A Dark Dividing (29 page)

A whole new horror scalded through my body.

He was still alive. The shock of the initial tumble had somehow rendered him senseless for a few moments but it had not broken his neck, and now he had regained his senses and he was alive. He was struggling and writhing, dreadful wheezing grunting sounds were coming out of his mouth, and his face was a deep dull red. His eyes bulged so much I had the grisly thought that at any minute they might burst out of the sockets and hang down on his cheeks.

It was the dance of the hanged man, it was the dead man standing on air, exactly as Professor Housman’s poem had described, except that this man was not yet dead, he was slowly strangling and we—the children and Maisie and I—were going to see it happen.

Dark patches, the colour of uncooked liver, broke out on his face, and all the time the terrible breathless grunting sounds went on. The sun had gone behind a cloud earlier on but it came out again, casting shadows in the enclosed courtyard. The square shadow of the well’s crossbar and what hung from it fell sharply on one of the walls, so that it almost seemed as if there were two men, both jerking and struggling and choking.

The children had not expected this; I saw that at once. They had expected him to die instantly, and although it was an ugly death it would have been more or less instant. Their voices faltered and they stopped chanting. I saw Anthony start involuntarily forward, as if to attempt some kind of rescue, but one of the others—and I think it was Robyn—pulled him back. One of them—and again I believe it was Robyn—began the chant again, a bit raggedly, a bit shrilly, but after a moment the rest joined in.

Time ceased to exist, and the world narrowed to the squirming figure at the rope’s end. Once I thought someone approached the courtyard—there was the tap-tap of quick angry-sounding feet coming along one of the corridors on the other side of the door—and I half-turned, although I am still not sure what I would have done if one of the attendants—the ogress-like Mrs Beadle perhaps—had appeared. But the footsteps went on into another part of Mortmain.

The man jerked and grunted in helpless spasm for what felt like several eternities, but was probably about ten minutes. The rags tying his wrists together had worked free and he clawed vainly at the air, feebly trying to reach the constricting rope, once trying to grasp the crossbar. His shadow on the wall clawed and jerked with him. Blood-flecked spittle ran from his mouth and his tongue began to protrude out of his mouth. Urine ran down his legs, soaking his trousers and splashing down into the well-shaft—under normal circumstances I would have found it paralysingly embarrassing to witness this and to write about it now, but it was simply part of the horror and the nightmare.

And then it was over. His body sagged as if a string had been cut and his head fell forward on to his chest. The link of life snapped…as suddenly as if a flame had been snuffed out.

I was shaking as if I had been running very hard for miles and miles, and Maisie was whimpering. But the children—now that they had done what they set out to do—now that they had achieved their revenge—they were no longer implacable justice-wreakers, they were children again, frightened and bewildered. The tiniest were starting to be tearful, and even Anthony sent scared glances about him. Only Robyn still seemed defiant and uncaring.

I stopped shaking and went forward to them, half-kneeling on the dusty flagstones. (‘Charlotte, your
skirt
!’ Mamma said later). They turned, half-gratefully, half-warily, and then Anthony said, a bit tremulously, ‘I don’t think we’re sure what we should do—’ He broke off, and I saw that he was very young after all. His hair had fallen over his eyes and he pushed it back defiantly and looked at me.

I said, ‘How deep is that well? Does anyone ever draw its water?’ and saw understanding, and with it relief, shine in his eyes.

It was not quite as simple as I had expected, because I had thought we would be able to release the winch mechanism and wind the man into the well’s depths. The iron hook was attached to a thick coil of rope, steel-laced, and on one side of the wooden frame was a handle rather like the one you see on mangles. But when Anthony and the other boys tried to turn it they discovered that it was somehow bolted to the side, and none of us had the least idea of how to release it.

(Note: So much for Edward’s mother insisting that no lady ever needs to know anything about machinery, although to be fair to the old bat she could not possibly have anticipated a situation even remotely resembling this.)

