Flowers Stained With Moonlight (27 page)
Read Flowers Stained With Moonlight Online
Authors: Catherine Shaw
My dearest, dearest and only, unique twin,
I am in a sorry state, as I write this note to you, before I hasten, at the very first crack of dawn, to quit this house forever. Dawn is barely breaking over the sky, and my previous letter, written just a few hours ago, lies on the desk before me, barely dry. This one is an addendum to it, and yet it is much more. For during the long hours of this fatal night, I have passed the barrier to the other side.
Oh, I did not realise, when I began this investigation, that the solving of it could perturb me so deeply, could tear such rifts into what I thought, hitherto, was a natural, healthy and straightforward moral sense. Wrong, right, and responsibility – nothing is clear to me any more! Yes, something
is
clear. The truth has been revealed to me beyond the need for proof – and if proof were needed, it would be easy to come by now.
I left you last night, when I wiped my pen and put it down next to the letter I had just finished writing. I stood by the desk, momentarily paralysed, straining my ears for the soft rustling noises from next door, and running my eyes, at the same time, over the list of points I had taken such pains to write just moments before – I will send you that letter, dear, with this one, although it seems so foolish and blind now! I was reading over the sentences you wrote me, when suddenly, in an instantaneous flash, in infinitely less time than it takes to read this, and even while my heart was knocking in fear at the sly little movements I could still
make out next door, something hit me which had not hit me before.
Sophie Germain – the genius mathematician, Mr Korneck’s idol –
she had to pretend to be a man!
Charles had told us all about her story, and Mr Korneck’s mention of her had lit a sudden spark in my mind, in connection with all our talk about disguises; hasty disguises that must be put on and off in a moment behind a pile of crates.
A woman – disguised as a man!
What could be easier? A tall woman with a long stride, and thick dark hair controlled by a net and combed severely back into a heavy knot, a woman who is able to sew the most sophisticated dresses for herself and her friend. If such a woman were to pass quietly along the quay, wearing a long, ample skirt of some modestly coloured stuff and a hat upon her head – if her hair were in fact cut short like a man’s, and her knot of black hair were a false one, attached with pins – if the skirt should in fact be fastened down the front with nothing more difficult than buttons or ribbons, and lined, invisibly, with brightly coloured silk – if it were worn over a pair of men’s trousers and boots – if this woman should, then, slip behind a mountain of waiting luggage, snatch off her
lady’s hat
and fling it to the ground, to be picked up later by some stray passenger or by a dockworker after the loading was finished, and handed to the office of lost objects – if she were then to remove the net and the knot and thrust them into a pocket, ruffle up her mass of hair into curls, and unbinding her skirt, transform it into a vivid cape with a single swish?
If this same woman amused herself, months earlier, by
donning her masculine guise in public, and accompanying her friend about the city in the role of a lover?
Dora – what if this woman planned a murder, and planned it carefully, travelling to Dover and crossing to France in her female clothing, descending from the boat onto the quay, and turning herself into a young man in just a few swift gestures, leaving no trace at all behind her (except, perhaps, a lost hat)? And if she boarded the boat again, her ticket of course purchased beforehand, and travelled back to England as noticeably as possible in her scarlet silk cape, and went about her terrible business there? And then quietly, in a washroom on the return train to London, resumed her woman’s garb, took a different seat, and descended at the terminal, undetected and undetectable (except, perhaps, by a vague, wandering old woman who had seen her, upon occasion, visiting Haverhill Manor)?
Camilla!
These thoughts, or rather, these images flashed through my mind within a single second, together with the startled question – but
why? Why?
Why would Camilla hate Sylvia’s husband enough to murder him?
And one who murders once can murder again, I thought, gripping my candle and staring at the door of my room with horror. I heard again slight sounds of movement, and even something that sounded, faintly, like the rustling of paper. Stepping silently to the door, with one brusque, sharp gesture, I kicked aside the little dressing table which stood in front of it, pushed the bolt, flung it open, and
stretched my arm with its candle into the total darkness that confronted me.
I perceived no one, yet I still felt afraid. My candle shed a little circle of light which did not reach into the farthest corner of the large space, and it was well stocked with old furniture and boxes behind which a person could be hiding. Yet I would not have thought that a person could have had enough warning of my approach to hide, so quick had I been. I stood for a moment, wavering.
