The Mist in the Mirror (21 page)

I would have asked questions, would have said, ‘I have been here. Who was it? Whose room? Who lived here then?’ But I saw that the woman was waiting for me – and, besides, she would almost certainly not have known.

I turned and followed her, our steps sounding hollow on the bare oak boards of the landing, until we stopped outside a door.

So, now, I was at last to see Miss Monmouth, my only living relative. My mouth was dry, my heart beating hard in my chest.

It was a bedroom, long and low-ceilinged, with bare floorboards and some simple, dark pieces of old country furniture. The shutters were closed, so that at first I hesitated, unable to see into the gloom. But the woman stepped quietly across to the windows, and folded the shutter back, and, glancing put, I saw that the sky had clouded over and was heavy and blue-black.

Then, she left the room, closing the door very softly behind her, and I was alone with my relative.

A carved oak bed stood opposite to me, without curtains or pillows, and I went forward quietly, preparing my first, gentle greeting, for I was anxious not to startle or worry an old woman.

She wore a bone-coloured cotton gown and her grey hair was pulled back from her forehead and dressed in a thin little plait which rested in the crook of her neck. Her arms were folded, hands together on top of one another. The flesh, what little there was – for she seemed immensely old, and wasted – had sunk back into the hollows of her eyes and mouth and below the cheekbones, and her nose jutted up, hooked and sharp as the beak of a hawk. Her eyes were closed, her skin was dull and waxen.

Miss Monmouth was dead, and I, the visitor, had been allowed in to view her corpse, and pay it my first, and last, respects.

It was only by a supreme effort of will that I managed to stand my ground firmly, for my limbs felt as if they would dissolve, the whole room seemed unsteady, the floor to shift like the sea beneath my feet.

In panic, I looked up from the dreadful still figure laid out before me, and my eyes found the wall behind the bed. On it was an elaborately carved mirror, with faded and cracked gilding, and dark streaked glass, the exact counterpart of the mirror that had been hanging in the bedroom at Alton, and as I stared into it, my own face, pale and with terrified, haunted eyes, looked back at me dimly, through a grey, swirling mist.

Rain rattled suddenly against the casements, and in the distance, from over the moors, came the sound of thunder.

The woman had returned, and led me back down through that oppressive old house, not to the gloomy room in which I had first waited, but to a small parlour, where a bleak fire had been recently lit and smouldered sulkily in the grate. The room smelled of damp, everything seemed as though undisturbed for years, but there were at least a few trinkets and books to soften the bareness. A tray, with a decanter of sherry and some plain cake, stood on a small table. Propped up against it was the letter.

‘So you knew that I was coming here – you know my name.’

The woman inclined her head, but I noticed that she stood back from me, as if afraid, and her eyes were wary, she did not readily meet my glance.

‘Miss Monmouth received my letter.’

‘She did.’

‘But, by then, I suppose that she was too ill to reply?’

She cleared her throat, her hands fidgeting on her apron.

‘She’d been ill a good long while. Only …’

‘Yes?’

‘It shook her.’

‘My letter?’

‘There was no thought that anyone else was left.’

‘Indeed not. I know of no other relative myself – that is why I am so anxious to come here and find – find Miss Monmouth passed away. There is so much we might have talked about, so much that she would have told me. I know little about my family – and Kittiscar – my own self. Perhaps you …’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I came from away. To Miss Monmouth. She was to be looked after. But none of the rest of it is my concern.’

‘Did she speak of me to you?’

She indicated the letter beside the tray. ‘What she wanted to say she said there – though she was dying then, and knew it. But clear in her mind. When you’ve taken your refreshment and read what she had to say, I expect you will let me have your instructions.’

‘Instructions?’

‘As to the arrangements.’

‘Oh, I would want to leave everything to you or to anyone else local who knew her. I don’t expect to interfere with the funeral in any way.’

She nodded, unsmiling. ‘And, as to the rest, perhaps you will say in due course.’

She turned quickly, seeming anxious to be out of my presence, so that I thought it best not to try and question her further.

I poured myself a full glass of the dark sweet sherry, and drank it off at once, and took another, for my nerves were not yet steady, I had not at all recovered from the shock of finding myself alone with the dead body of Miss Monmouth.

Outside, the rain was still heavy, and the thunder prowling low about the house.

I sat in the straight-backed chair, my glass close to hand, and took up the letter.

It was written in ink, in a shaky, old-fashioned but clearly legible hand. The paper itself was headed in the same form as the envelope.

There is little of interest to tell about the events of the following two days. From the woman, I learned that tentative arrangements for the funeral had been made – it was to take place in the nearest market town, followed by burial there – and I confirmed them hastily, not wishing to interfere at all, or put forward any alternative plans of my own.

I returned to the Inn at Raw Mucklerby that afternoon. There seemed nothing for me to do and I felt curiously flat and dispirited. I had inherited Kittiscar, my family home. I had some dim childhood memories of visiting it, and of being in the village and the countryside around, presumably with whoever the old woman was who had looked after me. No one seemed to remember or be interested in me, I had no information at all about my parents or the rest of my family, and knew nothing of what had happened to them, and suddenly, lying listlessly on my bed at the Inn, I
felt as though I had been excitedly following some path, with great difficulty, led on, led on – only to arrive at a dead end, a blank wall. Nothing.

