A Crooked Rib (29 page)

For the first few days of Lucy’s visit to Lyme, I asked her nothing, and she ventured not a word about Cape Town, her husband or herself. She looked stronger than when I had last seen her, but I was concerned that her spirits seemed low. Drifting about the house, she resembled nothing more than a wraith, the shell of what she had once been. She sat at table with me, eating almost nothing, she stared from the windows for long periods, and frequently retired to bed. She could not be coaxed to walk about Lyme or to visit Cobb House, and any suggestions of a stroll on the Cobb she refused to countenance, saying she was ‘too tired today’. When we sat together, I noticed how her hands plucked ceaselessly at her skirts, brushing away invisible particles from the fabric, and how she constantly twisted the same lock of hair behind her ear.

Though at first merely exasperated by this, I gradually became alarmed, and resolved to engage her in some kind of discussion about her true situation. I was still contemplating the best way to approach this when I was woken one night by a presence in my room and was startled to see Lucy, in her shift, standing beside my bed.

‘What is it?’ I said, sitting up and trying to collect myself. ‘Are you ill?’

She shook her head.

‘You’re shivering. What’s happened?’

‘Someone is crying. A baby. Do you hear it, Fanny?’

I cocked my head. ‘That’s just the wind in the chimney. In these old houses …’

‘No, it’s a child. Or perhaps a young woman.’ She began to wring her hands. ‘We must find her, Fanny.’

‘Come,’ I said, fully awake now. ‘It’s after midnight. We can’t search tonight. Climb into bed beside me and sleep. In the morning we’ll see what can be done.’

‘The morning may be too late. It’s only at night that she comes. She brings the child with her. For me to take care of, I think. Though I hear her quite clearly, I can never find her.’

But she slipped into bed beside me and lay back on the pillows. In the faint moonlight, I saw the marks of tears on her cheeks.

She was silent, and I thought perhaps she had fallen asleep, but then she spoke again. ‘Do you remember how we shared a bed at Strawberry Hill?’

‘Yes. And the room was so small there was only space enough to dress ourselves one at a time.’

‘We were happy, then.’

‘Yes, we were.’

‘Are you happy now?’

I thought of Te Toa, whom I had not seen for so long, whom I would never see again, of New Zealand, of … ‘I have had my share of happiness,’ I said. ‘And you?’

She did not answer this. Instead, she said, ‘Do you recall the old woman in Rio? The fortune-teller.’

‘You’ve asked me about her before. And I’ve told you she was simply a blind old woman.’

‘Fanny, do you believe our lives are preordained? That everything that happens to us is merely Fate and that we are powerless to change our destinies?’

This was the most she had spoken since her arrival and I wished to encourage her to continue. I said guardedly, ‘I think some parts of our lives are guided by Fate, or even by Heaven, but we also have the power to shape our own destinies.’

‘I have sinned,’ she said suddenly. ‘And God is punishing me.’

‘I’m sure we’ve all sinned at some time, and you no more than I or any other.’

‘You don’t understand, Fanny. I’ve done very wrong. I’ve forfeited my place in Heaven.’

‘I can’t believe such a thing,’ I said soothingly. ‘Only God can judge that and, if you truly repent of what it is you’ve done, you’ll be forgiven.’

‘You’ve heard of Godfrey’s situation?’

‘Why, no.’ Since leaving New Zealand, I had not thought at all of Mr Godfrey.

‘His father, Sir John, my husband’s stepfather, you know …’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘… Soon after we arrived at the Cape, he died and Godfrey succeeded to the baronetcy. He’s Sir Godfrey Thomas now. He’s in very poor health and my husband is visiting him at Bodiam at present, but I have refused ever to meet him again.’

I said nothing.

‘He’s entirely base. When he succeeded to the title, he left his mistress, that dreadful servant girl, with their daughter in New Zealand, saying he would send for them. But, Fanny, within a year of his arrival here, he had married someone else. She’s extremely respectable, from a good family, we’re told. And rich … And now, he has four other children.’

I thought carefully of how to reply. Finally, I said, ‘And what does Sir George think of all this?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘But surely he’s discussed it with you?’

‘Not once.’

‘I daresay he’s been much occupied with government business.’

