Where Earth Meets Sky (25 page)

The evenings invariably ended in her bed and she lay awake long after he had fallen asleep, looking up into the darkness in lonely silence.

Still, she reasoned, she had had worse times in her life. And she could not seem to see out from it any more. She couldn’t imagine anything else.

The Mussoorie snows melted at last, the sun grew warmer and delicate flowers appeared in abundant, pale sprays down the hillsides. However, while spring had arrived, the doctor’s moods had darkened.

One morning, when icy streams and waterfalls were rushing the last of the mountain snows down the steep slopes, Lily walked along, drinking in the sight of the hillside glittering green after all the snow. Birds called and fluttered among the branches and all nature seemed to smile, reawakened. The air felt warm and hopeful and Lily took in deep breaths, freeing herself from the constrained feeling she now had all the time in the house. She thought of the mighty sweep of the mountain range on whose hem she was walking, its giant ripple of the earth’s crust extending across to Kashmir, Nepal, Tibet, the awesome white wilderness she had heard of so often, and it gave her a sense of exhilarating freedom. She realized, as she moved even faster, almost wanting to break into a run, just how much this winter she had become a puppet who had to dance all the time to a tune played by the doctor. And for these precious moments she could be free of it, could regain a sense of herself. These times made it bearable, standing out on the sunny Mussoorie hillside, when she felt free and young again, and as she made her way back into the house she was smiling.

He was standing in a dark corner of the hall. She saw the dog Cameron before she saw him, coming to greet her out of the shadows.

‘And where exactly have you been, missy?’

Lily jumped, laying a hand over her thumping heart. ‘I . . . I’ve been out for a little walk.’ She used the low, taming voice she had learned to use with Ewan McBride when he was like this. ‘It’s so lovely now spring’s coming.’

He approached her, and she could see he was tense with rage. ‘You went out, alone, without asking me?’

Lily could hear Mrs Das moving about further along the corridor, but the doctor seemed too overwrought to care who heard him.

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said softly. ‘But you weren’t here. It doesn’t do any harm, going out to take the air for a few minutes, surely?’

‘Who did you meet?’ His hands gripped her shoulders and he brought his face close up to hers, breathing his tobacco breath in her face. She could see where the hairs of his beard entered his skin. ‘You’re going out to meet someone, aren’t you? Behaving like a little whore again.
Tell
me!’ He squeezed her so hard that she yelped. Here again were all the accusations he was forever throwing at her. She breathed in deeply, quelling her urge to shout at him,
Of course I’m not meeting other people! How do you expect me to when you keep me here like a prisoner!
But she must not shout: it would be a disaster.

‘My dear, I . . .’

‘Your
dear
!’ She thought for a moment he was going to slap her. His nostrils were flaring, his breath fast and shallow. ‘You little hypocrite. You don’t care for me! You’re just after everything you can squeeze out of me while you torture my heart with your wanton behaviour, running after other men, younger men, to make me feel old and of no value to you. That’s all you can think about isn’t it – showing yourself off to other men while I rot here, all alone . . .’

Very quickly his rages sank him into misery, so that sometimes he wept in her arms, full of remorse and self-pity.

‘Shall we go into your study so that the servants don’t hear?’ Lily suggested and took his hand. ‘Come along, dear.’ She led him like a child. ‘Everything will be all right.’

As they walked along the corridor she calculated that the most dangerous moments were over. He had begun to hit her, just once or twice. Both times he had caught her on the arm, where the bruises did not show, but she was afraid of worse and constantly alert for his more violent moods. And she knew how to pacify him. It was an instinct deep in her from her years with Mr Horne, from trying to be whatever other people needed her to be. Once they were in the study with the door shut, he started to weep in earnest, sinking down on his chair beside the desk.

‘Oh God, one day I’m going to hurt you, Lily. I don’t know what comes over me!’ She tried to quiet him, her hands on his shoulders, looking down at the thinning crescents of hair at the top of his head. She saw that her hands were bonier than they used to be.

‘I’m not a violent man – never have been. It’s something you do to me. You’re like a demon – you’ve possessed me, body and soul, woman! I can’t bear to think of you with anyone else. It would tear me apart – do you understand?’ He turned to face her, full of anxiety. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you, my dear. I wouldn’t harm you for the world. But when I think of you leaving me, of you in another man’s arms, it’s as if I’m blinded . . . Can you forgive me?’

‘Of course,’ Lily said, mechanically. She tried to make her voice warm and forgiving, though she felt nothing.

‘Do you, my dear – really?’ Now he was almost like a child.

‘Come – sit on my lap, my sweet, and give your foolish old man a kiss.’

Lily slid round on to his lap and he pulled her close, hands moving greedily on her body. Over his shoulder she looked out at the sunlight slanting over the hills, her mind out on the paths and tracks bright with flowers. Dr McBride was already highly aroused and Lily knew she was not going to get away with just a quick embrace to put things right for him. His hard penis was pressing against her and his breathing was fast and urgent.

‘God, woman, I need you!’ His breath was hot on her neck and he began fumbling to unfasten his clothes. He gestured towards her and she knew he meant her to remove her underclothes and she obeyed, knowing she must be quick or she would summon another of his rages.

He beckoned to her to straddle him, and he groaned and sighed as he found release and afterwards he clung to her.

‘Don’t ever go away from me, my Lily,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t ever leave me.’

There was a period, in the February, when Muriel McBride revived for a time and was able to sit up. Lily saw the transformation in Jane Brown as well, a lightness and sense of hope, that she was not necessarily party to an inexorable and tragic slide downwards to death. Lily saw her smile more, and she even became rather humorous in her dry way.

‘Mrs McBride would like to see you,’ she said to Lily one afternoon when they were in the kitchen again. ‘That is, of course, if you’re not too busy.’

