Chapter 26
26
Olivia’s body stiffened with shock and she allowed her head to fall back against the rough bricks, trying to better hear Seth’s bemusing words and make sense of what the voice was saying. Her stomach was churning faster than a spinning top and she thought she might be sick. Everyone knew the tragedies she’d experienced in her short life, from the death of her parents, to the loss of the three eldest Fairchild sons. The upcoming wedding had been the talk of the village and she couldn’t believe that anyone could be so unkind as to put her through this. Why would this man claim to be the very person she’d initially suspected of being the voice? And someone she had such an uncomfortable past with, to boot?
Everything that had happened in the summer of 1912 came rushing back to her. As far as she knew, Tanner had moved to Cambridgeshire and hadn’t had a connection to Merriford Manor for years. And yet, she’d always thought Seth’s manner of speaking was similar to the prickly lad she’d had her silly, infantile crush on. Whoever he was, he was delusional, assuring her that the events that had so devastatingly altered the course of her life had never happened. It was simply too much for her to cope with in the middle of the night, alone and in her current state. But perhaps that was the truth of it – she was so unhappy that she was lost to her own mind and no longer had any control.
‘Seth Tanner hasn’t worked at Merriford Manor for years,’ she said, her tone quite sharp.
‘I know, I’ve been serving abroad?—’
‘No, I mean he left to work in Cambridgeshire back in 1912.’
‘Well, I most certainly didn’t. Why would I leave a job I love to go halfway across the country?’
A guilty pang shot through her and she avoided his question.
‘This is all nonsense,’ Olivia said. ‘You insisting that you are someone I happen to know doesn’t live in Norfolk any more, and trying to persuade me that the Titanic didn’t sink…’
She heard a long sigh drift through the wall. It was the weary impatience of a person repeating himself to someone who wasn’t listening.
‘May God strike me down if even one word coming from my mouth is not the truth. I’m Seth William Tanner and that ship did hit an iceberg head on, but was able to sail onward for repairs. There were a lot of red faces at the White Star Line and huge public outrage,’ Seth continued. ‘We heard a lot about it at the time because Sir Hugo had friends on board when it happened. Have you heard of the famous author Jasper Davenport?’
For a moment, Olivia wanted to laugh, but nothing about this situation was funny. Her parents were dead and this whole conversation was ludicrous. It was at that moment that she realised Seth had no idea who she was. He didn’t even know her real name.
‘Of course I’ve heard of him!’ She spat the words out. ‘He was my father and I am Olivia Davenport. I was orphaned when that boat went down, and Sir Hugo – as my godfather and legal guardian – took me in. I gave my name as Cordelia because I was pretending to be the ghost you kept insisting I was.’
If her tone was angry, his was simply incredulous.
‘Olivia Davenport? The tree-climbing tomboy who was always so kind to Master Benjamin when she visited?’ He snorted. ‘I remember her asking if I’d ever seen fairies in the woods and whether I thought people’s dreams floated around in the air and landed in other people’s heads – or something equally dizzy.’ The questions sounded like something she might have asked but never had – not of him, at any rate. ‘Darn good shot with a catapult, as I recall.’
She frowned. ‘That sounds like me.’
‘If you’re her, then tell me the title of the book your father published last year.’
But it was the wrong question to ask.
‘The last book my father wrote was published at the end of 1911 and then he died ,’ she reminded him. ‘And it was a cruel and wholly avoidable death. I know this because I’ve thoroughly researched the events of that night over the years, even though it wouldn’t bring my parents back, but because I mistakenly thought understanding it all might help.’
It hadn’t helped at all, of course, and the very fact that the whole disaster was preventable had made everything a million times worse.
‘We talked about the Titanic before the war – remember?’ she said.
‘I do, as it happens. That was an odd night. You mentioned some names – members of the crew that I’d never heard of – but jigger me, if they didn’t turn out to be real people. Never could quite get my head around that.’
‘Equally, I thought about your version of events, where the ship telescoped, and it made sense.’ She sighed, calmer now. ‘There were details in your explanation that I didn’t know, like the fact that many of the crew slept in the bow of the ship.’
‘Well, I can assure you, Jasper and Selina Davenport didn’t die. The poor woman broke her leg, though. Thrown from the bed when it smashed into the iceberg. She still uses a stick, I was told, although I’ve not seen her since the start of the war. I didn’t make this stuff up. It wouldn’t be a nice thing to do and I’m not a nasty person.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I know you’re not.’
Neither of them spoke for fully a minute but eventually, his voice drifted through the bricks. His tone was softer – further proof of his kind nature.
‘When I heard you tonight, you were sobbing. What was that all about?’
Olivia couldn’t bring herself to mention Howard by name. She’d have to talk of their engagement and it was all still too raw. Although she realised that the stream of startling revelations from the other side of the wall that night had distracted her from wallowing in self-pity.
‘We’ve all been hit very hard by the deaths of the Fairchild boys,’ she explained. ‘It catches me by surprise sometimes and I simply can’t bear that they aren’t here any more. In fact, I don’t think I can talk about them, if that’s all right with you, because it opens me up to more pain than I can bear. As I’m sure you can appreciate, they’ve been like brothers to me in the last few years and even saying their names is a twisting knife to my stomach.’
‘I understand, and that’s a sorrow we do share. The war has destroyed so many families and I don’t think Her Ladyship will ever get over such a loss,’ he said. ‘Parents should not outlive their children. It in’t right.’
‘And equally, children should not lose their parents before they reach adulthood.’
