Chapter Thirteen #2
I sift through her clothes. She has many more dresses than Eddie.
They’re crammed into the wardrobe in a mouthwatering display of varying colours and fabrics.
At the bottom are two rows of shoes. She’s certainly not short of footwear!
The drawers are full of blouses and shirts, scarves, handkerchiefs and underwear.
Her father might not support her ambitions, but he has certainly bought her a fine array of clothes.
Nessa is a girl who wants for nothing, except a career.
I’m at a loss. Besides the usual things one might find in a woman’s bedroom, there doesn’t appear to be anything that sheds light on why she later chooses to remain earthbound.
So, she hates Gilda and wishes she were playing Lady Macbeth.
But that’s not reason enough to shun the next world in favour of haunting this one.
I sit on her bed and look around despondently, wondering where to go from here.
The sun streams in, catching little filaments of dust that my searching has released into the air so that they glitter like gold.
I’m about to give up, when, on a whim, I try one last thing. I slip my hand beneath her pillow.
Bingo! A journal. Why I didn’t think of that first, I’ll never know. It’s such an obvious place to hide something.
I study it hopefully. It’s a cheap grey exercise book.
The kind that might be given to school children.
She’s drawn a big heart on the cover in glue and stuck little pieces of scarlet tissue paper to it, making it into a kind of rough mosaic.
I open the first page. There, in large black letters is the name Taran. Who is Taran?
I turn the next page. In her pretty, flowing hand she has listed his date of birth, 26 June 1892 (that makes him 31), followed by the characteristics – both positive and negative – of the sun sign Cancer.
There are ticks by some of those qualities: intuitive, creative, moody, home-loving and sensitive.
I imagine they are the ones she identifies as his.
She’s drawn a picture of a crab for the astrological sign and then written down all that she has gleaned about it.
On the following page she has gone into his Chinese sign in great detail.
He’s the Year of the Dragon, and consequently a water dragon, being born in June.
Then she pairs Cancer up with her sign, Aquarius.
There are pages on this, and I don’t bother to read it all.
I’m more interested to find out who Taran is, and whether he might be here in Seacombe.
Does he have a part to play in this drama?
What follows is quite concerning. She has written pages of repeated sentences, rather like lines one had to write at school as a punishment for misbehaving in class.
I love you, I love you, I love you … on and on and on.
Pages! It’s alarmingly obsessional. After that, there are lists of his name and then Taran and Vanessa.
Taran and Nessa. T&V. Hundreds of times!
Oh, my poor, hopeless, broken heart.
I flick through the pages, in search of a last name.
There are love poems. Some she has written herself, I think, others are famous, from Romeo and Juliet to ‘The Highwayman’.
They’re written in her lovely flowing hand, in black ink.
She’s taken trouble with every line. But I sense beneath the facade of control is a desperate, compulsive person.
Who is the object of this obsessional passion?
I hear shuffling outside the door and in one hasty move shove the book back under the pillow and spring to my feet. The knob turns and like lightening I leap to the wardrobe and grab the dress hanging there.
When Nancy comes in with a basket of laundry pressed to her hip, I appear to be studying the dress.
‘Oh, sorry, ma’am, I didn’t know you were in here,’ she says and blushes with embarrassment.
‘That’s all right, Nancy,’ I reply and smile sweetly. ‘I saw a stain on this last night but can’t find it now. Will you have a look?’
‘Of course,’ she replies, putting the basket on the bed and taking the dress off me. She runs her eyes over the fabric, but in spite of finding no stain, she takes it. ‘I’ll get rid of it, don’t worry.’
I want to ask her who Taran is, but that might sound weird if it turns out to be someone I should know.
I leave her in the room and retreat to mine, where I stand by one of the windows and gaze out, weighing up what I’ve just found out.
Nessa is madly in love. It has the feel of an unrequited love, for there are no reports of spending time with this man, or even of speaking to him.
I wonder whether he’s one of the cast members.
After all, I haven’t met them all yet and one of them might be called Taran.
I need to find a cast list from a previous play.
A programme perhaps where both first and last names are listed.
A feeling then comes over me. Subtle at first then growing stronger as I consider Taran and his possible part in Nessa’s demise. It’s the kind of feeling I get when I know I’m on the right track.
Taran is very significant.
I have lunch in the dining room on my own.
Cold ham, new potatoes and baby broad beans.
It’s delicious. Mrs Crocker has returned from the shops with the tea.
She offers to make me some now, but I have no time.
I must get back to the theatre and find out who this mysterious man is.
She looks disappointed. I reassure her that I’ll have some later, when I can really enjoy it, and that seems to satisfy her.
I return to the theatre to find them all hard at work.
Mr Bentley is giving instructions, the actors are rehearsing their scenes, many are hanging around waiting for their turn, smoking or reading the newspapers, or talking quietly among themselves.
Nessa, as it turns out, is doing my job, sitting in my chair and prompting.
It’s hard to reconcile the smiley girl with the infatuated, obsessive author of the journal.
How can she sit here, seemingly so tranquil of mind, when her manic listing of I love yous implies a mind that is very disturbed.
Or perhaps I’m being harsh. Maybe it’s just childish.
When she sees me, she grins. ‘I rather like doing this,’ she says. ‘It’s better than being bored, anyhow.’
‘Where’s Lavinia?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘Not back from her lunch break. She went with Eliza and Tamsin.’