The Visitors (43 page)
The time, the driver informed me, was 4 p.m. Four o’clock it
is
, I thought. I felt as if I were sleepwalking. I strapped my neglected watch around my wrist, adjusted the hands and wound it.
It was a long slow drive to Cambridge, and it took us through several counties. Periodically, the driver, a kindly man whose name was Frobisher, would look over his shoulder and inform me of our progress in an encouraging way. ‘Well, that’s Hampshire under our belt,’ he’d say, ‘now for Berkshire.’ I think he could see I was in a wan, muddled state, so after a while he gave up on the confusion of counties. ‘Twenty more on the clock,’ he’d announce, ‘I’ll top her up soon,’ or ‘Another half-hour and we’ll be seeing signs of civilisation… You all right there, in the back, miss?’
I’d assure him I was. By the time we’d reached the top of the lane behind the farm, I’d resolved to forget what Mr Carter had said to me. It had happened, I couldn’t change it. I must concentrate on my father. Could he have suffered an accident – could someone, perhaps Mrs Grimshaw or the college or even a friend like Dr Gerhardt have summoned Nicola Dunsire from France? What did ‘Your father unwell’
mean
?
It must mean ill enough to send a telegram, ill enough to summon me – did that mean he was dying? Could it mean he was
already
dead – was I being gently prepared, as Rose and Peter had been with Poppy?
Somewhere on the edge of two counties, Frobisher pulled over to the roadside verge. He unstrapped two large petrol cans from the back of the car and filled up the tank. I opened the little attaché case I had with me. Inside it was the letter from Miss Mack. I left that unopened and took out my book. It was Charlotte Brontë’s
Villette
: over six hundred pages of holiday homework; I was halfway through it. As Frobisher started the car again and pulled away, I found my place at the end of Volume I
.
How the car jolted, how the words bounced on the page! I read:
I was left secretly and sadly to wonder, in my own mind––
I lost track as the car cornered sharply and had to read back. The heroine and narrator of the novel, Miss Snowe, had seen a ghost, which might have existed, been faked or been imagined; it might have come from a realm beyond the grave, or was perhaps
only the child of malady, and I of that malady a prey.
I turned to the next page, new volume, new chapter, and read:
A new creed became mine – a belief in happiness.
I wondered distantly if you
could
adopt that particular creed: could you decide to be happy, as you might decide to become a Roman Catholic, a Hindu or a Muslim?
‘Skirting London now,’ Frobisher announced – and I saw to my surprise that we were: I’d been in a Brussels convent school and had looked up expecting to see its garden, its
allée défendue
. Instead here were houses, shops, other vehicles. There was even a garage, where we pulled in and the thirsty car was refilled. London huddled on the grey horizon. I got out and stretched my legs on the dusty forecourt. I walked back and forth, back and forth. It was beginning to rain hard. I climbed back into the car, and we set off again. The windscreen wiper swished a rhythmic semicircle. I replaced
Villette
in my case: the light was now too poor to read by.
We reached Newnham some four or five hours after leaving the farm – it was difficult to be sure of the time: my watch, unwound for weeks, seemed unreliable; it would tick, stop, tick again. I stared at the tall grey house as we drew up outside it: every light in the rooms facing the road was on. Frobisher waited until I’d unlocked the door with my latchkey, and then lifted the cases into the hall for me. He asked if he should wait, but when I thanked him and told him I’d be fine now, he wished me good evening and left. I closed the door behind me.
Frobisher had been reassured by the lights in the house, I think – but I was not. My father disliked rooms to be lit unless they were in use, and Miss Dunsire always observed this economy. As soon as I’d seen lights in the drawing room, in my father’s study, upstairs in the front bedroom, my heart had begun beating fast: they signified trouble. I was nerving myself for evidence of emergency, a doctor or a nurse emerging from a room upstairs – Nicola Dunsire, distraught, summoned from France, running to greet me.
The house was silent. No sounds from upstairs or down, only the faint hiss that came from the gas-lights – my father had always refused to install electricity. I dragged my cases to the foot of the stairs and listened. I called out. No answering footsteps or voices. I ventured into the drawing room, where I saw that a fire had been lit but was almost out. I went into my father’s study, in which the gas-lights were hissing and blazing. The
shabti
figure I’d given my father had suffered an accident, I discovered. It had been smashed, and its fragments lay scattered across his desk. Apart from this isolated damage, the house seemed in perfect order: it looked exactly as it always did. I crept from room to room. Two wineglasses had recently been used and washed; they were the only signs of recent occupation; they lay resting on the kitchen draining board.