There was a considered pause on both sides of the bricks.
‘I’m sorry that your Davenports died on the Titanic ,’ he said. ‘It’s a terrible thing that you are in some world… some other place… where it sunk.’
It was the only explanation. He was somewhere similar to this world but not quite the same, and instead of a looking glass between them, it was a wall.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, resting her hand on the cold bricks and leaning in close to whisper her gratitude, ‘for believing me.’
* * *
‘Whatever happened to Tanner? The undergardener?’ Olivia asked, as she joined Cynthia in the dining room the following day.
‘Good morning, my dear. You look well.’ The delight across Her Ladyship’s face that the girl who had shut herself away for four months was up and about was plain to see.
‘I am feeling a little better,’ she agreed. ‘And Tanner?’ She repeated her question.
Cynthia avoided her eye and continued to survey the range of breakfast options, lifting the lid of a serving dish and allowing the smell of smoked fish to pervade the room.
‘Goodness, dear, that’s going back some years. You were very young and I felt a duty of care for you. We sent him to work for Sir Hugo’s first cousin, Jonty, who has an estate in Cambridgeshire.’ A thought obviously occurred to her and she looked across at Olivia with concern. ‘He didn’t touch you, did he? I’ll never forgive myself if something happened. Howard told me you had a special friendship with the lad. That he’d said how pretty you were and invited you to spend more time with him in the gardens. And I’d seen you together in the greenhouse. Such attentions made me uncomfortable. Tanner denied it all, of course, but it was my duty to keep you safe.’
Olivia’s stomach constricted as she realised what she’d done. Her silly lies to Howard had been reported back and had unimaginable consequences.
‘The things I told Howard were untrue,’ she admitted. ‘I was cross with him for spying on me and I had a silly, childish infatuation with Tanner at the time. It was me who was bothering him and he never did anything untoward. I was curious and he was kind. He was Benji’s friend and would humour us if we came across him in the grounds. My mind was always full of handsome princes and swashbuckling pirates, and I think I confused the two.’
Cynthia frowned. ‘Oh dear, then I feel terrible for not believing him. Although, in my defence, I made sure he went to a good position. He was a hard worker and life had not been easy for the poor man.’ She took a single slice of toast and sat down at the long table across from Olivia. ‘You’ve always been quite a wild thing and attracted attention. People, and more latterly men, have always found you captivating, from Benji and Howard, to the patients at the hospital. There is something about you – your optimism, your determination, your spirit. Even I have long since admired your vivid imagination.’
The older woman wouldn’t envy her if she knew what turmoil she was currently experiencing. Where did her imagination end and the disembodied voice beyond the wall begin?
‘And he was a lovely-looking lad,’ Cynthia acknowledged. ‘If somewhat moody. Of course, we knew all about the girl when we took him on, but I felt sorry for him what with his father and everything.’
‘What girl? What about his father?’ She vaguely recalled Benji saying something about an Amy or an Annie all those years ago.
‘He was sweet on one of the girls from the village but she ran off with a travelling lad, they say. Tanner was understandably devastated. Not long afterwards, he witnessed his father die a rather unpleasant death. The vicar spoke to me about it all at the time, quite concerned about his welfare. His grandfather had given the estate many years of excellent service, and I persuaded Sir Hugo to take him on.’
‘Is there any way Tanner could have returned to Norfolk before the war without you knowing? Not taken up the new position after all and worked somewhere locally?’
Lady Fairchild frowned. ‘No. His mother moved to Cambridgeshire to be with him not many weeks afterwards. I only know because she was on the rota for the church flowers back then and I had to find a replacement. What’s all this about, Olivia?’ She peered quizzically at her companion, who decided to backtrack and not cause too much alarm.
‘I’ve been having some strange dreams and sometimes hear voices in my head, but it’s perfectly understandable after everything that’s happened. My parents, the war… Howard.’ The two women exchanged an understanding glance. ‘Perhaps the guilt of kicking the poor gardener out of the tower and the knowledge that my foolishness cost him his job is playing on my mind.’
‘It is not normal to hear voices, Olivia,’ Her Ladyship ventured, reaching for the butter dish. ‘Maybe you should move back into the house if you find the tower unsettling. I never did like you out there. Sir Hugo’s grandfather had a dog who refused to enter, but people don’t sense these other-worldly things as keenly as animals. In fact, quite the opposite was true with my husband, who was always pulled to it as a child and used to enjoy haring up and down the stairs with his brother.’
Olivia jolted her head towards Cynthia. ‘I didn’t know Sir Hugo had a brother.’
‘He was always a sickly child and he’s… gone now.’ Cynthia waved a dismissive hand. ‘Apparently, the builders had the Devil of a job with the east tower because the seam of iron that runs through the estate is directly beneath the foundations and continues all the way up to the coast. You can still see the shrieking pits in the village, where they dug it out in times gone by.’
Olivia knew about the pits from when she’d gone on bicycle rides to the coast with Benji – she struggled to think of him as a Benjamin. Could this geological phenomenon be in some way connected to what was going on? She thought again of the world that existed the other side of the mirror in Lewis Carroll’s book. It might all be nonsense, but she was determined to investigate the tower, the strange geology of the local landscape and perhaps even see if she could track down Tanner.
It wasn’t that she’d got over Howard’s death – she knew that if she lived to be a hundred, the pain of losing him would never truly leave her – but the return of the voice was enough of a distraction to give her a focus and divert her from her self-pity. It didn’t mean her grief had evaporated; she was curious, not cured.