Another Heartbeat in the House (9 page)

On the title page –
Vanity Fair, A Novel without a Hero
– was a handwritten dedication. It read:
To Eliza, my very dear friend and soulmate, from William
.

Edie turned to Milo, who was sitting on the hearthrug diligently washing his knitted kitty. ‘Oh, Milo – what fun!' she said. ‘I think we may have found ourselves a mystery to solve!'

HAD SHE NOT
been set a task akin to Hercules's fifth labour, Edie would have put all her energy into collating the intriguing jumble of papers in the box file. The document that interested her most was the manuscript, which – apart from the first paginated quire or two – did not seem to have been assembled in any particular order. So she decided to spend her days decluttering the house as per her brief, and her evenings reading and sorting through the hundreds of pages of Eliza Drury's handwriting.

Today she had scarcely ventured further abroad than the stable yard, just to allow Milo to do his wees. The weather had been cold and horrible and the best place for both of them, she decided, was by the fire in the library. Besides, Milo got plenty of exercise running to and fro along corridors and up and down stairs all day long, following her as she filled tea chests and boxes with stuff that was destined to be dumped. The more serviceable or uncommon items she carted into the drawing room, where they would remain until they went for auction along with the house.

Toast and Marmite would do her for supper – she could brown the bread on a toasting-fork in front of the fire, the way she and Hilly had used to. It was her second evening in the house, and she thought they were beginning to get on rather well together. She supposed that you would have to get along well with an entity whose nooks and crannies you were probing with barely a by-your-leave. She made a pot of tea, carried a tray through to the library, and started to sift through the papers stowed in the box file.

Finally, she managed to sort another sheaf into some kind of chronology, and this is what she ended up with.

In the cabin it was agreed that I should strip the poor creature of her sodden garments and get her into a nightgown. With difficulty, I managed to unlace her water-logged stays and divest her of her gown and petticoats. The ship's doctor – a florid man with mutton grease on his waistcoat and whiskey on his breath – prescribed rest, and administered a sleeping draught. I piled all the pillows I could find onto the narrow berth and laid the patient against them, and then I removed the pins from her long red hair and set about untangling it.

Mr Thackeray had fetched a cup of hot negus. He sat on the edge of the crib and coaxed his wife to take sips while I brushed her hair dry. She remained inert and uncomplaining while we tended to her, and finally her measured breathing told us she was asleep.

Mr Thackeray set the cup upon the locker, and took the hairbrush from me. ‘Thank you,' he said.

‘I am glad to help.'

He was drawing strands of his wife's hair from between the bristles of the brush and laying them on his lap. His fingers were long, the nails well cared for – but for the one on the index of his right hand, which had been gnawed to the quick.

There was silence between us for several moments, and then he began to speak in a low voice. ‘Isabella is the best of wives, but she believes herself to be a demon of wickedness. I can see what I never did until now, that she has been deranged for several weeks past. I fear she is quite mad.' He did not raise his eyes from his lap, and I made no comment. ‘A year and a half ago, we lost a daughter. Her name was Jane. She was sickly, but Isabella would not see it. For two nights the infant reposed a corpse upon her mother's breast, but she would not give her up. In a locket at her throat she keeps a kiss curl, which she took from the child's head as she lay in her coffin.'

I glanced at the locket that lay upon Isabella's breastbone; I had remarked it as I'd combed out her hair, and had removed a strand of seaweed that had caught in the clasp. Mr Thackeray continued to toy with the filaments he had pulled from the brush.

‘A little more than three months ago, another child was born, very like the one that had been lost. I had thought Isabella would take comfort from the arrival of our darling Harriet – we call her Minnie, as a pet name – but after her confinement she remained curiously lethargic. I sought the help of a physician; sea air and sunshine were prescribed. In August we journeyed to Margate; there her strength continued to fail and her spirits became ever more dejected. Sometimes her mind flew away from her – like a balloon, she said,
une femme sans tête
.' He gave me an uncertain look. ‘It means, “a witless woman”.'

‘I know what it means.'

‘And then one day at Margate sands she tried to drown herself.' His eyes met mine. ‘She tried to drown herself, and to take Annie with her.'

‘She tried to drown your daughter?'

‘Yes. I am at my wits' end. I am at my wits' end.'

I rose to my feet and moved to the porthole, to allow him time to recover. ‘Why are you taking her to Ireland?' I asked.

‘Mrs Shawe, her mother, and her sister Jane are there.'

‘She is Irish?'

‘Her mother is – Isabella was born in Ireland. They have lived for many years in Paris, but her mother has returned to Cork.'

To uproot the young woman from her home and transport her to another country did not seem to me to be the most sensitive solution to the problem, but I refrained from comment. The invalid's dress and undergarments lay pooled in a tin tub at my feet. They would need to be rinsed in fresh water, and put through a mangle, if one could be found. ‘We must get these dried somehow,' I said.

‘I will ask Brodie to do it.'

‘Brodie appears to be a most devoted retainer.'

‘She is,' he said. ‘We should be lost without her.'

Poor Brodie! She became afflicted with a fever that caused her to be violently sick throughout the remainder of the voyage. So distraught was she at being unable to fulfil her duty of care that I volunteered my services to Mr Thackeray as nursemaid, nanny and auxiliary.