Then I saw another movement, like a streak. The large orange cat whom I had already encountered in this same room leapt down suddenly from the top of a high old closet where he had been perched, landing with a soft, heavy plunk, and trotted over to me with a meow. I heaved a tremulous sigh of relief, then jumped as I heard a rustling noise; something, disturbed, slipped from the top of the closet after the cat and fell, bumping, to the ground. It was a little sheaf of papers, which he had probably been investigating, as cats will, if they find anything unusual in their familiar domain. I stepped over to it with care and picked it up, my heart pounding uncontrollably.
This little packet, folded tightly and tied with a string, was undoubtedly what Sylvia had been hiding in her jewel box, that object which had subsequently disappeared.
Dora, I hardly know how to comment on such a document. I do not know what to do with it, where to put it; it burns my fingers. I will send it to you, Dora; keep it for me. I think it contains more explanations, and of a deeper kind, than any other kind of proof ever could, no matter how factual.
Truth
A poem-novel, a novel-poem, a raving novel,
an impossible attempt
This book contains the truth about Camilla: Camilla is mad. Her madness has a source, a wellspring, a catalyst that shoots it forth like jets of flame pouring from the cannon’s mouth, and when the fire dies down, it leaves only white ashes like death.
Camilla’s madness is invisible to all about her. She walks upright, she walks tall and straight, her eyes are calm, her words are plain. Sometimes she sneers, but only slightly.
Camilla’s life, and her madness, are divided into three. When the source is far and the need is small, the madness rolls like a ball, curls like a ball, and remains dense and thick and quiet in a deep place. When the source is near, and the inflamed thirst is constantly slaked, the madness lurks within like a ravening animal just after food: satisfied for the present, yet infinitely wary, infinitely tense. But when ferocious demand wells up uncontrollably and finds no satisfaction, meets only silence, that is when Camilla’s madness swells into a giant and all-consuming roar that drowns out, in her ears, every pleasant sound of the world around her; birdcalls and running water and the echo of distant conversations. All are lost; only the screaming roar remains.
In that swirling darkness all becomes possible, all becomes necessary, all becomes inexorable for all eternity, for the raving monster is stronger than any barrier the world can raise against it. As Mohammed moved the mountain, Camilla feels that she will heave gigantic, unknown weights and tear apart the very fabric of existence, if she lifts her hand to do so.
The wild beast is invisible. Camilla herself cannot see it.
In these moments, she rises slowly and walks, step by step, to the mirror. Carefully, as though she needs an effort to recall the simplest gestures. Step by step, to the mirror, and there, she stops and stares at herself.
Black eyes stare back: tormented. Black hair smoothed back, drawn back, forced back, pulled back. The creature with its slavering fangs is nowhere to be seen, and yet she feels it gnawing and gnashing within.
She stares in the mirror for many long minutes. Without knowing it, she is rocking back and forth, slowly, intently, and her gaze is becoming fixed. She presses her fingers to her temples, hard, strong hard sensitive fingertips pressing against the delicate place, then forces them slowly upwards into the hair, into the very roots of the hair where it springs forth, a heavy mass controlled, a wild thing tamed. Deep into the roots the fingers force their path until they are buried entirely, and she grasps the hair, grasps it in a frenzy,
wrenches and twists it, pulls it loose from its binding, and as it falls in a tangled web on her shoulders, she is crying, rocking back and forth, crying, twisting the hair as though to tear it out altogether, staring at herself in the mirror, rocking and crying, devoured from within by the monster, destroyed and devoured by the monster, and she stares at the girl in the mirror, no longer a girl, a banshee, keening and wailing, suffering and desire forbidden, and therefore mad. And she whispers again and again to the abandoned creature in the mirror,
‘Is it possible? Can it be? Were I a man, this madness would be love?’
Great rocks embedded in the earth, thrusting toward the sky. Gigantic and immobile and silent; mere stones, yet radiating the still power of pagan gods. The air is thick beneath them, thick with tension, heavy with their eternal past, silent echoes of the formless, hypnotic thoughts of those who built and worshipped them. They move not, they speak not, yet they stand, shrouded in meaning, inaccessible to time and effort, monuments to eternal, expressionless existence.
That same eternal monument is the cornerstone of Sylvia’s soul; silent, inscrutable, invisible, powerful.
‘She’s just a slip of a girl.’ That is what they say of her.
A slip of a girl, a flower perhaps, but merely a small and insignificant one. Yes, that describes her quite well.
