The Shape of Darkness

by Laura Purcell

As if she possibly can.

  Everything is slipping through her fingers: each person or occupation that ever brought her cheer. She does not feel as if she is only fighting against a killer; it seems like a battle for her soul.

  Who can she be without her art, without her dear nephew, or even the hope of being reunited with the man she once loved? She tries desperately to picture Montague as she knew him, to conjure the sound of Cedric’s voice, but already they are fading away.

  Soon, there will be only Simon left.

  Thank heavens for his kindness, for his warm touch upon her arm. Her other joys are mere shadows, retreating into the darkness when the lamp is blown out.

  CHAPTER 23

  Days have passed and Agnes still hasn’t come back.

  But she left her carpet bag behind, and Pearl has hidden it inside her wardrobe as a kind of talisman: the only proof that Agnes was here and promised to help her. Most days it’s easier to believe in the spirits than it is to believe that Agnes will return.

  Pearl spends her hours fever hot, bone dry, thrown from one encounter to the next. It’s getting difficult to tell all the séances apart. So many clients, so much money changing hands. Her ears ring with wails and sobs and some of them are her own.

  She trawls through the carpet bag and pulls out the map; she’s already memorised its twists and turns. Agnes was right, she doesn’t need to read in order to follow its directions, but she needs another talent that she doesn’t have: courage.

  The paper shakes in her fingers. Her whole hand looks as if it might shake to pieces. It’s been like that all the time since the ghosts started sucking her dry. The only steady objects in her life are Myrtle’s eyes, watching, watching.

  She tucks the paper away, fastens the bag and closes it in the wardrobe. She’ll give herself a few more days. If Agnes doesn’t return by then, she’ll put on the clothes and follow the map.

  Maybe.

  Her pulse beats so hard she can see it in her wrists.

  Donning the green-glass spectacles Myrtle has brought her to help shut out the light, she ventures from her darkened room. Everything looks emerald-coloured, which doesn’t help her sense of unreality. The house is prettier through the lenses, but it still smells the same and is smelling worse day by day. The stink plagues her wherever she goes, like someone’s shoved a piece of bad meat up her nostrils.

  Maybe she’s rotting, being pulled down among the dead.

  Father definitely is. When she pushes open the door to his room, she can see a halo of spirit matter circling his sleeping head. She wonders if that’s how the reaper plans to take him: if he will drag poor Father to the afterlife headfirst.

  She has to stop it.

  Myrtle sits in a chair beside the bed, not reading for once, or even doing her Mesmerism, just looking. Her face is sad when it’s relaxed; you can see creases in it, lines she shouldn’t even have at twenty. Her wide eyes are glazed over.

  It scares Pearl, to see her like this.

  ‘What you doing?’ she asks loudly, hoping to snap her out of it.

  Myrtle blinks and turns her head, but she doesn’t look that much brighter. Her attempt at a smile is more like a grimace. ‘I’m thinking of my dad.’

  Pearl hovers near the door, irresolute. Myrtle doesn’t often talk about her father, still less their mother, and if she shows too much interest, her sister might clam up again.

  ‘D’you remember him much?’ she asks softly.

  ‘’Course I do,’ Myrtle huffs. ‘I remember him better than anyone. Even …’

  She trails off, but it’s another one of those times when Pearl can hear the unspoken words inside people’s heads. Myrtle was going to say that she remembers Private West better than she remembers Mother.

  Pearl creeps forward, interested. ‘What was he like?’

  The grimace finally turns into a smile, but it’s a sorry one, tinged with pain. ‘He was brave. Wouldn’t let anything stop him. Used to say he’d make major if ever a common man did.’ She grits her teeth. ‘And he would have. He would. Life just didn’t give him enough time.’

  You could say the same of pretty much anyone who died young, but if this soldier was like Myrtle, Pearl has to admit he’d stand a good chance of getting promoted somewhere along the line.

  ‘Lord,’ sighs Myrtle, ‘I miss that way of life. Following the army. It was tough at times, but …’ She flicks her eyes over the room. It was built to be a second parlour; it’s the largest bedchamber in the house, but she seems to view it like a cage.

