The Memory of Lost Senses Page 7

  Encouraged by Cecily, Annie Gamben had made it her business to try and learn more. As village postmaster, Annie’s father was privy to almost everything that took place within the scattered parish: births, deaths, engagements, marriages, and scandals (though there were few); who was writing to whom, who dispatched and who was the recipient of a telegram; and, crucially, what those telegrams spoke of.

  It had been Annie’s mother who had first mentioned the young man: a relation, she presumed, and from what she had heard—judging by his looks—foreign, possibly Italian. Then Mrs. Gamben mentioned the companion: a lady only recently arrived by train from London. The companion had been into the post office twice, once to buy a packet of birdseed and some buttons, and once to dispatch a large brown paper package to a gentleman in north London.

  On the first occasion Mrs. Gamben had not taken much notice of the bespectacled lady. It had been a Wednesday and the post office had been busy, as it always was on half-day closing. Realizing the lady to be a visitor to the village, and assuming her to be staying with one or other of her customers, Mrs. Gamben had been courteous but not overly so. But after the lady had thanked Mrs. Gamben and left the shop, Mrs. Moody, standing to one side beside the brooms and trugs and baskets, emerged from the shadows and told Mrs. G exactly whose guest her previous customer had been. On the second occasion, when the lady arrived with the brown paper parcel, Mrs. Gamben had been prepared. She had noted the absence of a wedding band on the lady’s left hand, a distinct lack of eye contact, and what she described as a “rather shifty manner.” Mrs. Gamben had politely inquired after the countess, been reassured to hear she was in very good health, and that Miss Appleby—who came to the post office each Tuesday to cut and dress hair—was expected up at the house that very afternoon. The countess, Mrs. Gamben surmised, was still very particular about her hair.

  Rosetta had been the first to use the word “orphan.” She had bumped into the gardener, Mr. Cordery, “had it from the horse’s mouth,” she said, that the boy was quite without parents and that there were “suspicious circumstances.”

  Everyone was curious. Everyone wanted to know more.

  It was Cecily’s mother, Madeline, who raised the subject later that evening at dinner, saying, “Do tell me, Mr. Fox, how is our new neighbor, the countess, settling in?” And Cecily looked up and sat forward.

  True to form, Mr. Fox appeared delighted to be offered the opportunity to speak about the dear lady. Oh yes, he began, she was settling in well, and delighted with the modernizations made to her new home. “Of course, she’s used to continental ways, and finds English sanitation a trifle primitive, to say the least,” he added. And Cecily saw Rosetta—standing behind Mrs. Fox, waiting to remove plates—roll her eyes.

  That evening, Rosetta had changed into the dark gown, long white apron and cap Madeline had made for her and liked her to wear on the rare occasions they had visitors to dine with them. But the dress had become a tad too tight around her waist, causing her to tug and pull at it, and the cap, secured with elastic about her head, too loose. It slipped this way and that, and at one point, as she leaned forward to serve the rector, it slowly slid down her forehead until it entirely covered one eye before she managed to free a hand and push it back in place. Cecily knew these evenings to be enough of an ordeal for her, standing about, waiting at table and managing the kitchen on her own, without the added encumbrance of a faulty cap. Also, despite every window in the house standing open, the place was uncomfortably hot. And permeating the smell of meat and pastry and stewed vegetables, like the top note of a cheap perfume that catches the back of one’s throat, was the malodorous reek of Mr. Fox.

  “And do remind me of her full name,” Madeline continued. “I’ve been told, of course, but it’s somewhat unusual. French, I think, isn’t it?”

  Cecily turned to the rector.

  He smiled, nodded. “You are correct, Mrs. Chadwick. It is the name of one of the most ancient and noble families in all of France, de Chevalier de Saint Léger. Thus the dear lady is la Comtesse de Chevalier de Saint Léger.”

  “The Countess de Chevalier . . . de Saint Léger . . .” Madeline repeated hesitantly, as Cecily said it silently.

  “And there were how many husbands?” Madeline asked.

