Eloise (14 page)

Juliana was relieved. Charles had been particularly difficult lately. He was drunk every night and when he sobered up refused to discuss what was to happen to Roseland. The servants had sensed there was a crisis, so the atmosphere at Roseland was febrile and unpleasant, and it was all Juliana could do to smooth things over, to continue to behave as the gracious lady of the Manor, even though she woke every morning with her heart in her mouth, her stomach crippled with cramps of anxiety.

*

On Ellie’s birthday, there was a celebratory tea. Sandwiches, scones and a beautiful cake, made and elaborately iced by Annie. All the servants were there, plus the gardeners, the gamekeeper, and the Estate Manager and his wife, John and Angela Merchant. Their son Jack was there, too, the only other person in the birthday girl’s age group.

Everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday To You’ with gusto, and afterwards, when the grown-ups began drinking wine, Jack beckoned Eloise onto the Palladian terrace, and then, his finger to his mouth, across the lawns and around the side to the stable yard.

Juliana had showed me Ellie’s account of what happened next.

‘Ellie, do you want to come on a birthday ride with me?’

‘Where to?’ she squeaked with excitement.

‘Up onto Bodmin. I’ve got so many places to show you. Places so scary you wouldn’t believe. Honestly, Ellie, it really
is
full of ghosts. But don’t worry. I know how to handle them. I’ll look after you.’

Ellie and Jack rode out on their ponies; Jack on a restive creature called Red, Eloise on her own docile pet, Daisy.

Bodmin Moor, on a dank and foggy day, is not just forbidding and austere. Sometimes, when the mist wreathes round the gorse, and you can see only yards ahead, you feel a shivering
of fear as you realise you don’t know where you are, that it would be so horribly easy to veer off the road, find yourself on a footpath that led nowhere. And all around you, the ghostly breaths of the ancient stone gods of this inhospitable country.

Jack was strong and confident on his pony. Although Eloise followed him with trepidation in the fog, she trusted him completely. She felt totally connected with him, knew he would keep her safe, protect her from any harm.

They reached Jamaica Inn, which had been standing in lonely isolation on the moor for over two centuries.

‘Now this,’ Jack told her quietly as they tethered their ponies to the hitching rail outside the inn, ‘this is a properly haunted place. Not just after dark, either.’ He pointed to a little meadow behind the building, visible in a sudden break in the mist. ‘See that meadow?’

Eloise nodded, too excited to speak.

‘There’s something not right about it,’ Jack said. ‘People don’t like walking across it. I know a woman who used to be a cleaner here who used to walk to work across the meadow, but she soon stopped, I can tell you.’

Eloise turned to him. ‘Wh – why?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘What happened?’

Jack shook his head slightly. ‘Nothing has actually ever happened – not to anyone. It’s the feeling they get when
they cross it, going either way. A really strong sense that they’re being followed; and not by something that means them any good. I remember being here one day last summer, and I saw some hikers cutting through on their way back from Roughtor. As soon as they climbed over that stile you can see on the far side, and starting walking to where we are now, they started looking over their shoulders – all of them. They began to speed up and when they were close enough for me to see their faces, they were obviously seriously spooked. They couldn’t get out of that field fast enough.’

Eloise stared at the innocent meadow. ‘What do you think it is, Jack? What’s in there?’

He shrugged. ‘Search me. I have no idea. Do you want to try crossing it now, with me?’

Eloise shook her head violently. ‘No! Not at all!’ She shuddered and turned to look at the inn. ‘What about that – is it haunted too?’

Jack laughed. ‘Oh yes, Ellie. It is sooooo spooky … the oldest part of Jamaica Inn is the eastern side.’ He pointed to the right hand side of the building. ‘All the weird stuff happens in there.’

Eloise gaped at the east wing. ‘What weird stuff?’

‘Too much to tell you in one go. The restaurant’s supposed to be haunted by a man in a green cloak. I know someone
who saw him leaving the restaurant and walking very, very fast to reception. When he asked one of the staff who it was, they went white and said he couldn’t possibly have seen anyone coming from the restaurant, because the door to it was locked. He checked, and it was!’

‘More! I want to know everything!’