I was still half-listening for the return of those tapping footsteps within Mortmain, but I said in as practical a voice as I could manage, ‘Clearly the only thing we can do is cut the rope. Has anyone got a knife?’ Ridiculous question, of course.

‘I could try to get one from the scullery,’ said one of the girls rather timidly.

‘Very well, but make sure you aren’t caught.’ As she sped off, it occurred to me that now I was colluding in theft as well, although since I had just colluded in a murder stealing a scullery knife did not strike me as particularly felonious.

We waited in silence. Another of Mamma’s precepts was that a lady should never be at a loss for conversational topics, but I defy even Mamma to have thought of a suitable remark to make in this situation.

The little girl returned more quickly than I had dared hope. She had brought a broad-bladed knife, which she handed to Anthony. She seemed quite sure that no one had seen her take it.

And again the children worked together with that tacit understanding of one another’s intentions. Anthony climbed back on to the parapet, and from there swarmed up the vertical post, and then sat astride the crossbar. It creaked ominously but it seemed strong enough, and he appeared untroubled by being directly above the well-shaft, and I don’t know about the others, but my heart was leaping into my throat with fear, because if he were to lose his balance—

But he worked his way along the crossbar until he was far enough out to reach down and start sawing at the rope. The movement caused it to swing crazily to and fro, and several times the dead man bumped against the black bricks lining the well-shaft. The crossbar was groaning like a thousand souls in torment with Anthony’s weight, and my heart was still in my throat in case it should splinter.

But it held firm. The rope began to fray, and the dead man stopped swinging across the well’s mouth, and began to spiral again. And then Anthony said, ‘It’s going!’ and the last strands of the rope parted.

The dead man went down into the mouth of the well with a sound like the four furies rushing upon mankind’s doom, and after what seemed a dreadfully long time we eventually heard the dull, dead splash of water. It’s difficult to describe, even now, how that sound affected me. It was a black, bleak sound, and I thought: even for such an evil creature he’s had a terrible death and now we’ve consigned him to a dank lonely eternity down there.

But I gathered the children around me, and I said, very seriously, ‘We must promise—all of us—never to reveal what has happened here. If the man is ever found none of you will know anything about it. You understand that? You may have to lie—’ There was a wry smile from some of them at that, and I realized that they would be perfectly used to lying in this place. ‘If anyone saw my arrival,’ I said, trying to think of all eventualities, ‘or saw me talking to you, you are to say that I was a visitor from—from—the Workhouse Commission.’ It was a vague definition, but I saw that they accepted this and realized that they were probably quite used to well-meaning ladies on committees and commissions visiting Mortmain. They promised, even the small scornful Robyn. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll come to see us again, will you?’ she said, glaring angrily at me.

I knew I would have to return to London and Edward very soon, but I remembered that Mamma was one of the well-meaning ladies on committees, and that Mamma, whatever her shortcomings, can always be roused to crusading anger by a story of cruelty against children.

So I said, slowly, ‘I might not be able to come back here, Robyn—I live in London, you see. But there might be ways I can help you from outside. There might be people I could talk to who would look into the—the governing of this place.’

She shrugged dismissively: probably she had heard things like this said before, but I said as earnestly as I could, ‘Robyn, please believe me. I will do what I can for you.’

Charlotte Quinton’s diaries, continued
Maisie said, ‘Oh mum, Mrs Quinton mum, I can’t believe what we just seen. Those kids—And that man—’

‘Neither can I believe it, Maisie.’

‘It was awful, wasn’t it?’

‘One of the worst things I’ve ever known. But we have to remember that he was a very evil man.’

(Evil enough to justify condoning his murder? said the voice of conscience in my ear. Was any human being evil enough for a fellow creature to take on himself the responsibility for killing? How about the Bible’s teachings? Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord—remember that one, Charlotte? Of course I remember it, but if we’re quoting the Bible, hadn’t we also better remember the Old Testament and Exodus? Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth… But how about the almost certain fact that if you had tried, if you had really
tried
, between you, you and Maisie could perfectly easily have stopped those children?)