  “Someone told me there had been five,” Cecily broke in, without thinking, and she heard her mother and Mrs. Fox both gasp.

  The rector cleared his throat. He picked up his glass of wine, studied the liquid for a moment. “It is unfortunate but perhaps understandable,” he said, glancing at Madeline, “for there to be conjecture of that nature. I can tell you only the facts. Facts I am certain the countess would be happy enough for me to share with the assembled company.” He paused again, took a sip of wine. “The first marriage was to a gentleman by the name of Staunton, in Rome, many years ago . . . perhaps as many as fifty years ago.”

  “Fifty,” Cecily repeated.

  “I would estimate so . . . yes, I would estimate so. But that union, that first marriage, was cut tragically short when Mr. Staunton was killed.”

  There was a loud clank from the sideboard. Madeline jumped. “Killed?” she repeated.

  “An accident, I believe,” said Mr. Fox, without elaborating further. Cecily caught Rosetta’s eye and quickly looked away as he continued. “And thus, the countess—little more than a girl at that time—was left to raise her sons alone.”

  “Ah, so she does have children,” Madeline said, smiling, sounding relieved.

  “Sadly, no longer. I’m afraid her children, like her husbands, are all deceased. Her grandson is the only one left . . . all she has left,” he replied, newly baritone.

  “What about the count?” Cecily asked. “What happened to him?”

  He shook his head. “It was another short-lived union. They were married but a brief time before he was killed.”

  “Killed?” Cecily said, at that moment conscious only of the repetition of this word, its connotations, and Rosetta’s steady gaze.

  “Killed in battle during the Franco-Prussian war, and buried there in the battlefield, at Servigny, near Metz.”

  “The Franco-Prussian war. That was forty years ago.”

  “Bravo, Cecily, it was indeed. Forty-one years ago, to be precise. And so our dear lady was tragically widowed once more, cruelly robbed of another husband, her children robbed of another father. At that time la comtesse,” continued the rector, warming to his theme, “divided her time between France and Italy, between her fine château nestling in the glorious Loire Valley and her home in Rome, where her aunt, the dear lady into whose care she’d been placed as a very young girl, continued to reside. And of course she also kept an apartment in Paris, off the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré,” he added gutturally. “Paris, like Rome, is I think very dear to her heart. For thither she was sent as a child, to live with her aunt”—he paused, glancing about the table, his eyes twinkling, smiling—“who was none other than the Contessa Francesca Cansacchi di Amelia!”

  Cecily looked at the others; was this a name she was meant to know?

  “Gracious!” said Madeline.

  “Indeed, indeed,” said the rector, lifting a napkin to his whiskers.

  “Golly,” said Ethne, who’d remained silent until now. “So she’s true aristocracy.”

  The rector looked at Ethne, narrowing his eyes. “Almost more than that,” he said, enigmatically.

  Cecily felt her heart shiver. More than that? What did he mean? And she wanted to say, “Do tell us, please tell us more,” but for some reason, right at that moment it seemed inappropriate. The rector had stopped his story at a very specific point, and quite obviously for a reason. There was more, she realized, much more. She glanced to her mother and Madeline smiled back at her; but now with tightly sealed lips, as if to say, no more questions. Did her mother know something? she wondered. Was her mother familiar with the aunt, the It
alian contessa? Did everyone know something she did not? She looked over to Ethne, who appeared more engrossed by the summer pudding in front of her. No, Ethne would not know. She turned to Mrs. Fox, seated on her left, but she too appeared more interested in fruit and cream than the unfolding roll call of European nobility. And then she couldn’t help herself.

  “Is she descended from royalty, Mr. Fox?”

  He smiled at Cecily, raised a finger to his face and tapped his nose.

  “Well,” said Madeline, lifting her glass of watered wine, “what a life . . . what a life she has had. But it must be hard for an expatriate to settle,” she added. “She must find Bramley awfully quiet after Rome and Paris and . . . all that,” she petered out.

  The rector shuffled in his chair, clearing his throat, and Cecily knew another installment was on its way.

