suddenly so much brighter.
Then, oh, what a revolution to my senses! My hands had been resting on the table-top, and without realising it, my fingers were moving over the smooth polish. It felt like nothing I had ever felt before – like silky glass, or wet diamonds, sending tingles through my fingertips that wove icy cobweb patterns in my brain. I could not stop feeling the table-top. It seemed to me as though my hands could sense colours, but not the colours we ordinarily see: my hands could find the truth about colours. Although I had always known the table as chestnut, I realised now that it was actually glacial white. I said aloud, “The table-top is white,” and Virgil replied, “I know.”
So I touched Virgil, and found that he was the colour of red wine as one sees it by candlelight through glass: glowing darkly, mysterious, promising. I leaned over and kissed his hand, which was lying upon the table, and found he tasted the same.
“If only we had music,” he said, and even his voice was dark wine. My cheek rested on the table-top, my mouth closed around one of his fingers. I breathed in the impossible combination of the glacial wood and the dark liquid of his skin.
“Charlotte will sing,” Edward declared, and I looked up to see him propel Charlotte out of his lap so that she stood unsteadily in the candlelight, an amused smile curling her lips.
“Where e’er you walk,” she began in a clear bell-like tone, “Cool gales shall fan the glade, Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade…”
I closed my eyes to listen, and though her voice was unaccompanied, it was as though a choir of angels were singing with her. Even the wind outside seemed to have found a harmony for her voice. It was little short of rapture to listen, as I was, slumped over the table with Virgil’s finger still trapped between my lips.
But then Virgil withdrew his finger and I heard him say, “Bravo.”
I opened my eyes and sat up. Edward was now standing behind Charlotte, caressing her ribs while she sang.
“Where e’er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise…”
“Yes. Come, my angel – sing, sing!” Edward cried as his hands rose and closed over her breasts.
“And all things flourish, and all things flourish, and all things flourish…”
Now his fingers had pulled apart her bodice.
“Where e’er you turn your eyes.”
He pushed underneath her breasts so that they spilled out of her stays. She stretched like a cat, clearly enjoying herself.
“Where e’er you turn your eyes, where e’er you turn your eyes.”
Indeed, I could not turn my eyes away. Edward gathered her skirt and chemise, pushing them up so we could see her thighs (I was not so out of my wits that I didn’t notice what awful, sturdy, man’s legs she has). She had stopped singing now, and instead had leaned her head back on Edward’s shoulder, letting him undress her before us. The sudden resumption of silence, or at least what passes for silence in this windy place, caused a strange shock to my senses. A peculiar panicky feeling came over me. When Edward grew bolder and exposed the very flower of her womanhood, I pushed myself out of my chair and thumped my fist on the table.
“Don’t!” I cried. “Do not!”
“Jealous little virgin,” Charlotte hissed in reply. As I looked at her, it seemed her mouth was a huge, wet thing; her breasts, her thighs, everything womanly about her suddenly became obscene, overdeveloped, grotesque and hungry.
Rather than look at her, I fled to our bedroom. It was blissfully dark. I threw myself upon the bed, and clutched at the sheets as though they might stop me from falling into the awful abyss that seemed to have opened around me. I realised after a few moments that I could hear muffled laughter from the parlour, and I became so angry that I thought my feelings would split me in two. I simply could not bear the thought that Virgil might be enjoying such a display of Harlotry, but I knew if I called him I would seem like the jealous little virgin which Charlotte had accused me of being.
I pressed my palms to my eyes and tried to calm my senses, which was impossible because they were in such a tumult from the opium. Once again, I heard the muffled laughter, and this time I heard Charlotte make a little moan of delight. I simply could not stand for it, so I called for my Husband.
“Virgil,” I cried, trying to sound pathetic and not at all angry. “I am so very ill. Would you please come?”
I heard him push his chair back and approach the room. In a moment he had closed the door behind him and sat down next to me.
“Gette?”
I sat up. “I have a sickness in my stomach.”
“It’s just the laudanum. You’ll get used to it.” He touched me tenderly on the forehead. I was so overwhelmed with sensation that I began to cry.
“Please, Virgil, promise you will always love me.”
“Of course, my little poppet, of course I will.”
What I really wanted for him to promise was never to love Charlotte, but he had gathered me in his arms to comfort me, and I knew that I would only demonstrate my jealousy if I asked him. He lay me down and wrapped me amongst the covers, then sat with me until he thought I was asleep. In fact, I dozed a little, but as soon as he got up to leave I woke again, and lay there listening. I dreaded hearing sounds from the parlour that may suggest Virgil was enjoying Charlotte and Edward’s debauchery, but even though I strained my ears over the gusts of wind which shook the windows, I could not hear her voice or her laughter. I did not know how long I had dozed, but I think perhaps she and Edward had finished their ridiculous business, and she had gone to bed also.
