The Misbegotten (31 page)

‘Whether it is the war that has done it, or his treatment by Alice Beckwith . . . or whether it be those two things combined, it seems to me that your son has lost faith in the world, and in mankind. As you yourself have said, he seems to feel betrayed, and wishes to have no part in his own life any more.’

‘You think . . . you think he wishes to die?’ Mrs Alleyn breathed, stricken.

‘No, madam! No indeed. I think he wishes . . . to have nothing more to fear. To never expose himself to the risk of further pain. But in hiding away as he does, he traps himself with his memories and his nightmares. In truth, I believe the biggest, perhaps even the only, barrier to his return to health, and to a normal life, is that . . . he does not wish for any such return.’

Silence fell in the garden, and Rachel waited fearfully, worried that she had said too much. A robin flew to the top of a nearby pergola, feathers puffed for warmth, and treated them to a cascade of liquid song. The air was so still that Rachel saw the tiny wisp of its breath as it sang.

‘You see things very clearly, Mrs Weekes,’ said Mrs Alleyn at last. There was a note of despair, a note of defeat in her voice. ‘I suppose my next question must be, can you think of any way to change his mind?’

‘In truth, I cannot.’ Never had Rachel felt less qualified for any task. ‘But you told me that it was unusual, and progressive, for him to even consent to see me, and be read to. So I will continue to, if you wish it. I will challenge his despair however I can, though I can make no promise of success.’

‘I wish it, thank you, Mrs Weekes.’ To Rachel’s surprise, Josephine took her hand. The woman’s fingers were profoundly chilled, and her grip first tightened and then loosened, as if unsure of itself.
How long has it been since she took anybody’s hand?
Rachel swallowed, loath to say what she was about to.

‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Alleyn; I wish that I did not have to mention it, but . . . my husband is bound to query me later on, over . . . your offer to reimburse me for my time with your son . . .’ Rachel hung her head, embarrassed.

‘Poor girl. You are too good for the likes of Richard Weekes,’ Mrs Alleyn muttered. She pulled her hand from Rachel’s and turned away from her slightly, as if to distance herself again. Rachel’s head came up in an instant, and it was Mrs Alleyn’s turn to look uncomfortable.

‘I understood that you thought highly of my husband, as your former servant. That you had done a great deal to aid his elevation to a man of business . . .’ Rachel said, too quickly, feeling something like panic. Mrs Alleyn pursed her lips, and when she spoke, it was coolly.

‘I spoke out of turn. I meant no slight to Richard, only a compliment to you, my dear. For what he is, Richard has done very well. He has worked hard and deserves the rewards. But you are a finer wife than he could ever have hoped for, and I know he would agree with me. Forgive me. I have known him a good deal longer than you, but I forgot myself to speak so freely about him in your presence. I spoke too truly when I said that manners and propriety had abandoned us here.’

‘Why have you helped him so much? Why do you still keep ties with him, when he left your service so long ago?’ said Rachel. Mrs Alleyn’s mouth twitched to one side, but it was not a smile. It was a curious expression, a mixture of warmth – even affection, or the remnants of it – coupled with distaste.

‘Richard Weekes . . . was always deeply loyal to me. He served me faithfully throughout some turbulent times in my father’s household. I value loyalty, and always reward it. That said, much of his success is due to his own diligence, and is none of my doing.’ Her tone brooked no argument.

‘Of course.’ Rachel thought of Richard’s nerves when they had first come to call at Lansdown Crescent; she remembered the way he had bowed so low, and trembled. Her mind was alight with enquiry.

‘And you shall have money to show your husband. Come now, let us go in, and I will deliver it.’

‘You are too kind, Mrs Alleyn,’ said Rachel.

Josephine had grown stiff from the cold, so Rachel helped her to rise and they walked back into the house arm in arm. A flash of flame red caught Rachel’s eye as they reached the steps, and she looked up thinking that the robin had returned. But it was Starling she caught a glimpse of, turning hurriedly away from a small window halfway up the house. Rachel’s skin prickled.
She was watching me again. This girl who so offends my husband that he will not confess to knowing her.
She remembered Richard’s command that she have nothing to do with Starling. She remembered his anger flaring, his voice rising, and afterwards the rough way he had handled her in bed, not looking her in the eye. She tensed as she contemplated what he might do or say if he found her out in what she was about to do, but in the end it didn’t make her hesitate.

