The Land of Summer (30 page)

When she thought it was time to blow out her light, she found that sleep would not come. Attributing her insomnia to the fact that she had rested so much over the past few days, she went to her dressing table and took one of Dr Proctor’s powders mixed in water. It was the first time that she had taken one, and she was surprised to find that in only a short time, with her precious notebook still on her knee, she felt her eyelids growing heavy. Turning to blow out her nightstick, she lay back on her pillows feeling strangely light in mind and body, not even
stirring
as the notebook filled with her poems slid to the floor.

But the sleep she finally fell into was fitful, as if the powder had brought on some sort of fever. She knew she was asleep, and that she was dreaming an ugly uncomfortable dream filled with images of strange people, faces that were not quite faces, forms that were neither human nor animal, but she couldn’t wake up – and then there were the noises.

When she at last forced herself to sit upright, she knew something had woken her because she had heard it in her half-dream: the sound of someone in the house, a door or a floorboard creaking, or perhaps not even a noise, she thought as she sat listening – perhaps it had just been a sense of disturbance. She had taken to the habit of sleeping with the bedroom door a little ajar when Julius was away, half because she found she had become afraid of the dark when she was alone and half because she believed that somehow it was safer, as if it left her a ready exit to flee from whatever nocturnal terror might befall her, or would permit her more readily to call for help and afford one of the servants a better chance of hearing her cry. And now, through the half-open door, she could see a faint ray of light coming from somewhere, not from anywhere on the landing it seemed but from another source, one downstairs. For a moment she sat there, the bedclothes pulled tightly round her for security while she listened and waited, but in vain, because there was
nothing
to hear. There was just the light, a light that had grown brighter now she was completely awake and fully conscious. Emboldened, she decided to climb out of bed, and take a look over the banisters to see if she could identify its source. Pulling on her dressing gown, and hooking her long hair back over her shoulders, she tiptoed out on to the landing and looked down into the hall.

The light was coming from Julius’s study. There was no doubt about it. Emmaline could see that the door was slightly open and a strong ray of light was seeping out into the otherwise darkened house. She was about to call out Julius’s name but stopped herself just in time, realising that if it were not her husband, any intruder would be alerted and know that he had been spotted. Instead, she went to the top of the staircase and slowly eased her way step by step down the stairs until she was opposite the study door, in a position to see into the room, hoping to identify the person within. As she stood waiting, holding her breath and frowning into the gloom, she heard the sound of someone moving about inside the room and then by sheer good chance caught sight of him in the large, ornate mirror that hung on the wall opposite the door. It was a tall man in a long dark coat.

It was Julius, she was sure of it.

Unable to contain herself, Emmaline called out his name as she ran quickly down the rest of the stairs and into the study, where sure enough she found Julius standing at the desk going
through
some papers apparently taken from an open drawer. She also realised when she saw the curtains billowing above the desk that for some reason the study window was open.

‘Julius?’ she repeated drowsily. ‘Julius – you’re back.’

Even as she said the words she knew how foolish they must have sounded, but such was her state that she could think of nothing else to say. She remembered that earlier in the day she had been reliably informed that her husband was not to be expected back until the end of the week at the earliest, perhaps not until the beginning of the following week, yet here he was at home in the early hours of the morning, in his study, going through a pile of documents.

He stared at her in the half-light, clearly startled.

‘I’m sorry, Julius,’ she said vaguely. ‘What are you doing home so … so …’ She struggled to complete the thought.

‘My dear—’

‘What are you doing home?’ Emmaline repeated dreamily. ‘I thought – I thought …’ She searched in her mind for the words, ‘I am sure we were told—’

‘Urgent business,’ he said quickly, cutting in on her.

‘I see. I do see. Forgive me, but I feel a little strange – it must be the time of the night …’

‘I really am sorry.’ Julius smiled, and when he did Emmaline thought she noticed a different
look
to his eyes, a look that she could not remember seeing before.

‘Julius,’ she began again, still not knowing quite what she was going to say.

‘I must say, you look …’ he said quietly, ‘your hair looks – I do so love it when women wear their hair down like that.’