Still, I listened to Virgil and Edward talk. I found it comforting to hear the low rumble of male voices. Rain had just started falling outside, and a constant drip-drip sounded off the eaves. I burrowed further under the blankets, feeling warm and content.
I heard them speak of poetry and politics, and of returning to London as soon as they could, as soon as they had enough money or their collection was published.
“And so you have told Flood that I’m looking for work?” Edward asked.
“He says he’ll be happy to have you work for him again,” Virgil replied. A clink of glass against glass told me they were drinking wine together.
“Does Georgette know what kind of work you’re doing?”
“No. And she won’t find out. It would disturb her too much.”
My skin prickled.
“Are you sure it’s not you who will become disturbed?” Edward asked. “I
remember last time.”
“I’m better now. I can endure anything for Gette’s sake. No other employer would pay me so well for only a few nights’ work.”
“No other employer is a monster.”
A short silence prevailed. I could see reflected candlelight dipping and swelling against the wall of my room. The rain had become heavy, making it hard for me to listen.
“Do you think he is a monster?” Virgil said at last. “Truly?”
“You know he is,” Edward replied.
“He does monstrous things, I’ll grant you. But it is in the interests of scientific discovery.”
“I don’t believe that, Virgil. I think Flood is interested in far more personal goals than scientific discovery.” I heard one of them, Edward I think, stand and walk to the sideboard, perhaps to fetch the snuffers.
“Have you ever touched his hand?” Edward continued.
“Yes. Upon our first meeting I shook it.”
“His fingers are icy but smooth. So unnaturally smooth, like a pebble worn down by the sea.”
“I think he is very old.”
“I cannot imagine how he can live where he does,” Edward said.
“A fitting lair for a monster,” Virgil said laughing, but I sensed from his voice that it was only mock cheer. That perhaps Flood frightened him a little. “The dark, the cold, the half-finished experiments.”
“I once found half a frog in a glass dish behind his work bench. The back half. I almost didn’t recognise what it was, divorced from its context like that.” More laughter, the kind that we rely upon to disperse discomfort.
Their conversation turned elsewhere, and Virgil came to bed shortly after. I have not been able to rest for worry, so I left him sleeping peacefully and came here to the parlour to write. Dawn would be upon us if the sky were not so laden with the coming day’s rain.
I am all confusion, not knowing what to do with this new knowledge. I want to ask Virgil what it is that Flood does, but I find that I am irrationally afraid. Monstrous science? I simply cannot imagine. I shall think on it some more, for I cannot sleep. I cannot even close my eyes.
CHAPTER TEN
Maisie sat back to contemplate what she had just read. The rest of the page was empty, but Georgette always started a new entry on a fresh sheet. So Sacha was probably right, the diary didn’t end here. Maisie had recognised her grandmother’s handwriting in the margins clarifying a word here or there, and then, under the last entry, Sybill had written in pencil: “look up”. Whatever that meant. Maybe she’d intended to look up some information about Dr Flood, or about Georgette herself.
Far from putting her to sleep, the diary had awakened a sense of unease, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It could have been the last mention of Dr Flood as some kind of monster, it could have been because Georgette had described the house – this house – in ways that made it seem old and grim and with a history that stretched back into a darker past. She tipped her head back on the armchair and looked up at the ceiling. No black beams in the roof now. A new ceiling, painted pale yellow, had been put in. Double glazing blocked the wind, and electric lights warded off the night’s shadows. The shadows that were deepening towards midnight beyond the windows.
No, she knew why she was unsettled. A “pious Reverend named Fowler” had come calling on Georgette when she first arrived, just as his namesake had called on Maisie. And Sacha had told her that very evening that Sybill, obsessed with finding out how old he was, had dated her own Reverend Fowler to at least ninety. But of course it was just his namesake. It was probably common for parishes to stay in one family for centuries. Or common to be surnamed Fowler in North Yorkshire. Or common for fabulous coincidences to occur when a girl was all alone in a cold place away from loved ones.
It meant nothing.
Still, she left the lights on in the lounge room when she went to bed, hoping the bright electric yellow would keep at bay the eerie shade of centuries.
The cold haze of morning hadn’t yet lifted, and Maisie’s breath made dragon puffs in the air as she left the house and headed towards the road. Icy threads of wind tangled in her hair. She jammed her hands into her pockets. Even with gloves on, her fingers felt numb.
Saturday. Empty time stretched out before her until Christmas. Since she had woken up that morning, her loneliness and emptiness had woken up with her.
The cold was everywhere and she was a long way from home.
