The Seance (25 page)

Magnus’s generosity shone all the more brightly alongside my mother’s conduct. And yet my apprehension had grown until Ada, who had, as always, divined my distress, offered to speak to Magnus on my behalf.

‘But what am I to do, if I break my promise to him?’ I cried. It was scarcely a fortnight since I had made it.

‘Stay with us,’ said Ada.

‘No, I could not. If I break my promise I must go away from here. It would too bad of me to stay and—’

‘Are you afraid,’ asked Ada gently, ‘that if you do not marry him, he will not be here to help you, should your trouble return?’

‘Perhaps I am.’

‘That is not enough to marry on, Nell. Let me speak to him – or George, if you would rather.’

‘No – you must not.’

‘Then can you not tell him that your heart still belongs to Edward?’

‘I have – I did – the first time he asked me. He says he does not mind.’

‘But Nell, you told me that he wants children – you do understand what that means?’

‘Yes – but let us not talk of it ... not yet.’

‘Then at least ask him for more time,’ said Ada.

‘I will try to,’ I said.

‘No: promise me that you will.’

‘I promise, then.’

But somehow the moment never came. Magnus was very much occupied with his patients during the next couple of months and could manage only brief visits to Chalford; I strove to cherish these last weeks of freedom, but the shadow of my impending marriage hung over them all. Repeatedly, George and Ada tried to persuade me to break off the engagement, but in all of these exchanges I felt compelled to assume the role of Magnus’s advocate, countering every argument with recitals of his virtues and my own failings. And when he appeared three weeks before the day, already in possession of the marriage licence, the final preparations took on an inevitability of their own.

Not that there was much to prepare, for I had already said that I wanted only the smallest and simplest of weddings, and in this as in everything else he had taken me exactly at my word. The approaching ceremony was, by any ordinary measure, a travesty of what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but any semblance of normality had vanished with my mother’s refusal to attend, and from there it had seemed only a short step to a reception for four (since I could think of no one apart from George and Ada whom I wished to invite, and Magnus’s friends all seemed to be scattered to the most inaccessible corners of the world). Ada and George had of course offered the rectory, but I did not want that, or anything that I might have had in marrying Edward. Happiness lay buried in St Mary’s churchyard, and beside that fact, no breach of custom, however extreme, seemed to matter in the slightest.

Ada had once, in desperation, taxed me with betraying Edward’s memory.

‘If I have betrayed him, it is done,’ I replied, ‘and breaking my promise will not undo it.’

These words came back to me as I stood beside Edward’s grave on the morning of the wedding. In truth I could not feel I had been false to him, because this marriage was so little what I wanted for myself, and so much a matter of – a kind of moral compulsion. I had given my word
to Magnus in a moment of self-forgetfulness, having convinced myself that I could bring warmth and happiness into his life in exchange for all he had done for me. And if I had ever since felt like one who wakes from a dream in which he has signed away a precious inheritance, to find himself in his solicitor’s office, pen in hand, with the ink drying upon his signature, well, my word was no less my word for that. He will never take your place, I said silently to Edward, never. And then, almost angrily, if only you had heeded me, and kept away from the Hall ... But again the feeling of his presence eluded me. ‘Forgive me,’ I said aloud, as I set the flowers I had gathered, forget-me-nots and bluebells, lilac and hyacinth, upon his grave, and blindly turned away.

arkness has fallen – I do not know what time it is. Clara sleeps soundly in her cradle; so soundly I am compelled to look to make sure she is still breathing. I am utterly fatigued, but I know I will not sleep. My head swarms like a cage of rats; I cannot think, and yet I must, for her sake. I have three days before Magnus arrives: three days in which to set down everything that has happened, and prepare myself for what I fear will come.

At least I have found the perfect hiding-place for this journal. I dared not begin in London, for fear that Magnus would find it. If he were to learn – but I will not come to that yet. I must not
assume
the worst, or I shall lose all hope.

I shall begin by describing this room, or rather two, for Clara sleeps in a small chamber, once a boxroom or closet, I suppose, opening off this one. We are on the first floor, about half-way down a passage which
twists and turns so often that you cannot tell where you are. I had to go back and count three times to establish that there are fourteen rooms on this corridor. The stairs for the servants are at the back of the house, with a door leading to the main part of the Hall at the front.