Lily could see the twinkle in Jane Brown’s eye.

‘I think I could manage to fit it in,’ Lily quipped. ‘But why on earth does she want to see me?’

‘Oh, I expect she’d just like a change from looking at me all day long.’

Both of them laughed, and exchanged an unusually fond look. Whatever Jane Brown knew or thought, Lily realized, she was not one to sit in judgement.

‘I’ll come and see her today,’ she promised.

She went to the sickroom and found Muriel McBride propped up on pillows, looking out at the sunlit view. As Lily came in, she smiled. There was a strange down of fair hair on her cheeks and her skeletal form seemed thin enough to let the light through. She didn’t look any more substantial, but she did seem to have a fraction more energy.

‘Come and sit by me, Lily,’ she said in her reedy voice. She raised one of her stick-like arms to gesture to a chair and Lily saw the blue veins under her skin.

Lily obeyed. Jane Brown hovered in the background tidying up and Lily liked her being there. The room was light this afternoon, seeming more cheerful, and Lily felt her own spirits lift. She only occasionally realized how much the sad presence of this sick woman dampened the atmosphere of the house.

They talked a little about Muriel’s health, though she seemed hardly to acknowledge that she was ill. It was almost like something separate from her that she had no interest in.

‘I’m quite all right really,’ she said, closing down Lily’s enquiries. ‘Nothing much to say about it. I must say, Lily, you are looking rather thin and tired. Are you all right?’

‘Yes, perfectly, thank you,’ Lily said, though Mrs McBride was not the first person to comment on her loss of weight. ‘I feel very well.’

She tried to think of a few things to say about her work, even though Dr McBride no longer liked to think of her as employed as housekeeper any more. And she said how lovely it was outside now the weather was changing. It was a friendly conversation, but after a time she saw Muriel McBride still looking rather intently at her with her huge blue eyes.

‘I wanted to say something to you, Lily.’ She paused and Lily could feel Jane Brown listening somewhere behind her. ‘Just to mention that my husband is a man who can tend to run to extremes. Over the years I have seen a number of people affected by it. Just be careful.’ These last words were spoken very sadly. Then she looked up, sharply. ‘By that I don’t want you to think I mean myself. What I have done, I have done to myself. I can’t help it, not now. But it’s no fault of Ewan’s. You, though, Lily – you don’t have to stay here. You are free.’

For some reason the words brought tears to Lily’s eyes. She did not understand why and she looked down for a moment in confusion, her cheeks burning.

After that, they talked about ordinary things again.

You are free.
The words stayed with her, like birds fluttering in her head. She did not feel free, not at all. Every part of her day was hedged in by Ewan McBride, by his need to parade her in public in her finery, his demand for her in bed, and by his rages if he thought she was running out of his control, until she felt like a prisoner in the house. One day, when he was out on his rounds, Lily was about to slip out for a walk when Jane Brown came out of the sickroom, looked hurriedly back and forth and beckoned Lily to her. In a low, urgent whisper, she said, ‘Lily, I feel terrible saying this, but he’s told me not to let you go out.’

Lily, who had been buttoning her blue velvet coat in readiness for a walk, gaped in disbelief. ‘Dr McBride? But he hasn’t said anything to me.’

‘He says he doesn’t want you going out unless you’re accompanied by either me or himself. He knows perfectly well that I’m not free to accompany you anyway . . .’ The words were left unspoken. In other words Lily was not allowed out at all without the doctor.

‘But I
have
to go out. I can’t just stay in here all day!’

‘Yes, I know,’ Jane Brown said, her eyes troubled. ‘But I’m just warning you. I didn’t see you go.’

Lily went out anyway, slipping quietly along to her favourite spot along the Camel’s Back Road, but she felt very shaken. More and more often she had reason to feel afraid of Ewan McBride. For the first time she thought seriously about leaving, but the idea of having to start in yet another strange place was so wearying, just when she had made friends here and felt, at least in some ways, secure.

So far he had not found out about her morning walks and they were her one piece of real freedom. She could settle for this, she decided, at least for the moment. She had grown to love Mussoorie very much, seeing its beauty in all the seasons.

One day, she thought, I’ll get out of here, but not yet. What she was not prepared for was a change that was approaching even as she stood looking out over the valley that day, one which would turn her life upside down all over again.

Lily was in her room that morning, and as it happened she was writing a letter to Cosmo. He wrote to her, very occasionally now, telling her about rugby and cricket and about boys whose faces she would never know. Though she tried to tell herself that Cosmo had not grown into a stranger, in sad moments she wondered if she would even recognize him now he was almost seven. Of course she would, she told herself. She kept the photograph of herself taken with him on her dressing table.

She heard, distantly, the knock at the front of the house but ignored it. Mrs Das or Prithvi could deal with it and she took no notice of the voices in the distance. But in a moment there was a tap on her door.

‘Miss Lily?’ It was Prithvi, standing outside with her usual air of apology. ‘There is a man,’ she said. ‘He is asking for you.’

Lily frowned. No one ever came calling at the house for her. She did not have that sort of social life.

‘Well who is it, Prithvi?’

‘I do not know, Miss Lily. But he is asking for you by name.’

She walked along to the hall and saw a man standing, looking down at his feet as she approached, hat in hand. Hearing her step he looked up, and it was only then she knew him. Her walking stopped, abruptly.

‘Lily? It
is
you.’ His voice was gentle, wondering.

There again, with no warning: Sam Ironside.

‘Oh Lord, why are you here?’ she heard herself say.

Sam stepped towards her. He looked just the same, as if he had never been away. The three years since she last saw him evaporated and in those seconds she wanted to pour out all the things she had never been able to say to him, but it was impossible. Her chest felt tight, as if she’d been running.