by Mary Mackie
Squinting past bright light, I discovered the weeper seated in the corner behind Grandmother, with beside her, his hand on her shoulder, a thin man with receding fair hair.
Now that I had time to take in detail I counted seven people around the bed – five to my right, two to my left. It looked like a stage setting, with two candelabra on a chest at the end of the bed acting as footlights, and I the only audience. Slowly, I began to identify my relatives. The thin man in the corner must be my oldest uncle, Harry, and the weeping woman seated beside him, his wife, Saffron. She appeared enormously fat, enveloped in shapeless clothes. By the head of the bed, Grandmother stood near the kneeling Frank, while nearer the foot of the bed, leaning on the post and half behind the red drapes so I could not see her face, stood a girl whom I guessed to be the youngest of the family, my mother’s only sister, Victoria – only six months older than I. On the opposite side of the bed, the bespectacled doctor leaned to check his patient’s pulse against a turnip pocket-watch, while a slender young man, with a pale, beautiful face under sleek golden hair, looked on. That must be Emmet, due to reach his majority the next January.
Just as I was wondering where Tom could be, I heard a muffled sob and saw another figure huddled half on the bed, hidden behind the blaze of candles. The light fell on a golden-fair head, hair curled and tousled, his face bent over hands clasped tightly in prayer. His whole attitude expressed hopeless anguish and I saw Emmet reach a hand to squeeze the heaving shoulder, soothing, ‘Hush, Tom. Don’t take on.’
‘But he’s dying!’ Tom’s wail came hoarse, shocking in that still room, and he stretched out his arm towards his father, sobbing, ‘Don’t die, Pater. Please don’t die!’
‘Control yourself, Thomas!’ Grandmother snapped. ‘Be a man, can’t you?’
The sobs diminished – he had buried his face in the counterpane and I saw Emmet again squeeze his shoulder in a gesture of comfort and support.
‘Kate?’ Uncle Frank had remembered me. He got to his feet, peering past the haze of candlelight. ‘Kate, are you there? Dear girl… forgive me.’ He came towards me, saying, ‘Look, everyone. Look who’s here at long last. It’s Kate. Kate Brand. Clara’s girl.’
He drew me forward, into the light at the foot of the bed, where I stood blinking uncertainly at the faces that stared back at me. Before any of them could speak, the sallow skeleton in the bed croaked, ‘What’s that? Clara? Clara!’ Like a man pierced by lightning, he sat bolt upright, staring at me with wild eyes. His shaking finger stabbed venom at me. ‘What have you come for? Damn you, girl! You’re not welcome here. You’re no daughter of mine. I curse you. A father’s dying curse on you! Be damned to hell!’ With a groan, he fell back on his pillows, his mouth a gaping hole between sunken cheeks, his thin chest labouring under his nightshirt, each breath drawn ever more painfully. The doctor bent over him again, stethoscope extended.
I find it almost impossible to express my feelings of that moment: disbelief, incomprehension, rejection and bitter hurt – for Mother, too. What had she done to make him revile her so? I felt as if invisible walls had dropped round me, shutting me off from everything. My sight was blurred, and sounds came as if through water. Someone said, ‘He doesn’t know you, Kate. He’s raving.’ I think the speaker was Frank. I knew he was beside me, but I couldn’t look at him or respond when he laid his hand on my arm.
Then Grandfather opened his eyes again, saying clearly, ‘Mother!’ and every eye swung back to him.
‘I’m here, my dear,’ his wife replied.
‘No, not you, Vi,’ he dismissed her. ‘It’s my mother. And Sadie. Sadie’s with her! Hello, Sadie.’ He was gazing towards the end of the bed, smiling at someone he apparently saw standing beside me. In my strange state of mind, I too sensed figures there in the shadows, one of them more substantial than the rest…
‘And who’s this?’ Grandfather said. ‘Why… it’s John! Violet, it’s John! It’s our boy! I’ll be all right now. I’m going with John. Wait for me, John. Yes, I’m coming.’
Beside me stood a tall young man – the same young man I had seen on the marshes – the young man who so resembled Uncle Frank but was not Uncle Frank. I felt him on my left as real and sure as I could feel Uncle Frank on my right. I saw him, there in the candlelight. Just as I had seen him earlier, except that this time he was fully dressed, though in exactly what garments I couldn’t say. All I clearly saw was his face, his wind-blown fair hair and his intent blue eyes, gazing into mine and trying to tell me something.
