In Her Shadow (39 page)

Some time later, my parents received a postcard from New York. Jago reassured them that he was all right and promised he’d be in touch when he was settled somewhere. He did not ask after me.

They didn’t hear from him again for ages, not until he found his feet in Newfoundland.

And I was in Chile. I had planned to go for a year, but when the time to return home approached, I could not bear the thought of it. I had become used to big skies and wide spaces, being part of an eclectic mixture of accents and personalities and cultures. I could not go back to Cornwall, the very idea was suffocating. So I agreed to stay on for another year. Ricky had to return to England to take up his university place. I didn’t find it hard to say goodbye to him. I had stifled my capacity for feeling. We wrote to one another for a while, but it was half-hearted correspondence, and we soon lost touch.

But it was before then, months before, that I received the letter from my mother telling me that there had been an accident and that Ellen had drowned. There was no mention of a baby in the letter.

That was all I knew.

Karla and Kirsten told me the rest.

After I left Ellen, after she destroyed the piano, she did her best to carry on. She confronted her father about their financial situation, and he confirmed that Thornfield House had been remortgaged to the hilt and that they were as good as bankrupt. Ellen and her father sent Mrs Todd away to save money. The two of them lived together in that awful big house, hardly communicating, hardly existing. They were
recluses, and once again, the people of the village turned a blind eye; they did not want to interfere.

Every day Ellen must have felt her body change. Every day the baby must have grown a little bigger, a little stronger. At night, she must have lain in bed and put her hands on her belly and felt the little kicks inside her. Ellen would have talked to the baby, she would have sung to her; she would have promised that her baby would be the most precious, beloved child ever.

It wasn’t hard for her to hide the pregnancy. She hardly ever left the house, hardly saw anyone apart from her father, and winter was coming so if she went out, she wore big coats and her father’s jackets. She probably blamed herself for the position she was in because she was no longer the attention-seeker, no longer the drama queen. Ellen was not herself any more. She was broken.

Destroying the piano, awful as it was, had brought about a kind of understanding between Ellen and her father. She no longer fought him; he stopped bullying her. He must have, there was no point in him hurting her because she was already at the nadir of hurt. He believed that everything had been taken from her. He accepted her act of vengeance because he understood it. In his mind, it helped lay the ghost of Anne Brecht to rest. His revenge had been exacted. He had, finally, taken complete control – or, at least, he thought he had. In disposing of his daughter’s inheritance, he had taken away Ellen’s independence and her future. He had scuppered Anne’s plans for her daughter and he had put two fingers up at the ghost of Mrs Withiel.

Ellen kept her distance from him for the sake of her baby. She left the house rarely, isolating herself, arranging for provisions to be delivered. She cooked for her father, but ate alone, leaving his food in the kitchen for him to heat in the microwave when he was ready. In his mind, this small
domestic act, those sad plates of toast and no-frills beans and cheap sausages that Ellen left out for him, were her way of showing contrition. He still slept during the day, and paced the house at night. She stayed out of his way. They no longer tormented one another; they left each other alone.

Ellen still believed in her lover. She believed he would come back for her: all she had to do was wait. She thought that sooner or later he would forgive her, and that once he returned, and realized the truth, then everything would be fine-and-dandy, hunky-dory, happy-ever-after. She didn’t know – nobody knew – what I had said to him. She didn’t know that I had dashed his belief in her. She hung on to her hope, her trust, her confidence in his love.

Only he didn’t come.

In the end, growing desperate, Ellen wrote to Tante Karla. She didn’t mention the pregnancy but said she needed help. Karla had some affairs to put in order, but she booked a flight to London at the earliest opportunity.

She was too late.

When the time came, Ellen must have known. On some deep level she must have known she was going to have the baby early.

One evening, while her father was sleeping, she put on her coat and her thick boots and as many sweaters as she could wear, and she walked out of Thornfield House. It was late autumn and she was a little over seven months pregnant. She could have walked into Trethene to ask for help, but she didn’t. She had no friends, she didn’t know anyone – perhaps she simply could not face explaining. Or perhaps, by then, Ellen was so worn down by life, so desperate that she was no longer thinking logically but relying on instinct, like an animal.

