The Seance (17 page)

‘There is very little to tell,’ said George as we set off again. ‘According to local superstition, the Wood is haunted by the ghost of a monk, who appears whenever a Wraxford is about to die; it is said that anyone who sees the apparition will die within the month. I shouldn’t be surprised if the Wraxfords started the rumour themselves to keep people away. The family have played no part in local affairs for as long as anyone can remember, but there is nothing unusual in
that. No; the only genuine oddity is that the last two owners have disappeared.’

‘What do you mean, disappeared?’

‘Exactly that; no more, no less. Mind you, the two incidents happened nearly fifty years apart. The first was a Thomas Wraxford, a widower; he had great plans for the Hall when he inherited it, somewhere in the 1780s, I think, but then his only son died in an accident and his wife returned to her family. He lived alone at the Hall for many years, until he was quite an old man; then one evening he went to bed as usual, and when his valet came to wake him the next morning he wasn’t there. There had been a heavy downpour, with thunder and lightning, not long after he retired, but then it cleared to a fine moonlit night. His bed hadn’t been slept in, and there was no sign of a struggle; so it was generally assumed that he’d wandered off into the forest – disoriented by the storm, perhaps – and fallen into a pit or something of the sort. The Wood is very much overgrown, you see, and there are various old workings – it was mined for tin centuries ago – a very easy place to come to grief in.’

‘And – the other?’ I asked with a slight shiver. The path had descended again, and now ran parallel to the edge of the forest, which looked very dense indeed, so choked with creeper and fallen branches that you could see only a few yards within.

‘Cornelius Wraxford – Thomas’s nephew, the nearest surviving male relative – petitioned the court of Chancery to find that Thomas was legally deceased. He – Cornelius – was a fellow at some obscure Cambridge college, but he resigned as soon as judgment was given, and took possession of the Hall. Where he remained for another forty-five years, living the life of a complete recluse, until the spring of this year, when the same thing happened; he retired as usual – again, by a strange coincidence, on the night of a violent electrical storm – and was never seen again.’

‘But ... what do you think became of him?’

‘No one knows. Of course it caused a good deal of talk; the general
opinion at the Ship was that both of them had been carried off by the Devil. I wonder myself if Thomas Wraxford’s fate could have played upon his nephew’s mind until his wits finally gave way, and, under the influence of the storm, he felt compelled to follow his uncle’s example.’

‘Like King Lear on the heath,’ said Ada. ‘I remember that storm very well; he must have been mad indeed if he went out in it.’

‘And what will become of the Hall now?’ I asked.

‘I believe that the heir – a Magnus Wraxford; I know nothing of him – has applied for a judgment of decease. It may raise a few eyebrows on the bench, but I don’t suppose he’ll have much trouble getting it; Cornelius must have been at least eighty years old.’

‘And now,’ said Ada, ‘it is high time we spoke of something more cheerful.’

I did not press the topic any further, but the image of an old man stumbling through a dark forest remained vivid in my mind, long after Monks Wood had vanished from sight.

An hour or so later, we came within sight of Orford Keep, a massive, turreted edifice of jagged brown brick and greyish mortar. It stood on a high earthen mound, with a few scattered cottages beyond, though the settlement seemed quite deserted. As we came nearer, I noticed an easel standing a little way from the keep. It bore a stretched canvas, but there was no sign of the artist, who had presumably retired to one of the cottages. I could not resist the impulse to examine the picture.

It was, as I expected, a study of the keep, but in oils, not watercolour, and it reminded me of a place I knew but could not immediately identify. The artist had caught the bulk and mass of the tower, the way it seemed to lean over you, but there was more, something ominous, a sense of menace impending. The closely paired windows below the battlements made you think of eyes ... that was it, it was like the house of my dream, alert, alive, listening ...

‘That’s – er – very striking,’ said George, coming up beside me.

‘Very sinister,’ said Ada in turn.

‘I think it is wonderful,’ I said.

‘I’m delighted you think so,’ said a voice seemingly from the earth behind me. I spun round as a figure rose from the long grass a few feet away. A man – a young man – slender, not especially tall, wearing tweed trousers and a collarless shirt, rather the worse for paint.

‘I am sorry to have startled you,’ he said, brushing grass-seeds from his clothes. ‘I was asleep, and your voices got into my dream. Edward Ravenscroft, at your service.’

As with the picture, I was reminded of someone I had seen before, but I could not think who or where, and I had certainly never heard the name before. He was certainly handsome, with dark brown hair falling across his forehead, fair skin, a little roughened and reddened by the sun; dark, heavy-lidded eyes; a long, prominent nose, straight as a blade, and a most engaging smile.

‘It is we who should apologise,’ I said, as soon as George had made the introductions, ‘for intruding upon your picture – and your dream.’

‘Not at all – a delightful awakening,’ he replied, still smiling at me. ‘It strikes you as finished, then?’

‘Oh yes, it is perfect; it reminds me of a dream I used to have – a nightmare, I must confess.’

‘Very gratifying – though I shouldn’t want to trouble your sleep. Knowing when to stop is the hardest part; I cleaned my palette an hour ago, for fear I might spoil it.’

We stood for a while in conversation, during which it emerged that he was on a walking tour of the county, sketching and painting as he went; that he was an artist by profession, subsisting for the time being upon small commissions, mostly pictures of country houses; and that he was a bachelor, with a widowed father in Cumbria. He had been staying for the past few days at an inn near Aldeburgh, making forays up and down the coast.