  ‘There were men who should’ve treated us better. My dad saved their lives. They should have helped us out when he bit it, or married Mother if it came to that. They’ll all be in the Crimea now and it serves them bloody right.’ She knots her fingers together. ‘But it’s my uncle who gets me most. I’d never be in this mess if my uncle had been around to look after us.’

  Pearl glances at Father: his eyes flicking beneath their closed lids. She thinks he’s just as brave as any soldier – more so, in fact. Surely it would be easier to be shot down by a cannon than to waste away like this?

  ‘We’re not in a mess,’ she says quietly. ‘Are we? I thought the séances were going really well.’

  Myrtle makes a harsh guffaw. ‘You don’t know the half of it, do you? You just sit there and close your eyes and it all happens for you.’

  ‘I’m trying, Myrtle—’

  ‘D’you know, I’ve envied you every day of your life?’

  Pearl stares. Myrtle, the astonishing Myrtle, is jealous of her? What for?

  ‘You don’t have to do anything, Pearl. Plan for what we’re going to eat, or beat out carpets, or fetch coal and haggle over it, or keep a book of everything that goes out to the laundry, or cook, or charm the landlord into giving you a few more days, or bloody anything except the séances, and I arrange those too!’ Myrtle’s angry voice pinches out, strained by the effort of trying to keep it at a low volume.

  Pearl stands there, stunned. She didn’t even notice that Myrtle did all those things. Wouldn’t know that they needed to be done.

  Father tosses his head on the pillow but he doesn’t wake up.

  Myrtle glares daggers at him. ‘Maybe it’s not your fault. Maybe you just inherited it from him. He’s not helping me either.’

  ‘He’s so ill—’

  ‘He’s resisting me. The Mesmerism. I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve had it up to here, Pearl, I can’t feel sorry for him any more. He doesn’t want to get better. It’s too much effort for him.’

  Even in her weakened state, Pearl manages to snap at her sister, ‘You take that back.’

  ‘I can’t. He lost his wife, but I lost my ma. And he went all to pieces. Didn’t take charge of the house, the funeral, even the wet nurse for you. He expected a nine-year-old girl to do it all. And I did. I’ve been doing everything, ever since.’

  Myrtle’s always been capable. Pearl assumed that was her character. But now she imagines Myrtle at nine, two years younger than she is now: grieving, looking after a sickly baby, running a house and working in a match factory.

  Myrtle has done her duty ten times over. It’s Pearl’s responsibility to fix Father. She’s his flesh and blood. She can’t just leave it to Myrtle, like she has done everything else in her life.

  She sits down on the edge of the bed, fighting for some strength. Just an inch of it will do. She feels utterly, utterly useless.

  Myrtle watches, and her features fall slack. ‘I wish,’ she says raggedly. ‘I wish I could just’ve been your sister, Pearl. I think I would’ve been much better at that.’

  CHAPTER 24

  It is the silence that wounds her.

  No pattering feet, no half-whistled tunes. Cedric’s hoop and stick stand propped up against the old grandfather clock, which still refuses to tick. Even the magpies have ceased their chatter on the roof. The whole house holds its breath.

  Mamma raises the trumpet to her ear. For once, it is not her hearing that is at faul
t.

  ‘Why should Cedric be with Simon?’ she asks for the third time this morning. ‘He was perfectly well here with us.’

  ‘You know why, Mamma. He is a Carfax.’

  ‘He is not.’

  The perquisite of grief is that it dulls all other emotions, even the temper. Agnes finds she can lie to her mother again and again, without the slightest compunction. She will keep saying Cedric is staying at Simon’s house until the police return him. And they will return him. If she repeats it often enough, she may even believe it herself.

  ‘According to the baptismal records and the law of this land, Cedric is Simon’s son.’

  Mamma snorts. ‘That may be so. But the child was to live with us, after the separation. We agreed to it.’

  ‘And he has. Now he is almost a man. He needs an occupation and an education. Simon will provide him with both.’