  “I believe the dear lady was ready for a change,” he began. “The daughter-in-law’s tragic demise served to propel that need for change, and here we are, with her and her beloved grandson in our midst. I think we’re honored, Mrs. Chadwick, truly honored, don’t you?”

  “She must find everyone here pretty dull,” Ethne broke in, sucking raspberry seeds from her teeth. “I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, of course. I don’t think Bramley’s dull at all, I’d far rather live here than in some horrid smelly city like Rome. But why on earth did she come here?”

  Hallelujah! Cecily thought, at last she’s managed to spit out one pertinent question.

  “Because Temple Hill is her home,” Mrs. Fox piped up, soft and sweet, like the pudding in front of her. “It belongs to her, was built for her, I believe,” she added, glancing along the table to her husband.

  “But surely it’s much too old,” Cecily said. “And it’s been standing empty for years, hasn’t it?”

  “That is correct,” Mr. Fox quickly replied, silencing his wife, who was about to continue. “The place has never been lived in, certainly not in my time. Though I’ve heard tell that it was for a while rented out to a succession of tenants, and then no one. Of course, when I first arrived here, almost twenty years ago—”

  “Good gracious, Mr. Fox, is it really that long?” Madeline interrupted.

  Cecily sighed and Mr. Fox smiled. “Yes, indeed it is, Mrs. Chadwick. And oh, what changes I have seen in that time . . .”

  Diverted, the rector began to speak about the village and surrounding area as it had once been. Cecily pushed the congealing ruby-colored mess about her plate. Had her mother changed the subject on purpose? Who in their right mind, apart from her mother, would want to hear about Bramley as it once was rather than Rome and Paris? It was beyond frustrating. All Cecily could do was wait. He’d get back to it, eventually. She knew he’d only just begun.

  Bramley had always struck Cecily as an untidy, straggling sort of place. The roads passing through it rose and dipped and rose once more before heading out through tunnel-like lanes to the outlying farms, scattered cottages and huts of the parish. The village had no railway station or market, but it had carpenters, builders, blacksmiths and wheelwrights; saddlers, farriers and millers; broom makers, shoemakers, coal merchants and drapers; grocers, bakers and butchers. The surrounding heathland provided for the broomsquires and thatchers, the bees for honey, hop fields for beer, and the meadows for milk and butter and cheese. It had three public houses, a school, an undertaker and a post office. And there were regular “entertainments”: evenings of poetry, music and amateur dramatics in the village hall. The lending library was administered by the rector’s wife, Mrs. Fox, who checked and monitored exactly who was reading what each Thursday afternoon.

  For hundreds of years those who had been baptized at St. Luke’s—and then, against the odds, survived infancy—had been wedded there, and later buried there. No one left, no one moved. Bramley had always been self-sufficient, able to supply and occupy its inhabitants’ hands and heads and hearts and stomachs.

  In her final year at school Cecily had written about “The History and Times of Bramley.” Most of what she had learned had come from Old Meg, who may have been Young Meg, once. Meg had been the village midwife and had, she reckoned, delivered over one hundred babies and laid out almost as many corpses. But by that time Old Meg confined her activities to the reading of tea leaves—and knitting. She told Cecily that in times not so long gone by runagates had skulked about the mist-shrouded wilderness surrounding the village. Yes, it had been a place for fugitives then, she said; a place to hide away, a no-man’s-land people traveled through at their peril due to the vagabonds and highwaymen who preyed upon those journeying between London and the coast. She told Cecily that the unplanned ragged lines of the village probably owed something to those lawless folk and squatters, who had erected cottages by night, depositing children in them by dawn so the bailiffs could not remove the heather-thatched roofs above their heads. Then, the railway came to Linford, bringing rich city folk and consumptives from London. Yes, Cecily thought: Daddy.

