The Echo of Twilight Read online

  She stared back at me: “You won’t leave me, will you?”

  “Of course I won’t leave you.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  The veil lifted. By September’s end the landscape had altered to a rampant frenzy of pale bronze, dark copper and bright yellow, burnished gold and brilliant red. Impossible to ignore, impossible to turn away from. And I wished Ralph had been there to see it, paint it. I wished everyone, including Lord Hector, had still been there, because maybe then he’d have noticed his wife; maybe then he’d have seen the colors reflected in her eyes and seen, too, how dull Mrs. Parker’s were by comparison.

  But what of Ottoline’s condition? In the days immediately after her confession, we had not spoken of it again, and though I had racked my brain to come up with a plan, the only answer seemed to be for the two of us to go away for a while—for her baby to be born in a place where no one knew the Campbells. I hadn’t thought any further than that, but I knew there was no way Ottoline could keep her baby. We would need to find a family.

  Meanwhile, and as ever adding to the complications, there was Mr. Watts to contend with. He told me that we were late. The time to head south was overdue. “It’s the usual course of events. Has been for years,” he said. “We always return south at the end of September.”

  And it came to me. We would and should return to Birling, and in the New Year, Ottoline and I could come back to Delnasay—alone. She could spend her confinement there, with me, and when the time came, we’d employ a midwife, and pay her handsomely. We could surely find a family there just as easily as anywhere else, I reasoned.

  I wasn’t sure how much Mr. Watts knew—had seen or perceived—about Ottoline’s state, how fragile she was. But I knew Mrs. Lister understood something of what was going on. The day after she’d come to my room, after I’d gone down and found Ottoline made up and dancing, she had told me that such occurrences were not new. They had happened before, she said.

  “She’s always been a bit . . . well, flighty, if you know what I mean. A bit too much up and down,” Mrs. Lister said, shaking her head. “High-strung, I suppose, like a lot of them are. And of course he’s always away,” she added, tutting to herself. “I sometimes wonder why he married her. I mean, why marry someone and then spend your life away from them, eh?”

  I agreed. Why?

  “And as you know, she’s ever such a kind soul. And clever as well, but perhaps too clever . . . I think too many brains makes you go a bit queer, don’t you?”

  Ottoline received a letter from her husband once a week, usually in the second post on Monday afternoon. I often wondered what he said to her in those letters; if he ever told her he cared, or that he loved her. For how could he not? And I’d seen him watching her, seen him that day in her bathroom at Birling, when his mouth had twitched. Strange, I thought, that he had allowed himself to lose her, and to the rather puny Mr. Cowper.

  I had often imagined having my own telephone and calling people up—Lord Hector and a few others as well, not all of them alive . . . a call to London, heaven or hell, depending. It was a wonderful fantasy, the notion of speaking my mind without having to look back at them, my betters and my worse: surprising them all with a “Hello, Pearl here!” Liberating. I’d imagined one such call to Stanley after I’d received his last letter, and just to tell him what a feckless individual he was, and how much better-suited he was to a sticky-fingered chambermaid. He didn’t have a lot to say, but it was cathartic.

  In reality, I’d only ever used a telephone once, when Mrs. B. had sent me to the post office to call up her eldest son and tell him she was dying. It wasn’t long before I left her, and she was delirious, seeing people who weren’t there and having conversations with the furniture. The doctor said it was hallucinations caused by dehydration, possibly too many boiled eggs and not enough water, he said, after quizzing me on her diet.

  But my imagined telephone calls to Lord Hector were different . . .

  “Hello . . . Hello?”

  “It’s Pearl Gibson, Your Lordship.”

  “Pearl who?”

  “Pearl Gibson. Your wife’s maid?”

  “Wife? Ah yes, my wife . . . What do you want, Gibson?”

  “I want to tell you what an ass you are.”

  “An ass? What are you on about?”

  “It’s a hoofed mammal, Your Lordship, and looks a bit like one of those horses you like to ride about on, but a little smaller and with longer ears. Like a donkey.”

  “For God’s sake, Gibson, get to the point.”

  “Of course, Your Lordship. The point is, you’re an idiot.”

  “How dare you!”

  “Yes, I do!”

  Clunk.

  And my many imagined telephone calls to Ralph were altogether different again . . .

  “It’s me.”

  “I thought it would be you. Hello, darling.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I miss you so much . . .”

  “And I miss you, too.”

  “Have you been thinking of me?”

  “All the time.”

  “Are you coming back soon?”

  “As soon as I can. I promise.”

  “I love you.”

  “And I love you, my darling girl.”

  “Stay safe for me.”

  “I will.”

  Though I had imagined telephone conversations, I was not—unlike so many other servants I’d known—a seasoned eavesdropper. Nor was I in the habit of reading other people’s correspondence, except a postcard, which seemed to me altogether different and more public. But when I saw the opened envelope—lying next to the glinting paper knife on the desk in the small study and in Ralph’s hand and postmarked London—I had to read it.

  His paltry lines gave little away: He was training with the Artists Rifles and anticipated serving with a unit of the Seventh Division. He would try to keep in touch, and would do his utmost to find Billy, he assured Ottoline.