She went to the place where she had been happy, and where she felt safe.

She went to Bleached Scarp.

She made that arduous journey alone, through the bleak fields, across the marshy peatland and the coastal path, down to the cliffs. She negotiated the scree, found the cleft in the rock and climbed down the steps cut into the tunnel. It must have been cold as death that night, and the sky would have been wide and black, and apart from the sound of the sea and the wind, there would have been no company for Ellen. She put up the little two-man tent that I’d left for her, months before. She secured it to the sandy ground in the shelter of the cave, held it down with rocks to make sure it was stable. She made a nest inside of blankets, sleeping bags, coats and towels. Then she built a fire and she sat beneath the stars and listened to the rhythm of the waves rolling in from the sea.

She waited.

I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Ellen on the beach, alone that night. She would not have been afraid of the sea or the sky or the animal noises, but she must have been afraid of what was happening to her. She might have cried out in labour, but maybe not. There was nobody to hear, nobody to notice. Somehow I imagine Ellen would have been quiet. She’d have wanted her baby to have a peaceful entry into the world.

The baby came. She was born beneath the moon and stars, to the sound of the sea and the smell of the breeze. I imagined Ellen wrapping her in the soft cotton blankets she’d brought with her. In the silver moonlight, the baby’s tiny face was wrinkled and dazed, like the face of a fairy. She squinted her eyes against the cold and she turned her face towards Ellen’s breast, and her lips searched and sucked against Ellen’s skin.

Somehow Ellen knew what to do. She trusted her instinct – it was all she had to guide her. She must have been weak and exhausted but also, perhaps, exhilarated. She would have felt free. She would have felt happy. At last, she had achieved something wonderful all by herself, without reward, without duress. She was in a place she loved and she had a baby, a live, solid little creature, in her arms; someone of her own, someone who would love her unconditionally. She probably believed that now everything would be all right. She put the baby to the breast and the baby took the colostrum, the first milk. She must have done this, because otherwise she would not have survived. I don’t know how Ellen knew how important this was, but she did.

The baby was fine, Ellen made sure of it. But she wasn’t.

Sometime during that night, or the next morning, she bled to death on the beach.

Tante Karla arrived at Thornfield House in the afternoon of the following day. Mr Brecht had only just got out of bed, and was wandering around the house, smoking and dishevelled in his dressing-gown. Tante Karla assessed the situation at once. She assumed Ellen was lying in, so she made coffee and gave the filthy kitchen a cursory clean before she went upstairs to knock on Ellen’s door.

Ellen had left a letter for Tante Karla on her pillow. It explained nothing, but gave directions to the beach, so Tante Karla knew where to go, where to look. It was late in the day. Almost sunset. Wind was gusting across the sea, picking up foam and blowing it. The hardy little plants that lined the cliff edge were pressed flat against the rock. Gulls wheeled and cawed, and high clouds hurried across the sky. Tante Karla went alone to the cliffs, following Ellen’s instructions. At the edge, she looked down onto the lonely beach and saw Ellen’s body, lying where she had collapsed at the point where the sea met the shore. Ellen was rising and falling to
the rhythm of the small breaking waves, her extended arm seemingly beckoning to Karla as the sea pushed it in, and then drew it out again. Her hair was spread about her like seaweed.

She had been trying to clean herself up in the sea, trying to wash away the blood.

Tante Karla found her way down to the beach. She pulled Ellen’s body from the water, laid it safely in the shadow of the cliff. She was a practical woman, who knew there was not much light left; there was no time for tears or grief. She knew she would have to walk half a mile along the coastal path until she reached the emergency phone box where she could call for help. She had to hurry. But first, she went to the tent, in search of a blanket or something with which to cover Ellen.

She unzipped the door. Inside, she found the baby, wrapped up warm and swaddled in amongst Ellen’s bedding, like a little bird in a nest. She wasn’t crying but watching the orange tent canvas move in and out with one eye open and the other closed, sucking her fist and making little clicking noises with her tongue.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

AS NIGHT SETTLED
in over Magdeburg, I picked at the bread on my plate. The food was delicious, but I had little appetite. We were sitting on the terrace, the table lit by candles, and Dora, cross-legged on the bench, was hunched over her guitar, playing chords. Bats darted around us and the German moon was high in the sky. The night was dark and wide and beautiful. Dishes of salad, potatoes, cold meats, fruit, pickles and cheese were spread about the table, and bottles of wine and water. Karla was finishing the story of Kirsten.

