Property of a Lady (31 page)

Tonight I shall lie wakeful in my bed upstairs, imagining the marriage night, every step of the way. A firelit bedchamber in Mallow House, snow crusting the window panes outside . . . She will lie warm and soft in scented sheets, waiting for him . . .

He’ll go to her bed with a book of sonnets or some metaphysical poet’s works, and I wouldn’t put it past him to forget to remove his spectacles from his nose when he turns back the sheets . . .

April 1881

Today I sat three rows behind my Elizabeth in church and feasted my eyes on the little tendrils escaping from her bonnet and clustering over the nape of her neck. And the whiteness of her neck as it emerges from the collar of her gown . . . Is she happy with him? Is he good to her? When he bends his head in prayer, he looks exactly like a pale-brown vulture. I never before wished a man dead, but by God, I wish this one dead!

My father used to say that hatred is one of the devil’s favourite guises.

November 1881

‘Mr and Mrs William Lee of Mallow House, Marston Lacy, in the County of Shropshire, are happy and proud to announce the birth of a daughter, Elvira Victoria, on 10th November.’

Of course I should have expected that! Or did I believe theirs would be a marriage of convenience: separate rooms, separate beds, separate bodies? Didn’t I know, deep down, that the grasshopper, the juiceless bookworm, would mate with the dragonfly? Oh Elizabeth . . .

The hatred walks through my workshop and my house every night now. The only place where I can find the smallest fragment of peace is in my workshop. But sometimes even there I feel the darkness enclosing me, and it’s a darkness that whispers there are things that can be done to soothe an aching heart and burning loins, and ways to make an unwilling lady yield her body, if not her heart . . . If only I could have one night with her I believe this hunger would be quenched for ever. Just one night . . .

‘The writing changes a bit on the next page,’ said Nell as Michael paused to reach for his wine.

‘Yes. It’s the same person writing it, though. D’you want to keep reading?’

‘No,’ said Nell, ‘but it’s like opening up the cellar earlier – not knowing will be worse.’

‘There’s rather a lot still to read,’ he said, looking at the papers.

‘Are you saying we could be here all night?’

Michael turned his head slowly and looked at her. Nell had thought she was being very cool and very controlled about this, but when he looked at her in this way, a bolt of desire seemed to slice through her entire body.

‘I wish I could be,’ he said, then made a half-angry gesture, as if there was something he could no longer bear to resist, and pulled her against him.

His first kiss was gentle and almost questioning, but when she responded instantly and eagerly, the gentleness accelerated into passion. Through mounting delight and desire, Nell thought the emotion flaring up between them was so intense it was as if the air around them was becoming charged with electricity. She clung to him, lost to everything but the intense pleasure coursing through her. So, after all, those nerves and emotions she had thought gone were still there – alive and clamouring for attention.

When he finally released her, she leaned against him, strongly aware of the warmth of his body.

‘Do I apologize?’ he said, his arms still round her. ‘Would you like to smack my face?’

‘Oh Michael,’ said Nell, turning her head upwards to look at him. ‘That’s the last thing I want to do to you.’

He smiled, his eyes narrowing in the way that was already familiar. ‘I think I wanted to kiss you like that since that first day,’ he said.

‘I think I wanted it since about the second day.’

When he kissed her again, this time Nell leaned back against the settee’s arm and he moved closer until they were lying against each other, their bodies locked together. And incredibly and blessedly, there was no shadowy ghost – these emotions were so different from the ones she had felt for Brad, it was as if they were coming from a wholly different source – a source she had not suspected existed.

Eventually, he sat up, his hair dishevelled, a faint colour touching his cheekbones. ‘I should stop,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to stop . . .’

‘I got beyond that point ten minutes ago,’ said Nell. ‘I can’t stop at all now. I don’t want to stop. Kiss me again – oh God, yes, that’s good . . .’

It was natural and unforced, and it was so wildly exciting that Nell thought she might either faint or burst into tears from sheer delight. His hands on her body were tentative and then not tentative at all, and it felt as if they were melting into one another.

He drew back briefly before entering her. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Is it all right – I mean can we— Because I haven’t got—’

‘It’s all right,’ said Nell, understanding. ‘Long-term contraceptive implant.’

She thought, afterwards, that the words ought to have shattered the mood, but they did not. The firelight danced over the walls, and the scent of woodsmoke and wine filled the room, and the climax, when it came, was a sweet, deep explosion. He cried out and pulled her against him, his hair soft against her naked shoulder, and Nell wanted to stay like this for ever. Against his shoulder, she said drowsily, ‘Skyrockets and exploding rainbows. Oh Michael,’ and felt his arms tighten.

‘Shooting stars and supernova,’ he said. ‘Thank you, my love.’

‘Did you call me your love?’ said Nell, registering this after several minutes.

‘I did, didn’t I? I think I was trying it out,’ said Michael. ‘But it sounds good, doesn’t it? As if it fits?’

‘Yes,’ said Nell slowly. ‘Yes, it does.’ She sat up. ‘D’you know what I’d like now? Don’t grin like that. I was going to say a cup of tea.’

‘You’re a constant delight,’ he said. ‘But now you mention it, a cup of tea would be exactly right.’

Nell stood up and pulled on the shirt she had been wearing and that had been discarded so frantically a short while ago.

‘You look amazingly sexy wearing just a shirt,’ said Michael, watching her.

‘You look amazingly sexy wearing nothing at all. Oh, are you getting dressed? What a pity.’

‘Well, just for a while,’ he said, reaching for his sweater. ‘I wouldn’t guarantee that it’s for the entire evening, though.’