She sits at the window, staring outside. Her hands are idle, her body motionless. It is early evening, and the room is filled with people, the air is crossed by a multitude of sounds. Yet the girl at the window is alone. She is at a party, yet she sits, and stares out the window, at the dusk slowly gathering over the stone urns bordering the terrace. She is not absent, not irritated, not disturbed, not bored, not anxious, not hopeful. Her profile, the profile of a very young girl, is sharply outlined in white against the darkening window. Camilla stands watching her. The party swirls around her, and she stands, watching the girl at the window and trying to fathom what she sees, what she feels. The power of the presence of the unknown girl is such that the party fades into mist, and her silent world becomes the only truth. To be so motionless (her hands and feet so totally still) – how is it possible when Camilla’s whole being twitches with restlessness, when interest, annoyance, surprise, pleasure and boredom alternate so rapidly within her that she hardly knows what it is that she feels? Her first season; at times she feels like a queen, at others, hatefully, on display. Sometimes she dances (she has danced a great deal lately), sometimes she watches and her thoughts are tinged with irony and malice. The parties seem like giant games of chess; each piece moving according to preconceived rules, no infractions tolerated. Camilla plays her role, but sometimes the thoughts within her run wild.
The girl at the window is not playing the game, is not aware of any game; has never, perhaps, heard that one must hide one’s thoughts; has, perhaps, no thoughts to hide, but contents herself with existing, with the quiet inexorable strength of being which defies reason and effort and purpose.
Why struggle, why hope and strain and worry, why weary oneself with vain attempts? Why play the cosmic game?
‘Camilla, Camilla, what are you doing, dear? They’re beginning to dance, won’t you go?’
She awakens, startled, out of her reverie, and transfers her gaze with difficulty to her hostess, standing in front of her. It is a moment where nothing but truth is possible.
‘I was wondering who the girl at the window is,’ she says, so directly that her hostess raises her eyebrows, but she turns and glances.
‘Oh, her. That’s Sylvia Bryce-Fortescue, the daughter of an old school friend of mine. Now look at her; what is she doing? Isn’t she impossible! I shall fetch her at once.’
Camilla gazes fascinated, her heart pinched. Will the idol fall, smashed? Will the girl stand up, unfold her fan, laugh, dance,
blink up into her partner’s face? Mrs Clemming is blind; all people are alike to her. Cogs in her large, well-oiled machine, they must be made to behave. She is talking to Sylvia, smiling and beckoning, but her tone is cross. Sylvia turns her face from the gathering darkness to the glittering room. Camilla cannot hear the words. The scene passes silently in front of her, and she is afraid, afraid of losing what she has just found. The unknown girl will not, cannot possibly resist the order to come, to move, to dance, to mingle, to talk, to eat an ice. She is rising, she is following her hostess. They are approaching the place where Camilla is still standing.
‘Here’s Camilla Wright. She was asking about you,’ says Mrs Clemming brightly, thrusting Sylvia forward. ‘Camilla, this is Sylvia, the daughter of an old friend of mine, as I told you, just up from the country for the season. I’m sure you two girls will be friends. You’re the same age, aren’t you? Both eighteen, like my Helen. Camilla, see that Sylvia spends a nice evening, show her about, will you, dear? She’s a little lost here tonight.’
And she moves away, leaving Camilla in front of her lily, her idol, whose whole expression and demeanour are exactly as before; even now, as she stands and moves and speaks, she is surrounded by an aura of silent stillness. Her smiles and words are not those of other people, masks in front of their true faces; her smiles and words spring unconsciously and directly from the inner source of still power. And Camilla takes her arm, and searches for expression, and speaks it slowly.
‘You were looking at the terrace. It is very pretty in the moonlight. Would you like to take a turn?’
Camilla cannot think about anything else. The colours of the days of this season, this social season during which Camilla was to come out, to enter into the great world, to see and be seen, to marry and be married, are now determined exclusively by a single factor. The days where she is not to see Sylvia are dove grey, wrapped in felt. They have their beauty, those empty days; they have the quietness of waiting and the secret excitement of using them to build the self into something greater than before, something that can charm and conquer her. Yet the mystery is how to set about it, how to be worthy of Sylvia, for Sylvia does not care about worth; not moral worth, nor riches, nor sparkling intelligence, nor beauty. What, then, does she want? She wants nothing, is content, is not even content, but quite simply, is. And so Camilla spends the empty days seeking the words and gestures with which she can transmit this most fragile and delicate of all notions: love, that which reaches and enfolds and protects without spoiling or crushing even the tiniest petal.