  Mamma lowers the ear trumpet, unsatisfied with its message. ‘What I don’t understand,’ she mutters, ‘is why my grandson would go away without saying goodbye to me. And he didn’t even take his books with him!’

  ‘Because he is not far away,’ Agnes says to herself. ‘He will be back soon.’

  How dull the parlour feels without him; cluttered and poorly kept, occupied only by a spinster and a widow. Rather than providing a place to rest, it offers a crushing weight of banality.

  Agnes remembers leaving the police station, and how Sergeant Redmayne watched her departure with an altered manner. No doubt Simon told him the whole sorry story to gain his assistance: how she lost her father and supported the family; how the man she loved jilted her; how her sister died in the Accident; how she nearly succumbed to pneumonia two years ago.

  A failing business, two scrapes with death and a legacy of fragile health. Even the police would pity a person with this history.

  Agnes finds it difficult not to pity herself.

  ‘I am going upstairs to work,’ she announces.

  Mamma mumbles something incoherent and stares into the fire.

  Agnes touches a hand to the grandfather clock as she leaves. Papa would have helped her through this mess. In fact, Papa would have stopped all of it from happening in the first place. He was the only one who could keep Constance in check. She would never have dared to seduce Montague while their father breathed.

  The stairs wail like the miserable damned as she climbs them and goes not to her studio, as she said she would, but to her bedchamber. The curtains have not been drawn back in days and discarded linen lies in heaps upon the floor. It is starting to resemble the benighted little house on Walcot Street more every day.

  Agnes closes the door, sits carefully upon the bed and smooths her skirts out around her. Only then does she allow herself the luxury of tears.

  Her sorrow will not fit inside the small space she has allotted to it. It is not like a fish that grows to the size of its pond; the more she tries to squash it down, the more it threatens to burst out and consume everything.

  How she wishes she had a confidant to talk to. Miss Grayson from church and even gossipy old Miss Betts circle through her desperate mind, but they cannot be trusted with secrets. Agnes enjoyed the company of her peers in her younger days – where have they all gone? It was not easy to keep friends, with Constance as a sister. Her jealousy became a problem. Agnes’s playmates would suffer ‘mishaps’, mysterious nips and burns until they eventually stopped calling at the house altogether.

  The only female Agnes has spoken to with something approaching honesty since the Accident is young Pearl. Constance would have been jealous of her, too.

  Of course there is still Simon, infallible Simon, but she can hardly weep for Montague’s fate in front of him.

  The tears show no sign of abating. Her head throbs with the pressure of them. She places a handkerchief over her mouth to stifle the sound of her gulps. Did Montague ever think of her with regret? He died a lingering death overseas. There would have been enough time for him to write her a line and say goodbye – but of course, he had no guarantee that she was still living in Orange Grove. He did not know about Cedric, or about the Accident. He had been so ashamed of himself that he had cut off all connections. He seemed to believe that the only way for the family to carry on was if he disappeared entirely.

  Agnes never had the chance to say that she forgave him. She was hurt, of course, and incandescent with rage for a time. But he was not the first person unable to fight against Constance’s will. She had a way of making you do things.

  For all his flaws, Montague was a good man at heart. Cedric is the last whisper of his name. But where is he? Who would take him?

  Teardrops spot the dark material of her bodice, each a tiny, bloodless bullet hole. Agnes scrubs at her eyes with the handkerchief. She has gone through so many of them lately that she’s been forced to use Constance’s old ones; she has picked the initials out but the ghost of the letter C still marks the corner.

  Throwing her used handkerchief onto the heap of dirtied linen, she stands and goes to the press to fetch a new gown.

  Her press is far better appointed than Pearl’s wardrobe: floral-scented with a variety of shelves and hooks. Neatly folded stacks of jet clothing line up before her. Though there is scarcely any change in the hue, the material alters: poplin, coarse wool, smooth bombazine. Her fingers trail over each, selecting none. Instead she bends to the bottom shelf.

