The Widow's Confession (35 page)

Miss Waring, the purest of us all, had taken those girls, the first one being Martha’s niece. ‘When I was younger and stronger,’ so she said. ‘When
I did not have to give them laudanum.’ And I thought of the large bag she carried, and how we always joked about her: this stern, proper woman.

Death strips every trivial thing away. That night, I went into the cottage and told Julia. I embraced her as she wept, and the thoughts I had been thinking on that endless journey home
crystallized in my mind. I held her face in my hands. ‘Did you only travel with me from guilt?’

‘At first,’ she said. ‘But not now. You are as a sister to me.’ And I knew that the bitterness I had tasted on the harbour arm that day should be dropped into the
depths of that harbour like the other, wretched memories of that day.

We stayed only to hear that Daisy lived; then Julia and I left for London. Julia asked if I wished to see Theo again. I said no. But he had cut a scar in my heart, and I only knew this when
I kept seeing him: a stranger’s back on a London street, the shape of a hat across a crowded shop. Once or twice a day, I thought I saw him. It was as when I first left New York. I thought I
saw my mother everywhere.

I say ‘him’, but I do not know why. I have only been able to write about that summer, about us, without admitting you are the reader. So let me write it. Once or twice a day, I
thought I saw you, Theo.

The constable had locked Miss Waring in a room, but she was not trying to get out. She had sat down in a chair and was waiting patiently when he unlocked the door and let Theo
in. Her harsh expression unbent at the sight of him. The constable did not go. ‘I’ll hear what she has to say to you,’ he said, and locked the door from the inside.

Theo pulled a chair across the room and sat down opposite the woman, but a distance away. He did not want to be near her. He did not want to look at her. His eyes had seen many things, and his
faith had strengthened him in times of fear, but this was one thing he could not look upon. Still, she sought him with her eyes, tilting her head until she caught his gaze.

‘I believe in God, Mr Hallam,’ she said eventually, her voice swollen with emotion. ‘I thought you might pray with me, but I can see it would pain you to do so.’

Theo felt ashamed. It was his duty to pray with whoever requested it; that she had seen so clearly and immediately in his face that he did not wish to help her, distressed him.

‘Will you listen to me?’ she said. ‘You mean a good deal to me, Mr Hallam. You are, perhaps, the first good man I have ever known, with the exception of my own parish
priest.’

‘Did you kill Martha’s niece?’ he said.

She nodded, and he saw the constable taking notes. ‘And the others,’ she said. ‘Amy, Catherine, and the other girl – I tried. Sweets and drinks.’ She leaned down
and tapped the large, leather bag on the floor by her feet. ‘I was always prepared. I would drown them, if I had the strength. Or, if not, I knew the sea would take them. I always waited for
them to fall asleep. Apart from that last girl; her brother got away from me.’ She smiled, gently, and Theo felt sick with it, sick and at the same time, tears pricked at the corners of his
eyes.

She sought his gaze once more, but he could only look at her for a moment before looking away again.

‘Do you not see it?’ she said. ‘It was my mission to protect them. It was noble, it was pure. Like them, I was a happy little girl until my mother died. Before long, my
stepfather, my stepbrother – I was never safe from them. So when I saw beauty, and innocence, I had to protect it from the lusts of men. I would never have had the strength to kill the men
– and how would I ever do it? How could I empty the world of these beasts who had destroyed the me that had once lived? How would I know who was good and who was not? No, I sought only to
save a few beautiful girls, who in their heaven will surely thank me for my custody of their souls.’ She looked at Theo sadly. ‘I wish someone had drowned me at ten, so that I could
have gone to heaven, and been at peace.’

Theo shook his head; he could not speak.

‘It was on the beach at Broadstairs,’ Miss Waring said, ‘that my stepfather emptied my world of all its hope. It was the summer after my mother had died, and I had spent the
day gathering shells. How I treasured it: the beauty shell I found. I was sitting, looking at it, the first time he touched me.’

Theo remembered the day of shell-gathering on the beach; how Miss Waring had fainted at the sight of the beauty shell.

