Eloise (6 page)

And yet, afterwards, even when Eve had recovered and was manifestly well and cheerful, I still felt dread in my heart. I still dreamed she was dead in a tiny matchbox. I still dreamed Eloise was gloating over my grief.

Eventually, with medication and therapy, I got better. By winter I had returned to sanity, accepting that Evie was well, and that I had had a breakdown precipitated by my fear for Eloise. I had been living in terror and denial about my friend’s impending, inevitable death, and when my daughter became ill, my anxious mind flipped into a kind of madness.

I was better, but I knew, from the way he watched me, looked at me, that forever after Chris would watch me for signs of instability. And although I prided myself on my recovery, my rationality, of course I also knew I was perpetually on the edge of an abyss. If you’ve been there, you don’t ever forget it. You can’t possibly ignore it. Once you’ve glimpsed the profound horror of the chasm which opens up beneath your feet, once you’ve felt the inexorable pull which draws you to the edge, once you’ve understood that down there lies not just madness but the total destruction of your life, your happiness, all hope of love and comfort … then, and only then, can you understand the unspeakable magnitude of what lies beneath. And how utterly vile it is, how
barren of everything but death. And even when you’re feeling better, when pills and therapy have restored you to a fragile normality, you always know there are demons out there, life-sucking, soul-sucking vampires.

Never far away. And always ready to pounce.

It was ironic that I was married to a psychiatrist. Someone who knew me so well but couldn’t treat me. I had to see one of his colleagues because of medical etiquette, which I found terribly embarrassing.
Hey
, I imagined him saying at dinner parties when he’d had a bit too much to drink,
did you know that Chris’s wife is nuts?

Chris told me I was wrong when I wept my fears to him. The man who was treating me was, he said, scrupulously observant of the rules of confidentiality. Chris would trust him with his life – or at least, I responded with bleak humour, with his wife.

Chris didn’t like it when I was flippant. But then, I would tell myself, he was desperate to help me, wasn’t he? And, like any man trying to cope with a suicidally depressed wife, he was desperate anyway. Because during my breakdown, I had left him in no doubt that if anything happened to Evie, I would kill myself.

The phone rang again. Convinced it was Chris, I let the answerphone take it. But the voice which came from the
machine was soft, mellifluous and quite definitely female.

Juliana. I suddenly saw an answer to my problems and flew to the phone.

An hour and a half later, having called a taxi, I was sitting in Juliana’s house, a cup of tea in one hand and a beautifully ironed handkerchief in the other, unable to stop crying. I could hear myself sobbing loudly and I was mortified by my self-absorption. Juliana had just lost a beloved daughter, her only child – all that had happened to me was that I had had a row with my husband.

Typically, Juliana, who had asked me to spend the night, was completely sympathetic and warm about my ridiculous emotional crisis. I told her something about my breakdown – all she’d known was that we had stopped coming down to Cornwall for a time and because Chris hadn’t wanted to worry Eloise with the truth, he’d said it was because Tom was studying hard for his A-levels and that I was busy with writing commissions. Concerned with her own deadly illness, Eloise had accepted the excuses. I didn’t tell Juliana to curry sympathy, but to explain how rocky my judgement was at present.

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Of course you’re upset about everything. But I had no idea that you had been going through such a terrible time.’

‘We tried to hide it from you, Juliana. God knows you had enough on your plate with Eloise.’

‘Yes. That’s true. I appreciate your kindness. But still, you’ve had a horrible time. I wish I’d known.’

‘Do you know what, Juliana? I just wish I could go to sleep. Sometimes I think I could sleep for ever.’

‘Eloise used to say exactly the same thing.’

‘She was depressed?’

Of course she was. She was dying. How stupid of me.

‘I’m so sorry, Juliana. She was so ill.’

‘Well, there was that, of course. But she didn’t mean that. She meant that her life, quite apart from the cancer, wasn’t worth living.’

‘But she was desperate to live,’ I protested. ‘She fought death with everything she had!’

‘Oh, yes. But that was because of her children. She knew how much they needed her.’

‘So what do you mean? Surely her life meant everything to her with her babies?’

‘Yes. But there were other things.’

‘Ted? Is that what you’re talking about?’

She looked down. She was sad, tired. ‘Darling, I really can’t talk about this tonight. But I am so utterly delighted that you are going to stay with me. I think we both need company and we have a lot to talk about. Let’s start tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to ask Annie to put you to bed.’

If that had come from Chris, I would have told him that nobody puts me to bed. But Juliana’s suggestion felt as if it came from a mother.
My
mother, Not that mine was the most loving and kind maternal figure, never had been, and God, how we all long for that care, that absolute conviction that we are loved, wrapped round with affection. That we are still small, still passively able to accept the physical absorption into the soft loveliness of our mothers’ bodies.

Annie, who was was over eighty and who had been Juliana’s loyal lady’s maid from their teenage years, tucked me into bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of hot chocolate. She had already unpacked my suitcase and hung up my clothes, few though they were. I felt like a fugitive from a Jane Austen novel. I was tired, upset and totally appreciative of the soft linen sheets and warm quilt on my new bed. I felt cared for, cocooned. I fell asleep, feeling, for the first time in years, that I was being mothered. It was utter bliss.

I dreamed again that night, but this time, Eloise’s spirit came gently. As I slept, I felt she wound her essence around me. She was glad, clearly, that I was with Juliana. She was pleased that I was on her own familiar ground. She was sweet, in my dreams. Full of comfort.

‘Cathy, you’re with my mother now. That’s good. I can really talk to you here. Please stay at the farmhouse and I can tell you about my children. There’s so much I need to say
to you. But I’m weak, trying to get the strength. It comes sometimes, then evaporates and I am nothing. Nothing. Just vapour on the breeze. Can you imagine how that feels? To be nothing, to be so powerless when so much is at stake?’