I was afraid to go upstairs, but when I’d called again and again, and no one replied, I did so. The bedrooms on the first floor, with the exception of Miss Dunsire’s, were never occupied. I looked into my father’s room at the back of the house: unlit and unused as always. I opened the door of my mother’s bedroom next to it. That room was dust-sheeted. The white sheets around the bed billowed and beckoned in the wavering light from the landing. I slammed the door shut on them. I looked into the empty guest rooms and then, summoning my nerve, tapped on the door to Miss Dunsire’s room.
When I’d tapped three times and there was still no answer, I opened it. All the gas jets were burning brightly. I stared around it in dismay. I rarely entered this room, but whenever I had, it had been immaculate. Now clothes and underclothes were tossed on the floor; a stocking snaked over the bedpost, a petticoat had slithered under a chair, and the bed itself, a double one, was tumbled. One pillow lay on the floor and the eiderdown was humped over the bed end. A white silk nightgown lay on the bare white undersheet. I gazed at this disorder – and saw that on the table next to the bed there was a telegram. It was unopened.
I picked it up – surely this must be the wire sent in reply to Miss Dunsire’s cables? Why should it lie here, and why had she not read it? I stared at the objects scattered next to it, the painkiller aspirins, numerous bottles with pharmacy labels, the book by Marcel Proust that Miss Dunsire had been reading –
À la recherche du temps perdu,
lying open and face down, its spine broken. I hated books to be mistreated: I picked it up and closed it, and saw the letter beneath that it concealed. It was written in Miss Dunsire’s neat, italic script. It bore that day’s date.
Dear Lucy
, I read.
It’s such a beautiful day here at the chateau. We had a picnic lunch by the river, then Clair, Meta and I walked to the market in town. Now we’re back, and I’m sitting on the terrace overlooking the valley. I have a tranquil hour, my dear, in which to write to you…
There were pages of it. I dropped the one I was holding and let it flutter to the floor. I backed out of the room and fled upstairs. No one there either: the whole house was unoccupied. In my attic the bed had not been made up; none of the gas-lights had been lit. I went to the window, opened it and leaned out. It was raining heavily, it was dark, and the Cambridge church bells had begun tolling. I counted ten strokes. As the echoes of the last bell died away, I glimpsed a woman walking along the lane towards our back garden. She was caught for an instant in the pooling light from a street lamp; she was walking swiftly, my view of her obscured by the umbrella she held. She passed into the shadows, was hidden from view by a patch of trees, then stepped into a circle of lamplight again. She was dressed in black – and she was not alone.
Two figures approached the gate that led into our rear garden. I could hear voices now and they were raised as if in disagreement. They were women’s voices, I realised, and one of them was surely Miss Dunsire’s – but whoever was with her, it could not be my father. The two shapes disappeared beneath the rose arch, took the path between the lavenders and came to a halt on the terrace directly below me. The light spilling from the house illumined their faces. The taller of the two women – and it
was
Nicola, I saw – gave an exclamation of annoyance and lowered her umbrella. I realised that the person with her was her artist friend Clair. As they came to a halt, she was clasping at Nicola Dunsire’s arm with her small hands, and Miss Dunsire was closing the umbrella and attempting to shake her off. She said: ‘Let go of me. Let go. It’s done, Clair.’
She tried to prise her friend’s hands free, and for a brief moment the two women seemed to struggle. Then Clair released her, and took a step back. Her white face flared in the light. She said: ‘This will finish you, Nicola. We both know that.’
Miss Dunsire made some reply that I couldn’t hear – though I recognised the familiar taunting tone in her voice. Then she seemed to reconsider, or falter – I wasn’t sure what happened, but it was swift. She made a low sound, and the next instant Clair’s arms were around her. The two women clung to each other; they embraced and kissed – it happened swiftly, in a swirl of agitation. Then they broke apart. Clair turned away down the path without a backward look. The gate slammed shut behind her. Miss Dunsire turned to face the house. Her expression, caught in the light, assumed a fixed serenity. She walked inside, and when I heard her moving in the drawing room below, pacing back and forth, then pausing to put coal on the fire, then pacing again, I went downstairs to her.
