Weyward — Chapter 15: Kate

15

KATE

Kate takes a long sip of tea before she opens the package. There is a sweet, cloying scent as she unwraps the cloth, which is spotted white with mould.

Inside, a stack of letters. The ink has faded to a dull brown, and the paper is creased and yellowed. The date on the first letter reads 20 July 1925.

My darling Lizzie, I have not slept this week for thoughts of you.

Outside, the world is bright and green with summer, and even young Rainham has a spring in his step. But I cannot bear the long days. In fact, I hate them. I hate each and every day that stands between now and when I shall see you again.

I cannot settle to anything – even hunting brings me no comfort. All I can do is mope about, like a man tormented.

I long for you to come and join me, here at the Hall. I truly believe, my darling, that you will be happy here – much happier than in that dank little cottage. As I write this, I am looking out through my study window at the gardens. The roses are in bloom and their delicate beauty is unmatched in this world, other than by your face.

Trust me when I say this, for I have seen the world. The world, and every specimen of woman it contains. Oriental girls with coal-black hair and obsidian eyes. African princesses, their swan necks looped with gold. So many faces I have seen and admired.

But none compare to yours.

Oh, your face. I dream of it each night. Your ivory skin. Your lips, as red as fresh-spilled blood. Those dark, wild eyes. Each night I fall

deeper into dreams, like a man drowning.

I must have you.

My darling. I have spoken to the vicar and he can perform the ceremony in two weeks’ time. But we must ensure that everything is in order before we can proceed, as we discussed. My parents and my brother are due to return from Carlisle on Thursday. I expect them home by sundown.

We are closer than ever, now. You must not falter but be brave, for the sake of our union. For our future. It is as Macbeth said: ‘Who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make love known?’ I enclose, as a symbol of our promise, a gift. It is a handkerchief. I sent to Lancaster for it, demanded only the finest quality for my love.

My bride.

I count the days until you are mine.

Yours forever Rupert

Who are Rupert and Elizabeth? Previous inhabitants of the cottage, perhaps.

But, no – Rupert had written of ‘the Hall’. Did he mean Orton Hall – her

family’s old seat?

Could they be related?

She searches through the other letters, hunting for more details. Rupert writes of first setting eyes on Elizabeth at a May Day Festival in the village.

He had – in his words – been ‘transfixed by her ivory skin and raven locks’.

Some of the letters are about arrangements to meet – always at dawn or dusk, where the lovers won’t be seen. There’s a dark undercurrent to Rupert’s words, as though danger stalks the couple; their stars conspiring against them. What did Elizabeth need such courage to face?

She can’t figure it out. Nor can she confirm the identities of the correspondents – Rupert never signs his last name, and there are no further references to the Hall.

Sadness wells up in her. Something in Rupert’s tone reminds her of early texts from Simon.

I can’t stop thinking about you, he’d texted, after their third date. I feel like I’m sixteen again.

He had taken her to a little sushi place in Shoreditch. She had felt out of place among the other female diners, with their sleek hair and expensive jewellery. She had agonised over what to wear, texting pictures of different outfit options to her university friends. She’d wanted to wear something simple, a plain navy dress she’d had for years, but one of the girls, Becky, had talked her into borrowing a slinky red top. It was so low-cut that it exposed a mole on her breastbone, a dark pink smudge she’d hated since childhood.

She had felt incredibly self-conscious as she walked into the restaurant and scanned the tables, looking for Simon. He stood up when he saw her and smiled, his perfect teeth dazzling. Later, she’d convinced herself that she imagined it, but at the time she thought that a hush fell over the room, as the other diners looked between her and Simon and thought: Her?

Really?

But Simon had poured her a glass of wine and smiled at her again, in that slow, sensuous way he had. Gradually, her nerves had fallen away, replaced by butterflies of excitement. They had talked about everything, the conversation flowing as easily as the wine that Simon poured into her glass, until quickly they’d had one bottle, then two.

They’d talked about their families – Simon was an only child, just like her. He wasn’t really in touch with his parents, he’d admitted – there’d been some kind of argument, when he was younger. Later, she’d realise he wasn’t in contact with most people from his childhood, or from university.

He had a talent for moving on and starting over, extricating himself as seamlessly as a snake shedding its skin.

But she didn’t know any of this that night, as she looked into his eyes – so blue – and opened herself up to him in a way she couldn’t remember doing with anyone before. The glass wall she’d built around herself was disintegrating – she could almost see it happening; the fragments winking in the light like tiny mirrors.

Really, it was just that the glass wall was being replaced with another kind of cage. One that Simon spun from charm and flattery, as binding and delicate as spider silk.

Now, she wonders if she’d known this, even then. Perhaps it had been part of the allure – the thought that, after all those exhausting years of locking herself away, here was someone who could do it for her.

Their jobs couldn’t have been more different – he seemed to relish the challenge of private equity, telling her of the electric thrill when he acquired a floundering company. It was like hunting, he said, but instead of shooting deer or foxes he was seizing assets and balance sheets, stripping a company of its deadweight like flesh from a carcass.

His world – with its own set of bewildering rules and jargon – couldn’t have been more foreign to her. And yet he’d listened attentively as she’d gushed about her job in children’s publishing. About the thrill of reading manuscripts, of immersing herself in a story that no one else had yet experienced. She’d even told him how reading had been such a comfort – a life raft, really – after her father’s death. ‘I love your passion,’ he’d said, placing his hand on hers, the fine hairs of his arm gold in the candlelight. And then, with a tenderness that made tears prick her eyes, ‘Your father would be very proud of you.’ Other images from that night haunt her, too. Simon helping her into a taxi, asking her to his for a nightcap. Sinking down into his soft leather couch, brain muddled from too much wine … ‘You’re so much prettier when you smile,’ he’d said, as she laughed at one of his jokes. He had leaned over, brushed the hair from her face and kissed her for the first time. He touched her gently at first, as if she were a wild animal he might spook away. Then the kiss deepened, and his fingers

were firm on her jaw.

I must have you.

It was romantic, she told herself the next morning, the way he undid her trousers, pulled down her underwear, pushed himself inside her. The strength of his need.

In the early days of their relationship, she returned to that memory again and again, smoothing its rough edges into a lie she almost believed. It would be years before she remembered the word she had whispered, mind and body dulled by alcohol, as his face blurred over hers.

Wait.

Suddenly, she can’t bear the sight of the letters anymore. She folds them up and puts them aside.

She clutches her mug of tea tightly, letting it warm her hands. Outside, it is raining in earnest now; the windows are jewelled with it. She can’t see the garden, but she thinks she can hear the branches of the sycamore, scraping across the roof in the wind.

Nausea grips her stomach. The only sign of the baby, other than a new heaviness to her breasts. She wonders if it is normal, this feeling that her guts are pushing up into her throat, if it indicates how far along she is.

Almost two months since her last period, since the familiar twist of pain in her womb, the smear of blood on her underwear. Always the colour of silt, of soil, on the first day. Looking more like something from the earth than from her own body.

Simon didn’t care for blood, unless he’d been the one to draw it. He collected the bruises that bloomed across her skin as if they were trophies, fingering them with pride. But her menstrual blood flowed from her body with its own rhythm, one that he didn’t care for and couldn’t control. He hated the feel of it, slimy and fibrous. The smell. Like an animal, he said.

Or something dead. So, Kate had one week a month when her body was her

own.

And now she is sharing it.

She pictures the clump of cells, clinging to her insides. Even now, splitting and reforming, growing. Into their child.

Will it be a boy, she wonders, and grow up to be like Simon? Or a girl,

and grow up to be like her?

She isn’t sure what would be worse.

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