Nell went out to the kitchen to put on the kettle, and Michael followed her. It seemed entirely natural that he should reach for the mugs and set them out while the kettle came to the boil.

‘After we’ve drunk the tea, do we return to Brooke?’ he said.

‘Yes, let’s. We might have to hand the journal over to the police or the coroner or somebody in the morning, so let’s find out as much as we can before we do that.’

‘At the moment I feel quite sorry for him, although I feel sorry for anybody who isn’t me tonight,’ said Michael. ‘Poor old Brooke and his unrequited passion.’

‘But he had his work,’ said Nell. ‘And his books.’

30th November 1884

Like many another man suffering from an unrequited passion, I have turned to books for solace over the last few years. My father had a large library – although his tastes ran to the collected sermons of worthy churchmen and such moral tales as
The Pilgrim’s Progress
. I grew up with Bible tracts and the New Testament – my father was inclined to eschew the Old Testament on account of the more robust activities of some of its peoples. He did not consider, for example, the Genesis account of the sin of Onan to be suitable for mixed congregations, although I always felt rather sorry for Onan, who was slain by the Lord for the mere accident of spilling his seed on the ground. These things happen. Nor did my father condone all of the Old Testament, considering St Paul on the subject of temple prostitutes, and Leviticus talking about fornication, unnecessarily descriptive. I believe he told the vicar at St Paul’s that if these passages were ever part of a sermon, he (Father) would walk out. The vicar agreed with these views, although pointed out that a good deal of blame must be laid at the door of the later translators, King James included.

Given my father’s outlook on matters of the flesh, I sometimes wonder how I ever came to be born at all, and I’m not surprised my mother died, quietly and unobtrusively, when I was two years old.

However, as well as the religious works, my father also had a shelf of local legends and folklore, in which he took considerable interest. As a boy I was not allowed to read them, and it was only after his death that I did so.

You’d think it a relatively harmless subject. Admittedly, there were a few slightly prurient explanations as to the tribal deflowering of virgins and how best to achieve this without loss of honour or prestige before the rest of the clans. Also directions for what apparel to wear when leaping through the bonfire – although authorities differed on that point, the purists holding the ritual would be tainted if undergarments were worn, the pragmatists recommending several thick layers of flannel in case of errant sparks from the fire. But in the main the books were innocent enough, although I’d question the symbolism of some of the practices.

But – and here’s the real nub of the matter – there’s a dangerously thin line between legend and lore and— Well, the deeper, darker forces.

We’ve lost most of the old beliefs – we’ve forced them out with our machines and our smoke-belching industries and our mechanical dragons rumbling along iron tracks: I heard only last week that the railway is to be brought quite near to Marston Lacy, and while I suppose that’s progress and necessary, I’m sad at the despoiling of the countryside.

Despite all this, the ancient beliefs still linger. They’ve come down to us from a time when the world was young, and when strange things still lingered in its crevasses and chasms and in the lairs of mountains and subterranean caverns. And for the prepared or the curious mind, there are signposts pointing them out.

For me, the first signpost appeared when I found a book on my father’s shelves called
The Ingoldsby Legends
, collected by the Reverend Richard Barham, purportedly written by one Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor. I suppose my father acquired it because he thought anything written by a minister of the church was suitable and praiseworthy. But although I’m not a betting man (too cautious!) I’d lay any money that he never read it. In fact, Thomas Ingoldsby was Barham’s pen-name. The legends he’s plundered are parodies or pastiches, but they are based on genuine old myths and beliefs.

Living quietly in this small corner of the English countryside, making a modestly prosperous living, I have begun to trace some of those beliefs. It’s a curious experience – like picking up a black and bloodied string and feeling your way along until you reach its core. I’m not entirely sure I ought to be doing this, but that dark string, once picked up, is impossible to put down. I shall go just a little further along.

At times, emerging from reading of old tracts and ancient chronicles, I am uneasily aware of something seeping into my mind, like a thin trickle of brackish water. Is that how madness starts? No, I won’t believe that, I
won’t
 . . .

I shall go on with my research – I want to find the genesis of those legends.

June 1885

My studies over these past months have been innocent enough, although – I shall be frank – they have not been studies I should want my neighbours to know about. That fine line between legend and something more dangerous, again. That trickle of brackish water . . . But it has stopped now, I know it has. I am entirely sane.

I have reread that last sentence and am shocked to see how deeply my pen scored into the page when I wrote that I was sane. I think I shall not write in this diary again. It sometimes frightens me.

TWENTY-FOUR

January 1886

I
am coming to the conclusion that my books must be stored somewhere less visible. As the collection grows, they become more noticeable to visitors to the house, and some of the titles on the spine are – well, I’ll use the word
dubious
.

Over the last few years I’ve made a number of trips outside Marston Lacy to scour second-hand bookshops – that despised railway has proved its value after all, for travel is now very easy indeed! Sometimes private libraries are broken up and sold when the owner dies. I’ve attended several of those; in fact, I believe I’ve become known as a collector of curios. ‘Ah, Mr Crutchley,’ a book dealer said to me last month at a library sale near Chirk. ‘We wondered if you might be along. Now there’s a little volume here you might fine interesting.’ And twice I’ve been sent an invitation to such sales. That pleases me greatly.

It will be very inconvenient to move the books. But it might be worse to leave them where they are. People often come to my house – I am a church sidesman at St Paul’s and also on its John Howard Committee for prison reform and visiting. This last is a very worthy organization – I was flattered when they invited me to serve on it, and I like to think I have been of value. Prison reform is a worthwhile cause – no matter a man’s crime, depriving him of his freedom and liberty should be sufficient punishment without forcing on him the indignities and deprivations rife in so many gaols.