  Daddy—Cecil Chadwick—lay next to the ancient yew tree on the western side of the churchyard. Cecily had grown up knowing him only as a name chiseled on a tombstone. When she was young, she had been taken to his grave twice each week. Then it fell back to once a week, on Sunday afternoons. Now it was as and when—high days and holidays and special occasions, and Madeline alone each wedding anniversary. But sometimes Cecily took a walk through the churchyard on her own. She thought of the dead beneath her feet and pondered on all those long-unspoken, long-forgotten names: someone’s daughter, someone’s son, someone’s father: hers. In Loving Memory . . . Sacred to . . . Beloveds one and all.

  In the churchyard, history—his story and her story—was condensed to names and dates. Nothing more. Lifetimes, no matter how extraordinary, had no narrative, no triumphs or defeats. There were no clues, no achievements listed. And yet there, just below Cecily’s feet, lay hundreds of untold stories, stories spanning centuries, bridging generations, linking then and now. Tales of derring-do and recklessness, wisdom and folly, passion and pride and honor, stories Cecily could only wonder at and imagine. The names themselves often conjured an image, the date adding context and detail. So much so that she could often see them, not as bones beneath the sandy earth but in the flesh, alive and animated once more.

  Cecily’s allegiance with the dead had started at an early age, reinforced by all those visits to the cemetery and bound up in a fascination with Loss. And most particularly, Love and Loss.

  Finally, and after some confusion about the point of his lengthy monologue (of which Cecily had heard not a word), the rector found his thread again. Yes, his wife was correct, Temple Hill, as far as he understood, had always belonged to the countess. The rector leaned toward Madeline. “But you must know,” he whispered loudly, “the land this very house sits upon was once part of the gardens of Temple Hill.”

  Madeline shook her head and, glancing at Rosetta who stood by the sideboard, a dish in her hands, mouth open and cap askew, she said, “You can clear away now, thank you.” And the maid bustled out of the room.

  Madeline then quietly explained to the rector that she had not been involved in her late husband’s business affairs. She had no recollection of him ever having mentioned from whom he had purchased their plot of land. But then, after some thought, she admitted she couldn’t be sure he had not; he had been ill, her attention focused entirely upon him, his comfort and well-being. And then, as though still taking in what the rector had told her, she said, “So, our house, the land this house is built upon, actually belonged to her, the countess?”

  He nodded.

  “Well I never,” she said.

  Cecily listened as the rector explained that Temple Hill had originally had some one hundred acres of gardens and paddocks and woodland. But slowly, he said, over the past twenty years or so, parcels of land had been sold off for development, mainly on the other side of the hill. Now, he estimated the house
would have only a fraction of those original acres; certainly less than ten, he thought.

  The evening, Cecily realized, was producing answers to questions even she had not thought of. And as the conversation altered its course, touching briefly on the strikes and unrest spreading through the country, before turning to the recent and not so recent changes to the village, and Mr. Fox to his favorite subject—the loss of the old country ways—Cecily sat in quiet contemplation.

  So, she was right, she thought, the countess was indeed the survivor of an epic adventure, one that had cost her dearly, robbing her of husbands, children and, it seemed, money. But how had it started? she wondered. She knew the end of the story—or almost, because the countess had arrived there, possibly penniless, and with no family to speak of apart from Jack—but where, exactly, had it begun? And why had she not returned to this country before? After all, she mused, having done the calculation earlier, she was a great age, and had had a house standing empty, waiting for her. If her only family had been in England, why had she chosen to stay overseas? It was incomprehensible. Something didn’t make sense. Was she so very selfish that she had allowed Jack’s poor widowed mother to sink further and further into her loneliness, her melancholia, while she continued her gallivanting across Europe? No, surely not. She had come here eventually, yes, but that, it seemed from what Cecily had heard, had been after Jack’s mother’s suicide. Then it dawned on her: the countess had had no plans to come back, ever.

  Later, in the room Madeline Chadwick referred to as the parlor to her daughters and the drawing room to her guests, Cecily sat down next to the elderly rector. She wanted to ask him more about the countess. She had obviously led a fascinating life, she said, smiling brightly, eagerly, knowing he’d be flattered by her continued interest. “And what stories she must have . . .”