Cold Ash Holt
Dear sir,
The child is due any day now, and I am full of fear. How can I do this? You know of what I speak – I am sure you do. I might as well be alone in this house, surrounded only by ghosts. Do you see what you have done? Half of me wishes I had never known you. More than half of me, some of the time. I find myself trying to picture you now, trying to picture what you might look like without your usual clothes, without your books and your smile. All of those little icons that made you up – your ‘divine truth’. What of that now? Is it all abandoned, as I am?
Everything is ruined. I can’t even take pleasure in teaching any more, in the children, because as I stand on the floor before them, I know what lies beneath my feet. I told you what I did, didn’t I? I can scarce remember. I’d thought it would be only temporary, a place where nobody would think to look. Trying to find what I had already found, what I picked up from the library floor that morning. I was going to destroy it all, you see. Every last thing, but then I thought perhaps you might one day have need of it to offer proof, to offer mitigation. So there it stays, beneath the floor. I can scarce think of it without such a storm of dread arising in my heart that it leaves me weak, and shivering; let alone dare to move it, to touch it.
I think this child must be a boy, and a big one. I am quite unrecognisable, I am vast. The creature has taken over my body. He’s too big now to even move around and kick me like he did these last few months. He’s tight packed in, like the air in a balloon. How I wish he would stay there! I don’t know where I will find the strength to raise him with a pure heart, happy and carefree, when I labour under such shadows. Enough now. I am tired. Even writing a letter is enough to tire me out; and especially a letter to you, sir, when I come to know that I shall have no reply. Still I hope for it, and that tires me even more.
Wishing this letter brings you some comfort, in the cruel place where you are,
H. Canning
Again, Leah read, and reread. She read the letter a third time, but only because she did not trust herself to look up, to look at Ryan and to speak to him. How did it always come to this? She cursed inwardly. That liquid feeling, hot in the marrow of her bones, as though her resolve was an actual substance that could melt under pressure, rush off into her bloodstream and be quite lost. Ryan was not even that close to her. He was perched on the window sill opposite, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand holding back her hair as she read. He stood up so suddenly that Leah jumped.
‘More coffee?’ he offered, voice so casual that Leah doubted herself, doubted that he had feelings anything like her own.
‘No thanks.’ She didn’t look up.
‘Sounds like she was in a right pickle, doesn’t it?’ he asked, pouring hot water onto a fresh scattering of instant granules. ‘What do you make of it?’
‘I hardly know. Something dire happened. She was left to deal with the aftermath by herself, our guy buggered off somewhere, and then to the war. She thinks he knows something about what happened,’ Leah said. Now she looked up at him. His back was turned, it was safer. The long, loose shape of his spine, the broad spread of his shoulders beneath his shirt. Just flesh and skin and bone, no more than she; but still magic, somehow.
‘But they weren’t lovers?’ he said.
‘I don’t think so, no. She’d hardly call him “Dear sir” if they were, would she? Not even a hundred years ago. It’s a bit cold and formal.’
‘The content of the letters isn’t though, is it? Cold or formal, I mean,’ Ryan pointed out. He sat down next to her, too close, touching at thigh, hip, elbow. Leah felt a sinking inside, the pulling open of old wounds. It was an odd pain, almost satisfying; like tugging at a loose tooth, pressing a bruise. A bruise that went right the way through. She remembered his treachery, the flying apart of everything she thought she knew.
‘It is and then it isn’t. Very odd. It’s as though she’s trying to be proper about it all, but there’s no way to reconcile what she needs to say with that. And the way she’s so vague – it’s almost like she half expected someone else to get hold of the letters and read them, and she didn’t want to give too much away…’ Leah trailed off. Ryan had tucked her hair behind her ear for her, left his fingers to brush her cheek with a touch softer than snowflakes. Mutely, she met his eye.
‘So you’ll look into it then? Try to find out who he was?’ Ryan said. Leah nodded. ‘It’s like old times, watching you get stuck into a mystery. An… unexpected bonus.’
‘What do you mean? Didn’t you think I’d do it?’
‘No, I thought you’d deliberately avoid doing it just because I’d asked you to.’ He smiled.
‘I did think of that,’ she admitted. ‘I… part of the reason I came out here was for the chance to say no to you. To refuse you something.’ Tears blurred into her eyes and she wiped them away angrily.
‘You fell at the first hurdle,’ he said, softly. ‘You came out here in the first place. When I asked you to.’
‘I know. Not very good at this, am I?’
‘I don’t know. You’ve made me wait five months to see you. You made me come to Belgium to try to forget you.’
‘That’s a lie. You always wanted to come and work with the War Graves Commission,’ she said, struggling to find a toehold, something to grasp as she slipped further and further over the cliff edge.
‘Leah, I’ve missed you so much,’ Ryan whispered, his lips in her hair, words touching her skin like butterflies. In silence, Leah gave in.
When she woke it was to the sound of more rain, flecked with hail, tapping at the window pane. The little room was dark and gloomy, the bed crowded. Ryan was turned to the wall, his back to her, deeply asleep. Without moving a muscle, Leah scanned the room, made note of each item of her clothing, cast off the night before. For a second, she tried to find a way to undo what she’d done, knowing it was utterly futile. She shut her eyes and let despair wash through her. It was like being underground, being smothered, seeing no way out. I will never be free.
But then, scribbled across the red-black of her eyelids, came the words of the Canning woman’s letters. Everything is ruined. I was going to destroy it all… there it stays, beneath the floor; I labour under such shadows! There was something there to be discovered, some hidden story, some truth. Not just the identity of the dead soldier, but whatever it was that had caused this woman such anguish, such nightmares. And why it was that the man she wrote to never wrote back to her; and why it was that he kept only these two of her letters; and why it was that she thought he might one day have had something to prove, to mitigate, as she put it.
Like a lifeline, something to cling to, the loose threads of the story wound their way down to her. She could just about reach them, concentrating hard, bending all her will to it. The first thing she had to do was leave. Not even wake Ryan, or speak to him, or tell him goodbye; never mind that the smell of him was in her hair and on her fingers and in her mouth, like traces of some pernicious drug that fed her as it wasted her. On soft feet she rose, dressed, picked up the copies of the letters from the floor and folded them into her bag. She did not look at the bed; she did not leave a note. As she left the room she thought she saw a gleam with the corner of her eye, a shard of light reflected from the dark form tangled up in the pillows and sheets. As if Ryan’s eyes were open as she slipped from the room.
1911
In the mornings, the house is cool and quiet, full of bright sunshine that glints on every speck of dust swirling in the still air, settling slowly onto the furniture. As Cat sweeps the hearths and rugs, clouds of it billow around her, resettle all around to be wiped off minutes later, back into the air, on to the floor. She is glad Hester is never up in time to see how futile trying to be rid of it is. People are made of dust. Houses are made of it. Cat brushes her fingers on her apron, again and again, not liking the thought of it clinging to her skin. She cleans the downstairs rooms and lays the table for breakfast before Hester comes down. Sometimes, she is called upstairs to help Hester dress. Then, when the vicar is back from his morning jaunt, he and Hester eat breakfast while Cat goes upstairs, gathers the dirty laundry and mending, makes the bed, cleans the bedroom and bathroom, the upstairs corridor. She airs guest rooms that she has yet to see any guests use; opens shutters in rooms nobody will enter all day, shuts them again when the sun begins to set. She persecutes flies endlessly, swatting at them; watching those that fly too high, out of reach, waiting for them to tire and die.