‘Kate! Kate!’ Was he speaking my name, or was I only hearing it in my head? Or was it Uncle Frank calling me? I became aware that Frank was shaking my arm, and in the same moment the other presences faded. The room resumed its former appearance. But there was a subtle extra silence about it. I saw the doctor lean to close his patient’s eyes, while Tom, lunging across the bed towards his father, howled, ‘No-o-o!’
* * *
Whatever legends may have arisen later among the family, that is my recollection of what happened that night.
Three
Grandfather had been delirious, not knowing what he was saying – that was what Uncle Frank said, and the rest tacitly agreed. Kind of them, but it seemed to me that the old man had meant every word.
Whatever Grandmother was feeling, she hid it behind a mask of brisk practicality. She welcomed me kindly enough, but, seeming unable to cope with my arrival that sad evening, she left me in the care of my youthful aunt, Victoria.
The bedroom assigned to me had once been used by the governess, Miss Yearling. It lay at the rear of the house, overlooking outhouses, walled yards and gardens; close to the service stairs, it seemed far from the nearest bathroom, but Victoria explained that the more convenient guest rooms would be needed as other relatives arrived for the funeral. What I most remember is the iron bedstead, with big knobs gone dull for want of Brasso, and a delicate Queen Anne writing desk under the window. A fresh scent of lavender polish did not disguise the underlying must of disuse, but, on that first evening, I was grateful for a place where I could close the door and be alone.
My luggage had been dealt with by porters on the journey. Now, faced by an embarrassment of two trunks and five cases, I realized that our housemaid, stupid Marthe, had packed nearly everything I possessed, as if she couldn’t decide what I might need for a stay of unknown duration. How like her! Still, after the scene in that candlelit room in the south wing, it was good to have familiar things around me.
Grandfather’s mortal remains had been taken to a funeral parlour, but after a day or two he was brought back, looking like a wax effigy, in a polished oaken, silk-lined coffin which stood, open for viewing, in the library. Large as it was, the room smelled sickly-sweet from lilies and other floral tributes.
Harry and his wife Saffron had gone home to their own house in Lynn; handsome young Emmet tried to lighten the gloom with bad jokes which annoyed his mother; Frank played a supportive role; Vicky was subdued, her face pale under its weight of golden-red hair. I particularly remember poor Tom – he was seldom named without the adjective – sitting by the coffin with helpless tears slipping down his face, or following Emmet around like a puppy. Poor Tom: mentally and physically he was a rough-sketched, unfinished copy of his handsome twin.
One by one other mourners arrived, like black crows round carrion: a grim, elderly great-aunt with a humourless son and a fat daughter-in-law; two fussy spinsters, twin cousins of Grandmother’s, from Wales – twins were in the Thorne blood; I met a few people I never clearly placed on the family tree, plus friends and business acquaintances. Some came only to call, others to stay until after the interment. Some were accommodated in the house, while for others Uncle Frank rushed around in his Rolls-Royce, searching for vacant rooms – not easy in late August. The nearby coastal villages were crammed with holidaymakers, as was the new seaside resort of Hunstanton with its colourful cliffs set on the corner of the Wash. A few of our people had to make do with lodgings furt
her inland, at inns set amid gentle hills and rolling farmland generously folded with woods, copses and coverts.
Every time I opened my mouth in that company I was reminded of the ‘guttural inflection’ upon which Oliver Wells had remarked so crushingly. Blue Rhys-Thomas eyes, sharp and critical, told me that my accent grated upon their sensibilities. So I kept mainly to my room, writing letters and rereading the letter from Carl-Heinz. His photograph smiled from my bedside table, mouth curved under a fair moustache with waxed ends, fair hair brushed flat either side of a central parting. He was in full dress uniform, with his cap elegantly under his arm and his other hand resting lightly on his sword hilt. So straight, so tall, so fine! He hadn’t meant those cruel words of rejection. He couldn’t have.
At mealtimes, round a table which grew ever more crowded, conversations dwelled on the deceased and the drama of his last few hours. Among the myths of his passing were the stories of his visions of those who had gone before – his mother, his sister Sadie, and his oldest son, John, who had drowned in the Wash at the age of twenty-seven. Some hearers found the story a confirmation of Christian teachings; others, more sceptical, said that the dying man had been hallucinating.