As the front door of the grand house closed behind her, Rachel darted quickly through the little gate in the railings and down the servants’ stair. She knelt by the courtyard door and took out the note she’d carried with her from home that morning, written after Richard had left the house. Fingers shaking with nerves, she pushed the paper under the door and was up the stairs again with such haste that her feet slipped on the smooth stone – for a heart-stopping moment she thought she would fall. She paused to catch her breath, then crossed the street and set off down the hill into Bath with more decorum, wondering whether Jonathan Alleyn would be watching her from his window as she went. She resisted a powerful urge to turn and look.

Starling went to the abbey in the grip of mixed emotions. She was excited, and curious, and also afraid; pleased, and for some reason angry as well. Like as not the anger had to do with the tone of the missive.
I would speak to you again. Meet me
. . . Starling was ever wont to resent being ordered. She wrapped her shawl around her tightly, wedging the corners beneath her arms. The inside of the huge building was always cool, even in summer. The heat of a sunny day couldn’t penetrate the thick walls; walls so ancient that the stones seemed fused with dust and age and the slow grinding of gravity, so that the abbey was no longer like a manmade thing, but a structure pushed up from the bones of the earth. In winter, the cold seemed to radiate up from the floor, down from the ceiling, and in from all four corners of the echoing space within. A verger was drifting from place to place, lighting candles; a few pews were occupied by the pious and the homeless, and a thin man who stank of the midden was sweeping the floor. The scratch of his besom only seemed to deepen the hush around it. In the shadows beneath the organ loft, Starling saw the person she had come to meet.

Rachel Weekes was standing beside a massive pillar, shifting from foot to foot with her face pinched up in worry. Starling felt her disgust increase. The woman could not have looked more conspicuous, more as though she had a secret. Her arms were folded tightly against her tall, narrow body; her face was white under a faded green hat that matched her faded pelisse. Starling strode up to her with such purpose that she had the satisfaction of seeing Mrs Weekes flinch, and draw back.
For this chicken-breasted creature Richard takes to beating instead of loving me.

‘Thank you for coming,’ said Mrs Weekes, quietly. ‘After I left the note, I wasn’t sure if . . .’ She trailed off, uncomfortably.

‘You weren’t sure if I could read?’ Starling guessed. She felt her mouth pull to one side in disgust. ‘Well, I can. Better than most. And I’ve a fair hand, as well,’ she added.

‘I’m sure you have,’ said Rachel Weekes, and Starling felt her irritation rise again, to be caught bragging.

‘Well, I’m here. What do you want?’ she said. Rachel Weekes was looking at her strangely, and Starling remembered the bruise on her face. A pinkish bloom where Dick had hit her, that had swollen the cheekbone and made the eye on that side bloodshot.

‘Did somebody beat you?’ the woman blurted out, all sudden consternation. Starling took a moment, deciding what and what not to say.

‘Aye, somebody did; a blow, not a beating. For having spoken to you, madam. So let us have the reason for this meeting made plain, so I can be away and nobody the wiser.’

‘Somebody hit you for talking to me?’ Rachel Weekes sounded incredulous. ‘Who?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ said Starling. She glared at Mrs Weekes, and had the satisfaction of seeing, in her eyes, that she could indeed guess.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, I think you do.’ Starling watched the woman shift uneasily. She took a deep breath. ‘What do you want with me? He told me never to speak to you again, nor approach you. I don’t think it occurred to him that you would approach me.’

‘You and my husband are . . . you are . . .’ She could not bring herself to say the word.

‘We were lovers. Yes. Not since you wed though.’ Starling cast a brief look at the crucifix over the altar, in case Jesus could hear her.

‘How long before we wed did you . . . did it . . . cease . . .?’ The woman’s voice was a strangled whisper, shaking with emotion. Starling did not flinch.

‘Two days before. He wed you still wearing the scent of me, I do think.’

Starling’s heart clenched at the cruelty of her own words, with the thrill of being able to wound her rival so.
I was wounded, too.
But in the next instant, she felt deflated. Mrs Weekes put out a hand to steady herself against the wall; her face had turned ashen, and was so full of horror that Starling at once felt the need to make amends. She tried to resist it.
Alice would embrace her, and call her sister, and comfort her. But I am not Alice.
Still, she felt her resolve waver and her anger seep away. The woman looked abject in her misery. Starling almost put out her hand, but could not quite do it. ‘Mrs Weekes . . .’ she said, but was unsure what else to add. The woman raised her eyes, expectantly. ‘Aren’t you angry?’ said Starling, eventually. ‘Aren’t you angry with me? With him?’

