Menfreya in the Morning (7 page)

“But it’s beastly … for you and Bevil, I mean.”

“Bless you. We don’t mind.” She stood up and folded her

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hands together, trying to look like a saint “It’s for the sake of Menfreya,” she added.

It was soon after that when she showed me the table in the hall. “Once,” she said, “it was set with precious stones. Rubies, I think. See, they’ve all been taken out They were used up one by one by my ancestors … to save Menfreya. Well, now there are no rubies left, so it has to be wives and husbands.”

“I shall be a wife more precious than rubies,” I said. We giggled together. That was how it was with Gwennan; however much she hurt me, we would always laugh together; and however much she scorned me or criticized me, I was always her closest friend.

When my father decided to give a fancy-dress ball at Chough Towers, Gwennan determined to go. We were sixteen and neither of us officially “out,” but Gwennan badgered Lady Menfrey until she agreed that we might watch from the gallery if my father gave his permission for us to do this; and since Lady Menfrey asked it, it was graciously given.

“We need clothes,** said Gwennan, but even Lady Menfrey, who could usually be persuaded by her family, did not take that seriously.

Gwennan glowered; she raged and stormed; and for days she talked of nothing but costumes and how we could get them. Then one day when I went to Menfreya I found her in a state of excitement.

She greeted me with the words: “I’ve something to show you. Come on. It’s where you’ve never been before,”

Menfreya always seemed mysterious to me because there was so much of it which I had never explored, and the thought of seeing a new part excited me, so I eagerly followed Gwennan, who led me through the house to the east wing, which was never used and was the oldest part of Menfreya.

“This wing needs so many repairs that until they can be done we can’t live in it Who’d want to anyway? I came here yesterday but I didn’t like to stay, because it was getting dark.” We had climbed a short staircase and reached a door which she pushed but could not open.

“It was hard to open yesterday, but I managed it Before that it hadn’t been opened for years, I expect—not since Bevil and I came here ages ago. Don’t stand there. Give a hand.”

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I put my shoulder to the door and pushed with all my might It moved slowly at first and then flew open to disclose a gloomy passage which smelt of age and damp. We walked down this.

“We must be near the east buttress,** I whispered.

“There’s no need to murmur,” Gwennan shouted. “No one can hear us. We’re shut right away. Buttress is right. That’s where I’m taking you.”

My teeth were chattering—with excitement, not cold, although there was a chill hi the air.

“Fancy having all this and never coming here,” I said.

“Somebody went over it once and gave such an estimate for what had to be done that we forgot all about it That was the time when I came here exploring with Bevil.”

“When you were children?”

She didn’t answer. “Mind these stairs. Hold the rope.” We had come to a small spiral staircase; each step was steep and worn in the middle; the rope acted as a banister and a means of pulling oneself up the stairs. Gwennan stood at the top and grinned at me. She held up her hands. “Look at the dust.”

“What made you come here?”

**You’ll see. Look at this door. It was put in a long time after this place was built. Once there was just a panel which you could slide and let yourself into the room.”

“What room?”

“This leads to a sort of passage and then … into the haunted room. This door’s hard to open, too.”

It was; it gave a whine of protest which sounded like a human voice warning us not to go in—at least, that was what I suggested, and it made Gwennan shriek with laughter.

‘Trust you to think up that! Now.… through here. It leads to the buttress.”

The air was really chill now; the passage was narrow, the wall of stone. We were almost in the dark, and I reached for ‘Gwennan and clutched her skirt.

The passage opened out into what was scarcely a room— more like a circular aperture. There was no window but a slit in the deep wall open to the air, and through this came a little daylight.

**What a strange place!” I cried.

“Of course, it is. They used to keep prisoners here in the old days. Then, of course, he kept her here … and then it became haunted.”

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“You are incoherent, Gwennan.”