Jack laughed. ‘We’d be here all day … ok, one more. One of my mates, his dad’s a plumber. He was called out to fix a leaking water tank in the east loft. He was up there all alone and suddenly felt absolutely petrified. He didn’t see anything, nothing at all, but he was convinced there was something terrible hiding up there and he was back down the ladder before you could say knife. Never went back. For all he knows, the tank’s still leaking.’

Eloise shivered. ‘I don’t want to stay here any longer. Please can we go, Jack?’

He grinned. ‘Have I scared you, Ellie? Sorry, birthday girl. OK, let’s ride over to the foot of Roughtor. That’s the most haunted part of the whole damn moor.’

As they rode towards Roughtor, one of Cornwall’s highest points, Jack told Eloise the terrible tale of Charlotte Dymond. Charlotte was a flirtatious maid who worked at a local farm. On Easter Sunday 1844, she was murdered at the foot of Roughtor. Her throat was cut, not once, but twice.

‘Dad’s got a book about it,’ Jack explained. ‘It was a massive
drama at the time. In all the London papers and everything.’

He told Eloise that Charlotte’s body had lain undiscovered for nine whole days before someone stumbled on it. ‘You can imagine what a state it was in after all that time – flies and maggots and everything.’

Eloise gagged.

‘Want me to go on?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I’m all right, honestly.’

Suspicion had fallen at once on Charlotte’s suitor, an illiterate farm worker, lame in one leg and barely in his twenties. Charlotte was said to have refused him.

The upshot was that the man was tried at Bodmin Assizes, convicted, and, four months after the murder, hanged – in public. The crowds, Jack said, were enormous.

‘But here’s the thing, Ellie – turns out the poor guy was innocent all along. I can’t remember the details but soon after they strung him up the case against him started to fall apart. Too late for the poor bloke by then, of course. He was six feet under in the prison yard. He never should have been executed.

‘Now Charlotte Dymond is said to haunt the moors around Roughtor. They say her spirit can’t ever rest because her killer was never brought to justice and an innocent man died, kind of because of her … ’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Eloise indignantly. ‘It wasn’t her
fault, but I think if I were her her ghost I would feel the same! I can’t stand injustice. Who’s seen her?’

Jack said the most reliable sighting had come from The Cornwall Rifle Volunteers, who in the early 1900s had been on night exercises near Roughtor and had seen Charlotte walking on the very spot where her body had been found, and where a memorial stone now stood. They’d been so terrified they had abandoned the patrol and fled home. A few years earlier men from the nearby Stannon clayworks had reported multiple sightings.

Interestingly, women never saw Charlotte Dymond’s ghost. Only men.

Of course there was nothing to see when the pair of them reached Roughtor, only swirling mist and the stone memorial to poor Charlotte, erected after public subscription the year after she was butchered at the lonely spot.

Eloise tried to hide her disappointment. She really had been half-expecting to be met by a weeping apparition of the murdered girl.

‘Come on,’ said Jack. ‘I know a place you can’t fail to be seriously scared by. It’s much, much older than anything I’ve shown you so far. And it is so spooky, Eloise. I’m going to show you the Stone Quoit of Trevethyan.’

At last they reached Jack’s intended destination. The stone chamber loomed above them. From Jack’s description, she
had imagined it to be like the witch’s cottage in an old fairy tale, but the reality was vast, terrifying. This astonishing monument, so tall and uncompromising, so elemental in its ageless defiance of time, inspired horror in Eloise’s soul.

‘What’s it for, Jack?’ she whispered.

He looked proud to know. ‘It’s a burial chamber. They laid down the bones of Kings and Princes here. Do you know how old it is, Ellie?’

She shook her head.

‘Five and a half thousand years. There were people here, people like us, all that time ago. And they built this. Come inside.’

She didn’t want to. All those dead bones, all those centuries of haunted memories. She shook her head.

He laughed, took her hand. ‘Are you frightened?’

She acknowledged it, looked at him and said she wanted to go back home.

Jack looked grave. ‘Ellie, I promise you there is nothing to be scared of. I’ve been up here so much, even at night, and I’ve never seen a ghost. Although,’ he paused, unable completely to let go of his supernatural hold over her, ‘I have seen lights. Dim, purple and green. And I’ve heard things.’

‘What kind of things?’ Eloise asked shakily.

‘Oh, just sounds. Like voices, but very far away. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.’