Her eyes were closed now. She said sleepily, ‘Do you remember the poisonous snakes in Albany? And how the Aboriginal children carried them about on sticks? In Cape Town there are venomous snakes, too. The puff adders hide themselves in logs and crevices in the rocks, but the Cape cobras come right inside the house to escape from the heat. And their poison is so deadly it’s fatal almost at once.’

‘Well, there are no snakes in this house,’ I said, ‘so we have nothing to be alarmed about.’

‘I hope it doesn’t sound vain,’ Lucy said as we sat together in my garden in the sunshine, ‘but I must tell you that I’ve had a South
African town named after me. Lady Grey it’s called. It’s just a small place in the north-east, in the Southern Drakensberg. Sir George and I made an expedition there and the townspeople asked if they might name their settlement after me.’

I thought that she seemed calmer, though I could not help noticing how she still plucked and picked at her skirts. ‘What an honour,’ I said. ‘They must have liked you very much.’

‘It’s a strange thing but, somehow, when I returned to South Africa, even though I was often lonely, Sir George and I found ourselves extremely popular. When we left for England, we held a farewell levee at Government House and thousands of people came from all over the country, even from as far away as Durban. And when the carriage took us from Government House to the wharf, our route was lined with crowds of people, shouting and applauding, and suddenly, a group of men surged forward, unhitched the horses and pulled the carriage themselves all the way to the port captain’s boat. Then, once we were aboard, all the ships and small boats in the harbour formed a sort of procession, and the crowd on shore cheered and cheered us, and when we finally appeared on the ship’s deck, we were so overcome by emotion that even my husband wept. It seems so odd to think of it now. I felt exactly like a queen.’

And, for a chilling instant, I caught the echo of the words of the fortune-teller in Rio.
You will reign like a queen … and slink like a cur.

‘Fanny? Are you awake?’

‘I am now,’ I said, a little crossly.

‘Can I climb in next to you? I’ve tried my best to sleep in my own bed, but whenever I close my eyes, my sins come crowding in on me and I’m afraid.’

Sighing, I sat up against the pillows. Lucy settled beside me.

‘What is it that you’re so afraid of?’

‘I fear for my immortal soul.’

‘Lucy, you surely know that’s only because it’s night. In the darkness, such terrors assume an importance beyond their daytime reality.’

‘No, even in the daylight I’m obliged to stave them off by forcing
my thoughts elsewhere. That’s why I like to sketch. It takes my mind from my fears.’

‘Then don’t you think it may be time to confront these fears?’

‘I can’t. I daren’t confide what I’ve done to a living soul, not even you, Fanny.’

‘Whatever you’ve done, I’m your dearest sister. I will always love you.’

‘Not if you know the terrible nature of my sin.’

‘Lucy, I want you to tell me what it is you believe you’ve done.’

‘It’s not a belief, Fanny. It’s a reality.
I have done those things I ought not to have done.
And now, as the Confessional Prayer says,
there is no health in me.’

‘And what does the Prayer go on to say?’

‘I’ve forgotten,’

‘Let me remind you.
But thou, Oh Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, Oh God, who confess their faults. Restore thou those who are penitent.
Aren’t those also the words of the Prayer?’

‘Yes.’

‘That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life?’

She burst into a storm of weeping and I forced myself not to lose patience with her. The time has come, I thought, when the only way I can help her is to make her confront those demons which appear to possess her.

‘You must tell me now,’ I said, and I heard the severity in my own voice, ‘everything about this imagined evil you say you’ve committed. I tell you honestly that I don’t believe in it.’

For a time, she was silent, but she ceased weeping and seemed to gain some control of her emotions. She pulled nervously at a strand of her hair. ‘Do you remember when Sir George begged me to return to him, that you said Makareta might refuse to leave the Cape? Well, you were right, Fanny. She wouldn’t be unseated from Government House. And then, one day, she came to me and said … said … she was carrying my husband’s child.’

‘
What
? Surely not? Did you confront Sir George?’

‘How could I? Supposing he said it was true? What would I have done then?’

‘Sir George is at Bodiam now. Is Makareta with him?’

Lucy turned to look directly at me. In a voice barely her own, she said, ‘Makareta is dead.’

‘
Dead
? Makareta? When?’

