Turning the Stones (35 page)

We entered a rotunda whose cavernous splendour took my breath away. The scale of it! A gargantuan chimney in the middle of the structure seemingly held up the roof as well as warming the immense space. A multitude of persons in brilliant costumes ambulated around a concourse that was
illuminated by hundreds of candles in glass globes. And all of this activity was accompanied by the sweet airs of an enchanting orchestra. Johnny led us to a supper box in the gallery on the first floor and a boy brought us tea and bread and butter.

For several minutes we watched the people circling below, then Johnny urged Mr Paine to take Eliza down for a promenade. Eliza stood up at once as if at a prearranged signal.

When they were gone Johnny sat at his ease without speaking. I think he meant to prolong my discomfort. Presently he said, ‘You are very clever to have found out about the bank’s difficulties, Em. But I wish you had not seen the need to alarm my sister.’

I said, ‘Do you think it is better to keep Eliza, and all of us, in ignorance? How much greater the shock would be if we should discover without warning that all is lost and Sedge Court must be sold.’

‘Oh, it is not that bad.’

‘I cannot believe that.’

Johnny laughed. ‘Very well, I will admit it is rather bad. But we have a way out. Actually I have seen this disaster coming for some little while. I warned my father that things in Rotterdam were out of control and he wrote to Arthur after Christmas and asked frankly for help in regard to our bills. No doubt I do not need to tell you how hard it is to prise a coin from Mr Paine’s grasp. It has taken me these many weeks to soften him, but he has agreed to lend us a substantial sum and finally we will meet next week with the conveyancer and all will be well.’

I had been right to think that it was Johnny and not Eliza who must persuade Mr Paine, despite what Mrs Waterland
had told me about the reasons for Eliza’s coming to London. That had turned out to be another of the mistress’s inaccuracies. I said, ‘But why are Eliza and I here?’

‘Arthur likes you, Em. He thinks you appreciate his genius. So it does not hurt to have you around to keep him in good cheer. But the chief reason for bringing Eliza to London concerns a marriage. You have probably guessed that, haven’t you?’

‘Marriage with whom?’

‘With a kinsman of Lady Broome’s.’

‘Eliza has said nothing about it.’

‘Eliza did not know. She has only just been told.’

I suppose that news may have answered for her subdued demeanour, if I could believe that Johnny was telling the truth.

‘But nothing has been settled yet. We are still in negotiation. I am telling you this so that you understand that although we face difficulties, we do not court catastrophe.’

‘When will Eliza and I go back to Sedge Court?’

‘I cannot say. I am telling you how things are in order to put your mind at ease. After all, you are almost one of the family.’

His gaze flicked towards the perambulating crowd below, and he said, ‘There’s Eliza making her contribution to the beau monde.’ He pointed at a plodding scrap of yellow among the glittering whirl. ‘Why don’t you join her now, Em? I am sure you will find it amusing to inspect the lords and ladies at close quarters.’

‘Why did you bring us here? You could have said what you had to say to me at Poland Street.’

His sloe eyes played over me. ‘How suspicious you are.’ The way he gave a soft little sigh reminded me of his mother.

‘I am no different to Mr Paine, who likes events to be
verifiable. And if I am suspicious it is because your dishonourable friend and his assaults have stolen my peace.’

Of course Johnny side-stepped the subject of Barfield, although it lifted my spirits to bring my accusation out into the open. Johnny reached out and I flinched as he took my hand.

‘Poor little Em.’ I thought that was exactly what Mrs Waterland would have said.
Poor little Em
. ‘I could have spoken to you at Poland Street, but I decided it would be agreeable to go out. Feel free to hold that against me if you must.’

A waiter appeared out of the shadows and I pulled my hand away from Johnny’s grip. Johnny, coldly smiling, said we did not want anything more.

Later in the night, as I prepared Eliza for bed, I said that Johnny had mentioned the possibility of contracting with a relative of Lady Broome’s. Eliza said shortly, ‘So I have been told.’

But now I am sure that Johnny was lying to me. Nothing had been fixed. Mr Paine had not agreed to lend his money. There was no Broome kinsman waiting in the wings with an annuity for Eliza.

