The Secret by the Lake (33 page)

I understood now that the history of the room accounted for all the odd things that had happened inside it. All the sadness and fear that had seeped into the brickwork was gradually being released as the paper that had sealed it in the fabric of the building, like a secret, was peeled away. Tomorrow I would open the window wide and give the room a proper airing. And I’d paint the walls, paint over the past and then I’d scrub the floorboards and fill the room with light and flowers. Once that was done, then Daniel could come in and open up the fireplace. We could put an electric fire in the opening, that would make the room feel more modern. The estate agent could come and take his photographs. And I’d carry some flowers to Caroline’s grave, flowers for Caroline and the baby.

I tied my apron about my waist, unscrewed the cap and poured white spirit on to my cloth. I dabbed it in the middle of the last patch of wallpaper. The smell was awful and my eyes stung but I persisted, dabbing a wider area. And as I did so, so the wallpaper lost its opacity. It became transparent.

I watched as the vile yellow faded and the pattern disappeared; the paper became like tracing paper, and what was beneath it suddenly, after thirty years, became visible. The writing appeared, faint at first but then clearer.

At last I saw what Caroline had written on the wall behind the chimney breast.

Dear baby
, I read.
You were born in this room on the 23rd of August 1931.

My first thought was that that couldn’t be right. Caroline had died on the 31st of August. How could her baby have been born more than a week earlier?

I read on.

Dr Croucher told me you were stillborn but I heard you cry outside my window as he took you away. I will find you. And in the meantime wherever I am and whatever …

My heart was thumping. I tipped more liquid on to the cloth, put it on to the paper, waited for the paper to become invisible.

… becomes of me, even if I am in the asylum, know that I am your mother and I …

I poured some more liquid on to the paper, directly from the bottle.

… am not the wicked person they tell you I am. I wanted to keep you, I tried, but I was …

Dab, dab, dab on the paper.

… not strong enough to hold on to you.

I love you.

Though we are apart, I will be beside you, always.

I stepped back.

‘Oh Caroline!’ I said.

I closed my eyes.

I was in the same place as she had been.

We were separated only by time.

I am Caroline now. I am lying in the bed. The mattress is soaked, with sweat and blood and with the waters that broke when I went into labour. I’m so hot, the room is like a furnace. I’d begged to have the window open but the doctor had refused. If I cry out, or make any kind of noise, he threatens me with his pad of chloroform. There is such pain inside me, pain as if the bottom half of me has been macerated, ripped to shreds. And I feel empty. For weeks I’ve had the company of the secret baby growing inside me, I’ve felt its movements, day and night, the little flutters and kicks, the tapping of its fingers, the push against my abdomen as it turned in the womb. People had started to notice I was growing thicker round the waist. Madam knew. I overheard her talking to the doctor. She told her parents too, Sir George and Lady Debeger. I was all ready for the questions, all ready to be given my marching orders, but nothing happened. I thought everything was going to plan for me and Robert and our precious baby. I thought we were going to be fine. But now the doctor has taken the baby and I am alone. My nightdress is stuck to me, plastered to my sore, heavy breasts and my stomach. The bloody sheets are kicked off all over the floor. It wasn’t meant to be like this. Robert has gone to Scotland. He has rented a little house where we can live together, in a place where nobody knows us. He will work on the estate, managing the fish, and I will stay at home with our baby. We are going to be happy. Everything is going to be fine.

Only it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Our baby came early. It should have been born the second week of September, and by then we would have been in Scotland, but I couldn’t help the labour. I couldn’t stop it. And now the baby is born and I’ve heard Dr Croucher talking to my parents: I’ve heard him say the best place for me is the asylum. He said I can go there for a few years until I am rehabilitated. I shall refuse to go. I shall put up such a fight. I shall run away. Robert will be back soon and he will save me, he will sort out this mess. Somehow. He will make everything all right.

What is it?
I ask.
Is it a boy or a girl? Where is it? Where’s my baby?

My mother is here now, beside me, wiping my face with a flannel, holding my hand. She is talking about blood, about the tears in my flesh, about the afterbirth. My mother is crying.

