The Taxidermist's Daughter (3 page)

Chapter 3

Blackthorn House

Fishbourne Marshes

Connie drank her coffee on the terrace, making the most of the sunshine before going back to the workshop.

Her journal and a fresh jar of blue ink sat on the table in front of her. So far, she had written nothing.

She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with fresh, sharp sea air. She was pleased with her work this morning and, for the first time in some days, felt at peace with the world and her place in it.

Who killed Cock Robin?

I, said the Sparrow

With my bow and arrow.

I killed Cock Robin.

The maid’s voice floated through the house and out of the French windows on to the terrace. Connie smiled. Mary often sang to herself when she thought no one was listening. She was a sweet creature and Connie considered herself fortunate to have secured her. Her father’s profession was strange enough to excite distrust these days, and most of the village girls she’d interviewed when they first arrived were scared, or claimed to be, by the bell jars in the workshop, the bottles of preserving solutions, the trays of sharp glittering eyes and varnished claws. The first maid Connie engaged had given notice after only two weeks.

And . . . all the birds of the air

Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing

When they heard of the death

Of poor Cock Robin.

Connie put down her pen and sat back, feeling the sigh of the wicker garden chair beneath her.

For the first time in weeks, she had woken shortly after five o’clock to the sound of birdsong, then the sound of silence. Loud, astonishing silence. She could no longer hear the wind howling around the house or the rain smattering against her window pane.

The past winter and early spring had been long and harsh. Black clouds and purple skies, the endless shifting of the mudflats and a pitiless wind shaking the house to its foundations night after night.

In January, Mill Lane and Apuldram Lane both had flooded. Ghost lakes forming where once were fields. The roots of the wych elms rotting where they stood. In February, Connie had been kept awake by the frantic rumbling and turning of the wheel of the Old Salt Mill in the centre of the creek, spinning and booming and thundering in the surge of the spring tides. In March, one of the branches of the oak tree had come down in the gales, missing their workshop by a matter of inches. April and the endless squalls, rain falling vertically and the land sodden underfoot. The water meadows hadn’t dried out yet. Connie had set up a line of pails in the attic to catch the water. She made a note to remind Mary to bring them down, if the weather looked like holding.

Today, the surface of the mill pond was flat and the marshes were alive with colour. Blue-green water, tipped with foam by a gentle breeze, glinting in the sunshine. The oaten reedmace like the underside of velvet ribbon. The blackthorn and early hawthorn shimmering with white flowers. Red goosefoot and wild samphire, purple-eyed speedwell and golden dandelions in the hedgerows.

Connie looked back over her shoulder to the house itself. Often it appeared inhospitable, so isolated and exposed on the marshes, some quarter of a mile from its nearest neighbour. Today, it looked splendid in the sunshine.

Fashioned from the same warm red brick as several of the finest houses in Fishbourne, it had a steep red-tiled roof and tall chimney. At the back of the house was a kitchen with a modern black-lead range, a scullery and a walk-in larder. On the first floor were four bedrooms and a night nursery overlooking the water. A narrow flight of stairs led up to the servants’ quarters on the top floor, unoccupied since Mary’s mother insisted on her living at home.

But what had persuaded her father to take the house was the long and light conservatory, which occupied the entire west side of the house. He had turned it into their workshop. And in the furthest south-west corner of the garden, there was a large rectangular ice house made of brick, which they used as a storeroom.

The gardens to the south and the east were set to lawn. A wooden village gate, cut into the blackthorn hedge at the north-east corner of the property and bordered by one of the many tidal streams that fed into the head of the creek, opened directly from the kitchen garden to the track leading to the village.

The main entrance was further down the footpath. A black wrought-iron gate led to the front door of Blackthorn House, which faced east towards the Old Salt Mill. On a clear day, there were views all the way across the creek to the water meadows on the far side of the estuary. There were no beaches where children might play, no dramatic cliffs or outcrops, just miles of mudflats and saltings, revealed at low tide.

There, just half a mile as the crow flies across the water, the tiny church of St Peter & St Mary was hidden in the green folds of willow and beech and elm. Beyond that, another mile to the east, the soaring restored spire and Norman bell tower of Chichester Cathedral dominated the landscape.

Who’ll dig his grave?

I, said the Owl,

With my pick and shovel,

I’ll dig his grave.

Connie ran her hand over the surface of the table, still thinking about her father. If only she could persuade him to leave his room. It wasn’t simply a matter of his health, but also because she wanted to ask him why he had gone to the church a week ago. He hated to be questioned, and usually Connie did not press. She did not like to distress him. But this time was different. She’d been patient, knowing she had to choose her moment wisely, but she couldn’t allow another week to slip by.

In the past couple of weeks, Gifford’s demeanour had changed. He seemed to be in the grip of some complex emotion. Fear? Guilt? Grief? She had no idea, only that when he did emerge from his room, he walked quickly past each window and repeatedly asked if any letters had been delivered. Twice, she had heard him weeping.

She was worried for him. About him too, she realised.

A sudden glint from the middle of the channel caught Connie’s eye. A bright flash, like a ship’s warning lamp. Had it come from the Old Salt Mill? She shielded her eyes, but she couldn’t see anything. Just the few small houses dotted on the Apuldram side of the water.