Isabella's condition veered between one of stupefaction induced by the quantities of laudanum prescribed by the doctor, and periods of frantic activity during which she made repeated efforts to escape from the cabin and throw herself overboard. Her exhausted spouse dared not drop his guard for a moment, and secured a length of ribbon to her waist to bind her to him at night, lest she sought to steal away while he slept.

On the last night I could not settle. It was not the snoring of the stout matron with whom I was berthed, nor even the promise of a first glimpse of land that induced me to reach for my shawl and slip from the cabin. It was rather an acute disturbance of the mind. They say that one's sensibilities are affected by the phases of the moon. That night it was full and unobscured by cloud, and I felt sure that Isabella's lunatic tendencies would be aggravated by whatever cosmic forces were abroad.

I didn't go looking for her, but all the same I was not surprised when I came upon her crouched beneath the companionway between decks. She was clad only in her nightgown, and was twisting between her fingers the ribbon that Mr Thackeray had tied around her waist. I did not approach her, but remained motionless some two yards distant. For a time she did not seem to register my presence; at length she looked up and fixed me with her huge unblinking eyes. ‘They are taking me to the lunatic asylum,' she said.

‘No,' I said. ‘They are taking you to your mother, to convalesce.'

‘Who will care for my babies while I am convalescing?'

‘Why, Brodie will.'

‘And who will care for Mr Thackeray?'

‘Your mother and your sister Jane, of course.'

‘Jane! I named my last baby for her. When she was born, William declared I produced children with a remarkable facility. Those were his very words. “A remarkable facility.” I suppose three babies in three years is no very great travail. Annie, Jane, and now Harriet. But Jane died. I tried to drown Annie, but she would not stay under the water, so in the end I relented and pulled her out. You must think me dreadfully wicked.'

‘I think you are dreadfully unhappy.' Ducking under the companionway, I advanced cautiously, then lowered myself onto the deck beside her.

She shivered, and I put my arm around her and covered her shoulders with my shawl.

‘Do you think William writes about me?' she asked.

‘Writes about you? Why would he do that?'

‘He writes for
Fraser's Magazine
and
The Times
. It does not pay enough, nor is it an occupation for a gentleman, Mama says. He proclaims that one day he will produce a great novel, like
Oliver Twist
or
Nicholas Nickleby
, but he has done nothing but draw some paltry character sketches. William is a clever man and an engaging writer, we all know that, but he cannot tell a story.'

Until then, I had not known Mr Thackeray was a published writer, but that was hardly surprising since Miss Pinkerton took only the
Morning Post
, and subscribed to no periodical other than the
Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance
.

‘He requires a muse. He thought I was she, when he proposed marriage. I, a muse!' Isabella laughed. ‘He thought me an affectionate woman, he wanted me to be better than
all
women – a paragon – when I was but a thoughtless girl of eighteen! He pressed his suit too
hard
– I had no option but to marry him!'

Her laugh became shrill, and I was reminded uncomfortably of the time I had heard her laugh in her cabin, when she had called herself ‘God abandoned'. She had begun to wind the ribbon around her neck, and I feared that she might become galvanized with that energy I had seen possess her on other occasions when she had screamed and flung herself at her husband and begged to be allowed to take her own life.

‘Come, Isabella,' I said, rising to my feet. ‘Let us return to your cabin. You will not recover if you do not rest.'

She looked at me strangely, twisting the ends of the ribbon in her hands. ‘I will not recover any way,' she said, ‘for I am dead already.'

I looked at the moon and the sky above us glittering like smashed black lacquer, and then I resumed my seat on the deck. So fragile and birdlike was Isabella that she reminded me of the tiniest of the pupils at Miss Pinkerton's academy – the ones who used to suck their thumbs and cry themselves to sleep at night. Curling my feet beneath me and drawing her frail form close, I started to tell her a story that began with, ‘Once upon a time …'

When we disembarked in Cork, I found a handsome barouche waiting for me on the quay, courtesy of my employer, Mr O'Dowd. While the driver took charge of my luggage, Mr Thackeray sought to engage the services of a carman to transport him and his dependants to Grattan Hill, where his mother-in-law was domiciled.

Isabella was sitting on a crate, shoulders hunched, her hands covering her ears against the cries of the herring-women and the din of the coal carts, while Annie gazed open-mouthed at the urchins in their bare feet and ragged clothing careering over the quayside, swarming over gantries and swinging on ropes. I had persuaded Isabella to nurse the baby before we docked, and Minnie was now sated and sleeping in her basket. Brodie, pale and exhausted, was fending off the beggars that were jostling around her, and the driver of the barouche had mounted the box seat and was flicking the tail of his whip over the horses' heads, clearly impatient to be off.

I did not like to leave without bidding Isabella farewell, but when I drew near I saw that she was singing to herself. It would have been unkind to awaken her from the trance-like state that cocooned her from reality, so instead I sent packing a pair of imps who were amusing themselves by mimicking her. I sent packing too the beggars importuning Brodie, and a ragamuffin who was hanging upside down from a scaffold gobbing onto Annie's bonnet. I did not take leave of Mr Thackeray; it was not necessary for, having exchanged addresses the previous day, we knew we would meet again. As I made for the barouche, Annie ran to me and caught me by the cuff of my pelisse.