None of this could be said to Maisie, who would probably see the whole thing in terms of black and white, and who would not understand all the tones and half-tones in between or the lines that blurred the boundaries between one set of values and another. So I said, ‘We have no need to feel any blame, Maisie.’ And then, being naturally truthful, I added, ‘
You
have no need to feel any blame.’

We were outside Mortmain by then; its door had clanged shut and we had stepped unchallenged into the ordinary world once again, although as we crossed the big stone-floored hall we had glimpsed a couple of women. They looked like attendants of some kind, but whoever they were they had not questioned us.

I was trying not to let Maisie see how very shaken I was, and I was trying to walk calmly and composedly down the tree-fringed slope to where we had left the pony and trap. But it was quite difficult. I said, ‘I wish I could think of a way to find that man who takes the children, Maisie. Matt Dancy.’

‘How would you do that, mum? Where’d you even start looking?’

‘I don’t know, but there must be some way. Anthony’s sister—And all the others—’

‘It happens, mum. You can’t do nothing about these things.’

(‘You can’t change the world, Charlotte,’ Mamma always said. I had always thought she was right until I met Floy, and then I saw that here was someone fully prepared to take on the entire world, and, if not actually change it, at least make a dent in one or two of its shibboleths.)

We were halfway down the track, at the place where it curved sharply around, when I suddenly heard footsteps on the path below us. Whoever was coming towards us was out of sight from the sharp curve in the track and by the trees—even in the winter months Mortmain’s trees cluster thickly and darkly around it, but he was coming nearer. Mortmain was so shut away by itself and the path was so lonely that I felt a sudden twist of nervousness.

‘There’s someone coming, mum.’

‘Yes, I heard. But it will only be someone visiting Mortmain,’ I said firmly. ‘A pity the track is so narrow, but all we need do is bid the person a courteous good-afternoon and go on down to the road.’

‘He’s stopped,’ said Maisie after a moment. ‘P’raps he’s changed his mind and gone away.’

He had not gone away. As we came around the path’s curve he was there, standing quite still as if he had been waiting for us, his coat collar turned up against the wind and his black hair, worn just too long for present fashion, tumbled into disarray. For a moment the landscape tilted and spun all around me, because I had conjured him up in my mind so many times and I had been thinking of him so strongly only moments earlier, that it was treacherously easy to believe we were being confronted by a ghost.

The trees formed a frame for him and the afternoon sun filtered through the leaves, tipping his hair with red. With anyone else I would have suspected him of standing in that exact spot deliberately in order to create an effect, except that he had never tried to create an effect in his life. He had never needed to.

Then he said, ‘Charlotte,’ and I knew he was real, and I wanted to run forward and fling myself against his chest.

I did not, of course. (‘Never make a scene, Charlotte, especially not in front of a gentleman.’ I had made many a scene with Floy in the past and some had been passionate and some had been gut-wrenching and some had been merely diversionary, but I was not going to make any kind of scene out here, in the shadow of Mortmain.)

I said, in a polite little voice, ‘Floy. Goodness, of all people to meet.’

Maisie gave him one frightened glance and then scuttled on down the track towards the pony-trap. I knew she would wait there, obedient and unquestioning, which meant Floy and I might as well have been alone in the middle of a wasteland. Just as we had found ourselves alone in the middle of a mental wasteland on the day I left him for ever.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I said, in a light, artificial voice.

‘I came here to see you, Charlotte.’ No one has ever said my name in quite the way that Floy says it. He makes it sound like a caress.

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘Edward told me.’ The smile that was half-saint, half-wolf, showed briefly. ‘He was perfectly polite about it, but he does so dislike me, doesn’t he?’

‘That’s because he doesn’t understand you.’