Her face crumpled to the look of disgust she had shown at the sight of Benedict. ‘I became a repository for all his darkness, all his filth. My stepbrother, too, who was led by his
example. When I returned to Broadstairs, as a grown woman, I thought I would lay the past to rest. I only meant to walk on the beach. But I went to that spot, and there was a little girl looking
into a rock pool, all alone – it overcame me. But the little girl on the beach was not the first one.

‘The first was my cousin. He had joined in with . . . the others. I still loved them, at least a little – a child loves, is meant to love. My stepfather had been the only father I
had ever known; my stepbrother, away at school, had seemed like a god to me, before it all began. But not my cousin. I always hated him. I was walking into the dining room one day, and he was
sitting with his back to me: lumpen, oblivious. So I stabbed him with my scissors. Oh, the feeling – it was horrible, Mr Hallam. Like pushing a blunt knife into cold butter. I could not have
done that again.

‘We were alone in the house, that day. When my stepfather and brother saw what had happened, they did their best to cover it up, and they did, they did so very well. They moved his body to
another place, and when he was found it was decided that he had been killed by a person unknown, for he had many enemies, and many debts. They didn’t wish to lose me, you see.

‘I went to Broadstairs after that; because I was with child. Alba looks like my stepfather. She has that same, unreadable expression.’ She blinked, as though coming out of a daze.
‘Years later, when I saw the first little girl on the beach, she looked so beautiful. So happy. That uncaring, innocent, absorbed happiness.’

‘And you envied her?’ said Theo, trying to recover his composure.

‘Oh, a little, but that was not why I killed her. I simply watched her playing, and watched the expressions stirring on her face, and the sunlight in her golden curls and new skin, and I
knew that she would never again be so happy in her life. All that was to follow was disappointment. Her beauty would be bruised and, finally, ruined completely – by the stifling qualities of
life; by men. It was best to send her to heaven as she was; for her to have had a completely happy life. Complete happiness – what I would have given, to have had that. To always have had
hope.

‘I was strong enough to do it then, and quickly; though the gorge rose in my throat, it was better than that horrible stabbing feeling. She did struggle, and that grieved me, for I told
her that I was trying to help her, and I blessed her as she died. When I came back this summer, I knew I would never be able to do something so simple, and brutality was beyond me. So I simply took
opportunities when I could. I always had the laudanum with me, for ease of use. And I let them sleep, and let the sea wash them clean. Clean, white, pure as Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of
Sorrows. I always said a prayer over them.’ She leaned forwards, tried to pluck at his hand, but he pulled it away. ‘I always prayed for their purity. I left them a token always –
did you see? Shells for the pilgrim, and a word in the sand. I always blessed them for dying clean, white, pure as Mary. As I wished I had died.’

Theo emerged from the Clock House after the constable had led Miss Waring into the wagon and it had been driven away; he waited until the sound of the horses’ hooves on
the cobbles had faded. His mind was dark with a headache that had descended suddenly – a signal of the ordeal he had just gone through. The harbour was deserted, the boats still, apart from
the slight rise and fall of the water, the sea dull and slick as oil. He looked around him. He had half-hoped – desperately – that Delphine might have waited for him, that he could at
least speak to her and take some comfort from her presence. This night had stripped away all pretence; he loved her. But there was no one waiting for him.

He walked a little way along the harbour arm, found the seat that she had been sitting on in the sunshine, before any of this had come to them. He sat down where she had sat, looked out at the
night, and began to pray.

I truly believe that I have only really begun to live again in the last year. Until Broadstairs I was simply the ghost of what I had been. I felt my life had been ended at
twenty, as surely as if a street robber had stuck a knife clean into my young red heart. I told you I am a virgin; and I want you to know also that I never even kissed the man who took my life from
me with his words.

Mine, you see, is a confession of innocence. I make it to show you that innocence does not always appear to be innocent. It does not glow in its own particular, holy light – not
always. Sometimes that innocence can still be shrouded in shame, in accusation and in guilt. And sometimes it is the darkest heart that appears to be the purest, and the purest heart that appears
to be the most corrupt.