She headed towards the cemetery, intending to seek out her grandmother’s grave. She could hear the sea battering the bottom of the cliffs and thought about what Sacha told her Sybill used to say: “The sea knows something about me.” Well, perhaps it knew something about Maisie as well.
All the trees lining the main road were now completely stripped of their leaves. Their bare branches were stark against the freezing sky. A blackbird on a gnarled branch watched her approach and flapped away. The abbey rose up like a phantom watching over the graves. Maisie still hadn’t managed to shake her first impression of it, that unsettling, almost uncanny, sense of deep-buried dread. Other old ruins she had seen were beautiful, but there was something dark and rotted about the stone Solgreve Abbey was built from. She turned from it and headed towards the low cemetery wall: pale stone, covered in moss and creeping lichen. A sign on the wall, old and weather-beaten, said, Church Property: No Trespassers. She assumed it didn’t apply to mourners and clambered over into the cemetery proper.
Maisie walked right down the centre of the cemetery until she came to the cliff, and stood there for a few minutes watching the sea foaming and bubbling, grey and white. Seagulls ducked and weaved above her. The yearning was back, that thing that lived inside her like a ravenous, puling child. How was she supposed to be happy while she had this feeling: this queasy, bored feeling which attached itself to the weirdest objects as though they had the answer to all life’s problems? Every morning for as long as she could remember she woke up hoping that today she’d feel satisfied, contented, fulfilled. But then the feeling would start to seek her out. It hid in her favourite songs, or it lazed on the eyebrows of exotic boys, or, like now, it rolled in with the grey waves as she watched them.
She turned her back on the sea and surveyed the expanse of the cemetery. How on earth was she to find her grandmother in here? Perhaps she should have contacted Reverend Fowler, asked for directions. She inspected the graves nearest her. Wind and rain had worn away the inscriptions on the headstones, nearly eaten the entire surface to wormwood ribbons. They looked as though they had rotted in sympathy with the bodies they stood guard over. One had worn through completely. The top half lay in the grass, as though in disgrace. She wandered slowly up towards the road.
If only she hadn’t been thinking obsessively about Sacha all morning. Adrian was a known quantity, everything about him was known to her: his irrational fears and his vain habits and even how his breath smelled first thing in the morning. All was open with him, and she did love him. Of course she did. But here was Sacha, all darkness and mystery, exotic, dangerous even. She had gone over their conversation in her mind, scoured it for evidence of his feelings for her – (feelings for her? was she mad? she’d only met him twice) – and in her more reckless moments, imagined in shadowy detail where things could lead one freezing midwinter night.
Stop.
These graves were all too old. She paused to look at one. Sheltered a little from the wind by other headstones, some of its inscription was still legible. Here lieth Mary Margaret Hapselth. Born…Died 14-5-1715 of…from Heaven and returned…Forever missed. Forever? The inscription wasn’t even going to make it to three hundred years by the looks of it. The entire mid-section of writing was missing. People died, and then some time later their mourners died, and then some time later, even the material signs of grief died too. There was nothing permanent about life, not even the loss of it.
Morbid thoughts again. She felt like she had been living entirely inside her head for the last two w
eeks. Perhaps even Cathy and Sacha were spontaneously created figments of fantasy.
Further back from the cliffs, the inscriptions were closer to entire. She stopped to read one, and was surprised by what she found. Below the usual details of name, date, birth, and mourners, were two extra lines:
Whoever disturbeth this peaceful bower/Shall fall soon after to the devil’s power.
A curse. She read it again and backed away. She was probably standing right on top of the remains. Was that disturbing the grave? Too much weird stuff had happened in the last two weeks for her not to be superstitious about things like that. She moved up the pathway, looking from gravestone to gravestone. It took only a few moments to realise that more than half the graves were protected by curses.
Damned is he who troubles this grave.
Eternal hellfire to all who attempt to resurrect the occupant.
The men who dare to diggeth upon this tomb will face God’s mighty wrath.
It wasn’t the cold that made her shiver this time. She strayed off the path, trying to be mindful of where bodies might be lying below the ground, and read as many headstones as she could.
The cold grey sky arched above, the cold grey sea endlessly pounded below, as Maisie flitted from grave to grave in the enormous cemetery, reading curse after curse. A few drops of rain spattered here and there, and the wind pulled her hair around, impatiently making knots. Maisie filled her eyes with grey stone and dark promises, and wished she wasn’t totally alone.
She wove up through the cemetery towards a newer area. But over near the abbey were graves that looked even older than the eighteenth-century headstones on the cliff-top. She remembered what Cathy had said: “I bet there are burials over a thousand years old there. Could be some amazing stuff in the ground.” Maybe she’d go over and have a look after she had found her grandmother.