The day was overcast, as in the dream, but milder. Though the road was not the same, there was something about its atmosphere that reminded her of the dream: it was flat, and for the most part straight, and ran through a series of fields which appeared, from the glimpses through the hedges, to be quite deserted; but perhaps it was only the drivers silence that made her feel that she had passed this way before. All the while Rosalind was watching for a high wall of yellowish stone, so that when the driver turned down a short avenue of elms and she realised this was Blackwall Park, her first reaction was a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. There was no wall; the house was built of grey stone, not yellowish; the windows were shuttered, but it had two storeys, not three. They pulled up on gravel, but brown gravel was common, surely, as was a front door framed by a porch with stone pillars: it was not the same front door, and it was certainly not ajar; yet she was suddenly very apprehensive. What if Mr Margrave had come down after all? She had placed herself in the most compromising position; it would look as if she had secretly sought him out… how could she not have thought of this? She had been mad to come here; and with that thought the memory of the dream pressed so closely upon her that the smell of damp and mould seemed to rise from the gravel onto which she found herself alighting, telling the driver to wait for her.
Her intellect ordered her to retreat; but her feet carried her along the gravel to the left, around the side of the house, barely noticing an expanse of lawn and shrubbery, onto a flagged path which took her around a conservatory and back towards the rear of the house, where there was indeed a red brick wall, lower than in the dream, partly enclosing a kitchen garden. This garden was quite neat, and not at all rank or overgrown; yet there was a path leading diagonally from a door at the back of the house, through the garden beds towards the far corner of the brick wall, and her feet were again compelled along it until she could see clearly that there were no graves or tombstones anywhere here. Rosalind stopped, confused, and began to retreat. As she did so, the smell of newly turned earth floated up to her from a nearby bed; and something caught at her dress. She glanced down. It was a cucumber frame, and on the corner nearest the path was caught a long thin strip of material; not from the blue travelling cloak she was wearing, but a drab, rusty black. In the same instant she became aware that she was not alone.
At the edge of her vision-for she dared not move-she saw Denton Margrave standing exactly where he had stood in the dream, and for an instant it seemed to her that the sky darkened over. She waited for the ground to open into a pit; the dream rushed back at her with such appalling vividness that she saw the blue light crackle about him, heard the rustle of unfurling wings, and then… it was like looking out of a fast-moving train which had swiftly and silently reversed its direction: the Margrave-figure shrank back into itself; she seemed to be drawn backwards through the entirety of the dream, all in perfect detail but at such speed that she had not drawn breath before she was back in the sunlit pavilion with the woman showing her the tide page of her book, hearing simultaneously the voice of Caroline's mother at the dinner table, and understanding, at last, what Christina Temple had come back to tell her.
The vision faded; the paralysis ceased; Rosalind's heart gave one dreadful jolt as she turned to face her pursuer, until she saw that he was not Margrave at all, but an elderly man in a frayed, grimy, threadbare suit of black and heavy workman's boots, leaning upon a hoe and regarding her with some bewilderment. They remained silently facing one another until Rosalind had recovered sufficiently to say, somewhat breathlessly but with a composure which amazed her: "Pray excuse me; I have come to the wrong house."
Staring out across the sombre fields as the train carried her back to London, Rosalind found her thoughts running beyond the impending scene with her mother, Yorkshire would be a kind of exile for her, as well, but she would have work to do. She had her tale to tell, and would find the right way of telling it. Much black ink would have to be spilt; the angel's pure white radiance might never be quite recovered; but she would remain Rosalind Forster, and would one day earn enough to set her mother up in London with a companion, and be free to return to Caroline and Staplefield. So she promised herself, imagining the pavilion restored and glowing with fresh paint and varnish, floating in sunlit air.
PART THREE
I sat in the wreck of the pavilion with Even Staple field was a lie and Alice will be so disappointed looping through my head. But my mother hadn't lied, not exactly: Ferrier's Close was Staplefield. And Ashbourn House; and others, perhaps, I didn't yet know about. So why had she brought me up on the story-book version-in the most literal sense-of her childhood?
Because she couldn't bear to let go of Viola altogether, said the Alice-voice in my head.
Then what did she do here that was so terrible?
The voice did not reply. From here, the house was invisible; the path curved away into the encircling nettles. When I first saw it, the ruined pavilion had had a certain romantic charm. Now it looked utterly despoiled. Rusting, twisted sections of the cupola roof littered the trampled clearing. The desolation was suddenly unbearable.
You're just angry, I told myself as I walked back to the house; angry she lied to you. She chose the story-book version because she'd been disinherited, not because she murdered Anne.
The anger carried me on up the stairs to the second floor and another search of the bedrooms. This time I made as much of a racket as I could, banging doors, slamming drawers, stomping across like a poltergeist. My noisy progress reminded me of something a colleague at the library had told me years ago, about a troubled boarding school, iron bedsteads flung across an empty dormitory. I looked again at the deep gouges in the floor of the cupboard above Phyllis's bed; they looked unpleasantly like the marks of paired claws. But I found nothing new.
I returned to the library, intending to begin a systematic search for papers, but instead was overcome by another wave of black fatigue, lay down on the chesterfield, and fell instantly asleep.
I woke-as it seemed-at dusk.The sky through the upper windows was still relatively bright. High above, the ceiling floated in a vault of gloom. My gaze drifted down rows of shelves towards the false bookcase at the end of the mezzanine gallery.
Only I couldn't see the false bookcase, because someone was standing motionless in front of it. A woman-for a horrible moment a headless woman, until I saw that she was veiled in black. And wearing an elaborate gown in some heavy material; I could see the flare of her skirt through the vertical bars below the railing. A dark green gown, gathered at the shoulders.
I thought, 'Viola', and then, 'Imogen de Vere', and then, 'This is one of those dreams where you dream you can see through your eyelids.' Usually I wake the instant I realise I'm asleep, a little disappointed to find that I can't see with my eyes closed, any more than I can fly. But the figure didn't vanish. Instead it appeared to shrink, receding into the shadow of the end wall. I closed my eyes resolutely, counted to three. The false bookcase had reappeared. There was no one on the gallery.