Is this all? I asked. Apparently it was.

It seemed likely that everything that had happened to me, the odd, frightening incidents, things seen and heard, had been products either of coincidence, which had nothing to do with me, but which I had simply hit upon by purest chance, or else of an over-fevered and disturbed imagination, a heightened sensibility caused by illness and the strain and strangeness of arriving in another country, at the end of the old familiar life and the abrupt beginning of a new.

I was disappointed and yet perhaps also in some ways relieved. Things had an ordinary explanation – or none; my past was without mystery, my future set to be dull and uneventful. So be it.

Miss Monmouth’s funeral was a plain affair, in a neat, well-kept little church. A few more people than I had anticipated were gathered there, and I noticed that in the church I was avoided, and left to sit alone at the front, and at the graveside, too, I was apart, and the object of covert glances. But that was scarcely surprising – I was an interesting stranger in a close-knit, somewhat isolated community, being treated with wary courtesy and respect as the chief mourner and only living relative of the deceased.

But I exchanged some friendly words with the officiating clergyman, an old retired Canon, who had, he said, visited my relative occasionally in the past few years.

‘And now,’ I said, ‘I hope, you will visit me.’ The others had left the churchyard and we were standing alone together beside the lych gate. He frowned, as if he had not understood.

‘I am Miss Monmouth’s heir – the only member of the family left, or so I suppose. I have inherited Kittiscar.’

‘But I take it you will not be living there. You are come from abroad, and I …’

‘Yes, but my days of travelling and living in foreign countries are over. I came back to England determined to settle, long before I knew of Kittiscar or my connections with it. I had felt something, memories and recollections, were drawing me back home and, now, home is to be Kittiscar. I shall return to London to clear my belongings, and some few business matters there, but then I shall return and take over Kittiscar Hall.’

In truth, I had not known that this was indeed my plan, had made no decision, until I heard myself speak then. But I was convinced at that moment that it would be so, and was indeed what I most wanted.

The man was looking distraught, his mouth working, his eyes not meeting mine, as if he were desperately trying to nerve himself to speak, and torn between the desire to do so and the anxiety he clearly felt about the matter.

‘There is something wrong?’ I asked.

‘I … no, no. That is …’

‘Come.’

‘Then – oh, think hard, Mr Monmouth, think it over most carefully, I urge you. It is a lonely life here – and alien to you – Kittiscar is – not perhaps the place for a man in the prime of active life, on his own, knowing no one … surely London and other interests will call you, stimulate you more …’ He burbled on, his fingers plucking at the edge of his surplice, which blew about him in the wind. I shivered and turned up my coat collar.

‘No,’ I said boldly, beginning to make my way out of the gate, ‘London holds no interest at all for me. I am not a city man. I have come home, and here I shall stay.’ I proffered my hand. My own grip was firm. His was not, his hand was trembling and uncertain in mine. I looked at him and saw kindness in his old eyes, kindness and deep concern for me. And fear.

But he said nothing, only walked with me to the roadside, and watched me leave, before returning to the church.

At the corner, I glanced back. The wind was blowing bitterly cold off the moors, and rippling through the branches of the yews in the graveyard. Underneath them, and looking away from me, towards the freshly mounded earth of my relative’s grave, stood the boy, ragged, pale, thin, and quite as clear, real, visible to me as he had always been.

I averted my head before he could turn and look at me, and quickened my step away from the place.

I supposed that the mourners at the funeral had simply dispersed back to their own homes. If there was any gathering, to eat and drink and reminisce, I had not been invited to it.

I returned to the Inn, ate some cold meat and bread for lunch, among the local men, read a paper, wrote a few letters, including one describing everything in detail and relieving myself of many of my pent-up feelings, to the Quincebridges. Indeed, I thought altogether longingly of Pyre and their company and my time there, and even of my rooms at Number Seven, Prickett’s Green. Here, I felt lonely and strange and, if I regretted what I had said to the parson about taking over my inheritance at Kittiscar Hall, it was not because his palpable anxiety had influenced me, and certainly not because of the reappearance of the boy, but simply because of the depressed sense of anti-climax that continued with me now.

In the end, shortly after three that afternoon, I decided to go up again to Kittiscar, to look over the Hall, and begin to familiarise myself with it, make plans and see if I could even begin to feel at home there.

The wind was blowing in my face, making the climb over
the moor a hard one, but the views from the summit were glorious in the afternoon sun, and I felt so exhilarated by the great openness of this northern countryside that I had begun to love, that my spirits lifted as I went, hearing the plaintive bleating of the sheep and the birds’ cries all around me.

I had a list of questions forming in my head as I walked. Principally, I wondered whether any land went along with the Hall, or if I might possibly buy some to call my own, to have some sheep and rough cover for shooting, and a stream in which to fish. I saw the house transformed gradually into a comfortable gentleman’s home, not grand (and, in any case, I had no money for grandeur) but welcoming, with my books and a good dog, and the garden brought back to itself, a place to which I could welcome visitors. Perhaps somewhere at the back of my mind was even the thought that one day Kittiscar would be a home to which I might bring a wife, so that it would be truly alive with family happiness and the sound of children.

Such warm sentiments did not seem to me in the least foolish, so inspired and invigorated was I by my walk over the moor and the thought of my inheritance.