‘I’m glad. I should hate to be understood by someone like Edward—it would mean we had something in common.’ He waited to see if I would react to this, and when I did not, said, ‘I called at your house a week after the funeral, Charlotte. I went there as a friend, nothing more, and I was as correct and conventional as you could wish. I said I had come to tender my condolences.’ The stiff conventionality of the phrase sat oddly on his lips.

‘And Edward said you had gone to stay with your parents for a couple of weeks,’ said Floy. ‘He was perfectly polite, in fact he invited me into his study and offered me a glass of sherry. I see he still buys cheap sherry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, forced on to the defensive.

‘So then, since you were not in London, and since London without you holds no charms for me whatsoever—’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Since you weren’t there I caught a midnight train, and this morning I went out to your parents’ house, and said I was a friend of your husband’s and of yours, and that I was up here on business and calling to present my compliments. Your mother,’ said Floy expressionlessly, ‘was utterly charmed.’

‘Yes, she would be.’

(Note: In fact, at dinner this evening Mamma observed what a very charming young man Mr Fleury was: how extremely kind it had been of him to call—what a pity you missed him Charlotte—but how
interesting
to meet a writer, your father was quite taken with him. By time we reached the savoury, v. clear to us all that Mamma was basking in a little reflected glory, and revelling in the knowledge that she had actually met
the
Philip Fleury, the one who wrote those rather
risqué
novels. Would not put it past her to have read one or two of them in secrecy, either.)

‘Your father’s sherry is infinitely better than your husband’s,’ said Floy, and then without warning the brittleness dissolved and he said in a completely different voice, ‘My dearest love, you must have been in agony at losing the babies.’

‘Yes, I was. I still am.’ I was trying not to let him see that when he looked at me like that I still loved him so much it was a physical pain. ‘Thank you for coming to the funeral.’

‘Of course I came to the funeral,’ he said angrily. ‘Don’t you have something in your religion about sharing the pain of someone you love? Standing at the foot of the Cross?’ This was the pagan side speaking, of course; Floy affects to disdain all religions, but am not sure if he really does. ‘Charlotte, when I got back from France and heard what had happened, of
course
I came to be there.’

‘I noticed you kept to the back of the church,’ I said.

‘That was in case lightning struck me.’

Another of the pauses while I sought vainly for something to say. Part of the trouble, of course, was that I was still dazed from what Maisie and I had just witnessed inside Mortmain; it was like coming out of a dark room and being dazzled and made dizzy by bright sunlight. My mind was still drowning in the horror and the ugliness of what the children had done and I could not properly adjust it to Floy.

But I was just thinking that I had handled the situation fairly well, and that in a moment I would say goodbye to him, and go down to the trap, when he said, ‘They were mine, weren’t they, Charlotte? Viola and Sorrel?’

The words pierced the fragile carapace I thought I had woven against him, and broke apart the darkness that Mortmain and Mortmain’s children had spun. For a moment I had no idea how to answer him, and for a moment I was back in the dreadful infirmary ward, and two flower-like hands were clinging to me as if I was the only thing in their small world that they dared trust… Because perhaps the twins had sensed the pitying hostility—they’re often said to possess an extra sensitivity, twins—and perhaps they had picked up the sinister intent in the nurse’s too-emphatic words that I would be left on my own, no one would disturb me and there was a cushion there if I wanted it…

In a voice I hardly recognized as my own, I said, ‘Yes. Yes, they were yours.’

‘Oh God, why didn’t you tell me?’ he said after what seemed to be a very long time.

‘I didn’t discover I was pregnant until long after you had gone,’ I said. ‘And it was too late to do anything then. But if I had told you, it would have forced a choice on you. You would have felt coerced. Responsible. And I didn’t want,’ I said angrily, ‘to be anyone’s responsibility.’

‘You seem happy to remain as Edward’s.’

‘Edward likes responsibility. He thinks it’s what gentlemen do.’

The wolf-look was back in full force. ‘Ergo, I’m no gentleman.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘are you? A gentleman wouldn’t have seduced another man’s wife.’