I did not join in the telling – I had learned at a very early age that to speak of seeing spirits was to invite both anger and ridicule, and often a sharp slap before being sent to bed without supper. ‘Little liar!’ my nursemaid would call me when I mentioned the elusive playmates who sometimes appeared to me. ‘Bad, wicked girl! You know what happens to liars, don’t you? They get sent to hell and hung up by their tongues to roast over the fire.’ In this case, I was sure, the family would resent my claiming to have shared Grandfather’s clairvoyance. Even some of those who had been there didn’t believe he had actually seen anything. I was not about to argue. People must discover these truths for themselves.
It was generally agreed that Grandfather had disowned my mother, Clara, ‘For marrying a German!’ fussy Cousin Ellen muttered. ‘There’ll be nothing for that trio of foreign brats she’s now raising.’ Catching my eye on her, she added, ‘Kate, my dear, I don’t include you in that. What a good thing they sent you back. You belong in England.’
Out of politeness, I didn’t reply.
That night I lay awake working myself into a state of self-pity that became unbearable. Either I must lie and fret, alone in the dark, or I must do something to help myself. I threw back the covers, lit my candle, and sat at the little desk in my nightdress writing a passionate letter to Carl-Heinz, along the lines, ‘I know you were forced to write those awful things. Oh, please, write and tell me it is not true, my love.’ Not even pausing to read it over, I sealed it into an envelope, addressed it, and propped it up where it could not be missed. Then, feeling calmer, I went to bed and, for the first time in days, slept long and deeply.
When I woke to a brighter morning, the letter had gone, sent by Annie to the post with the other mail when the boy made his usual early trip to the village. So that was done, with no room for second thoughts. All I had to do now was await the reply.
Among shoals of condolence for the family there came a long letter from Mother, full of the trivia of her everyday life, with exhortations that I should, ‘stay and complete your education, my dear. After all, your heritage lies in England.’ Evidently Mother did not expect me back for some time. If at all. The advanced education that would have been so infra dig. for a von Wurthe in Berlin had suddenly become desirable for a Catherine Brand who had to make her own way in the world.
* * *
Grandmother kept herself occupied, organizing the funeral with help from Vicky and a female person named Anderson, whom I saw flitting about the house. Near sixty, I guessed, thin and dressed in drab, she always politely deferred to me, drawing aside whenever we passed in a corridor, but never actually met my eye or spoke above a mutter.
‘Oh, Anderson’s been with the Mater for ever,’ Emmet informed me. ‘Started out as a lady’s maid, I suppose, but she’s become indispensable in many ways, to both the Mater and Toria.’
I suspected that Emmet had been told to keep an eye on me. He turned up whenever I ventured about exploring my surroundings, and on that day he had found me in the tower room. I had gone to see Uncle Frank, whose spacious bedroom and adjoining studio had been built at attic level, way above the world, with a big window looking out on to slate roofs and catching clear northern light. But Frank wasn’t there, so I had opened the final door on the attic landing, which gave on to more stairs.
These stairs climbed directly into the top room of the house, designed as a lookout retreat and now used as a games room. A delicate wooden baluster protected occupants from falling down the stairwell and, as one climbed up, light came from all sides. Windows gave panoramic views of the countryside, and between them hung a gallery of family photographs, taken over many years. Window seats invited one to sit or recline among piled cushions; shelves held picture papers and a selection of the latest novels. All kinds of games – draughts, chess, jigsaws, word games and card games – spilled out of cupboards, and a collection of the latest ragtime recordings waited beside a gramophone.
The place was known as the sanctum, which, as Emmet loftily informed me, was short for ‘Sanctum sanctorum – that’s Latin. It means—’
‘Holy of holies,’ said I.
Emmet stared, blue eyes bright beneath a soft forelock of golden hair. ‘You know Latin?’
‘A little,’ I shrugged. I didn’t tell him how little.
Emmet was at Cambridge – the only one of the family, apart from John, to have achieved such scholarship. He liked to show off about it and was particularly condescending to me and to his sister ‘Toria’ – he called her that to annoy his mother. We were, after all, mere girls, and not expected to have brains.