She watched my amazement with gratification as I looked round the place. Strangely enough, there was a mirror propped against the wall; its glass was mottled, its frame tarnished, and there was a trunk, green with mildew. I noticed another passage like that we had come through and pointed this out to Gwennan.

“Come on, then. 111 show you.” She led the way into the passage, where, facing us, was another spiral staircase like the one we had just mounted. She began to climb it, counting the steep steps as she did so. There were forty, and at the top we were out in the open air on a narrow circular walk which took us around the buttress.

“This is where she used to come up for air,” Gwennan announced.

“Who?”

“Her, of course. If she really does walk, I reckon she comes up here.”

The sides of the buttress were battlemented. We knelt on a ledge and leaned over to look down from the very top of the house to the sea below. Gwennan pointed out the corbels on which, she said, they used to stand the pots of boiling oil they threw down on anyone who came attacking them. “Imagine them,” she said, “climbing up the cliffs and getting out their battering rams. That was years and years ago … long before she was here.”

I filled my lungs with the fresh air and clung to the hard stone of the battlement I thought then: How I love this house where so many exciting things have happened, and so many people have lived and died. I wanted wholeheartedly to belong to it, to be one of them.

Gwennan had started to tell me the story. “She was employed here as a governess to the children, and this Menfrey —my ancestor—fell in love with her. When Lady Menfrey found out, she dismissed her and told her to get out of the house. She thought she had gone, but she hadn’t. You see, he couldn’t bear her to go away, so he brought her to this place because no one knew it was here then. He used to visit her in that room down there. Can’t you picture him, Harriet, creeping into the disused wing and sliding the panel. I bet it was a panel then, and he’d have a candle or perhaps a lantern … and they’d be together. He had to go away for a while. To London, I expect … to Parliament … and the clock in the tower stopped. You know, the

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tower clock, which is supposed to stop when a Menfrey is going to die.” “I didn’t…”

“You don’t know anything. Well, the clock hi the tower is supposed to stop when one of us is going to die an unnatural death. That’s why Dawney has to be careful to keep it going. We don’t believe these old stories—or we say we don’t … but other people do. That’s what Papa says, and we have to remember that. Goodness knows why.” “Well, what happened? Why did the clock stop?** “Because she died. She died up here … in that room down there … and so did the baby.” “Whose baby?”

“Hers, of course. You see, it came before it should … and no one knew. They both died. That’s why the clock stopped.”

“She wasn’t a Menfrey.**

“No, but the baby was. It stopped for the baby. Then Sir Bevil came back.” “Who?”

**I expect he was Sir Bevil … or Endelion or something … he came back and found her dead. They sealed off the room and never thought about it for years and years … until someone found it again and put the door in instead of the panel. But nobody would come here. The servants wouldn’t. They say it’s haunted. Do you think it is?** “It feels cold and melancholy,** I said. She hung over the battlements with her feet off the ground so that I was terrified that she was going to fall. She did it purposely, I knew, to show how reckless she was. “Let’s go down,” I said.

“Yes, rather. There’s that trunk. I looked inside. That’s why I brought you. But I wanted to show you this first” We made our way back to the circular room, and Gwennan lifted the lid of the trunk. The green growth came off on her hands, which made her grimace, but the contents of the trunk caused her to smile.

She was tugging at what looked like a piece of topaz-colored velvet, but I wasn’t interested; I was thinking of the woman who had been loved by a Menfrey. “I thought you could have this brown thing,” she said. She dropped it onto the floor and brought a roll of blue velvet, which she began draping about her. I picked up the topaz-colored velvet Jt was a dress, with a tight, square-cut bodice and wide

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sleeves that were slashed to show golden satin beneath. The skirt must have contained yards and yards of velvet I held it up against me, and when I looked at my reflection in that mottled mirror I could not believe I was looking at myself.

“It suits you,” said Gwennan, her attention momentarily distracted from herself. “Put it on. Yes, put it on.”

“Here?”

“Yes. Over your clothes.”

