The Meaning of Night (6 page)

accusations are baseless. But how can I be sure? There must, after all, be some reason

why the note was written to me. I know that your father died before you were born, and

that your mother, whom you have told me you loved dearly, was an authoress; and you

have spoken often of your years abroad. But are there things in your past – important

things, perhaps – that you have deliberately withheld from me, to which the note may

refer? If so, I beg you to tell me now.’

‘I thought you were content to like me just as I am, the present here-and-now me,’

I said sulkily.

‘Circumstances have changed,’ she replied, leaning back in her chair. ‘When

Kitty retires to Dieppe, I shall be required to take her place at The Academy, and that will

allow me to give up my gentlemen.’ She shot a steady gaze at me. ‘It is important to me,

Eddie, under these new circumstances, to know everything about the man I have fallen in

love with.’

The directness of her words stumped me for a moment. I had been right, then, to

detect a change in her, during our afternoon in the Park; but I had not expected such an

outright declaration, fool that I am. I should have remembered the poet’s dictum: that a

woman’s friendship ever ends in love.? She was waiting for some reciprocal declaration.

But how could I tell her what she wished to hear, when my heart still ached for another,

whom I could never now possess?

‘Do you have nothing to say?’ she asked.

‘Only that you are my dearest friend in the world, as I have often told you,’ I

replied, ‘and that I cannot bear to see you distressed.’

‘But do you like me – love me, even – merely as a friend?’

‘Merely as a friend? Is that not enough?’

‘Well, I see you are now starting to play the philosopher with me, so I suppose I

have my answer.’

I reached out and took her hand.

‘Bella, dearest, forgive me. If you wish to call my feelings for you “love”, then so

be it. I am more than content for you to do so. For myself, I am devoted to you as the

dearest, sweetest friend a man could have. If this is love, then I love you. And if it is love

to feel safe and comfortable in your presence, then I love you. And if it is love to know

that I am never happier than when you take my face in my hands and kiss me, then I love

you. And if . . .’ And so I went on, until I could obfuscate no more.

I smiled, in what I hoped was my most winning manner, and was rewarded by the

sight of a faint animation of her lips.

‘Then I suppose, Mr Edward Glapthorn, that your many ingenious definitions of

love must suffice – for now.’ She removed her hand from mine as she spoke. ‘But for the

sake of all we have been together, and for all we may be, you must set my mind at rest –

completely at rest. The note –– ’

‘Is false.’ I looked at her steadily. ‘False as hell – written by someone who wishes

to do me – us – harm, for some reason we cannot yet know. But we shall defeat them,

dearest Bella. I promise you shall know all about me, and then they shall have no hold

over us. We shall be safe.’

If only it could be so. But she deserved to know a little more about me, to set her

mind at rest until such time as I could unmask the blackmailer, and put the danger from

us permanently. And then? When I had vanquished my enemy at last, revenged myself

for what he had done to me, and taken back what was rightfully mine, could she ever

replace what I had lost?

The Clarendon was a respectable hotel, and we had no luggage; but the manager

was an old acquaintance of mine and discreetly secured us a room.

We sat up late into the night. This, in summary, is what I told her.

My mother’s family, the Mores of Church Langton, were West Country farmers

of long standing. Her uncle, Mr Byam More, was land-agent for Sir Robert Fairmile, of

Langton Court near Taunton, whose only daughter, Laura, was nearly of an age with my

mother. The two little girls grew up together and became the closest of friends, their

friendship continuing when Laura married and moved to a Midlands county.

The following year my mother also married, though hers was a much less grand

match than her friend’s. Laura became Lady Tansor, of Evenwood in Northamptonshire,

one of the most enchanting houses in England, and the seat of an ancient and

distinguished line; my mother became the wife of a wastrel half-pay officer in the

Hussars.

My father – always known as ‘the Captain’ – served inconspicuously in the 11th

Regiment of Light Dragoons, the celebrated ‘Cherrypickers’, which later became famous,

as the 11th Prince Albert’s Own Hussars, under the command of Lord Cardigan, though

the Captain was long dead before the regiment’s immortal action in the Russian War. He

left the regiment after sustaining injury in the Peninsula and was promoted to half-pay;

but his leisure was productive of nothing except a renewed dedication to a long-held love

of strong liquor, which he pursued vigorously, to the exclusion of all other occupations.

He spent little time with his wife, could settle at nothing, and when he was not engaged

with his local companions at the Bell and Book in Church Langton, he was away visiting

old regimental comrades, and partaking of the usual lively debauchery such occasions

afford. The birth of a daughter, it appears, did not encourage him to mend his ways, and

on the evening of her untimely death, at only five days old, he was to be found in his

usual corner at the Bell and Book. He compounded his iniquity by also being absent – I

know not where, but I can guess why – on the day of the poor child’s funeral.

My mother and the Captain, on the latter’s insistence, left Church Langton soon

afterwards for Sandchurch, where remnants of the Captain’s family resided. The change

brought no improvement in his behaviour: he merely exchanged the Bell and Book in

Church Langton for the King’s Head in Sandchurch. I have said enough, I hope, to

demonstrate the Captain’s execrable character, and his utter contempt for the duties of a

husband and father.

In the summer of 1819, my mother accompanied her friend, Laura Tansor, to

France, where she stayed for several months. I was born there, in the Breton city of

Rennes, the following spring. Some weeks later, the two companions travelled together to

Dinan, where they took lodgings near the Tour de l’Horloge. Lady Tansor then departed

for Paris whilst my mother remained in Dinan for several more days. But just as she was

preparing to leave for St-Malô, she received terrible news from England.