‘So I brought this beautiful baby – the most beautiful baby in the world – back to Germany with me,’ she said. ‘I told my friends, my colleagues, my family and the authorities that she was mine – that I had given birth to her unexpectedly in England, at seven months. I invented a love affair, a married lover who did not know about my pregnancy, and everyone believed me. My story worked perfectly. It was the only way to be sure Pieter could never get his hands on her.’

‘Officially and legally, Karla is my mother,’ said Kirsten. ‘And I’m proud and pleased to be her daughter. But as soon as I was old enough to understand, she told me the truth. Any deception was only to protect me.’

She and Karla smiled at one another. They chinked their goblets together and then they drank wine, holding onto one another’s eyes. Ellen had done the best for her daughter, I thought. She had arranged the best possible upbringing for her, away from Pieter, somewhere safe where she would be loved.

‘But there must have been a coroner’s enquiry. It must have come out that Ellen had – you know – given birth,’ John said. He reached across me and helped himself to a slice of cheese from the board on the table.

Karla waved away a large moth, and nodded.

‘It was assumed the child had drowned, been washed out to sea when Ellen collapsed. It was the obvious explanation. Nobody else knew about the existence of the beach, so how could the baby have been taken?’

A few months later, when she and the baby were settled, and the official paperwork had been sorted out, Karla tracked down Mrs Todd, brought her to Germany and made sure she had a peaceful retirement in a comfortable little house in the grounds of the Schloss.

‘What about Mr Brecht?’ I asked. ‘What happened to him?’

‘We brought him back here too,’ said Karla. ‘My brother was in a bad way, Hannah. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital for his own safety. He’s still there.’

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

KARLA INSISTED WE
stay at Schloss Marien, at least for the night, and I was grateful. A strange kind of peace had settled over me. I did not want to lose the feeling of being close to Ellen. I felt as if she were beside me, but gently now. I knew the truth about her death, and it was better than not knowing. I was not frightened of her any more. I just felt sad; terribly sad.

And there was Kirsten, who looked so like her mother had at the same age, who carried Ellen in her genes and her smile and her eyes, who played with her hair just as Ellen used to, who burned almost as brightly.

The kindness of the three German women soothed me. As the evening wore on, they told me stories of Kirsten’s childhood. Karla said she had always been a show-off: she’d always wanted the starring role in school plays, always enjoyed attention. Kirsten laughed along with her almost-mother. She rested her head on Karla’s shoulder and Karla leaned over and kissed her.

There was so much laughter.

John was adamant that he did not mind missing yet another opportunity to network with the curators of some of the best museums in Europe. He said he’d rather be with us
instead. He was quiet, but I was glad he was there, beside me, and that he would know the story too.

I drank wine. John kept filling up my glass and I drank because it helped rub away at the sharp corners of my pain; it blunted my guilt. If I tried, I could almost imagine that Ellen was there with us, sitting just out of my eyeline, feeling proud of her daughter, happy to be with her family.

I had to ask, prove to myself that I wasn’t crazy, so I turned to Kirsten and said, ‘So it
was
you I saw in Bristol at the museum?’

She nodded. Told me: ‘I came looking for you.’

‘How did you know about me? How did you know where to look?’

Kirsten glanced at Karla, and Karla smiled and said, ‘Show her.’

Kirsten slipped back inside the Schloss and returned moments later with something in her hand. She passed it to me. It was the photograph in the home-made, heart-shaped frame that I’d given to Ellen for her eighteenth birthday. Some of the drift-glass had come away, and the picture was faded, but I could still see us – Ellen and me – our faces pressed together, our arms around each other’s shoulders, her dark hair mixed up with my fair. I turned the picture over. On the back were the words I’d written in black felt pen. They’d turned a pale orange colour now, but they were still legible. I’d drawn a crude heart with an arrow through it and on the top of the heart I’d written
Ellen Brecht
, on the bottom
Hannah Brown
and inside were the words:
friends always
.