She must have seen my cases in the hall, but if she had, she’d not taken in their import, I think. I made sure to come downstairs noisily, but even so, I startled her. She wheeled around from the fire, her face bloodless, and stared at me. She said, ‘Oh – it’s you, Lucy. For a moment I thought––’
‘You haven’t been in France,’ I said. ‘You lied to me. Who posted those letters?’
‘Such a greeting! My letters? Does it matter?’ Her gaze dropped. ‘Meta. My friend Meta. I gave her a batch of them before she left. I told her to send one every three days.’ She frowned and I saw her make a quick calculation. ‘What happened? Was there a gap? Maybe I underestimated how many she’d need – ask
her
when you next see her.’
‘Why are you wearing black?
Is
my father ill? Where is he?’
‘No, he’s not ill.’ She took a breath, and I could see that – swiftly as always – she was asserting her will and regaining her self-control. ‘He’s well – he’s remarkably well. He was here earlier, now he’s back in college. I’m sorry for that deception… no, actually, I’m not. I needed you here and that seemed the quickest, most effective way.’ She paused. ‘
Too
effective: I wasn’t expecting you until the morning.’
‘If you’d opened the telegram that’s lying next to your bed, you’d have known I was arriving tonight. Why didn’t you?’
There was a silence. For the first and the only time in all the years I was to know her, she blushed. I watched the blood course up into her pale neck and stain her face. It was painful to watch; then she brushed at her wet jacket with a black-gloved hand, and said, ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’ve acted wrongly: I accept that. As for that telegram – I must have forgotten it… I was distracted… your father was here, then Clair arrived. First
he
wouldn’t leave, then
she
wouldn’t: such a scene – I took her for a walk to calm her down. Clair doesn’t approve of what I’ve done, you see. She came here to persuade me
not
to do it. But by then it was too late. I’ve told her. The matter is settled.’
In a resigned way, she drew off one of her gloves and extended her left hand towards me. I stared at it, not understanding at first. Then I realised that she was wearing an engagement ring. A narrow gold band, a small stone; her hand was unsteady.
‘The wedding is in two days’ time,’ she said. ‘A register office. It will be a stupid, ugly sort of ceremony, but very quick and efficient, I expect. We decided two days ago. And the instant we
had
decided, I found I wanted you back at my side. So I summoned you. I needed you, Lucy. To celebrate. Or commiserate.’
Her tone, as it often did, veered between mockery and gravity. She had begun to tremble. I gazed at the ring, then her face, in incomprehension. I was trying to work out this husband-to-be’s identity: was it someone unknown to me, or could it be the poet Eddie, whom I’d met at her luncheon party? She’d gone to that reading he gave in London, I remembered, and had stayed there overnight. She’d mentioned him in one of the letters from France; perhaps not everything in those letters was fiction. Then I raised my eyes to her pale set face – she couldn’t hide the expression in her eyes, not from me, not by then – and I understood at last. I said: ‘My father? You’re going to marry my
father
?’
‘Yes. I am. He needs a secretary, and since an unmarried woman can’t travel with him on his sabbatical, he needs a secretary-wife. I am over-qualified for such tasks.’
She gave a small impatient toss of the head as she said that. Her face had become a mask of arrogance, and she was attempting to stare me down; the trembling in her hands, as before, had now spread to her whole body.
‘But you don’t love him,’ I burst out. ‘You don’t even
like
him. I’ve seen the contempt in your face when you look at him. How could you do that? Why –
why
would you do that?’
‘I did it because I
could
.’ She turned away. ‘Because I don’t want to be governess to some girl for the rest of my life, not even yours. Because I don’t want to go on – and on, and on, scratching a living, moving from place to place, buried alive, taking orders from fools. Because people won’t talk once I’m a married woman. Because your father was available and one fine day I thought –
why not
? Because I’m angry, and it gets me nowhere. Because I’m exhausted and I gave in. Because I once wanted to do great things and now I know I won’t––’ Her voice caught and she covered her face with her hands.