*

On the Friday evening, we went to the assembly rooms in Carlisle House. I see it now: Johnny manoeuvres Eliza and me through crowds of coquettes and sparks in silver heels and coloured hair powder and aggressively fashionable turn-outs. He is in a suit of violet taffeta and his hair new-curled. He steers us through an enormous supper room with vivid carpets underfoot and tall windows hung with crimson drapes and leads us up a flight of marble stairs into a hall. It is scattered
with tables and hung with chandeliers whose candles cast a seductive light. At the far end of the hall in front of a stage a small orchestra appears to be playing silently, its music smothered by the din of hundreds of babbling people. Parties of howling rowdies wear the universal grin of the carouser.

Our table is near the stage. As Johnny pulls back my chair, a courtesy that makes me uncomfortable since he is not obliged to offer it to me, his eye lights on my throat. Perhaps he notes that the necklace I am wearing does not belong to me. Eliza has let me wear it tonight to improve my appearance. She has brought the jealousy glass along and is amusing herself with it. Her spirits are much more lively tonight although that may be due to the wine she drank at Poland Street while we were getting ready. Johnny opens a bottle of champagne, but I refuse the glass he offers me. Gazing at the spicy attire on display is enough to set one’s senses reeling.

‘Oh, for goodness sake take a glass,’ Eliza cries. ‘It’s very uncivil of you not to, Em, when Johnny has gone to so much trouble to entertain us. Go on.’

A sudden clap of thunder makes her scream. It’s the electrical show, the curtain rising on a young woman in Grecian garb. At her back a painted backdrop of hill and sky. ‘Behold Mount Olympus,’ cries the master of ceremonies, ‘and the fair Aphrodite.’

After the show is over Mr Paine joins our table, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief, and tells us it is all accomplished by frictions, you know.

I raise the jealousy glass to my eyes, unheedful of its trick angle. Swimming golden sequins. Bring them into focus to
find they are quivering candle flames. A pink pastille becomes a face – an abhorrent face. No!

I lay down the glass. Turn my head away.

Eliza is gawping at me with shining eyes and shining teeth.

The champagne is very potent. Even the little I have sipped makes my head spin. I bring myself to standing and the room swirls. It is sickly and close in here. It feels dangerous. I turn with a stagger, pick up my skirts, stumble through the squawking masses towards the stairs. I aim myself at the door, longing for fresh air.

‘Careful, child, or you will fall.’ Johnny takes my arm. ‘It would be a great pity to break that pretty neck and an even greater one to lose my sister’s pearls.’

*

My account of the soirée at Soho Square has left me feeling drained and confused. I say, ‘I am not sure what happened after that.’

‘If you are not privy to all the facts, it can be difficult to get at the truth of a thing.’ Captain McDonagh motions to the wall behind as though to indicate everything that is beyond us and outside of us.

I nod dumbly.

He says, ‘I remember when I was a lad and out sailing with my father, we came upon tall, stormy waves breaking in the middle of the sea with an awful boom. It was a sight that scared the bejesus out of me, but I kept my fear to myself because I was ashamed by my weakness. On the next occasion that my father went fishing in that quarter, I hid myself at home, although I liked nothing more than to be at sea with him.’ He slants towards the fire to poke at the potatoes in the embers
and blows on his fingertips to cool them. He says, ‘My father was the kind of man who was always alert to the signs of things. When he got out of me the reason for my dread, he explained that it was the shallowness of the sea near the head, and a reef in the vicinity, that forced the waves to stand up like giants and crash into the open sea, and that was all there was to it. But when I did not know that, my ignorance caused me great distress. It is a blessed relief to find out how things are. It releases you from fear.’ He catches my eye. ‘Is that the reason for your journey here? To find out how things are?’

Oh, that wind pulsing in and out of the doorway, will it never stop? Staring out into the wild, black night I feel the prickle of fear that has ever dogged me on my flight. ‘Are you all right?’ the captain asks shortly. ‘You look like you have seen a ghost.’

‘Have you ever seen one? A ghost, that is.’

‘I never saw anything worse than myself.’

‘I am not as certain as I used to be that ghosts do not exist.’

The captain says, ‘I do not discount the force of physical sensations, especially when they combine with thoughts.’

