The Widow's Confession (2 page)

‘Any gifts I have are given me by the Lord, Mr Steele. I will not press you – I do not seek to force confidences – but I am here if there is some burden you wish to discuss.
And if we only talk of trivial things, that is welcome too.’

‘Do you find it lonely, living in such a small town, without many diversions?’ said Edmund. He caught the slight flinch Theo gave, an almost imperceptible movement.

‘I would never say that.’ Theo folded his hands in his lap and sat up, straight-backed. ‘I am where I have been called to be, to serve God’s purpose. I am following my
faith. But your company is welcome.’

It was only later that Edmund realized he had not answered the question.

It was many years since Edmund had attended Evening Prayer on a weekday, but when his host asked him to, he agreed in a moment. The church of Holy Trinity stood a few steps
from the parsonage; built as a chapel-of-ease to the Parish of St Peter-in-Thanet, it had been dedicated only twenty years, Theo informed him. It was a flint construction, black and glittering in
the summer light, but within, it changed character from brooding to serene. The interior was a large open space, with white walls. The only division was an elaborately carved rood screen. The
sweetish stale scent of incense hung in the air.

Edmund took his place quietly in the front pew Theo had pointed out, fearing that, fatigued as he was, he might doze off in the warmth of the summer evening. He could not help but think that he
would normally have been in his club at this time, but reminded himself of his resolve to be open to new impressions and new places. London had been his whole life since his teens, which was a good
while ago, for he was in his late fifties now. With the exception of his intermittent visits to his parents in Cheshire, which had ceased on their deaths, he had known few other places. It was true
he had travelled abroad, but those experiences were like mere framed prints on the wall; distant, separate, as though they had happened to other people. Nothing had touched or changed him. Now,
suddenly aware of his advancing years, he felt a little ashamed of it.

He rubbed his eyes. Despite his distance from London, there was much to think of, not least the pressing matter of Mrs Craven and her happiness. He had written a thousand letters to her in his
mind, but the outcome was never definite; to ask her for her hand in marriage, or not. Just as he decided on one course, he would think,
and yet . . .

He heard the church door open and close behind him. Theo looked up from his prayer book. Edmund glanced over his shoulder. A lady had entered the church and was standing a few steps from the
door, her gaze sweeping over the church and the few worshippers there without any embarrassment. Slim and tall, she was dressed entirely in black. A widow. Edmund thought her striking, but did not
want to stare. He turned back to see that Theo had paused in the deep hush. He gazed long at her, before he returned his eyes to the page and continued reading, his voice moving fluidly over the
elements of the service.

The last Amen woke Edmund from his reverie, and he heard the cries of seagulls seeping through the stone walls of the church. When he glanced back, the widow had gone.

Prayers; supper; bed. These would be the things, Edmund thought, which would soothe his troubled mind. He retired as ten chimed on the grandfather clock at the turn of the
stairs, and inspected his room by the light of a candle. It was pristine. There was a neat four-poster bed, with heavy hangings drawn back for him; a wardrobe; a washstand with clean towels, soap,
a basin and a ewer filled with cold water. A table had been set out in the bay window with writing equipment, and beside his bed was a chair on which sat, neatly placed, a box of matches and
another two candles. There was no dust, no cobwebs; knowing that Martha was Theo’s only servant made Edmund wonder. Already, Theo had struck him as the kind of man who was concerned with
details, and he thought he saw the priest’s own hand in the careful preparation of the writing desk, and provision of candles. For a moment he wondered if his host had even made the bed with
his own hands. He pulled back the top cover and saw that four blankets had been layered on the bed; but then he had been warned about the fierce sea breezes.

His host’s room was situated at the other end of the hall. Edmund heard his feet travelling the length of the corridor, the boards squeaking with every light step.