No. I could not even begin to imagine that desperation, and I had known huge despair when I was ill, had been so frightened for Evie, believing her to be in terrible danger. Was that what Eloise was trying to tell me about her little girls? That she was terrified they were facing great danger?

No, it was a dream, only a dream, I struggled to tell myself. Eloise is dead, quiet in her grave. I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m just prone to horrible nightmares.

Eloise drifted softly through my dreams all night, but not enough to wake or alarm me. Annie woke me in the morning with a cup of tea. Juliana, she said, was waiting for me in the breakfast room; I would have plenty of time for a bath; there was no hurry.

Half an hour later, bathed and dressed but with no makeup on, I joined my hostess at breakfast. She smiled, lovely as always, but there was strain in her blue eyes.

After the usual morning pleasantries, she stirred her tea and asked quietly, tensely, ‘Cathy, did anything strange happen to you last night?’

‘No,’ I said quickly – and regretted the lie immediately. ‘Well, truthfully, I did have vivid dreams. About Eloise, actually, but they were calm, nothing really worrying.’

‘Have you been having
troubling
dreams about her?’

‘I suppose I have, but then I can be a bit … well, odd.’

Juliana gave a short laugh. ‘I don’t think so. Or if you are, so am I. But … I feel I must tell you. She left me a message.’

‘What do you mean? Eloise left you – what? A letter?’

‘No. She left me
Wuthering Heights
.’

I didn’t understand. ‘I’m lost. How do you mean? She left a book with you?’

‘It was in the library. I know that for a fact because I was re-reading it last week. It’s one of my favourite books and it was comfort reading for me when she was so ill, and especially after she … ’

I swallowed. ‘Sorry, Juliana. What are you saying? That Eloise left a book for you in the library?’

‘No. It
wasn’t
in the library. Not this morning. That’s the thing. It was there yesterday. Eric, who’s been with the Trelawney family longer even than Annie, leaves the newspapers out on the library desk each morning, and I saw the book there yesterday when I went to collect them. I keep asking him to bring the newspapers to me in the sitting room but he always forgets. Anyway,
Wuthering Heights
was on the desk exactly where I had left it. That was yesterday.
I remember it bothered me. I didn’t want to look at it again, because I was so upset about Eloise.

‘But this morning, when I woke, it was on my bedside table. And it was open at the page when Cathy Earnshaw’s ghost haunts Heathcliff’s new tenant when he sleeps at Wuthering Heights.’

I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling my world tremble.

‘Juliana,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even, ‘I’m desperate to understand, but I can’t. You’ve had a terrible experience. Are you absolutely sure you left the book in the library? Perhaps you took it up to your bedroom without remembering?’

I could hear Chris in my ear.
Of course she did. She’s traumatised. She doesn’t know what she’s doing and you’d be mad to believe her
.

Maybe, I thought. But you think I’m mad anyway. So, what do we have here? Two mad women? Both convinced there is something terribly wrong about Eloise’s death? Sisters in hysteria? Or maybe an extraordinary moment of combined female intuition?

I hardly dared to let the suspicion form in my mind. Eloise, her mother and me. Could we be joined in some kind of psychic triangle, and was there perhaps something real happening here, a message sent by dreams and misplaced books, a message from Eloise from beyond the grave? I shuddered.

Don’t forget, don’t forget
, I whispered to myself.
Your mind is fragile; you imagine things. You thought Evie was going to die and she wasn’t.

‘I know how this must sound,’ Juliana said in a voice uncharacteristically tremulous. ‘But I am absolutely certain that
Wuthering Heights
was not by my bed when I went to sleep last night. You know, it was one of her favourite books too. I first read it to her when she was ten, and she’s always loved it.’ Juliana looked sad, exhausted and utterly defeated. ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’ve had a bad night. I felt sure she was trying to contact me, tell me something vitally important. But she was just all … I thought I could see her … almost … but then her face became so indistinct and her voice was lost – hollow, and too faint for me to hear.’

I had to tell her. ‘Juliana, in my dreams she seems to be warning me about something. Something to do with her children. Do you know what she could possibly mean?’

Juliana stared at me for a moment, then suddenly shook her head sharply.

‘No! Oh, Cathy, I’m such a self-indulgent fool. Having stupid supernatural thoughts about my daughter when she is dead from that horrible disease. Why am I even thinking like this? I was her mother, and I suppose that made me deny that she could possibly die so young – just as much as she denied it herself. But still. I had years to come to terms with it. I
knew
what was going to happen to my lovely daughter. I wept, I raged, I begged God to spare her. But He didn’t and I can’t bear it – forgive me.’

She stood up. She put a book before me and abruptly left the room. I picked it up.
Wuthering Heights
. There was a delicate tapestry bookmark within the pages and, suddenly feeling unbearably confined, I decided to take it into the garden and read it there.

Outside it was cold but sunny. There was a little gazebo beneath the rhododendrons, with cushioned seats and a wood-burning stove against one whitewashed wall. It wasn’t lit but the room still felt cosy enough. I settled down with the book on my lap, but before I had time to open it, Juliana’s old manservant Eric shuffled slowly in with matches, bellows and kindling, his frail body bent almost double. He was so ancient I thought his spindly legs would buckle under the weight of his burden. He was closely followed by Annie, bearing a tray of tea and a tartan rug tucked over one arm.

I leapt up, feeling horribly guilty at making them feel I needed looking after when I was so much younger and fitter. ‘Annie, Eric, this is terribly kind of you, but I’m fine as I am. Perfectly warm enough, thanks.’

‘Oh no, Miss,’ said Annie.

Miss? I was forty-six next birthday. The spirit of Jane Austen was surely still alive within the confines of Roseland.