‘I am angry only with myself,’ said Rachel Weekes, her voice tight and trembling. ‘I’ve been a fool. An utter fool. And it cannot be undone, can it? It
cannot
!’ She dissolved into a storm of tears. The verger looked over at them curiously, and Starling shushed her, herding her further back into the shadows.

‘Shh! Quiet, people are looking. What can’t be undone?’

‘The marriage!’ Rachel Weekes gasped, between sobs that shook her chest.

‘Well, no. That much is true. I was fool enough to love him but not fool enough to marry him, at least,’ said Starling, almost to herself.
Though I would have, if he’d asked. I’d have been fool enough then.
At this, Rachel Weekes grew calmer, and stopped crying.

‘You loved him?’ she said. Starling glared at her in silence. ‘Then he has treated you very ill . . .’ She looked at the bruise on Starling’s face, and seemed poised to begin weeping again. Starling tried to distract her from it, and was surprised to hear Bridget’s words coming out of her mouth.
Two mothers I had, one soft, one hard.

‘Well, there’s no point crying over spilt milk,’ she said wryly.

To her surprise, Rachel Weekes laughed; a startled snatch of laughter.

‘My mother used to say that,’ she said.

‘Everyone’s mother says that sooner or later, I reckon,’ said Starling. ‘What’s done is done; there’s nothing between him and me now. As far as I know he has been true to you, since you wed.’

‘No.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘I have been much deceived. But then, perhaps I deceived myself most of all,’ she murmured. She sounded calmer, dejected. Starling felt a stab of worry.

‘Don’t challenge him about this, will you? Don’t tell him we’ve met, for pity’s sake! It would go ill for both of us. You must swear not to tell!’

‘I won’t tell. I won’t . . . challenge him,’ said Rachel Weekes.

‘I can’t stay here all day – I must get back to the house. Was this what you wanted from me, then? To know that you married a knave?’ said Starling.

‘No, that was not it . . .’ Mrs Weekes wiped her face with gloved fingers, and took a deep breath. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Jonathan Alleyn. And about Alice Beckwith.’ Starling froze at the mention of both their names together. She couldn’t remember when she’d last heard them spoken in the same breath.
Jonathan and Alice. J & A; carved into the flesh of the lovers’ tree for ever.
She swallowed.

‘Well? What of them?’

‘When we spoke before, at the house, you said to me that Miss Beckwith had been too good for this world.’

‘I spoke the truth. What of it?’

‘Do you think her . . . dead, then?’ Rachel Weekes had stopped crying, and now a strange light was in her eyes, a strange eagerness that Starling mistrusted.

‘I know she is dead.’

‘How do you know? Were you still in touch with her, after she absconded?’

‘After she . . .? No, you don’t understand a thing! She never absconded. She never had another lover, and she never left her home with another . . . She was killed! That’s the truth of it!’ Whenever she spoke of it, Starling’s pulse quickened with desperation; the terrible frustration of knowing the truth but being believed by no one. But Rachel Weekes’s eyes had gone wide with shock.

‘She was killed? You mean . . . murdered?’

‘Aye, murdered! By Jonathan Alleyn!’

‘By . . . God above, you cannot mean it?’ Rachel Weekes said breathlessly.

‘I would not say such a thing lightly.’

‘But . . . what happened? Will you tell me?’ she said. Starling stared at her for a moment, and realised that nobody had ever asked her to describe that day before.

The last time Starling ever saw her, Alice had been winding the front of her hair into rags before bed; patiently wrapping each lock around a strip of cloth, and then twisting it up and tying it near her scalp. The back of it she left to hang loose, down between her shoulder blades. When she unwound the rags in the morning, the curls were never quite as neat as she wanted them – her hair was too fine, too wilfully straight. Most nights Starling didn’t wake when Alice came up, but that night, that last night, she woke from a dream of running and never tiring to see her sister at the dressing table, fixing her hair in this way. At once, Starling felt safe. Her dream, though it had almost been wonderful, had left her with the uneasy feeling that she was not quite normal, not quite real. But there was the smooth pallor of Alice’s skin in the mirror, and the way she curled up her toes and crossed her feet to one side of the stool, and everything was real and right again.