Property of a Lady(73)

‘The unhallowed spirit?’ said Nell, smiling. ‘The troubled soul that can’t rest until it gets Christian burial – or burial according to whatever it believed in?’

‘Don’t mock me, you heartless wench, it’s in all the best traditions of ghosts, in fact you said that yourself.’

‘I’m not mocking you. I still don’t believe it all – not logically and sanely. But then I remember what happened to Beth – and Alice’s journal and Harriet’s.’

‘And Elvira talking about the man who tried to find her – the man she said must never find Harriet or she might lose her sanity,’ said Michael.

‘Yes.’ Nell realized they were both looking across the room, to where the oilskin package lay on a low table. She said, ‘Can you eat any more casserole? In that case, I’ll dunk everything in the sink and bring the cheese and fruit over to the fire.’

Between them they carefully peeled away the oilskin covering and drew out the sheaf of papers. The writing was legible, although the ink was faded in places, and here and there the paper was spotted with brown mould.

With the fire burning brightly in the hearth and the curtains drawn against the night, they sat together on the sofa and began to read Brooke Crutchley’s journal.





TWENTY-THREE



December 1880

I never expected to become entangled quite so violently with a lady. But anyone reading these pages may be familiar with that sudden lightning-sizzle of emotion that sears through the mind so that one is unable to think of anything else.

I must qualify that statement, because for some of the time I have certainly managed to think of other things, although that may be because I must. The poets talk about counting the world well lost for love, which I dare say is all very well for poets, who seem able to live on about half of nothing and appear to have no responsibilities, and who think nothing of starving in garrets where they usually end up with a galloping consumption. I see no benefit in any of that, and certainly not in wasting away for love’s sake. I enjoy my food and think of myself as a robust figure of a man with a healthy appetite. (Only the unkindly-disposed would call me portly.)

Nor do I have any family responsibilities. (I do not count the distant cousin living in Staffordshire.) But there are other responsibilities in life, and mine are towards my customers. Clockmaking is a very precise craft, and my father would have been proud of the way I had carried on the business I had inherited. ‘Brooke, my boy,’ he would have said, ‘you can be proud of what you have achieved.’ Although he would have added: ‘Not too proud, mind.’ He was strict on self-pride and the vanities.

What he did often say was that I needed a son to carry on the business. ‘A good, steady boy who can continue Crutchley’s Clockmakers,’ he used to say. ‘So take a wife, Brooke, and get a son, and remember it’s better to marry than to burn.’

I would certainly have taken a wife, if there was any possibility that the wife I wanted – the only wife I could ever have taken – was likely to accord me a second look.

Elizabeth Marston. The simple act writing the name on this page sends a spike of such fierce longing through me that—

Perhaps I shouldn’t go into that. Instead, I’ll record that she’s daughter of the Honourable Roland Marston of Marston House. The Marstons are landed gentry, padded against the world’s chills by old money, and there’s even said to be some kind of connection to royalty, although personally I’ve always doubted that.

But what with their money and their land and their fabled link to Saxe-Coburg, no matter how much I might yearn for Elizabeth – and yearn I have done – no artisan clockmaker could aspire to such a marriage.

I haven’t exactly aspired, but I have hoped. I have hoped for many years, and I have woven dreams in which I rescued Elizabeth from assorted dangers, or in which I became heir to fabulous fortunes and titles making me an acceptable suitor. I know it’s absurd and even pitiful to recount a portly clockmaker visualizing himself braving burning buildings or runaway carriages, but I did.

Today those dreams and hopes have died. They died between the eggs and bacon and the morning post, on a spring morning, with the birds gossiping in the trees and the meadows just becoming spangled with yellow and gold.

It was in my newspaper, in black, hateful print. And I am writing this at my little dining table, my breakfast congealing on my plate.

‘The betrothal has been announced between William Lee, son of Sir James and Lady Lee of Shropshire, and Elizabeth Alexandra Marston, only daughter of the Honourable Roland Marston of Marston House. The marriage will take place on New Year’s Day, 1881.’



Later

I’ve cut it out, that detestable oblong of print, and pasted it into this diary. I keep rereading it and, every time I do so, the words burn a little deeper into my soul.

William Lee. Thin and pale, with a scholar’s stoop and an arid soul. How much say did old Roland Marston give Elizabeth over the match, I wonder?

They never tell you, those poets and those lovers, that hatred and agony can take on solid substance on a green and gold spring morning, or that it can smell of newly-fried bacon and eggs.

January 1881

The marriage has indeed taken place. I was not invited, of course – I dare say neither the aristocratic Marstons nor the patrician Lees are even aware of my existence, and if they were, they would hardly include a common clockmaker in the guests.