  There was no mention of me, but it wasn’t Ralph’s style to discuss personal matters; certainly not in a brief letter like that. Nor did it trouble me that he’d elected to write to Ottoline rather than me. After all, he’d told me not to wait for him, told me to move on with my life. Get married, have children, be happy, he’d said. But as I refolded the small sheet of paper and placed it back inside the envelope, I pictured him as he’d been that first time I’d seen him at the station, and I smiled in the knowledge that he’d followed me there, and that our paths had been destined. Whatever the future held, I knew I’d survive, and now, I hoped with all my heart that Ralph had given me reason to.

  But there was no time for idle romanticism and dreaming, not now. I had to look after Ottoline. There was more than one war to win.

  “Hector says I have to return south,” Ottoline announced one morning as I collected the newspapers that littered the floor and surrounded her desk. I folded the crumpled, cut-out sheets and put them in a pile, for I wasn’t allowed to remove them, or to hand them over to Mr. Watts for the fires, which had caused another sort of friction between him and me.

  I said, “Well, the weather is changing, my lady . . . and I think perhaps we should.”

  Ottoline shook her head. “No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to. And anyway, what does it matter to him? He’ll not be there. He’ll be with Virginia. In London.”

  “But that’s a good thing, surely?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Mm, perhaps . . .”

  She was drifting, unanchored, and I wondered if she’d forgotten her state: that she was carrying Felix Cowper’s child, and, from what she’d told me and by my own calculation, she was already almost four months gone. I said, “I think it’s perhaps better if His Lordship stays in London, don’t you? After
all, isn’t he more likely to hear about Billy there?”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure he knows more than he’s told me. In fact, I’m certain of it . . . I think he probably sanctioned it all.”

  She still hadn’t caught on to my motives, so I said, “You know, you’re not really showing yet, my lady, not at all. And it’ll be Christmas soon. People always eat a lot at Christmas.”

  She blinked, took a moment and then she smiled. “Ah, you mean I have to get fat?”

  I nodded.

  “And then what? Give birth to a Christmas pudding?”

  I laughed, and she did, too. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen her laugh. I said, “Then we go away for a while . . . and return here. We could come back in . . . February?”

  Her expression changed. “No, that’s the very worst time. We’d never get through the snow, and we’d certainly not survive here.”

  My heart sank momentarily. I thought of Biarritz, then said, “What about the South of France?”

  Ottoline shook her head: “We’re at war, Pearl. It’ll be very difficult if not impossible to gain permission to travel overseas.”

  “Dorset?”

  “Hector’s cousin lives there, and makes it her business to know everyone—and everything.”

  “The Lake District?”

  Her eyes widened, her smile returned. “The Lake District,” she repeated. “Yes, yes . . . I suppose I could have a friend, or even some distant, forgotten member of my family. It’s a little irregular, but . . .”

  “So is life.”

  We didn’t plan any further than that. But it was enough to assuage Ottoline’s immediate fears about returning south.

  Our final days at Delnasay were eerily quiet. The gramophone was broken, and the man who repaired such things had gone to war. The only sound came from the bitter northeasterly wind whistling beneath doors and down chimneys, tapping at glass panes, beyond which final remnants of summer fluttered to the ground. At night, the cold air whispered, flickering candles and creaking branches in the blackness outside. Dusk fell earlier; rooms shivered. But the news kept coming: Antwerp had been evacuated; the Germans occupied Lille; the Belgian government had moved to Le Havre; the Allies occupied Ypres; and Canadian troops had arrived in England.

  Then, finally, the news stopped and the house was silenced.

  Mrs. Lister and I spread sheets over furniture; we stripped beds, swept out grates, closed shutters and locked doors. And the longings and prayers and voices of that summer were packed away and became a thing of the past. And as I stepped out into the drizzle, I breathed in the scents of peat and pine and heather, and placed my palm on the wet stone. This place had offered me a lifeline—and a lifetime. Those granite walls had been my home, and I knew something of me would remain there forever.

  I climbed onto the waiting pony and trap, and we moved off down the driveway, beneath the arching limbs and dripping branches, over the bridge and fast-flowing river. I glanced back only once: for my eyes to find and know that whitewashed building, sitting forlornly in the mist. It had happened; it was not a dream. Ralph Stedman existed. And he was alive, I knew. I knew that. And I also knew with reasonable certainty by then that I was carrying his child.

  In love, my lady and I were no different. We were each of us flawed by our sex, each of us fallen.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Harry? . . . But that can’t be right. He’s only just turned fourteen.

  Harry had disappeared days before our arrival back at Birling, leaving some penciled words about Duty and England for his mother. She had told Mrs. Lister that the family was proud of him, and comforted by the fact that he had gone with his two cousins—also still bairns, according to Mrs. Lister.

  I pictured Harry in his old man’s oversize suit. He had longed for a uniform, as though it would offer him some magical status and place in the world. Now he would have one, and might very well die in it.