The panelling has been scrubbed, and new carpets laid, which would be reassuring if I did not suspect it had been done for Mrs Bryant’s sake rather than my own. Since I am to preside at her séance, appearances must be kept up – not that she is likely to set foot in here. The floor creaks wherever I move, no matter how softly I tread. The bed is an ancient four-poster, with the canopy removed – doubtless it had decayed to shreds; the bedding at least is fresh and dry. There is a chest, a wash-stand, a dressing-table, all in very old, dark wood. The writing-desk at which I sit . . . Again I do not know whether to find its presence reassuring or sinister; was it here already, or did Magnus order that a desk be brought in? As if to say: ‘I know, my dear, exactly what you intend to write, so do not imagine you can keep me from reading it’?

The writing-desk stands beneath the window, which by day looks down – a long way down – upon a ragged expanse of grass, so recently scythed, as I saw this afternoon, that the stalks are pale yellowish-white. The trees crowding upon it are so tall they blot out half the sky. But now there is nothing but my candle flame reflected beneath a blurred image of my face; beyond that, the darkness is absolute.

I have asked myself endlessly whether, on the one occasion Magnus succeeded in mesmerising me, he subdued my will, or shrouded my perception, for long enough to obtain my promise. But if he did, the memory is lost beyond recall, and I am still to blame for marrying him. I knew I did not love him, and should have told him I had changed my mind, as Ada pleaded with me to do. I remember her white, stricken face at the wedding; I have not seen her since. I say in my letters that I am
perfectly happy, and she pretends to believe it; and so our letters have grown less and less frequent. But I will not confide in her; she has sorrows enough of her own.

How could I have imagined that I would come to desire him as he plainly desired me? It seems to me now that even before we were married I shrank from his touch, but it cannot have been so, unless desire makes men altogether blind – even a man as subtle and discerning as Magnus. On the night of our wedding – I
shall
write it – I found the act immensely painful (would it have been thus with Edward? I cannot believe it) but my distress seemed to excite him further. The assault was renewed the next night, and the next (of the intervening days I have scarcely any memory at all) and I tried to pretend, to persuade myself I would grow used to it, but though the physical pain diminished somewhat, the sense of violation only increased. Because I had refused a wedding tour, we had gone straight to his house in Munster Square. My bedchamber was on the second floor; his was on the first, but for those first days – or was it weeks? – he regarded my room as his own, until the morning when all was changed irrevocably.

I must have come down to breakfast first, though I do not recall dressing, or pinning up my hair, only – just as if I had been sleepwalking, and found myself suddenly wide awake at the breakfast table – seeing the maid at the sideboard, just as Magnus appeared in the doorway. The maid’s name was Sophie, like my sister, a girl of about sixteen, small and shy and fair. Magnus came up beside me and laid his hand upon the nape of my neck, and – I could not help it – I shuddered violently at his touch. Sophie saw, and blushed, and scurried from the room.

The hand on my neck seemed to turn to stone. There was a moment of absolute stillness; then the hand was removed, and I looked up fearfully. Magnus’s face was utterly expressionless. For another small eternity we remained thus; he nodded slowly, confirming something to himself, and then – as if a blind had been swiftly and silently drawn – reverted to
his usual manner, and said, as though nothing whatever had happened, ‘I trust you slept well, my dear.’

He went out, soon after, and did not return until late in the day. All evening he kept up the pretence that nothing had occurred; and when it came time to retire, he did not touch me, but bowed and said good-night and withdrew to his own room. I lay awake half the night, dreading the sound of his tread upon the stair, but next morning it was the same; I would not have known that anything was wrong, except that again he did not touch me. Sophie gave in her notice soon afterwards, but if she had been forced to do so, she did not admit it to me. Day after day he went on playing the devoted husband, in company and before the servants, and I felt compelled to follow his lead, not knowing what else to do. The mask never slipped, even when we were alone together, though that was never for long. He was out most days seeing patients – or so he told me – and in the evenings, if we had dined at home, he would excuse himself with the utmost courtesy as soon as the plates had been cleared, and I would not see him again until he appeared at the breakfast table.

If he had shown any emotion – even fury – I think I should have felt for him. Perhaps I should have abased myself, and pleaded for his forgiveness, but the mere prospect set my flesh crawling, for I was now afraid of whatever waited behind that smiling façade. And a few weeks later, I discovered that I was with child.

I thought that the news was bound to change our situation, but when at last I gathered the courage to tell him – one morning at breakfast while the maid was out of the room – all he said was, ‘So I am to have a son. I congratulate you, my dear. You will need to look after your health, which has been a little uncertain of late.’ I dared not question his certainty that the child would be male.