A Dark Dividing, page 35
Who?
The woman you saw in Sonia’s mind. The dowdily dressed woman with brown hair and anxious hands whom Sonia had wanted to kill.
Simone had remembered the woman’s face vividly, even though she had only glimpsed her through Sonia’s mind. But that glimpse had stayed with her, and the woman whoever she was—had become one of the ghosts and part of the memories.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Charlotte Quinton’s diaries: 10th November 1914
All these years I had kept the memory of Viola and Sorrel as those two tiny curled-up creatures, warm and safe and loved in their crib. It’s been a good memory, one to hold on to. But now I have to face that the memory has changed into a nightmare, and that it’s a false memory. Viola and Sorrel were stolen away from that safe warmth, almost certainly by Edward, and they were taken to Mortmain House. Were they there the day Maisie and I went to Mortmain, the day Robyn and Anthony and the other children dealt out their dreadful vengeance to the child-trader? The dead man standing on air…
But whenever they were taken to Mortmain they must have lived there for years, shut away behind those grim walls. They would have lived as one of the ragged orphans, nobody’s children, forced to work, to scrub or scour, or pick oakum… Oh God, did they find any happiness at all during those years? Did they have friends and were they ever shown any kindness or pity? And did they understand what was happening when they were snatched up by the child-traders, the men Robyn called pigs, and put into a freak show for people to pay to stare at them?
If it were not for Floy, believe I might go mad thinking about all this, or sink into a decline. And then Edward would regretfully put me into an institution of my own, and people would say, Oh dear, poor Charlotte, the war quite unhinged her, you know: but then of course she never really recovered from the deaths of those poor afflicted children… And Edward’s mother would tell everyone it was a great tragedy, still, what can you expect; Charlotte never had any stamina, only look at how she never even gave poorest Edward a son… If I think about the part Edward’s mother might have played in this I think I will go mad, because I will never believe the evil old besom was not part of the whole wicked plan!
Floy has only the sparsest of information about Matt Dancy, and what he does know comes from one of the soldiers who was in the convalescent centre for a while with shrapnel wounds. The man came back to visit one of the other patients, seemingly, and mentioned a travelling group (or should it be troupe?) of performers. The twins had sung several songs at the end, he said, but for his part he had not much enjoyed seeing them; a bit cruel, he thought it, this business of putting such unfortunates on show, although the two girls had very sweet voices. (I know this is being supremely illogical, but I am aware of a jealous rage every time I think of Dancy or one of his revolting minions teaching my babies how to sing…)
One of the ironies about the situation is that the convalescent centre where I am working was apparently leased by Dancy himself and used as a music hall and supper club until the War Office requisitioned it. Since then Dancy has taken his performers on the road (think this is the correct term), and is travelling the country with them. The twins are billed as the Gemini Songbirds, which I find truly dreadful.
Floy has questioned the soldier carefully, but so far has only managed to elicit the information that Dancy and his performers have been touring the outskirts of London—places like Hackney and Hoxton—but that they left London a week ago.
Charlotte Quinton’s diaries:
15th November 1914
Was reading over breakfast an article in Blackwood’s about Government plans to revive compulsory military service. For the moment it will apply only to unmarried men between eighteen and forty—cannot help feeling agonized for all those boys being summarily sent out to fight, and cannot help remembering Floy’s recurring images of the mudfields and the relentless shelling like iron rain beating down, and of all those heartbreakingly young boys dying in pain and confusion, and horses screaming in terror. One day Floy will write about it, I think, and if he does it will make scalding reading.
The morning post brought a letter from Edward who is grumpy at being given what he calls inferior billeting—believe that when he volunteered for this War Office post he saw it in terms of proper servants and featherbeds, and civilized drinks before dinner with the Colonel. He says, irritably, that this is a very inefficiently run war; there was not all this nonsense about short rations and Jack’s-as-good-as-his-master when we fought the Boers. He does not think his digestion will comfortably support the kind of food he is being given either, which he knows will cause me great concern. It does not cause me any concern at all, in fact I hope he is suffering the torments of hell from his digestion.
However, Edward is convinced that the war will be over by Christmas, and a good thing too if you ask him. He will be coming home this weekend, and looks forward to seeing me. Fondest love.
I will see to it that Edward has no love, fond or otherwise, from me ever again.
2.00 p.m.
It is not my day for attending the convalescent centre, and I have felt guilty at being in the comfort of my own home for a few hours. Spent the morning writing letters, and checking household stores with Mrs Tigg. There are shortages of a great many things now: Mrs Tigg does not know what the world is coming to, and will I have a nice baked egg for my lunch today?
I was just sitting down to the baked egg, when a note was delivered by special messenger. Floy’s writing. Absurd that the sight of it still sends my pulses racing.
Floy writes that he must speak to me urgently—can I possibly come to his house right away? He has found Matt Dancy and his performers. They left London three days ago, bound for the Welsh Marches.
9.00 p.m.
I have thrown a random assortment of garments into a portmanteau, and I am writing this in my bedroom while I wait for Floy to collect me in a hackney. (Mrs Tigg horrified that I am going anywhere in a hackney, never mind to that nasty draughty Paddington railway station—whatever can you be thinking of, mum?—but I am beyond caring. I would go after my daughters in a wheelbarrow if it was the only means available.)