He settled down at the writing desk, where everything had been prepared for him, dipped the pen into the inkwell and began to write:

My dear Venning,

I have arrived, and find the young man very much as you told me he would be: warm, and hospitable. But there are depths to him, Charles, as you said. This evening we passed
his study door and I glimpsed within a portrait of Saint Sebastian. It was a mournful sight, that saintly face full of suffering, his sides pierced with many arrows. Mr Hallam closed the door as
soon as he saw my eyes upon it. It is clear that he has not taken a role in the church for the sake of a profession, or convenience; but I will not complain of his intensity. His fireside is warm,
his port and brandy good, and, for now, he is short on lectures for a clergyman. I see nothing to trouble me yet.

Did you really only send me here to ‘recover my spirits’ as you so charmingly put it? I blame myself for confiding in you that, as a bachelor, long past fifty, I look dully at my
life and am weighed down by the burden of my accumulated wisdom. Are you giving me a rest cure, as you claimed, or another diversion?

I doubt I will receive a full explanation by return. I will breathe in the sea air and smile benignly, and pray that I get through this ‘holiday’ of mine alive.

Your good friend, Edmund Steele

Edmund left the letter open so that the black ink, glossy in the candlelight, would sink into the paper. Then he got up and walked around the room, not worrying too much about
the creaking boards, for his host was way down the corridor. He had shied away from mentioning Mrs Craven in the letter, though Charles Venning and his wife had encouraged the match. He thought of
his father, as he often did these last months, and wondered if he had disappointed Alban Steele by not being as pure in intention as him. It was in his recent studies that he had sought to close
this gap, and to add some seriousness to a life that had been full of trivialities. He had also wished to examine the darkness which had haunted his father; the shadow which, despite Alban’s
happiness, had yet come over him sometimes.

‘Too late, too late,’ Edmund said, under his breath. Amusement and diversion; these were the things that made his life bearable. If his father, a silversmith and an artist in his
way, had bequeathed him something, it was exactness: a precision which had served him well in the building and keeping of his fortune, and was at odds with his otherwise relaxed nature.

Fretfully, he went over to the window and lifted the drape. Dense, blue-black darkness greeted him: it was perfect night in this seaside town, deeper and darker than any city night. He could not
hear a sound, not even the cry of a gull. He wondered if it was the trees, waving in the growing breeze, that swathed the parsonage in such complete darkness; but after a minute or two he saw there
was a gap in them, a line of sight intermittently blocked by their movement.

He saw a light.

He tilted his head and took a step to the right. Across the narrow road at the end of the driveway, someone was standing on the step of one of the cottages. He narrowed his eyes at the pale
column and made out the figure of a woman, holding a candle, shielded from the sea breeze by a glass shade; he caught the glint of it. He raised his hand, but the pale shape showed no sign that she
was aware of his presence. She stayed still, seeming to stare straight ahead. He had no idea what she was looking at; the building he was in was surely cloaked in leaves, a mass of darkness to her
eyes.

He waved a little more, until he felt foolish, and dropped the drape. He took a turn around the room and closed his letter. Then he could not help himself; he went to the window and looked out
again. But the figure was gone. There was no light behind the shutters of the cottage, no sign that anyone was within.

He undressed and got into bed. The balminess of the day had quite gone; the bed was cool, and he was aware that his heart was beating hard, and that he wanted to know who had been watching the
parsonage. ‘It is a quaint little place,’ Venning had told him, ‘but do not listen to the local people: they can talk only of wrecks, and they try to scare the ladies, speaking of
sea-monsters and ghosts.’

Ghosts, thought Edmund. Foolish, so foolish. He closed his eyes and thought of his childhood, imagining that he was in his parents’ cottage again, his mother stirring a pot on the range.
He thought of the London streets, the chaos and energy, the messenger boy running to him, bringing news of the money he had made through no labour of his own. He heard the chink of Mrs
Craven’s wine glass as she set it down on the silver salver bought by her first husband. And at last, as he fell asleep, he saw the pale shape of a woman on a step, and the dark and
glittering sea.