“It’s so cold I’m sure it’s damp,”

“It won’t hurt you for a minute. It’s just the thing for the ball.”

I caught her excitement as I slipped the dress over my head. She was beside me, pulling it, fastening it, and in a few seconds there I was … transformed.

It was cut low, and my gray merino showed at neck and sleeves, but that did not seem to matter. It became me in a way nothing else ever had. And as I lifted the skirt, something fell from it and, picking it up, I found it to be a snood, made of ribbon and lace and decorated with stones which might have been topaz.

“It goes on your hair,” said Gwennan, “Go on. Put it on.”

Now the change was complete. That was not poor, lame Harriet Delvaney who looked back at me from the mottled mirror. Her eyes were greener and much larger, her face

animated,

“It’s a miracle,” said Gwennan. She pointed at the reflection. “It’s not like you at all. You’ve turned into someone else.” She laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you something, Harriet Delvaney. You’ve got yourself a dress for the ball.**

She came and stood beside me, wrapping the blue velvet about her, and I was glad she was with me. If she had not been, I should have felt something very strange was happening to me. But then, of course, I was the fanciful one.

She took my hand. “Come, be my partner in the dance, dear Madam.”

She skipped round the room, her hand in mine. I went with her, and we had been round the room before I realized that I was dancing … I … who had told myself I would never dance.

She too had noticed it. “You’re a fraud, Harriet Delvaney,” she shouted, and her voice echoed oddly in this strange place. “I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that foot of yours, after all.”

I stopped and looked down at it; then I caught the re-

flection of the girl in the mirror. It was an extraordinary moment, like that in the garden when I was a child and had suddenly got up and walked.

I was exhilarated, I couldn’t understand why; I felt it had something to do with the dress I was wearing.

“Well, that settles it,” said Gwennan. “We’re going to the ball. And now get that off and we’ll take these things and we’ll see what we can do with them.”

We went back to Gwennan’s room together; I felt then as though I had begun to live in a dream.

My father came down to Chough Towers the day before the ball, and gloom descended on the house. Meals were always an ordeal when he was there. Fortunately for me—but not for him—William Lister joined us, and we would sit at the long table in the dining room—which overlooked one of the lawns—for what seemed like interminable periods of time. My father led the conversation, which was usually about politics, and William made discreet replies; if I spoke, my father would listen with obvious patience and usually ignore what I had said; if William tried to reply to me, my father often changed the subject. So I decided that it was better to say nothing and hope that the meal would soon be over. A’Lee would be at the sideboard directing the parlormaids—there were two of them; and it always seemed incongruous that we three should need so many people to wait on us—particularly as I knew how much bustle would be going on in the kitchen. I would rise when they reached the port stage and leave them to talk. How glad I was when it was time for that!

Once my father said to me: “Have you no conversation?” and I merely flushed and said nothing, when I wanted to shout: When I do speak you ignore me.

At least my mind was so occupied with thoughts of the dress which now hung in my wardrobe side by side with the one Gwennan would wear, and wondering if Bevil would see me in it and be charmed with what he saw, that I ceased to think very much about my father. Gwennan had said we must tell no one about our discovery because there might be attempts to stop us using the dresses. However, I could not keep Fanny out of the secret, and she had helped to make up the blue for Gwennan and altered the topaz velvet for me. She saw no harm in it, she said; and afterwards we could put them back where we found them. She hung

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them out on the balcony to air them, she said, and get rid of the musty smell. So, after we had smuggled them over to Chough Towers, there had been long sessions in my bedroom, which Fanny had seemed to enjoy as much as we did.

On the night of the ball, Fanny brushed my untidy hair untfl it lay flat about my shoulders; then she helped me into the dress and sat me down before the mirror so that I could watch while she finished my hair and put on the jeweled snood. My face looked back at me—my green eyes greener because they were so brilliant, a faint color beneath my skin; I could almost believe I was attractive in that dress.

“Well, there you are, my lady,” said Fanny, “all ready to go to the ball.”