Where is my baby?
I plead with her.
Mother, dear Mother, tell me, where is my baby?

The doctor is in the room. He has a basin in his hand. The basin is covered over with a cloth. His wicked face is severe, serious. He is speaking but I don’t hear him.

Caroline, listen to me. You are a very lucky young woman. The baby is deformed. He was stillborn and it’s a blessing.

No!

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to have the baby in hospital. Robert was going to pay for me to have a private room in a hospital in Scotland, a room with its own private nurse. The room was going to be full of flowers and sunshine.

‘It will be all right, my love,’ he had told me. ‘You’ll have the best room and I’ll make sure you have the best doctors, the best care. I want everything in our child’s life to be perfect from the moment it opens its eyes and takes its first breath.’

He promised he would wait outside while the baby was being born, and the moment he heard its cry he would come into the room straight away, and be with me. He was never going to leave me. We were going to be a family – together, always.

The doctor is speaking again. He’s talking to my mother.

It often happens when a young woman has a baby out of wedlock that the baby’s development is corrupted and it is born deformed. It is nature’s way. It’s kinder in the long run for the mother and the child.

My mother is crying.

I am screaming.
Where is my baby?

And there’s that sickening sweet smell again, those ice-cold vapours, and the doctor’s pad is over my mouth and nose and the pain is receding and the room is spinning.

I’m so hot.

I am burning up.

I open my eyes. I am alone in the room. I am so hot.

I climb out of the bed and throw open the window. I gulp in the cool air, great lungfuls of it, the fresh August air, the smell of hay from the meadows and a yellowy evening falling – and down below there is the doctor, putting something on the back seat of his car: a small, swaddled bundle, a bundle that is waving tiny pink fists, a bundle that is crying its little heart out.

I went back downstairs. Julia looked at my face.

‘What now?’ she asked.

‘Caroline’s baby wasn’t stillborn,’ I said. ‘And it wasn’t born the day she died but eight days earlier. They took him from her and they gave him to Jean Aldridge.’

Julia sat perfectly still and silent for a moment while she considered this.

Then: ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. That would have been too cruel! My mother would
never
have agreed to that.’

‘Your mother didn’t know about it. She was told the baby was stillborn.’

Julia sighed lengthily. ‘But Amy, it’s all conjecture. We will never know the truth. Caroline is gone and we can hardly go demanding answers from Robert Aldridge. Nobody can tell us what happened all those years ago.’

I reached behind to untie my apron. ‘One person can,’ I said. ‘Dr Croucher. He was there. He knows exactly what happened.’

I PUT ON
my shoes and coat and went out into the fog, but I had only taken a few steps when Julia called out to me: ‘Wait! I’m coming with you.’

‘What about Vivi?’ I asked.

‘She’s at Sunnyvale,’ Julia replied. ‘We can collect her and she can come back with us.’

‘Are you sure? It’s quite a way.’

Julia was pulling on her coat awkwardly, balancing on her stick. Her breathing was quick.

‘I want to hear every word the doctor has to say,’ she said. ‘I want to hear it from his own mouth.’

I put my arm around Julia’s waist and she held on to the back of my coat and the two of us set off along the lane in the direction of the lake. Within moments we were enclosed by the fog, and we could see nothing but the bony fingers of leafless trees reaching out through the gloom. Julia was soon out of breath and every few steps she slipped on the damp surface. She slowed me down yet I was so glad we were together. Julia’s weight leaning on me did not feel like a burden, rather the opposite.

‘What if we get there,’ she panted, ‘and the doctor refuses to say anything?’

‘He’ll tell us.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because if he won’t tell us, then we will make a commotion at Sunnyvale, in front of all his peers, all those respectable old men and women. He will tell us the truth to keep us quiet. His reputation is all that is left to him now.’

‘Amy, you have become positively Machiavellian! Whatever happened to the meek little thing you used to be?’

‘Caroline happened,’ I said.

The fog became thicker the closer we descended towards the lake. We walked slowly, holding on to one another. I could feel Julia’s heart pumping through the damp fabric of her coat. I could feel her fear and her determination and I thought: We will get to the truth this time, we will get to the bottom of this.