I already knew that I wanted to see more of Edward Ravenscroft, and
began singing the praises of Chalford, in the hope that he might pay us a visit. And indeed he liked the sound of Chalford so much that he asked if he might accompany us back there and put up at the Ship while he explored the countryside around. George had by now recognised the road by which we ought to have come, and so the journey homeward took us nowhere near Monks Wood. It needed only an exchange of speaking looks with Ada for Edward to be invited, long before Roman Kiln Field came into sight, to stay for a few days as a guest at the rectory.

Edward’s few days became a week, which we spent, or so it seems in memory, entirely in each other’s company, walking for hours each day or talking in the ‘yerd’. Beyond his talent for painting, he was not especially learned, or well read; he had no great interest in religion or philosophy; but he was beautiful – the word that came to me from the first, rather than ‘handsome’ – and had a gift of enjoyment which brought the world alive for me, and I loved him. On the fourth day he kissed me, and declared his love for me – or perhaps it was the other way round, I cannot recall – and from that moment onward – I shall write it, immodest or worse though it will sound – I desired him to make love to me, without even knowing exactly what it meant, beyond his kissing me and drawing me closer until I felt I should dissolve in bliss.

I would happily have married Edward that same week, but he told me from the first he could not afford to marry – he subsisted upon a small allowance from his father, a retired schoolmaster – until he had made his name. ‘Until I saw you,’ he told me, ‘I lived only for my painting’ (I was not entirely convinced of this; the assurance with which he embraced me suggested that I was not the first woman he had ever made love to, but I was too happy to care) – ‘now I think only of the day when we can be wholly together, and the sooner I produce a masterpiece, the sooner that will be.’

Ada and George were naturally uneasy about the speed of our courtship, and also about keeping the news of our betrothal – as I thought of it – from my mother. Ada had ceased to chaperone us after the first few days, not without misgivings, privately expressed to me, about what Mama would say if ever she found out.

‘Mama will never approve,’ I replied. ‘You know what she thinks of artists; it will mean a complete breach between us. And there is no reason to tell her yet; not until we can afford to marry.’

‘Perhaps not,’ she said, ‘but you must think of the scandal that would follow if – if it appeared that Edward had seduced you under our roof. If your mother ever found out, she would certainly write to the bishop, and George would lose his living.’

‘But he has
not
seduced me! I am of age, and I adore him, and I do not need Mama’s consent to marry him—’

‘That would not prevent her from making a scandal. And besides a man – even a good man, as I am sure he is – can take advantage of a woman’s love for him, especially when they are thrown very much together, as you are here, with no immediate prospect of marriage. Do not think me unfeeling, dearest; I know very well what it means to long to be with the one you love, but you have only known him a week, and it is simply too soon to be sure of him, or even of yourself – especially when you are still convalescing.’

‘Yes, but I have already seen far more of him than Sophie has ever seen of Arthur Carstairs. I will never be surer than I am now; and the visitations, I am sure, were only brought on by the strain of things at home ... Do you mean that Edward cannot remain with us?’

‘I fear not – not until you have told your mother that you are engaged.’

‘Then I shall tell her,’ I said, ‘though I am sure she will not give us her blessing. But please let Edward stay – a few more weeks at least.’

And so, despite Ada’s misgivings, it was agreed that Edward could remain for the present. He insisted upon contributing as much as he could afford
to the household expenses, as I had done with the pound a week my mother had allowed me for the visit. Though still very poor, he was beginning to make his name as a painter. Several of his pictures had been sold by a private gallery, ‘at the wrong end of Bond Street’, as he cheerfully put it, but Bond Street nonetheless. Beyond his study of Orford Keep, I had seen only a few recent canvases sent on from the inn at Aldeburgh, all of them studies of ruins or wild places, and all displaying the same qualities of seeming verisimilitude and dream-like immediacy. Ada had offered him a choice of rooms – the rectory had evidently been built with an immense family in mind – and he had taken a disused sitting-room on the first floor with high windows and a good north light, which would serve as both bedroom and studio. And within days of our engagement he was back at work in earnest. Though he spoke lightly of producing masterpieces, I knew how deeply he longed for recognition; he was sure of his talent, and needed only the world’s acknowledgement to set the seal upon it.

I thought a good deal about how I might bring the day closer by earning some money of my own, but to no purpose. Taking a situation as governess or companion – even if one were offered me – would mean being parted from Edward, and from my friends, yet I knew I could not live on George’s charity indefinitely, much as I dreaded returning to Highgate. Which in turn raised the fearful prospect of writing to tell my mother, for to delay much longer would not be fair to Ada and George, now the whole village knew that Edward and I were betrothed. Yet delay I did, for every time I sat down to begin, the thought of my mother’s fury would rear up like a thundercloud, blotting out all else. I had told Edward of my difficulties with Mama, even the threats of confinement to an asylum, but attributed these to my sleepwalking rather than the visitations, the one thing I could not bring myself to speak of; I did not quite know why. Did I doubt his love? I would ask myself. – No, of course not. – Then why not tell him? My conscience seemed to think I ought; but then he would only worry about me, and really there was no need, now that I was well again.

My only other cause of anxiety was the recurring sense that I had met Edward somewhere before, and that it was important – I did not know why – that I should remember where. I would sometimes find myself gazing at my beloved, thinking, where
have
I seen you? feeling the answer hovering like a forgotten word upon the tip of my tongue, but unable to summon it. Nor did I understand why this preoccupation should be linked to an uneasy feeling that everything – save the impending confrontation with my mother – was
too
perfect, my happiness too complete: a vague, superstitious dread that only troubled me when I was alone. I sought to convince myself that these anxieties were merely the shadow of my former indisposition – which was now, of course, entirely cured.