My soul was like the uncut pages of a book. I had no idea of what lay within; and no instrument to cut them free. The summer of 1851 I set the knife to those pages, and only now have I begun
to read them. We are alike in that way, you and I.

It is the same for Alba. She writes to me occasionally. She is married now – I hope you do not mind to hear that? She only had to bear a few months working as a companion to an old
lady, before the lady’s heir was so overcome by her beauty that he proposed. I fully expect her letters to stop soon. She was always practical, dear little Alba, and for all that she
suffered, I believe that she has the character to break with the past, completely.

I do not know how to close this letter, Theo. Part of me does not wish to, because it closes our conversation, and I must wait for another letter, or nothing.

After Julia married, I went to the western tip of Britain on my own. There, the rocks are hard, mud-coloured honeycombs, not soft, crumbling white cliffs, with their slight upper layer of
earth and grass. I stood high on the cliffs, as high as the gulls, who screamed at me. Below me, the sea weaved and roared, grey, brown and white, a net of light over it. From that height it seemed
to have its own pattern, its own logic. There was something mathematical there; if I had the right mind, I could have pinned it down, and turned it into an equation.

I thought long on it, but in the end I realized that I did not want to pin it down, just as I do not need to understand fully what lies between us.

I write to you now as Delphine Beck, not Amy Sears. And it is this new name that I will keep, for I have chosen it, as I am choosing to take the path towards you. We can only know what our
story is by living it.

May, 1852

As he travelled, Theo imagined Delphine on the train journeys she had taken over the years. He thought of her past, and of his own, and he turned his face to the window. As
the train jolted through the countryside, he imagined her sitting beside him, her bonnet tied neatly under her chin, the ends of the bow of even length; her gloved hands folded in her lap, gloves
that fitted so perfectly it was as though they had been sewn on to her hands. Yet he knew for all her stillness that her eyes would watch as keenly as he watched, drinking in the details of the
landscape, the sunlight of spring, and the sharp outline of the train’s shadow on the track.

Have you ever seen a sky so blue? he thought. Have you ever seen the grass so green? Each tree – a bright mystery, connection after connection in its branches. The dense acidic yellow of
the rapeseed flower; a tree standing there, the circumference of its shadow forming a perfect circle in the middle of the yellow field, where its shadow had fallen, and the flowers had not
grown.

His hand moved to touch his breast-pocket, and he felt the shape of her last letter there. He could not take it out and read it again; that would be too much. As if he did not know it off by
heart already.

The companions in his carriage were a middle-aged woman and her daughter. The mother talked effusively whilst the daughter, dull-eyed with misery, glanced apologetically at Theo now and then,
and licked her lips in the heat.

After the woman enquired of his wife and learned he was unmarried, Theo saw faint embarrassment in the girl’s face – embarrassment, yes, and was that – actually –
hope?
He stifled a sigh, turned back to the window and braced himself for whatever delicate enquiries might be coming next.

The next thing he knew, he was waking in full sunlight. On opening his eyes, he knew his gift of falling asleep in any situation – though bad-mannered – had saved him. The light was
so bright, so warm on his skin, that he thought for a moment he was in Ceylon again, jogged awake by the movement of the cart taking him to Colombo.

The first sight that greeted him was the blue sky, its slowly moving clouds tangling and untangling – the same sky as in Ceylon, he thought; he could be there. Then the focus of his gaze
changed direction and he saw the mother, her face fixed in an expression of proud displeasure. The daughter risked a slight smile in his direction.

Did I speak in my sleep? was his first thought. He wanted to ask them. He wondered, with a pang, what he had said. Or maybe it was just the mother’s unhappiness at being thwarted in her
marital intentions that so stiffened her expression. Then it occurred to him that soon, perhaps, he would be able to ask his wife if he spoke in his sleep. What would she say? He rehearsed her name
in his mind: said it again, and again, and again. He had never spoken her first name out loud. He would not say it now; he would speak it when he met her, so that she would hear it as he did: anew.
Saying it in his mind gave it a soft kind of vibration, a resonance that moved through his body.