The summer of 1851 seems as distant to me now as my childhood. It is as though a different Delphine Beck lived through that time. My cousin Julia and I began the year in
London, but as the world flocked there to visit the Great Exhibition and see its novelties, we knew it was time for us to leave. Just as the world opened up, we went to Broadstairs because it
seemed to be the perfect place to hide. A place for invalids, for those who hoped to convalesce, and those that never would. The town was known for its retired nature, and we thought that if we
stepped quietly amongst its residents they would never notice us.

Broadstairs was one more resting-place on the ceaseless journey Julia and I had taken since the autumn of 1841, when we left New York for England on the
Great Western
. We had spent
ten years touring Europe, travelling as much as our small income would allow. We thought this quiet sea-bathing resort would be no different from the spa-towns or the lakeside villages we had seen,
where we kept to ourselves, careful not to make connections.

We arrived in May, before the season had begun. The days were long and bright; the light hard and clear, sometimes even cruel in its merciless exposure of every flaw. Going to sketch on the
beach in the early mornings, I thought that I had never seen such light before.

Night fell differently there, too. Raised in New York, I was surprised by the swift way in which it descended: the sharpening air, the total darkness, only broken by the sweep of the
lighthouse’s lantern at North Foreland and the flashing signals of the lightships marking the Goodwin Sands out at sea. Coming out of our cottage, I would never know which way to turn:
towards the darkness of the foreland, or towards the town, where the locals sat in the taverns and conversed by the light of flickering candles.

I often wonder what that summer would have been, without the deaths. Would we – a group of strangers – have been thrown together with such intensity? Our loves, our hatreds,
focusing in the presence of death, giving every word, every touch, a sense of urgency. It seems so strange when observed at a distance, now that time has passed. We could have been like any other
group of travellers, passing and grazing each other lightly, with polite conversation and the occasional cutting remark. Instead, we were a conflagration, or perhaps that conflagration was only
within me.

Delphine went to sketch on the sands at Main Bay, going early, before anyone else was there apart from one or two fishermen on the pier. She was seated with her back to the
town, and the bathing machines were not yet drawn to the water’s edge, so she saw only the sea, the clouds and the sun. When the first walkers came, she closed her sketchbook and left the
beach.

Harbour Street and the clifftop promenade were still quiet. Delphine walked for some way until the path verged upon a cornfield, which went right up to the cliff’s edge. On its most
far-out point, she looked down upon the whole bay; the perfect view for a painter. But already, more people were out, and she knew it was time to go back to Victory Cottage, her home for the
season.

Her route back took her through the town and past the Albion Hotel. It was a large square building, solid as a dowager and with the same pretensions to stateliness, despite evidently having been
battered by the sea winds that winter. It was the foremost of the town’s hotels and associated with Charles Dickens, though he had long since decamped to Fort House, a private residence, for
his summer seasons in the town. She paused to look at the hotel with the interest of a stranger’s eye – the lantern over the large entrance and the little ornamentation cut into the
stones – to consider whether she wished to sketch it.

In the back of her mind she had noted the swift approach of a carriage from the distance, but it was only when the growing noise of hooves and wheels intruded into her thoughts that she became
truly aware of the danger she was in. The horse and carriage had come from the top of the town; it was downhill all the way, with the Albion at the bottom. The horse had bolted. It was hurtling
forwards, head high, eyes rolled back as its driver struggled with it. As she turned, the sudden vision of it arrested her where she stood; frozen, one hand against the wall of the hotel.

So this is how it ends, she thought, after a journey of a thousand miles. And in that single, endless moment, she closed her eyes.

In the blackness she heard the carriage draw up with a fearful, skidding sharpness, scattering grit so that some hit the windowpane of the hotel past her head, and the horse gave a painful
whinny. She waited for the sound of splintering wood, the scream of the animal.

The sounds did not come.

She opened her eyes and saw the proprietor of the Albion, Mr Gorsey, come running out of the front door, a young woman in drab clothes on his heels, wiping her hands on her apron.