Just under two hours ago Floy and I held a snatched conversation at his house. Dancy seems to be heading back to Mortmain House, which seems odd to me, but Floy thinks Dancy might be fleeing from some kind of police pursuit. He is such a villain he has probably transgressed any amount of laws, and Mortmain would make a very good hiding place for him—especially if he is in league with the beadle.
But when Floy said he would confront Dancy on his own I stared at him incredulously. ‘Without me?’
‘Yes.’ He paced the length of the room restlessly a few times, and then said, ‘Charlotte, this could be extremely awkward. We don’t know the legal situation. I suspect Dancy could have legally adopted Viola and Sorrel—Edward might have signed some sort of contract renouncing all claim on them. And if Dancy is some kind of criminal escaping justice he might be violent—’
‘I don’t care how violent he is,’ I said. ‘Floy, you can’t expect me to stay in London while you go after Viola and Sorrel. You can’t!’
‘The whole thing could be so distressing for you—’ He broke off, thrusting the fingers of his hand through his hair, and I said that if he did not take me with him I would simply travel to Weston Fferna on my own, and search for Matt Dancy by myself and very likely end up shooting him.
‘My dearest love,’ said Floy, with infinite tenderness, ‘do you even so much as possess a shotgun?’
‘No, but if necessary I’ll steal one.’
We stared at each other, and then with a gesture of exasperated resignation, Floy said, ‘All right. We’ll travel together. I believe there’s a train from Waterloo at ten o’clock. Can you be ready at nine if I collect you in a cab?’
‘Of course.’
‘What about your family? Your parents and your sisters? They’re still living up there, aren’t they? Will you feel it necessary to stay at your father’s house?’
‘No.’ I had already thought about this. ‘There’s no need for my family to know any of this—at least, not yet.’
‘But there are people you might want to call on?’
I thought about Maisie, living in respectable mediocrity with her small daughter: I had visited her a couple of times while staying with my parents, and her little girl was a pretty, although rather oppressively well-behaved child. But Maisie had embraced her repentance with such zeal and lived such an austere, Bible-driven life, that there had been an atmosphere of cold disapproval towards me all the time I was there. Then I thought about Robyn and Anthony who had vanished so completely and whom I had never been able to trace.
I said to Floy, ‘There’s no one. For the purpose of this journey I’m a respectable married lady travelling on an urgent errand in wartime. No one will raise any eyebrows but if anyone does I shan’t care. We’ll book two rooms at The Bridge.’
‘What if you’re seen? Recognized? Charlotte, you spent your childhood in that part of the world, and if we’re travelling about the countryside trying to find Dancy—’
‘I’ll wear a veil,’ I said in desperation. ‘I’ve got one of those motoring things. It’s as thick as a shroud, for goodness’ sake! And if anyone speaks to us, I’ll—I’ll pretend to be foreign. A Belgian refugee from the war.’
Floy threw up his hands in resignation, but then said, ‘What about Edward?’
‘Oh, bother Edward,’ I said, although in fact I used a much stronger word than bother, which I feel is inappropriate to write down here. ‘Edward’s still away, fighting the war from an office,’ I said. ‘So he’s not likely to even know I’m away as well. But if it troubles you, I will leave a letter for him implying that I have travelled home to see my sisters.’
It was eight o’clock when Simone finally came out of Thorne’s. She set the alarm and locked the door carefully, conscious of extreme tiredness. Facing ghosts was a fatiguing business, it seemed.
Ghosts. Whatever had happened before or since, Sonia had not been a ghost that day, she had been a living, breathing entity. Simone was still grappling with the prospect of phoning her mother later on, although she could not begin to think how she would tell her. But she would make the call as soon as she got in. Maybe she could write out what to say before phoning—yes, that might make it easier. But however she put it and however she did it, there was still going to be that appalling moment when she had to say that it looked as if after all she had killed Sonia, and they had better try to think who the brown-haired woman might be, because clearly she was mixed up in all this—
She was glad that she had her car here for once, and that she could drive straight home; she reached her flat, parked outside the building, and got out, locking the car door. She was just turning to go up the narrow path to her own door when a figure stepped out from the shadow of the adjoining building and stood in front of her. Simone glanced up with an automatic stab of apprehension, because you never really felt safe from muggers and handbag-snatchers in London, even though this was a fairly quiet street.
It was not a mugger and it was not a handbag-snatcher either, and for several wild seconds Simone thought she had tumbled straight into the nightmare and not realized it—or even that Time had somehow wound itself back, because although this was a set of features she had never, to her knowledge, seen before, it was a set of features she knew and recognized. Brown hair, in no particular style, plain features with rather hard little eyes. A little plain brown sparrow or a wren, unremarkable except for the mouth which was thin and might merit the description rat-trap, and except for the hands which were unquiet and nervous… Simone recognized her at once as the woman she had glimpsed in Sonia’s mind that day: the drab, rather dowdy woman whom Sonia had hated so fiercely and who had become part of Simone’s own recurrent nightmare.