  Minutes later, after I’d run out of the kitchen, Mrs. Lister came to the servants’ cloakroom where I was ill, having vomited. She said, “Ah, I knew you’d be upset about young Harry. But you mustn’t let it get you down.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was Harry or my condition that had made me ill, but I appreciated her kindness.

  Throughout November the air was stagnant, filled with the scent of rotting leaves and wood smoke. Nothing moved. It was as though our small part of Northumberland slept on as war raged, as perfect limbs and adored smiles were blown like dust into the ether. But the newspapers continued with their lists and numbers. And Lord Kitchener asked for more. And I thought, There’ll be none left.

  Then came the first flurry of snow, and everyone spoke of a “White Christmas” as though a frozen white world could make things better, as though it would somehow distract us from the slaughter across that thin stretch of water, the English Channel. But it did distract some, and so did the nearby army training camp, and the village hall dances where the soldiers were more than willing partners to the local girls, including a few of the young maids at Birling. And amidst the excitement of snow and soldiers, there was still speculation it might all end in time for Christmas.

  But no pretty snowfall could convince me, nor could it distract me from Ottoline’s condition and my own. And as I sat in the murky yellow glow of my lamp-lit room, extending waistbands, sewing in new elastic and moving buttons, I wondered when and where and how to tell Ottoline my own news, and how she’d react.

  Yes, I was anxious. Yes, I was worried. I was quietly terrified of what Ottoline might say and do. That my child would be her blood relation meant nothing in those moments of fear and doubt. I’d heard plenty of tales in my time about the fate of female servants who’d succumbed to the advances of the gentlemen of the house. Plenty of stories about maids who’d left carrying more than their bundle of aprons. All of us servants knew what happened to girls like that, for their sad stories were passed on to us as a warning.

  But would I be one? Would Ottoline dismiss me? Without any father, husband or brother—I had nowhere to go. I would quite literally be out on the street. And so all of this kept me awake at night. All of this kept me pacing that soft green and gold carpet. For what would I do? Where would I go? Who would employ me? In those small hours, I often thought of my Kitty and felt only shame. I had let her down. I was not after all a Superior Sort of Girl. I was no different to my mother.

  It was early December and late in the afternoon when Ottoline began to bleed.

  I knew what was happening, had seen it before—years before, when my roommate, a parlormaid with a penchant for footmen, had lowered herself over a chamber pot, moaning and reeking of gin. I’d been the one who’d taken the pot down the back stairs and out of the house. “Chuck it . . . Chuck it somewhere in the garden,” she’d said, sobbing. I buried it a long way from the house, next to a stream and a weeping willow.

  It couldn’t be like that for Ottoline, and I suggested we send for the doctor. But no, she didn’t want any doctor, least of all their family doctor. Like everyone else, he knew nothing of Ottoline’s state. The only comments made had been on my lady’s fuller figure: She had gained weight and it suited her, they said. Her long sojourn in Scotland had been beneficial; she looked well.

  By midnight it was over. But I stayed by her side. I sat in a chair by her bed, mopped her brow with cold flannels, held her hand and watched her drift, moan and murmur names.

  At one point in her delirium she saw not me but her mother and cried out, “Don’t go, Mama. Don’t leave me.” And I gripped her hand tighter. Later, I was stirred from my own fretful dreams by the sound of her voice calling out, “Hector.” And her situation came to me with new and powerful understanding. For she had been alone for years in a quiet place of fitted carpets and ticking clocks; she had been alone for years with her polished antiques and pristine uniformed staff. Lost i
n luxury without any comfort.

  Shortly before six, I carried the covered pail downstairs. I went to the servants’ cloakroom, put on my hat, coat and gloves, took the flashlight from the shelf by the kitchen door and left the house. The moon was almost full; the ground glistened with frost. Beyond the shadow of the house, its rooftop and chimney, the monkey puzzle tree cast its design over the frozen lawn and a solitary owl called out from the deodar.

  I left the pail by the gate to the woods, went to the potting shed and returned with a shovel. It took some time for me to unsettle the earth where Ottoline had asked, where a succession of snowdrops, primroses, daffodils and bluebells came up each spring. But eventually the earth gave way and became softer, as though opening up for my sad offering.

  I knelt down, placed the blood-soaked nightgown containing the tiny scrap of life into the hollowed ground. I said, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done . . .” Then I stopped. The words didn’t sound right, and what good had any of our recent prayers done? No one had heard them.

  As I rose to my feet, I picked up the shovel and glanced back at the house, the dim light of Ottoline’s room. I thought of my mother and that fateful day, the day of my birth. For I, too, had been discarded—the discarded remnant of an illicit love affair—and my life had been defined by that day. And for a moment I was overwhelmed with sadness for the unacknowledged and unnamed, the secret burials and unmentioned births, souls who’d never known sunlight or love.

  And then I thought of the birth announcement I’d found circled in Kitty’s hand. Arabella Godley . . . How wanted she must have been for her name to be placed in the newspaper. Celebrated. Cherished. Rocked and cradled. Each gurgle and flickering smile adored.

  I was still thinking of her, Arabella Godley—wondering who she was, where she was, and trying to picture her—when Mr. Watts walked into the washroom. “You’re up early.”