The Captain, returning home late one pitch-black night from the King’s Head in

an extreme state of inebriation, had wandered off the path, missed his footing, and

tumbled over the cliff not twelve yards from his door. Tom Grexby, the village

schoolmaster, found him the next morning, his neck quite broken.

The Captain appears to have been perfectly content to let his wife gad off to

France with her friend. He found it not in the least inconvenient to have the house to

himself, and to be able to spend his leisure unencumbered by even the few domestic

duties required of him when his wife was at home. And so he died, a miserable

mediocrity.

On a late summer evening, my mother brought me into Dorset, tucked up in a

plaid blanket and laid on her lap, up the long dusty road that leads from the church to the

little white-painted house on the cliff-top. Naturally, she received heartfelt sympathy

from her friends and neighbours in Sandchurch. To return home husbandless, and with a

fatherless child! All about the village, heads could not stop shaking in disbelief at the

double calamity. The general commiseration was received by my mother with genuine

gratitude, for the sudden death of the Captain had been a severe shock to her, despite his

inadequacies as a husband.

All these things I came to know much later, after my mother’s death. I pass now

to my own memories of my childhood at Sandchurch.

We lived quietly enough – my mother and I, Beth, our maid-of-all-work, and

Billick, a grizzled old salt, who chopped wood, tended the garden, and drove the trap.

The house faced south across a stretch of soft turf towards the Channel, and from my

earliest years the strongest memory I have is of the sound of waves and wind, as I lay in

my cradle under the apple tree in the front garden, or in my room, with its little round

window set above the porch.

We had few visitors. Mr Byam More, my mother’s uncle, would come down from

the West Country two or three times a year; and I also have a clear memory of a pale,

sad-eyed lady called Miss Lamb, who would sit talking quietly with my mother whilst I

played on the rug before the parlour fire, and who would often reach down to stroke my

hair, or run her fingers across my cheek, in a most gentle and affecting way, which I can

still vividly recall.

For a period of my childhood, my mother suffered from severe depression of

spirits, which I now know was caused by the death of her childhood friend, Laura, Lady

Tansor, whose name was unknown to me until after my mother’s death. Her Ladyship (as

I also later learned) had discreetly supported my mother with little gifts of her own

money, and other considerations. But when she died, these payments ceased, and things

went hard for Mamma, the Captain’s paltry legacy to her having long since been

exhausted; but she determined that she would do all in her power to maintain ourselves,

for as long as possible, in the house at Sandchurch.

And so it came about that the publisher, Mr Colburn, received on his desk in New

Burlington-street a brown-paper package containing Edith; or, The Last of the Fitzalans,

the first work of fiction from the pen of a lady living on the Dorset coast. The covering

letter sent Mr Colburn her very best compliments, and requested a professional opinion

on the work.

Mr Colburn duly replied to the lady with a courteous two-page critique of its

merits and demerits, and concluded by saying that he would be happy to arrange for

publication, though on terms that provided for my mother’s contributing towards the

costs. This she accepted, using money she could ill afford to speculate with; but the

venture was successful, and Mr Colburn came back gratifyingly quickly with a request

for a successor, on much improved terms.

So began my mother’s literary career, which ran uninterruptedly for over ten

years, until her death. Though the income derived from her literary efforts kept us safe

and secure, the effort involved was prodigious, and the effects on my mother’s

constitution only too apparent to me as I grew older and observed her slight hunched

form forever bent over the big square table that served her for a desk. Sometimes, when I

entered the room, she would not even look up, but would speak gently to me as she

continued to write, her face close to the paper. ‘What is it, Eddie? Tell Mamma quickly,

dear.’ And I would tell her what I wanted and she would tell me to ask Beth – and off I

would go, back to the concerns of my own world, leaving her to scratch away in hers.

At the age of six, or thereabouts, I was put into the pedagogic care of Thomas

Grexby. When I joined it, Tom’s little school consisted of himself, a plump, blank-faced

boy called Cooper, who appeared to find even the most elementary branches of learning

deeply mystifying, and me. Master Cooper was set exercises in basic schooling that

required him to pass long hours on his own in strenuous concentration, tongue lolling out

with the effort, leaving Tom and I to read and talk together. I made rapid progress, for

Tom was an excellent teacher, and I was exceedingly eager to learn.

Under Tom’s care I quickly mastered my reading, writing, and numbers; and on

the firm foundations thus laid down, he encouraged me to build according to my own

inclinations. Every subject, and every topic within every subject, to which Tom

introduced me assailed me with a keen hunger to know more. In this way, my mind began

to fill up with prodigious amounts of undigested information on every conceivable topic,

from the principles of Archimedes to the date of the creation of the world according to

Bishop Ussher.

Gradually, however, Tom began to impose some rigour on this habit of mental

acquisitiveness, and I settled down to gain a thorough mastery of the Greek and Latin

tongues, and a solid grounding in history and the main vernacular literatures of Europe.

Tom was also a dedicated bibliophile, though his attempts to assemble a collection of fine

editions of his own were severely curtailed by his always limited means. Still, his

knowledge and connoisseurship in this area were considerable, and it was from him that I

learned about incunabula and colophons, bindings and dentelles, editions and issues, and

all the other minutiae beloved of the bibliographical scholar.

And so things went on until I reached the age of twelve, at which point my life

changed.

On the day of my twelfth birthday, in April, 1832, I came down to breakfast to

find my mother sitting at her work-table with a wooden box in her hands.

‘Happy birthday, Eddie,’ she smiled. ‘Come and kiss me.’

I did so most willingly, for I had seen little of her in recent days as she struggled