‘A lady wouldn’t have indicated so plainly that she was willing to be seduced.’

I flinched, and then said, ‘In any case you wouldn’t have wanted conventional domesticity.’

‘You didn’t give me any opportunity to want it.’

‘You didn’t give me any opportunity to offer it,’ I said at once. ‘After that last night we were together you went to Paris, to write and research.’

‘And you ran back to Edward and safe, dull security.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Don’t go back to him. Leave him, Charlotte. Come with me now.’

‘I can’t. Floy, you know I can’t. There’d be a scandal—’

‘Oh, fuck the scandal,’ he said impatiently. (Floy has never troubled overmuch about protecting the delicate ears of ladies with whom he is or has been intimate, which is to say, me and very likely at least a dozen others.)

‘In any case writers’ careers thrive on scandal, Charlotte. We can live abroad. I’ve still got the apartment in Paris. Or we can go to Vienna and Italy. We’ll follow the footsteps of Robert Browning and Elizabeth, and of Byron and Shelley. Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t you like to sit on the banks of Lake Geneva while I write a chilling ghost story, and read it to you every evening by candlelight and wine? Let’s do it, Charlotte.’ His hair was whipped into witch-locks by the wind, and his eyes were sparkling, and there was a faint colour across his cheekbones. ‘We’ll take the silk route across Isphahan and walk in the rose-gardens of ancient Persia, and drink mandragora, the love-syrup of the poets…’

The darkness that Mortmain had spun over my mind dissolved a little further, and I saw Floy’s words take on substance, as if they had opened up two separate and quite distinct paths. And one of the paths was thorny and uncomfortable and difficult, and the other path was fringed with scented flowers and foaming lavender, with thick sweet grass to walk on barefoot, and I knew I must somehow resist the second and stay on the first.

Floy said, very softly, ‘“Two Gates the silent house of Sleep adorn/Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn/True visions that through transparent horn arise/Through polished ivory pass the deluding lies,”’ and I jumped because he had not only known what I was thinking, he had picked up something of the mental image as well.

‘Well, Charlotte? Which gate are you going to walk through? The gleaming ivory one, where the hopes eventually turn to scorn and where delusions rule? Or the gate of burnished horn where the dreams are true and real? The ivory gate looks so easy, so respectable, doesn’t it? But it’s a false sheen, Charlotte. And ivory’s a cold, unyielding bedfellow.’ He took a step nearer. ‘Come with me now, my dear love.’

My dear love. When he spoke like that, when he looked at me like that, I wanted to say I would follow him into hell and beyond, and never stop to count the cost. But I knew that I would count the cost. I knew I would be dealing a very great hurt to a lot of people. My parents. That mattered a lot. Mamma would never get over the shame. My two sisters, just emerging from the schoolroom, just starting to be allowed into the adult world, might find themselves ostracized. ‘The Craven girls? Wasn’t there some kind of scandal a few years back? The eldest girl, was it?’

(Should here record that I don’t
like
the way society views these things, but fear it will take a social revolution or an upheaval of unimaginable magnitude to alter people’s outlooks.)

And there was Edward. If I ran away with Floy, Edward would be bewildered and devastated. Edward isn’t the most exciting husband I could have had (and let’s admit in the privacy of these pages that I could have had several other husbands if I had cared to). He’ll never quote beautiful poetry to me, or paint exciting and soul-scalding word-pictures with his pen, or walk in and out of my mind as if it was his own bedroom.

But neither will he plunge me into penury, or embark on love affairs that will wrench me apart. (Floy’s financial affairs have gone from near-bankruptcy to wild affluence and back again at least three times, while his love affairs—Well, everyone knows that his love affairs are
legion
, and I would not trust his capacity for fidelity if he swore it before a hundred altars or on a thousand nuptial couches, I really would not. Do not class Edward’s occasional fumbling exploits with maids actually as
affairs
, since doubt he derives much real pleasure from them, and am even surer the girls do not.)