  Constance’s dresses have not been disturbed in years. On top lies a royal blue gown made from Henrietta cloth. Dust has turned it the colour of the sky on a cloudy summer’s day. Underneath, better preserved, is crimson silk trimmed with black braid. Agnes pulls it out, holds it up before her.

  She can move the gown, make it sway as if inhabited, but she cannot imagine herself wearing it. Nothing about the dress says Agnes.

  Yet if it comes to that … What in her life truly does feel like her own, these days? There is no point left in being Agnes; there is so little to her.

  Mechanically, she removes her tear-stained mourning gown and fastens herself into the crimson. It fits. She is surprised: Constance’s clothes always used to be too long and tight for her.

  Before donning gloves, she considers her hands. Veins rise beneath the fragile skin. Her nails are overgrown. The only vestige of beauty left is the gold band on her third finger and the glint of its small gem.

  After all this time, the ring is difficult to remove; it jams around her swollen knuckle, but Agnes tugs, ignoring the pain, until it slides free.

  What a tiny item of jewellery it is, to hold all the promises and hopes she bound up in it. She takes her reticule off the dressing table and drops the ring gently inside. Technically, the ring belongs to her, but he chose it and purchased it. It shall have to suffice. She has nothing else.

  Misery still hovers over her head, but at least she feels like a different, more collected woman as she heads downstairs and walks out of the front door without bidding farewell to her mother.

  The churchyard heaves with sedan chairs and it does not take long to lose herself in the crowds. There is an array of hats: proud toppers, low caps that cover the eyebrows and an aviary of decorated bonnets. Beneath them, most of the faces look cold and frustrated by their lack of progress. Each individual has become absorbed into the swarm: moving slowly forward with one accord, like a colony of ants, none acting of their own volition.

  As Agnes shuffles towards Cheap Street, the feet walking in front of her own slow and then come to a complete stop. Standing on tiptoes, she perceives some movement up ahead: dark plumes wafting to and fro. When the men remove their hats and hold them to their chests, the reason for all this congestion becomes apparent: a funeral cortege is slithering through the streets.

  To meet a hearse is bad luck. Instinctively, Agnes’s hand seeks a button to hold for protection, but this is not her own gown and she cannot find one.

  Respectful silence falls across the crowd. Only the clop of hooves echoes, like the beat of a failing heart. The deceased
must have been a person of some standing.

  A tall, thin mute heads the procession carrying a staff swathed in crêpe. There are so many black handkerchiefs fluttering behind him that they resemble wings, wafting the creature along. But of course that is not the real means of impetus: each carriage is pulled by a quartet of ebony horses crowned with ostrich feathers. On their backs, black-clad postilions ride without expression on the solemn road towards the grave.

  The glass hearse displays a coffin suffocating in lilies. It travels feet first so that its occupant cannot look back and beckon others to follow.

  Yet they do follow: mourners trail wearily behind on foot and the family creep along in their own elaborate carriage. They have not pulled the curtains for privacy. Each stricken and contorted countenance is on view.

  Agnes knows she should lower her eyes in consideration of the family’s pain, but she does not; no one does. Everybody peers into the carriage, eager to see the mark death has left on those it passed so closely by.

  One of the passengers is an upright gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair. A moustache obscures his mouth, but she can tell he is clenching it tight in an effort to appear composed. It only serves to make him look like he is being throttled. His lost, dazed children stare at the streets, and an older girl …

  Agnes’s mouth falls open.

  That girl.

  The carriage crawls so slowly that she can take a second glance, and even a third, but none of them prove her wrong.

  She knows those loose blonde curls and that habitual pout. The slope of the slender shoulders is not caused by dejection; it is there whether the girl sits in a chair or dawdles through the churchyard carrying a package, which she then drops.

  The girl travelling in the funeral carriage is none other than Lavinia Campbell.

  CHAPTER 25

  Dusk falls earlier every day. They’re pushing towards full winter now and Pearl yearns for it: the gentle gloaming against her eyes and hopefully more snow to soothe her heated limbs. Her skin prickles, seems to crackle with its fever.