That is the sort of thing Miss Broadbent would have said. As if down a long corridor, I see the figure of my dear governess turn and look over her shoulder at me before walking away into darkness. She leaves behind an echoing silence.

‘Mrs Conneely’s sister, Mary Folan, has seen ghosts – faeries, she calls them. She saw the lights of their lanterns and heard their chattering.’

Captain McDonagh says, ‘Those lights would have been nothing more than the shine that comes on starfish and jellyfish in the night. You have seen that glow yourself on creatures
in the sea in the dark. As for the chattering, don’t the shells rolling over one another in the breakers make a sound like a hundred little voices?’

His rationalising is a comfort, yet there is something about the captain himself that brings to mind the mythic and the fabulous. I see him on the deck of the
Seal
with the black of the sea and the sky at his back. Droplets of sea spray glitter on his cheeks. He raises an arm and dries off his face with his sleeve. He seems monumental, like a hero of some ancient cycle of tall tales – and flawed too, as I well know.

‘But if supernatural events do not exist, why are there so many ghost stories in the world?’

‘I dare say we have an urge to make reasons for things that are beyond our understanding. We to want to know that our ideas and emotions add up to something, especially when we have been exposed to suffering. It is in our nature to invent stories to make sense of events that are at heart senseless.’

‘What about the will of God? It seems that every ghastly incident is attributed to his caprice.’

‘To my mind the will of God is just another version of a ghost story. But I am not punctilious in matters of religion.’

He smiles at me out of a corner of his face and pulls a potato from the embers and squeezes it. It splits open with a steamy hiss. For some minutes we are silent, eating. It is good to feel the starchy warmth of the potato in my stomach. Captain McDonagh remains on his feet while he consumes his portion, eating the soft centre of the potato out of the charred skin. He feeds the skins to the pony and dusts off his hands. He takes up his seat once more against the wall and says, ‘It is the central dilemma of being human, in my opinion: how to keep going
in the face of suffering – and not only suffering as a result of unspeakable evil or of a random tragedy. Repeated commonplace casualties are more than capable of eroding hope and happiness if they are persistent enough.’ His expression is mild and experienced; its intentional blandness is a cover, I suspect.

He remarks, ‘You have an air of being burdened, Miss Smith, but surely you are not plagued by a ghost.’ He offers me the gesture of an open hand. ‘You have too much spirit yourself for that, I warrant. You are quite a shining one – anyone can see that.’

I am flummoxed by his compliment. I remain on guard, pike raised at the ready against him, but he strolls across my drawbridge in an untroubled manner and beckons my story to come forward – ‘Let’s have it,’ he says, ‘the account of your ghost’ – and settles back against the wall to listen.

‘I am in service to a family called the Waterlands, and in particular to their daughter, Eliza, and I had known no other home. When Eliza’s parents decided to send her away to school, I felt terribly threatened. I was afraid that Eliza’s departure would mean my tenure in the house and that I would be turned out to fend for myself. I wished desperately that something, anything, would happen to prevent Eliza from going away. One night I became convinced that some sort of inhuman entity had come into the chamber I shared with Eliza and that this presence had come to help me. In fact I felt that the ghost, if I can call it that, cared very much about me. It brought with it a freezing temperature and that caused Eliza to succumb to a serious ague. So it seemed that my petition was answered, you see. Eliza was badly ill for many weeks and had to depend on me more than ever. The plan to send her
away was put aside and my position was saved. My rational mind tells me that I could not possibly have been visited by a spectre and yet the episode was so vivid and consequential I still struggle to disavow it.’

The captain says, ‘Has it occurred to you that we might invent ghosts in order to cover up something in ourselves that we do not wish to acknowledge?’

‘Yes, it has. A part of me has always envied Eliza. I fear that the ghost that came to harm her was a projection of my own wishes – wishes that were too ugly to admit to.’

Captain McDonagh reaches for the cup that I have left on the floor, and settles against the wall again, his face and shoulders swallowed by shadows. Presently he says, ‘I can tell you one thing about getting older, Miss Smith – you become more aware not only of the double-dealing of other people, but of the darkness in yourself. The task then is to face up to your own callousness.’ He clears his throat and opens his mouth as if about to utter something else, but then only drinks down the last mouthful of the tea and leans back against the wall, engrossed in a thought.