Chapter Fifteen 1902 #3
They spanned just three years. At the time it had seemed as though she’d kept writing for an age, and he was loath to remember being pleased about that.
He’d wanted her to hurl herself against the fortress of his anger until she broke herself to pieces.
And he had remained unconquered; he was just no longer sure whether that meant he’d won.
He ought to open and read them all, or else get rid of them.
He spread them out across the table, noticing the handwriting getting more sophisticated as time passed.
She’d been fifteen when Kit had hanged. Fifteen.
Yet he had made none of the allowances for her that he now argued for on behalf of young offenders everywhere.
Toby took a gulp of wine, selected a letter from the middle of the array, and opened it before he could change his mind.
I know I was cowardly not to do as you asked me.
I let fear govern me, and I did not do as I should have done.
You said that I’d given them a small piece of the picture and left them to misinterpret the rest, and you were right.
I could have drawn that small part differently to make them see the truth of the whole.
How I wish I had! But I only made things worse for him with the magistrate, and I didn’t dare to try again in front of the judge.
I was so very ill, by then. I think about Kit and Missy every day, and I think of you, too.
Can you ever forgive me, Toby? Please, please do. It is agony to know that you hate me.
Toby dropped the letter and got to his feet.
He paced, poured more wine and then stoppered the bottle and put it away, out of sight.
The letters must be destroyed. He could no more undo the fact that they’d gone unanswered all these years than Theo could undo her absence from Kit’s trial.
He knew, now, why he hadn’t opened them – because he would have forgiven her.
Over time, he would have done; and he hadn’t wanted to forgive her.
He’d needed his rage. Back then, it was all that had kept him going.
Now, at thirty-one, he saw quite clearly what his teenaged self had not.
But the letters were relics of another time.
Theo would probably be mortified to know he still had them.
She was a mother now; she was no longer the girl who’d dreamed of Mesopotamia.
He pictured her with her handsome and successful husband, in their comfortable home, with their growing family, and doubted whether he or Kit ever crossed her mind any more.
It was only natural. They’d been so young, and so much had changed since then.
He picked up the letter he’d opened, intending to stuff it back into its envelope.
Instead, more words caught his eye, and he found himself reading the whole thing.
Sometimes I dream about the moment you and Kit arrived at the castle that night, when it was all lit up by the moon and the candles, and you seemed so happy to see me even though it was just a stupid, childish game. I never want to wake up from that dream, but I always do.
And then, shockingly: I still cannot understand why you said what you did in your last note to me, about the coin.
I didn’t want it back, I wanted Kit to keep it.
I hoped it was helping him to feel brave.
And I wanted to go and see him – I truly did.
I would have gone, readily, but you had been so hard on me and told me I was no friend of yours or Kit’s, so I didn’t dare to ask you . . .
Toby sat back, winded, as it fell into place.
It was blindingly obvious. Of course she hadn’t asked for the coin back; of course she’d have wanted to see Kit.
But, because it had suited him, he’d believed at once that she simply didn’t care.
He’d kept on believing it, and now saw that the underpinnings of his righteous anger had been pure fiction.
The most probable explanation was that Diana Hallewell had intercepted his note, and retained it.
Mrs Hallewell is very keen for nothing to disturb her daughter.
That was how she’d found out about the coin, and why she’d come, so callously, to ask for it back.
That was why Theo hadn’t answered his summons to visit Kit.
His fingers were shaking when he finally pushed the crowded paper back into the envelope.
It was far, far too late now to take it back, or apologise.
He gathered the letters together, took them over to the fireplace and put them in the grate.
There were matches on the mantelpiece, and a few bits of kindling in the scuttle.
He scattered the kindling, lit a match and waited for the flame to burn steadily.
Staring at it, he was hurled back to the moment she’d described – climbing up to the castle at midnight, seeing her there with her candles and props and her air of nervous anticipation.
He shut his eyes, and when the match burned his fingers he dropped it with a curse.
The memory was an ache, every bit as physical as the fragment of shot still lodged in his arm.
He sighed, and opened his eyes. The letters were still in the grate, with the burnt-out match perched on top like a withered insect.
