Spider Light(128)

And yes, of course, you can stay here just as long as you want to.

Bryony



Antonia finished reading the faded writing, and felt the past brush against her mind all over again. For several moments she was unable to speak. So, after all, Daniel, you were with me, and after all, you did save me. You had a part in arranging for that dreadful, blessed, old clock to be installed and looked after, and it sounds as if you also created the Clock-Winder position. Did you have a feeling it would be needed one day? It’s a pity you can’t know how very much it was needed, Daniel, or that in a future you couldn’t possibly have envisaged, it meant I escaped from Twygrist and from Donna Robards.

Daniel was becoming shadowy now–Antonia recognized this without sadness, but she rested her hand on the letter for a moment. Trying to keep hold of the past, Antonia? No, I’m letting it go. But I’m glad that I touched that past once or twice. Thank you, Daniel. I hope you went to Ireland and to Bryony who lived there. I think you probably did, somehow.

She withdrew her hand from the letter and smiled at the man seated across the table. ‘Oliver, you’re brilliant to have found this.’

‘I am, aren’t I?’ He did not exactly smile back, but somehow a smile seemed to be between them.

‘Kit Kendal thinks the first Clock-Winder was a several-times great-aunt–he thinks her name was Ellen, but he isn’t absolutely sure,’ said Oliver. ‘I told you the Clock-Winder appointment was virtually hereditary, didn’t I? I didn’t know the first incumbent was female, though. Nice that, isn’t it? Women’s equality as far back as the beginning of the nineteenth century.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you were a particular supporter of feminism.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been able to find out anything about Ellen Kendal yet, but I think the Maud mentioned in Bryony’s letter could have been Maud Lincoln.’

‘The miller’s daughter,’ said Antonia. ‘Was she?’

‘The records do show that George Lincoln had a daughter named Maud.’

Maud. Had she been the withdrawn creature in Latchkill, about whom the day book had recorded that she pressed into the ground as if afraid of the light?

‘How about Bryony?’

‘I shouldn’t think we’d ever trace her,’ said Oliver. ‘There’s no surname or address to start from.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Antonia, but to herself she thought she might see if there had ever been any record of a Bryony Glass who had lived somewhere near to Connemara.

‘If I can find out anything more, I’ll let you know,’ said Oliver.

‘Would you? I’d like to know about them.’

‘I’d like to know as well. More wine?’

‘Please.’

They were facing one another across the table at the cottage’s comfortable heart. Antonia had lit an old oil lamp she had found in the back of a cupboard, and the curtains were drawn against the night. Raffles, who had wandered in with Oliver, had found his favourite place by the radiator.

Antonia was not quite sure how this evening had come about. Oliver had phoned earlier in the afternoon to say he had found Bryony’s letter tucked in a box. He had been looking for something else at the time, he said, but as was so often the way…

Anyway, would it be all right if he walked down to the cottage later that evening so she could see it? Antonia had said, yes, of course, and managed not to ask if he could bring it down there and then.

He had somehow ended in staying to dinner. Antonia had put together a halfway reasonable meal from odds and ends in the fridge, at which point it had turned out that Oliver had brought some wine, a wedge of beautifully creamy Brie, and a box of luxuriously out-of-season strawberries and raspberries.

‘Peace offering,’ he said.

‘Thank you very much. But it truly wasn’t necessary.’

‘I thought I’d like to do it anyway.’ He set the box on the kitchen table. ‘I’m behaving a bit like Godfrey, aren’t I?’

‘Bringing extravagant food? Yes.’ Antonia smiled. ‘Is Godfrey all right? He was dreadfully upset by it all, wasn’t he?’

‘He’s recovering. I think he was secretly planning a crusade to prove your innocence,’ said Oliver. ‘But if so, you spiked his guns by telling us all that you were guilty as charged. Are you always so defensive?’

(‘Don’t be spiky,’ Jonathan had said.)

‘I thought I’d better clear the air,’ said Antonia.

‘Saxon offered you a job at your old hospital, didn’t he?’ he said abruptly.

‘Yes. Heading a project to expand the department–they’d like a proper rehab centre for drug users. How did you know?’

‘He told me he was going to.’ Oliver’s tone was devoid of expression. ‘He said it in a rather challenging way. Shall you accept the offer?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can struck-off doctors be reinstated? I’m sorry if that sounds a bit…’

‘It doesn’t sound a bit anything,’ said Antonia. ‘It’s nice and direct. Doctors can be reinstated, but it really comes down to whether it’s thought to be in the public interest to let them loose on patients again. I don’t think they’d let me loose,’ she said. ‘Whatever the rights or wrongs, I really did kill Don. I was beside myself with grief for my brother, and I was frightened to death of Don on my own account. A lot of high-minded stuff was talked at the trial–the sanctity of human life, and the trust that patients have to have in doctors–but it’s all perfectly true.’ She paused. ‘I’d like to go back to psychiatric medicine but I don’t think I could bear it if they refused to reverse the original decision.’ It was odd she had not been able to say this to Jonathan, but could say it to Oliver.