‘A year ago.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘And now, I am even more jealous of her than when she was living.’

‘Then you’re jealous of a ghost.’

‘You don’t know, you can have no idea … the effect her death has had on Sir George. Every day he was in Cape Town, he went to her grave and wept. I followed him secretly, Fanny. I saw it for myself.’

‘Did she die in childbirth?’

‘No.’

‘Then, how? What happened to her?’

‘She … met with an … accident. She died very suddenly.’

‘Lucy,’ I said, consumed with sudden alarm, ‘what are you trying to tell me?’

‘You asked me, Fanny.’

‘I did. And now you must tell me. I swear I will never divulge a word of what you say to any other living being.’

Again she tugged urgently at her hair. ‘I don’t know what possessed me, but I suppose it now to have been the Devil.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘At Government House, we had a native houseboy. To the natives, snakes are sacred; they leave out food and drink for them. But they terrified Makareta. She said the Cape cobra was the Serpent which beguiled Eve in the Garden, that it was entirely evil. You know that in New Zealand there are no snakes of any kind, so before she arrived at the Cape she had never seen one.

‘Shortly after she’d told me she was with child, when she was out somewhere with my husband, I called the houseboy. Since, at the Cape, cobras frequently enter houses to seek relief from the heat, every day it was his duty to rout them out and dispose of them. Such snakes are very dangerous but, like the Minang, he had no fear of them.

‘I told him that I wished the holy presence of a cobra in my house. For his race, this is customary. “Yes, Lady,” he said. “So,” I said, “you will not expel them. You will leave them to seek comfort here.” I indicated Makareta’s bedroom. “Place a saucer of milk outside that
room, on the veranda.” Cobras love to drink milk. They are almost blind, but I knew they would be lured by the smell.

‘The boy said, “Very much luck to have snake in house, Lady.” And with great reverence he laid out the saucer of milk.

‘My husband and Makareta came home. Neither of them spoke to me, but they walked together to his study, and then she left him and went to her room. My heart was hammering as I sat pretending to read. At last, there came a scream and then a dreadful shriek. Sir George rushed from his study. Feigning alarm, I ran to join him. “What is it?” I cried. “What’s happening?”

‘He flung open Makareta’s door. She lay on the floor, her eyes closed, her lips blue and her limbs jerking. “She’s having some kind of fit,” I said.

‘Sir George raised her. “Makareta. Makareta, what is it?”

‘“Look out!” I shouted. “Behind you. A cobra.”

‘The snake hissed, a sign it was about to strike. “Get out!” he ordered me, and I ran. But as he dragged Makareta from that room, I saw the cobra spread its evil hood, lash itself forward and strike her again on the leg.

‘“Send for the physician,” he cried. “At once.”

‘I did, but it was too late, as I knew it would be.

‘As soon as Makareta had been pronounced dead, my husband entered that room with his service pistol and shot the cobra. Not once, but four times. It was dead with the first bullet. The others were simply a punishment, a statement of his hatred for the creature that had robbed him of what he loved most in this world.

‘I have killed her, I thought. And, Fanny, that is why I will be denied eternal life … Because I am not repentant. My heart rejoiced — and is still rejoicing — because, at last, she has gone.’ She looked at me and I could not decipher her expression. ‘I willed it,’ she said. ‘I met witchcraft with witchcraft.
That
is why I am condemned.’

Lucy did not speak again of what she had told me about Makareta and, in truth, I did not know what I could say to her. Then, a week later, she came to me.

‘I have a letter from Sir George,’ she said. ‘He writes from Bodiam
to say that, as we returned Home, we passed the
Phoebe
bringing word, too late, of his reinstatement as Governor of the Cape. He must sail for the Cape within the fortnight … and he has begged me to accompany him.’

‘I see.’

‘And with his letter he enclosed something very precious for me from Aunt Julia Martin. Look.’

She unfolded a piece of watered red silk, revealing a small square envelope. ‘She says I’m to have this as a memento of her.’

‘What is it?’

‘Aunt Julia is a great friend of Mrs Browning — they’ve corresponded for many years. This is one of Mrs Browning letters … in her own handwriting. You may read it in a moment, but first, lift up the flap on the envelope and see what’s written there.’