Authors: Marjorie Eccles
Last Nocturne
M
ARJORIE
E
CCLES
Table of Contents
The child wakes in panic and sits bolt upright up in bed, clutching the cotton stuff of her nightgown to her chest. Outside, the great bell on the Stephensdom echoes the thump of her heart. She counts the strokes. Eleven! Hours since she was firmly tucked up, since her bedroom door was closed. Hours since she’d determined not to go to sleep, but to slip out of bed again to open the shutters and let the moonlight into the room so that
He
would be afraid to come. Only she’d fallen asleep, after all.
But perhaps there’s still time. Heart beating fast, she leaves the warm cosiness and goes to the window and stands on tiptoe, barely able to reach the knobs on the shutters. When they fold back at last, she sees there is to be no moon tonight. The only light coming through the window is the strange, bluish radiance somewhere beyond the dark which means there has been snow. She can see the snow-frosted roofs of other houses in the city and, rising way above them, the great cathedral and its spire, soaring up and up into the sky. In the daylight, the tiles on the cathedral roof have a brightly coloured pattern, but tonight snow and darkness obscure it. With a shiver, she remembers to say a quick, anxious prayer to Saint Stephen, one Berta has taught her, and then scuttles back to the warmth of her bed.
There’s no noise; the snow has muffled even the clatter of the
fiacre
wheels and horses’ hooves on the cobbles, or perhaps it’s too late even for them to be about. She lies still, not daring to move, scarcely daring to breathe. Somewhere,
He
might still be waiting to get her, perhaps hiding behind the huge, painted armoire in the corner – though for what misdemeanour she can’t think. But
He
, Struwwelpeter, the boy-demon with wild hair and long, sharp, nails like claws, will surely discover something. In the book, he always finds out naughty children and punishes them. Perhaps he’ll cut off her thumb because she still sucks it like a baby, although she tries not to. It’s very hard to be perfectly good, all the time. She tries to think of anything wrong she might have done that day. She hasn’t pulled the cat’s tail, or forgotten to practice her scales, but she suddenly remembers the little chocolate and cinnamon biscuit she popped into her mouth when Berta’s broad back was turned, and shivers.
The ancient house creaks and moans around her, as it often does in the night, as if it can’t sleep, either. It’s warm in the bed against the big square pillows, under the downy feather quilt which almost buries her. The only part of her showing is her nose, growing cold at the tip. Bruno must have forgotten to stoke up the huge green-tiled stove which keeps the house warm.
Perhaps
He
won’t know she’s there in the bedroom if she ducks her head right beneath the quilt to hide, leaving only a tiny space to breathe. She tries it and gradually the darkness reassures her, the terror recedes. Presently she sleeps again.
Perhaps it’s something in a dream that wakes her for the second time, but now she isn’t afraid.
With the wide unseeing eyes of the sleepwalker, she slides from the cosy warmth, not feeling the cold of the tiles as her feet touch them and she walks to the door. Leaving her bedroom, she turns away from the light coming from under the door of the attic room up the next flight of stairs. She doesn’t even pause when she reaches the banisters overlooking the huge dark cave of the ancient hallway, scary even in daylight, but passes barefooted along the gallery and down the next flight of worn stairs to the door, as swiftly and silently as if she’s gliding over them. Into the dim, shadowy cavern of the hall, where the remains of the sulky fire smokes and smoulders, and a single lamp still burns.
No one hears her, she feels no gentle, loving touch upon her shoulder, there is no soft voice to guide her back to bed and tuck her up once more. No sound from Igor, none of his deep baying to wake the household, not even the rattle of his chain as he stirs in his sleep on the straw of his kennel.
The great front door of the house hasn’t yet been locked and bolted for the night, but although she usually has to struggle with the heavy iron latch, tonight it responds easily. Leaving the door wide behind her she steps out into a still, white world.
The snow is thick and unblemished, the night dark and silent. She doesn’t notice the icy drop in temperature, however, as she begins to walk, nor the new snow-flurry which is starting and whips her nightdress around her legs. But almost at once something stops her. The street is in darkness, apart from the gas lamp where it turns the corner, throwing yellow light onto the snow. None of the other tall houses are lit. Their shadows lie black against the whiteness as the lane narrows in perspective, where the hollows in the snowdrifts show purple and mysterious. And silhouetted against the snow is a black writhing shape, grown huge and formless.
Struwwelpeter!