‘Julius …’

‘Go back to bed, do.’

Emmaline watched him, watched him smile, then looked into his eyes, once again seeing something that seemed to remind her of something, but what?

‘Very well,’ she replied drowsily, sensing her heartbeat racing, feeling it as if it was in her mouth. ‘I’ll go back up the stairs as you say. And get into bed.’

She held the look between them for a moment and then turned to go, but as she did so she felt a hand take her arm, and when she turned back he was standing very close to her. He put his other arm slowly but firmly round her waist, drawing her to him.

‘Except, you see, I can’t let you go just like that,’ he murmured. ‘Certainly not without kissing you.’

Emmaline’s eyes opened as wide as they would go as she realised what was about to happen, and then they closed and everything was dark, everything went black as he held her tightly to him, kissing her firmly. And the more he kissed her, the longer and tighter he held her, the more
she
wanted to struggle. This was the moment for which she had waited, for which she had longed, holding back her ever-growing impatience with the man who neglected her so cruelly, waiting because she knew she loved him – she
thought
she loved him, for now in the very act of him kissing her she felt that
something was wrong
and she put her hands on his chest and tried to push him away, but he just increased his hold on her and kissed her again. She could not match his strength. The light was dim and her heart was pounding so fast that it made her breathless, suffocating her until she was unable to draw breath, to keep awake, to stay conscious.

Since his eyes were still open he saw her fall away from him, and immediately felt what was now a dead weight in his arms. He put one hand to her neck and felt a pulse still beating, and turning quickly he carried her up the stairs and into the bedroom, where a bedside candle was still burning.

He laid her on the bed and stood for a while looking down at the slender unconscious young woman lying on her back. He removed her dressing gown, and very soon the clinging white linen of her nightdress revealed the roundness of her young breasts and the slender shape of her waist and the curve of her hips. He began to loosen his tie and the studs in his shirt, smiling to himself as he thought of how much he was going to enjoy this particular turn of events, and of the confusion and the mayhem he was going to cause. But
in
that moment of imagined delight he became careless, stepping backwards as he began to undo his shirt and walking straight into the low round table on which Dolly and Agnes placed evening biscuits and milk.

The tray crashed to the floor, as did the heavy decanter and glass, the noise seeming all the more startling in the sepulchral quiet of the house.

He waited for a moment, listening, before going to the door to check on the corridor outside. Just as he imagined it was safe to return to the bed he saw a light go on on the other side of the pass door at the end of the landing and at once he was gone – down the stairs and into the darkness beyond, leaving no trace of his presence, only an odd sense of disturbance.

By the time darkness had enveloped him Mrs Graham, pulling her dressing gown tight around her, was bustling along the landing in the direction of Emmaline’s bedroom, where she too saw a light still burning. When she came into the room Emmaline was still unconscious, flat on her back with an arm thrown to the same side as the upturned table and spilled tray.

The housekeeper hurried to her mistress’s side, kicking aside the notebook by the bed, hoping that her mistress had not blacked out but was merely suffering from some sort of nightmare, or had perhaps taken to sleepwalking, in the midst of which she had knocked over the piece of furniture which had been so close to her bed. Having righted the table and picked up the
pieces
of broken glassware, Mrs Graham turned back to Emmaline. Putting a hand on the still outstretched arm, she tried to rouse her mistress as quietly and undramatically as she could.

At first there was no response, Emmaline continuing to lie inert, and seeming to be hardly breathing, so that Mrs Graham found herself leaning forward and taking hold of one of her hands.

‘Mrs Aubrey?’ she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and stroking Emmaline’s hand in hers. ‘Mrs Aubrey? Wake up, dear. Please wake up.’

To Mrs Graham’s great relief there was a slight sign of life, Emmaline’s eyes moving and then opening, although when the older woman leaned over her she seemed to see nothing and no one.

‘Mrs Aubrey?’ Mrs Graham repeated. ‘Madam? Madam – are you all right?’

Now Emmaline turned her head and looked at her, but the housekeeper wasn’t sure she recognised her. ‘What happened?’ she said faintly. ‘Where am I? What happened?’