Eloise shivered. ‘No, Jack. I want to go home, right now.’

And Jack laughed softly, touched her cheek, and led the way back to their ponies.

Later that night, writing her diary in bed, Eloise could think of nothing but Jack, his charm, his knowledge, his confidence. She remembered his ghost stories, wrapped her arms round herself, enjoying the frightening thrill they gave her. And she realised that the thrill she felt wasn’t just to do with his whispers about strange happenings on the moor. She knew it was also about his touch on her cheek, his casual assumption that he was in charge, that he would take her where he wished but where she also wanted to go.

She slept that night, and dreamed that he was next to her; that his arms were round her, his breath hot against her neck. She dreamt his body rocked against hers. And something happened; something so exquisite she could not understand what it was. Only that the tumult she felt left her breathless. And for ever Jack’s.

He was a boy.

Her
boy.

Next morning, Juliana was curious about her ride with Jack.

‘Where did you go, dear? It was nearly dark when you got home.’

‘Oh, we rode up to Jamaica Inn. A bit boring really but Jack knows loads of ghost stories about the moor, so that was interesting.’

‘Yes, he’s a nice boy. Very clever I think. It’s a pity he goes to the village school.’

‘Why? I’d love to go to the village school.’

Juliana sighed. ‘Look, darling. We’ve been through this before. Truro School will give you an excellent academic education. You’re very bright, and you’re doing so well. Daddy and I want you to go to university.’

‘Why? You didn’t.’

‘Yes, but things are changing. It may be important for you to make your own money, to have a career.’

‘Is that what all the arguments are about, Mummy? Is that why Dad gets drunk every night? Is the money running out? Will we have to leave Roseland?’

‘Hush, darling. We’ll never leave here. All I’m saying is that in a modern world girls will need to be independent. And you’ve got the brains to do well.’

Eloise couldn’t imagine leaving Roseland. It had drawn a magic circle round her and within its grounds she felt protected. But was her mother telling the truth? Perhaps they would have to go. Would she have to leave this warm and happy place, these beautiful gardens, her darling gazebo where she read and dreamed about Jane Eyre and Catherine Earnshaw?

And would she have to leave Jack? Never see him again? Her adolescent heart almost stopped in her breast.

‘No,’ she thought. ‘Never. I will
never
leave Jack. I will always be his and he will be mine.’

Three days after her birthday, Eloise had not seen Jack again. She wondered why he hadn’t sought her out. She was desperate to catch even a glimpse of his lithe brown body, to see his light blue eyes, to listen to his stories about the ghosts of Bodmin Moor. But more than anything, she knew what she wanted was his touch. His hand on her cheek, his arm round her shoulder. And more.

She felt confused. She could not have put a name to what she wanted from Jack. She was just sure she was in love with him, and that she would do anything to make him love her back.

Came the day, a week after Eloise’s birthday, that Jack found her in the gazebo, reading as usual. He crept up behind her and put an arm around her neck. She jumped and he laughed. ‘Look, Ellie, I’ve brought you a present.’

It was silly, a tourist shop piskie sitting on a rock, but her heart melted and her body throbbed. To think he had thought about her, had cared enough about her to give her something, a small tribute which showed he liked her.

She smiled and thanked him. There was an awkward
pause, and he asked, in a rush, if she would go for a picnic with him that night, after dark.

‘On Bodmin Moor?’ Eloise asked nervously.

‘No,’ he replied.

Just somewhere here, at Roseland, in the grounds. He would bring sandwiches and something to drink. And he had loads of spooky stories to tell her about the moor, but they would be quite safe down here. There were no ghosts, he told her gravely, at Roseland Hall. All the old spooks here were so posh they wouldn’t be seen dead outside their swanky tombs.

He made her laugh. He always made her laugh.

They met later that night, after Eloise had endured supper with her silent parents. Her mother had at first tried to make conversation, but her father was sunk deep in his customary wordless angry stupor. He went to his study as soon as he could get away. Juliana tried to talk to her daughter in the drawing room, but she was obviously upset. After a while she kissed Eloise and said she hoped she wouldn’t mind if she went to bed. She felt very tired, she said. Perhaps Ellie would like to watch television in the small TV room? And then Annie would bring her a hot drink at bedtime.