Because I enjoyed seeing his eyes widen with utter amazement, I added, ‘I’m hoping to go to college – the London School of Economics. Didn’t anyone tell you? That’s one reason I came to England.’ My parents had held out the chance of that college place like a carrot to a donkey, and it was a tempting prospect – a measure of independence, which might lead to other openings. All depended on Carl-Heinz’s reply. ‘As a matter of fact, I was offered a place at Berlin University’ – that made him stare! – ‘but Pa – my stepfather – didn’t approve. He’s old-fashioned. He thinks women should be kept back, with no right to a place in the world as equal beings.’ Realizing I was on my high horse, I stopped myself.
‘You’re a suffragette!’ Emmet exclaimed, partly horrified and partly admiring.
‘Yes,’ said I with a lift of my stubborn chin. ‘I believe I am. I can drive, too. And I’ve smoked a cigarette. Fearfully modern of me, what?’
Later, I regretted my moment of hubris. At the dinner table, Emmet informed the company that they had a dangerous subversive in their midst, at which every eye turned balefully on me, as if I were a black beetle that had suddenly crawled on to their food.
‘She’s a suffragette!’ my young uncle gleefully announced. ‘And she’s going to school in London, to learn how to overturn society.’
‘That’s not what I said!’ I objected, mortified at being the focus of a dozen pairs of disapproving eyes.
Frank came to my rescue, saying, ‘Take no notice of Emmet, he likes to make mischief. So, Kate, you’ve decided to accept that offer, have you?’
‘Oh, I…’ I sent a venomous glance at Emmet, hating him for putting me in this spot. ‘I’m not finally decided yet. Not for sure.’
‘Why not?’ Frank demanded. ‘I thought it was your ambition to go to college? Of course you must go, girl. They’re holding that place for you. All you have to do is pass the entrance exam next week.’ He glanced around the table, saying, ‘Our Kate’s more than a pretty face, you see. Girl’s got brains, too.’
‘Brains,’ said a pinch-faced Victoria, ‘are so unfeminine.’
Grandmother, tiny and neat and calm, put in, ‘Not at all, my dear. All women
have brains. It’s just that most of us don’t choose to boast of them. Tom, dear… your nose is running, use your handkerchief. Ellen… did you manage to unpick those stitches in your knitting?’
I sank back into welcome obscurity, trying not to mind that Grandmother had squashed me as surely as she would have squashed an insect. She did it to all her family, I had noticed – a word, a cutting phrase, a look from those quenching blue eyes…
Having rediscovered the sanctum, I found myself drawn to it again the next day, with Frank in his studio beneath, finishing a commission. ‘We’ll start on that portrait next!’ he called as I left him and wandered up to the top room.
Powder-puff clouds floated along in a breezy sky, shapes changing all the time, swathes of sunlight chasing over sea and land, turning the water alternately brown, or slate blue, or brilliant turquoise green. From this height you could see how the house was circled by woods, though in front of it the crown of the hill grew a tonsure of gorse and purpling heather. To the south lay a croquet lawn and tennis courts, with wilder grass areas merging into trees, while behind the house the kitchen garden was divided into three walled sections, beside stables and garage yards. Grandmother kept an old pony named Willow, and a couple of carriage horses, preferring to be driven in old-fashioned style when she went out. She did not like newfangled gadgets, which was why there was no gas or electricity – she said gas smelled and electricity was vulgar.
From the eastern window, you could see the sweep of fields and woods inland, undulating round to the north and the Hunstanton cliffs. From there the eye travelled down past Heacham in its hollow, over Denes Hill woods and on southwards down the coast to the warehouses at Lynn docks some ten miles away, where the Wash merges into the broad Ouse. Ships came and went with the tide, mainly steamers, with the occasional petrol-engined vessel, or a sailing ship might appear, graceful and elegant, and a flurry of smaller fishing smacks with dark blue or red sails sallied out to perch on the sandbanks at low tide, after shellfish. Landward, you could trace the line of the coastal ridge, with Sandringham woods rising above flatlands where the railway’s gleaming track snaked between rich meadows. It disappeared behind Ken Hill before emerging to skirt the Eveningham vale. Part of the village was also visible, including the church tower poking up among trees on the slope of the ridge.