She screams, and the scream wakes her. For another moment she stands petrified, then she turns to flee back to the house. The door is still open but now another lamp has been lit in the hallway, and a familiar presence is striding towards her, scooping her into reassuring arms and rushing her inside. By the time the door is closed on the scene behind them, the snow is beginning to fall again, thick and fast, already covering the trail of her small bare footprints.
ART
O
NE
England 1909
CHAPTER ONE
It wasn’t Grace’s new outfit, worn in hopeful anticipation of spring, that helped her to decide, so much as the ridiculous hat belonging to Mrs Bingley-Corbett in the pew in front. Its brim was wide and flat as a cartwheel, its outsize round crown entirely studded with velvet bees and tiny flowers, so that at a distance it resembled nothing so much as a plum pudding on a plate, perched uncompromisingly on top of her elaborate coiffure. Grace suppressed an urge to laugh but could scarcely help envying Mrs B-C the self-assurance that let her wear such a monstrosity, especially to Evensong.
Not that Grace had any desire to emulate her, modish as such creations now were, restraint in that and many other matters having been abandoned in the years since the death of the puritanical old queen. Indeed, standards had altogether dropped now that Edward, her decidedly more liberal-minded son, occupied the throne, said Robert, disapprovingly. But it would have been nice to be able to think that one could do exactly as one wished for once; to know that being the late Canon Thurley’s daughter didn’t for ever place one in the shapeless tweeds and dreary hat brigade, something she had at least managed to avoid so far. Yet…although her own new hat that evening was entirely becoming (burnt straw with silk trimming in shades of yellow and cream, worn with the costume she had made herself, in the new otter-brown colour), seeing that other one had undoubtedly provoked not only a smile, but also fuelled the spark of rebellion and excitement already kindled by that letter. Rebellion about a great many things in her life…making her reject a more obviously sensible outfit to wear that evening, for instance.
Anyone with any sense would have foreseen that despite the day’s sunshine, it might turn chilly at eight o’clock of a Birmingham evening in late March…but though she was young and fair and pretty, and clever enough to avoid displaying how intelligent she really was, the desire not to be forced into a mould sometimes led Grace to be a little unwise. Shivering in the freedom of the unconstricting corded silk, she was forced to admit that Robert’s sister Edith had undoubtedly scored a point by wearing the thick maroon tailor-made, hideous and heavy though it was, and wished that she herself was not so often compelled to try and prove something or other – albeit only to herself.
Still, there it was; and as she came out of church on Robert’s arm, she knew her mind was finally made up, and all because of Mrs Bingley-Corbett’s hat. In the face of all advice to the contrary, she would accept Mrs Martagon’s offer and – here her resolution almost, but not quite, faltered – give Robert his ring back.
Awkwardly sharing an umbrella with him down the Hagley Road – for rain had now added to the unpleasantness of the evening – provided no opportunity to broach the subject. Robert was obsessed at the moment by the necessity to persuade his father to buy a motorcar in which to make their rounds, rather than the pony-trap his father, Dr Latimer, had always used and trusted and saw no reason to forsake. Such an outmoded form of transport did not become an up-and-coming young doctor, said Robert, and he could lately think and talk of nothing else but the relative merits of Wolseley and Siddeley, notwithstanding the outlay of a couple of hundred pounds. Understanding nothing of either, Grace could only listen and interject non-committal remarks at suitable intervals.
Later, feeling slightly warmer in the steamy heat of the gloomy conservatory at his family home in Charlotte Road, her back to the sodden lawns and even gloomier shrubbery beyond, she managed to screw up her courage. The first fatal words having been uttered, Robert stood facing her, outraged.
‘The Honourable Mrs Martagon?’ he repeated, as if unable to believe his ears. ‘London?’ As though Mrs Martagon were the Empress of China and the capital, not above a hundred miles distant, Outer Mongolia.
Straddle-legged, well-barbered, clean-shaven, thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, he waited for further enlightenment, but it seemed that her original astonishing explanation had exhausted in Grace any further capacity for speech, and she faced him uncharacteristically dumb, with lowered eyes. They were her best feature, a dark, smoky blue, but she was afraid they might give her away.
‘Well?’ Although not yet quite thirty, Robert Latimer was already inclined to plumpness, and the unprecedented announcement had caused his face to grow quite pink, giving him a slightly porcine appearance. ‘Why was I not informed of all this earlier?’