Trying to quell her anxious thoughts, Connie opened her journal at the entry for the twenty-fifth of April and flattened the pages. She had recorded her impressions immediately after the visit to the church – as she did with all her private reflections – trying to make sense of what had happened. She’d set down the names of those she recognised, done pen portraits of those she had not. The woman in the blue coat too, though Connie had soon realised that although she could describe her clothes and hat, she had no idea at all what she actually looked like.

She drained the last of her coffee, then began to read.

A Fishbourne village tradition or not, Connie hadn’t accepted then – and still did not – that so many people would have made their way to the church on the Eve of St Mark without some kind of prior arrangement. And she was certain her father would not normally have been among them. She had never known him attend a service – not at Whitsun, not Christmas, not even on Easter Sunday.

And that strange whispered question, overheard as the bell began to toll again. ‘Is she
here
?’ An educated voice, not a man from the village. ‘
Is
she here?’ The meaning was quite altered with each different intonation.

Who’ll be the parson?

I, said the Rook

With my little book,

I’ll be the parson.

Mary’s song continued to swoop and soar around the corners of the house, the notes floating in the sweet afternoon air.

*

Connie heard them before she saw them.

She looked up as a pair of mute swans flew low overhead. Their long necks stretched, the orange flash of their beaks, the steady beating of their wings against the air. She turned to follow their flight.

A swan. White feathers.

She was pricked by a sudden, vivid memory from the vanished days. Herself at nine or ten, long brown hair twisted through with yellow ribbon. Sitting on a high wooden stool at the ticket counter at the museum.

She frowned. No, not yellow ribbon. Red.

The painted wooden sign above the door –
GIFFORD’S
WORLD-FAMOUS
HOUSE
OF
AVIAN
CURIOSITIES
– and her palms hot and sticky from the farthings, halfpennies, and the occasional sixpence. Issuing printed entrance tickets –
billets
– on a grainy and coarse blue card.

Another shift of memory. The swan once more. With its grief-clouded eyes.

Of all the taxidermy exhibits in the collection, she had only hated the swan. Standing inside the main entrance, its wings spread wide as if to welcome visitors in, she was terrified of it. Something about its size and its breadth, the breast feathers moulting in the sun through the glass. The moths and the beads of fat, like blisters on the surface of its skin. Another memory. When she had been told that swans paired for life – who might have told her that? – Connie remembered how she had wept and become quite ill with the idea that the mate of the preserved cob might be searching in vain for her lost love.

She waited, willing more to come back to her, but already the memory was fading. She did not think the swan had made the journey here to Blackthorn House, as a few of the museum exhibits had. The image of her young self slipped away, unseen again, back into the shadows.

The vanished days.

Her life was divided into two parts. Before and after the accident. Connie had dreamlike memories of long and blurred weeks, drifting in and out of sleep, a gentle hand stroking her forehead. Hot air and all the windows open. Her dark hair shorn and rough on her scalp. A scar on the right side of her head.

When she did recover, her past was lost to her. The first twelve years of her life almost completely wiped from her mind. People, too. Connie had never known her mother – she had died giving birth to her – but she had the memory of being loved. A female voice, gentle hands smoothing the hair back from her face. But who was she? An aunt, a grandmother? A nurse? There was no evidence of any other family members at all. Only Gifford.

From time to time, there were glimpses of another girl. A cousin? A friend? Eight or nine years older than Connie, but with a youthful, spirited air. A girl with a love of life, not bowed down by tradition or proprieties or restrictions.

At first, Connie had asked questions, tried to piece things together, hoping that her memory would return in time. So many questions that her father could not – or would not – answer. Gifford claimed the doctors advised that she should not try to force herself, that her memory would come back in due course. And although Connie recovered her physical strength, she suffered episodes of
petit mal
. Any stress or upset could trigger an attack, sometimes lasting only a minute or two; other times half an hour might pass.

Her father refused, therefore, to talk about anything other than the accident. Even then, he limited himself to the barest facts.

Spring 1902. April. Gifford was working late in the museum. Connie had woken from a nightmare and, seeking reassurance, had left her bedroom and gone to look for him. In the dark, she lost her footing and fell, from the top of the wooden stairs to the stone floor at the bottom, hitting her head. She’d only survived thanks to a doctor’s urgent ministrations.

After that, her father’s account became vaguer still.

Gifford sold up and they moved away, finally settling in Fishbourne. He did not want to be reminded every day of how nearly she had died, and did not want her to be distressed. Besides, the sea air and the peace and quiet of the marshes would do her good.

The vanished days. Lost, as if they had never been.

And now?

Connie couldn’t be certain, but she thought her flashes of recovered memory were becoming more substantial, more frequent. At the same time, it seemed that the moments when time appeared to stop, and she was sucked down into a black unknowing, were becoming less common.

Was it true? Did she want it to be true?

*

Connie watched as the swans came into land in the orchard of Old Park, where sixty or more nesting pairs had made their home.

All the birds of the air

Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing

When they heard the bell toll

For poor Cock Robin.

As the sun moved round behind the oak tree, dropping the terrace into shadow, the ghost child was still there, waiting on the edges of Connie’s memory. A girl.