He knew he wouldn’t burn them, or throw them away; but he couldn’t read any more of them, either.
Her words caused flickers of the old chaos, when he liked to think he was the master of it now.
He put them back in the trunk, then picked up his old notebook and sat leafing through the symbols, stacking his feet up on the windowsill and waiting to feel better.
Amazingly, perusing the notebook did still feel like catching up with an old friend.
It was not because he wanted to go back.
It was not because he missed that time, or Theo, or the person he’d been – gauche, and obnoxiously self-important.
No, he decided: it was only because he might now be able to see something in the symbols that he hadn’t before, and tie up that loose end.
Not because he felt the beginnings of regret, setting in like rust.
Ralph came home in the particular sunken mood caused by the loss of a patient.
The whole household sensed it, none more so than Theo.
It had been twenty-seven days since he’d last hit her; she suspected it would not be that many before he did so again.
She was torn, because asking him what was wrong could at times be as provoking as not asking him.
She sent Arthur upstairs before approaching.
‘Ralph? Is all well?’
‘Is all well?’ he echoed bitterly. ‘No, it is not.’
‘Will you tell me what’s happened?’
‘Do you care?’
He looked up with more sorrow than anger in his eyes, so she went closer and laid her hand on his arm.
‘Of course I do.’
‘Fetch wine first, I beg you.’
He gulped the first glassful with grim determination.
‘Another one lost,’ he said. ‘When there was simply no cause for it that I could discern. What says that for my skill, and my knowledge?’
‘What . . . Was the patient gravely ill?’
‘Yes, though she did not seem so at first. Miss Breton. An elderly spinster. She slipped on a wet floor and hit her head against the wall, though she only called me out to reset her broken finger.’ Ralph poured more wine, slopping some on to the table.
‘But, fortunately for her – or perhaps not, after all . . .’
He swept the spilled wine on to the rug. A scatter of droplets like blood.
‘Fortunately, I noticed her blinking rapidly, as though unable to focus her eyes. I asked if her head ached, and she said that it did. So I invited her to attend the hospital, to be observed in case she worsened.’
‘There was a wound to her head?’ Theo asked.
‘A bump, nothing more. Or so it seemed.’
Theo’s mouth had gone dry. ‘Yet she . . . worsened?’
‘She did. I operated this morning – a trephining, to relieve the pressure.’
He was quiet for a long time.
‘But . . . she did not survive it?’ Theo whispered.
Ralph didn’t answer, but she didn’t need him to.
Only later, in the evening, did he speak again, by which time he was crumpled in a fireside chair, sodden with wine, staring morosely into the flames.
Theo knew the shifts in his mood like a fisherman knows the tides.
Such lassitude rarely led to violence; she was safe, for now, and sat nearest to the lamp, stitching Arthur’s initials on to some new handkerchiefs.
A sudden flurry of words burst out of him: ‘She was a spinster with no kin! That was what she told me. Mad, then, or a liar. It matters not which. The wretched man ought to be grateful I even tried, given how old she was.’
A shiver grazed the back of Theo’s neck. ‘Who ought to be grateful, Ralph?’
He waved a hand. ‘Brother. Come out of nowhere. The old witch’s neighbours sent him word.’
The fire popped; from along the back hall, the kitchen door closed with a muffled bump. Theo held her breath, hoping nothing would interrupt him.
‘He saw her last night, and not a soul in the building saw fit to tell me! Well – let him run to the Council, as he threatens; let him claim he knows better! Foolish, ignorant man . . . They’ll put him in his place, and make no bones about it.’
‘What does it matter if her brother came to see her?’ Theo said, but Ralph swivelled his groggy eyes towards her, so she returned to her sewing and pretended not to have spoken.
Her head thrummed with it. She could already guess at the story.
Miss Breton’s brother had seen her last night; Ralph had operated this morning.
The patient was dead; the relative was aggrieved: he did not believe that she’d needed the operation.
Theo felt the urgent need to act; as though, after thirteen years, she still had a chance to save her friends – to do something.
She pricked her finger, and tasted her own blood.