There was a moment when Simone stared, her mind whirling with confusion, and there was another moment when she thought that it was not so much that Time had wound itself back: it was more that it had wound itself forward, because now there were lines of age around the woman’s eyes and mouth that were not there in the dream, and that was somehow the most frightening part of all because surely ghosts did not age, surely they stayed frozen in their own fragments of time and space and infinity…?
She thought she started to say something although she had no idea what it would have been, but before she could frame any words the woman had reached out a gloved hand, and there was a glint of something and then a sudden sharp skewering pain spiking down into Simone’s arm. The familiar street with her own front door only yards away tilted and spun, and for a moment she thought she was going to faint.
‘You won’t lose consciousness,’ the woman said, as if she had picked this up. ‘I’ve given you chlorpromazine—enough to make you more or less helpless, but not quite enough to knock you out altogether.’
Simone managed to say, ‘Why—?’ but the woman was already taking her arm very firmly, and propelling her along the street. She felt immensely strong.
‘My car’s just along here,’ she said. ‘And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to get into it—you’ll be in the back seat, but you’ll be strapped in and I’m going to bind your wrists and ankles so you won’t be able to do very much. And if anyone questions us before we reach the car I shall say you’ve been taken ill and that I’m a nurse and I’m driving you to hospital. I really am a nurse anyway,’ she said, ‘so it’s likely that I’ll be believed. Here we are now. In you go.’
Simone had been hoping that someone would come along and that she could appeal for help, but the woman’s car was only a few steps along the street and this was not a time of day when many people were around. The car was a small hatchback—Simone was pushed on to the back seat, and the woman leaned over her. There was the feel of something being snapped around Simone’s wrists—twine or some kind of thin tough plastic. The sort of thing they put around your wrists in hospital with an identity tag on it. She remembered that the woman had said she was a nurse. But everything was feeling so distant and blurry that Simone was not even sure that this was actually happening any longer. Perhaps it was a new twist to the familiar nightmare, and if so she might wake up in a moment. ‘And now your ankles,’ said the woman, reaching down. ‘Good. Last of all the seat-belt. I don’t want to be stopped by the police because we aren’t both properly belted in.’
She clicked the seat-belt around Simone’s waist, and then straightened up, closed the rear door and got into the driver’s seat. Simone struggled against the wrist bindings, but whatever the woman had given her—chlorpromazine, had she called it?—was making her so impossibly weak that even to move a finger took a huge effort.
‘There’s no point in trying to get free, Simone,’ said the woman, and glanced at Simone in the driving mirror. Her eyes were like hard little pebbles. ‘Oh yes, I know your name,’ she said softly. ‘I know a very great deal about you, Simone. I’ve been watching you on and off for quite a while now and I’ve been waiting to meet you for years. I know far more about you than you can possibly realize.’ She fired the engine and the car moved off.
‘Where—are—you—taking—me?’ Getting each word out was like climbing a mountain but Simone finally managed it.
‘We’re going on quite a long journey, Simone,’ said the woman. ‘Tonight we’re going to Mortmain.’
Charlotte Quinton’s diaries:
16th November 1914
This morning we are going to Mortmain, Floy and I.
I was all for going out there directly we arrived last night, but Floy pointed out (with maddening male logic!) that it was already well past midnight, and not a good idea to approach any house, least of all that house, at such an hour.
So I have had to contain my soul in as much patience as I can muster for the last seven or eight hours, and have managed to eat a little breakfast (a cup of coffee and a slice of toast), and now I am ready, wearing a plain tailor-made (brown twill), over a cream silk blouse. Realize it is wholly frivolous to be recording this sartorial information when in a very little while I may be meeting my dear lost daughters after fourteen years, but refuse to lower standards on these matters. Also, writing about my clothes helps to fill up the time until we can decently set out for Mortmain. Brown twill costume, small brown hat with bronze trimming, buttoned boots, amber beads and brooch, cambric handkerchief, sprinkled with lavender…
I think I am more terrified than I can ever remember being in my entire life, but I shall not let anyone guess.
9.30 a.m.
My bedroom is at the front of the Bridge, overlooking the roadway (quite a small room but v. cosy and pleasingly furnished), and I have just opened the window to listen to the morning. The air always smells so different in the country to London, and I do so love the autumn scents—golden brown and copper scents, all mixed in with soft rain and chrysanthemums and bonfires…
Down below I can hear Floy arranging for the pony and trap that serves the Bridge’s guests to be brought round for us at 10.00. So in an hour’s time—perhaps two hours—I may be on the other side of the most momentous meeting and the most extraordinary event of my life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Charlotte Quinton’s diaries:
20th November
It is now three days since we arrived in Weston Fferna, Floy and I, and we began our search early on that first morning, taking the Bridge’s pony and trap out to Mortmain House and asking the man to bring it back to collect us at midday. (Would not have thought of this, but Floy sometimes unexpectedly practical.)
We had no very precise plan, only that we would go up to the house and ask to see the beadle, and then inquire of him whether twin girls, their bodies joined at birth, had been brought here in the first weeks of 1900.