Then there are the diamond days, when she knows that this evening, she will enter, somewhere, some house, and search in the crowded room until her eyes, irresistibly attracted, locate the slender figure, who, with the passing of time, has become less solitary; indeed she is always surrounded by young men and dances nearly all the dances, yet she has not
lost an iota of her original quietness. On those days, from early in the morning, Camilla watches herself, observes herself like an outsider, bursting with verve and laughing too much, eating nothing and looking constantly in the mirror; hears herself saying eagerly,
‘Oh, tonight’s party is
sure
to be wonderful! The Mannings are such marvellous hosts!’ –
– and doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused.
Worst are the black days where Camilla must go to some party, some fête, some ball, not knowing whether Sylvia will be there or not. On those days, Camilla frets and counts the hours in spite of herself. She hates it, stamps her foot alone in her room, argues to herself that such frenzy can have no good effect, is merely foolish, wearying and wasteful, snatches up a book and glares at the pages, walks with great strides up and down the avenues, buys white flowers for her dark hair, and finally, lies on her bed, dreaming, dreaming the hours away, until finally she is late, not yet dressed, and her body seems heavy as lead. The effort of rising, dressing and crossing the streets of the city seems beyond human strength. And sometimes, the hope of seeing Sylvia pushes her through these gestures like a rusty automaton, rewarded by the gift of life if Sylvia is present after all, whereas on certain other days she pleads a headache and falls asleep, a heavy sleep, tormented with strange dreams like lush tropical flowers, which seize her like a prisoner until morning, leaving her wearier than when she lay down.
If she could only penetrate Sylvia’s opacity. But Sylvia does not seek to understand the minds of others any more than a flower does, as it stands in its spot, spreading its green leaves in the sunshine.
‘There’s a soirée at the Kinnocks the day after tomorrow,’ Camilla says to her tentatively. ‘You know them, don’t you? So I expect you’ll be there.’
‘I don’t know,’ Sylvia answers, and her answer gives no sign:
I don’t know
– it can mean a thousand things, hint a thousand desires, hide or reveal an infinity of thoughts, be garnished, like a dish, with smiles or frowns, dimples or eyelashes. But Sylvia’s words are as plain as school cooking; quite literally, she does not know, and there is nothing further to be said.
‘How can you not know? Haven’t you an agenda?’
‘Mrs Clemming arranges everything for me,’ she says, and again, one could seek in vain the meaning behind her words; is she annoyed, does she find it silly, or on the contrary, does the arrangement suit her perfectly?
‘Can’t you ask her? I’ll only come if you do,’ the words are on the tip of Camilla’s tongue, poised, ready to slip off; and yet no, it is impossible. One does not speak to Sylvia in hints. So Camilla goes to see Mrs Clemming, sitting in her corner, following her daughter Helen with her eyes.
‘The Kinnocks, yes of course. Why, naturally. Oh, Sylvia, I don’t know, I really don’t! She’s such a very
difficult
girl, changes her mind without notice, has no idea how annoying it can be. I wash my hands of her. She can come or not, as she likes. But Helen will be there.’ And she watches her daughter intently, and Camilla follows her gaze, staring uncomfortably at the hefty girl standing alone at the refreshment table, while Sylvia cannot get away from three young men who clamour for the next dance and seem not at all put out by her inability to banter, quite the contrary. So Camilla remains in the same position as before, thinking of the following Thursday, knowing that she will suffer, not knowing how to avoid it, tormented by the desire to exert pressure on Sylvia, to exact a promise from her, yet knowing that it would serve no purpose at all, that her promises would slip away from her as innocently as clouds floating across the sky.
For promises are binding, and Sylvia cannot be bound.
Camilla no longer knows exactly when the idea first took shape within her, exactly how it eventually came to take her psyche prisoner. When she thinks back, she perceives a myriad of fragmented origins.
She is standing quite far from Sylvia; she still hardly knows her, but she watches her across the heads and shoulders of a cheerfully swirling crowd. A young man is talking to
Sylvia, earnestly, intensely. Camilla is far too distant to be able to hear or even guess at what he is saying. Sylvia listens quietly, motionlessly. The young man leans towards her a little more, then suddenly bends so that his face approaches hers. Camilla is transfixed.