‘You had a dream, dear,’ Mrs Graham said quietly. ‘It would appear you were sleepwalking for a moment, for you knocked over your night table.’

Emmaline frowned, but continued to stare at her housekeeper rather than look for the sign of any such accident.

‘Mrs Graham?’

‘It’s all right, dear,’ Mrs Graham assured her. ‘You must just have had a nasty dream, that’s all.’

‘I was dreaming, was I?’ Emmaline asked in a low voice, slowly looking round the room as if expecting to see someone. ‘But what? What could I have been dreaming?’

‘I don’t know what you were dreaming, dear,’ Mrs Graham said, standing and carefully pulling the bedclothes back into place. ‘But it must have been something very frightening, or perhaps, as I say, you were sleepwalking, Mrs Aubrey. I am the lightest of sleepers, but the noise could have woken the dead.’

‘Julius,’ Emmaline said suddenly, sitting up as she seemed to remember something. ‘My husband.’

‘He’ll be back soon,’ Mrs Graham said, tucking in the bedclothes then plumping up Emmaline’s pillows and patting them into a comforting pile behind her. ‘Won’t be long before he’s home.’

‘He’s not home?’ Emmaline turned to Mrs Graham. ‘But he is home. I know I saw him, I saw him in his study, I am sure I did.’

‘That was what you were dreaming, was it?’ Mrs Graham straightened up and looked round the room. ‘Not long now. As I understand it from Mr Ralph at the works, he is expected to be home by the weekend. Just you rest there while I fetch something to clear up all this mess. Will you be all right for a moment, while I fetch a bucket and an old towel from the airing cupboard and finish clearing up this mess?’

‘Yes – I am feeling a little better, Mrs Graham, truly I am,’ Emmaline assured her. ‘I’ll be quite
myself
soon, thank you. I am so sorry to put you to all this trouble.’

When the housekeeper had finished clearing up, and had disappeared once more to her own room, Emmaline lay back on her pillows in a daze, trying to remember, trying to recall anything from the night before, trying to make her hazy mind concentrate on what it was she had dreamed. Why had she woken up saying her husband’s name and thinking that he had returned? But try as she might, she could recall nothing of any note other than going to bed and falling asleep.

‘Mrs Graham must be right, I must have been dreaming,’ she assured herself quietly, yet putting a hand to bruised lips as though the touch might help her recall. But nothing came to her, nothing other than a feeling of dread and of intrusion, and a sense that Julius had somehow returned. ‘It must have been a nightmare. After all, Mrs Graham has just told me that Julius isn’t coming back until the end of the week.’

But there
was
something else, she was sure of it, something in all that darkness. She could see something – there, in her mind’s eye, she was sure she had seen a light. She remembered a soft flickering ray of illumination somewhere, and her sense of foreboding increased. Had she been dying in her sleep? Was the light that brightness that the dying were said to see, towards which their spirits were pulled as they eased out of this life and into the next?

‘To sleep, to dream … what dreams may come must give us pause …’

She found herself filled with an irrational panic, so much so that it seemed to her that to stay in bed would be to court death, although why she could not have said. She put her feet on the floor. The coldness of the old wood was reassuring, and she straightened up, but the moment she did so a sudden spell of dizziness overcame her, forcing her to grasp one of the sturdy oak bedposts. She stood still by the bed, taking two or three long deep breaths, which together with the cold of the floor beneath her feet seemed to steady her, so that, taking hold of a candlestick to light her way, after a few seconds she was able to set off for the door, just making it before she had to seek the support of the wall. She took more deep breaths, and then, determined on her mission, she opened the bedroom door, and walking slowly along the corridor, supporting herself with one hand tracing along the wall, she went to her husband’s dressing room and opened the door. The room was empty, the bed still made up and undisturbed.

‘Mrs Graham!’ she called out, once she had returned to her own room. ‘Mrs Graham!’ As the housekeeper came hurrying into the room, she said, ‘I am afraid you are quite right, I have been dreaming, no doubt because of the sleeping powder. Of course you are quite right, Mrs Graham, it was all just a dream – unless of course I have been awake all the time, and I am not dreaming but going mad.’