We reached the bottom of the hill and the walking became easier but Julia was becoming more tired with every footfall. It was so long since she’d taken any real exercise. We had to stop every few paces so she could catch her breath. I wanted to run – to hurry and confront the doctor, but Julia was really slowing me now. I was somehow afraid that he might know we were coming, and avoid the confrontation. I was afraid that if he slipped away from us now, we would never know the truth.

As we passed the entrance to Fairlawn, a man rode past on a motorbike, going in the opposite direction. He seemed familiar to me, although I couldn’t place him. I paid him little attention, although he was the only person we saw out that evening, and the noise of the bike engine going up the hill rang out over the foggy valley.

We crossed the dam without meeting anyone else or seeing a single vehicle. When we reached the spot above where Jean had drowned, my blood ran cold and I felt the hairs stand up on my neck. Our feet were walking over the exact place where Caroline had stood holding her baby. She had tried to take him back home but she had collapsed. Was that when the fatal haemorrhage started? Here, on the dam?

I imagined her lying on the ground, her face pressed against the earth, the baby still in her arms. She must have held him in such a way as to protect him as she fell. Did she know she was dying? Did she look out over the water and see the reflection of the summer sky and know that she only had a little time left?

The night was quiet and still; unearthly. The fog opened up only a few yards in front of us, and closed again behind us. It would be easy enough to fall into the reservoir on a night like this. Easy enough for anyone to go the same way as Jean Aldridge.

‘Oh Amy,’ Julia gasped, leaning heavily on me, ‘this is so hard.’

‘It’s just a little further,’ I replied. ‘We’re almost there.’

‘I’m slowing you down.’

‘Not really. Only another few yards, then you can rest.’

‘You’re very good to me,’ Julia said.

‘It’s mutual.’

We turned right beneath the illuminated archway and the sign that said:
Sunnyvale: First-class Residential Nursing Care for Gentlefolk
, although the sign was blurred by the fog, the light smudged into the air. We walked along the drive, past the Hailswood School minibus, past a handful of parked cars. By now I was half-carrying Julia; she was wheezing and heaving at her breath. She was not difficult to carry, she was so thin and frail in my arms, little more than a bag of bones, yet I could feel her resilience. I could feel her old energy and fight returning. She was looking forward to this meeting. She was hungry for the truth.

Before we went into the reception I smoothed Julia’s damp hair around her face and passed her her stick, so she could walk independently. ‘Will you be OK?’ I asked.

‘I’ll be fine.’

We went inside. The air was dry and very warm. A middle-aged nurse was sitting behind the desk transcribing figures into a ledger. From beyond, the sound of children singing came along the corridor – a pure, clear sound. I picked out Viviane’s voice and was reassured.

The nurse’s smile faded when she saw Julia, wheezing and white, with her wild hair, her mismatched clothes. The woman touched her earlobe nervously and her eyes swung from left to right, looking for support, but nobody else was around. Everyone was in the day room, listening to the choir.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked. She looked pointedly at the clock, so that we would realize it was an inconvenient time to visit.

‘We’ve come to see Dr Croucher,’ Julia said.

‘He’s busy at the moment. We have a children’s choir in to entertain the residents.’

‘We’ll wait in his room then.’

‘Are you family?’

‘Yes,’ Julia said. ‘We’ve come to surprise him.’

The nurse hesitated. ‘I’m not sure …’

‘We won’t stay long,’ Julia said. ‘Come on, Amy.’ And she walked down the corridor with her head held high, and although she was wearing shabby boots, although she looked like a bag lady and was relying heavily on her stick, she had regained her old elegance, her old charisma, her old confidence. I smiled at the nurse, and trotted after her.

We found the doctor’s room easily enough at the far end of a carpeted hallway. His name was inscribed on a brass plaque,
Dr Gerard Croucher OBE
. I turned the handle, expecting the door to be locked, but it was not and I pushed it open. In the day room, distantly, the singing reached a crescendo and there was the sound of genteel applause.