The Room Beyond (5 page)

‘Where do you hear them?’

‘In my room.’

I pictured the scruffy walls of Beth’s room and its endless piles of
collected artefacts.

‘Are you sure you’re not imagining things?’

‘Oh yes. I hear this one woman crying mostly. She just cries and
cries and cries and cries.’

I shuddered inside. I couldn’t help myself, even though it felt so
foolish to be freaked out by a young child’s colourful imagination.

‘And when do you hear her?’

‘Usually during the day when I play there on my own. I just tell her
to stop crying; sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t.’

‘I think you’re making things up.’

‘Think it if you like, but it’s true.’

Her face looked open, sincere. She wasn’t challenging me or trying
to get a reaction of some sort. That was the problem.

‘Come on Beth, you must be hungry by now. Let’s go home and find
ourselves something to eat.’

She put her small hand in mine and together we prowled back through
the grass towards Marguerite Avenue.

1892

Lucinda planted herself firmly in the middle of the bench. It was in
a perfect spot: set back under a large shady tree and away from the throng of
the pathway. A ladybird landed on her knee, a droplet of blood against her violet
skirt.

‘Where did you come from?’

It crawled onto her finger and then suddenly spread its wings and
hurled itself back into the sky.

‘Goodbye little man.’

She closed her eyes against the world and let the orange sunlight
wash coaxingly against her lids. How long had it been since she’d last ventured
so far? A month or two perhaps, it was difficult to tell. Her senses gradually
softened, like taught strings being unhooked one at a time. The noises in the
park merged into a gentle hum and the glow of the sunlight spread about her.

Tristan Whitestone
.

That name just kept coming back to her again and again and every
time her lips automatically curled into a smile. How on earth had that chinless
fidgety woman found such a husband for herself? Yet he was cruel enough; he’d
enjoyed her bad behaviour a little too much the other night.

But gosh, those blue eyes of his... like fire and ice at war with
each other. She could recall them so easily; the way they’d laughed with hers. If
only she could open her eyes right now and find them watching her again.

Suddenly she was falling. Bumping to and fro against the walls of a
deep well lined with black velvet. Down. Down. And then an enormous jolt. She
snapped her eyes back open and gripped the edge of the bench to steady herself.
The scene in the park came back to her in a mass of colour and jagged edges. Had
she been asleep?

Her throat tightened up. Already she could sense the whispers,
seeping from between the fingers of raised gloves:
Did you see Lucinda Eden
in the park? Fast asleep on a bench and lolling about like a drunk! She’s let
herself go since Alfonso left
her for that dancer you
know. Have
you seen the lines on her face?

Someone somewhere was laughing.
Look at that jilted woman,
it
seemed to cry out. She peered through the haze but found no one she even
vaguely recognized. Her throat loosened a little and as soon as she felt the
rhythm of her breathing coming back, she raised herself on unsteady legs.

It was slow going back on the pathway. People were bumping into each
other and a myriad of strange faces swarmed at her like flies. A few months ago
she would have adored it here; hanging onto Alfonso’s arm, laughing in the
sunshine.

‘I’m going to get married Daddy. To Alfonso Eden.’

It felt like only yesterday. Father down at the stables, his face
still pinched and sallow after mother’s death.

‘If you do Lucinda, it will be the worst mistake of your life.’

‘But I love him!’

‘No you don’t. You love the idea of him, you love his degenerate
ways, you love being able to think of yourself as a rebel by marrying him.’

‘How dare you insult me like that!’

He’d turned his back to her; impenetrable, a fortress of resistance.

‘First your brother leaves us for Africa, then your mother... Am I
to be the only Hartreve left? The only one to cherish all that we have here?’

‘No, of course not. And Alfonso is a huge admirer of yours; he
simply adores the prospect of entering the family.’

‘I’m sure he does.’

She’d placed her hands on his shoulders, pressed her cheek against
his back.

‘He’s a good man Daddy.’

‘And do the whores who dance on his stage for him agree?’

The path had got too frantic, she stopped for breath by the
sparkling pond. What was that across the water? Something bright and blue and
familiar.

How right her father had been all those years ago. But to keep
sending that damned servant of his, week after miserable week to spy on her, as
if her pitiful circumstances were too repugnant for him to face her by himself...

She touched her face. Her anger had caught at her skin. And there
was that thing across the water again. What was it over there? A silvery blue
pattern, like dolphins swimming upwards, emerging and then disappearing within
the crowd.

‘My Venetian Duchess!’, ‘My alabaster bride!’

Silly things for a man to have called his wife, and yet there was a
hollow place now inside her where the luxurious touch of Alfonso’s flattery had
once been.

A group of young men rowed towards her on the water; trim and
handsome with limbs much too long for the small vessel they’d hired. They
splashed water in each other’s’ faces, laughing at the hilarity of their
cramped postures.

She eased an inch or two forwards but the boat sailed past and they
jeered and whooped and fought over the oars without a second glance at her.

Tears flooded her eyes. Her lips twitched with the urge to cry. And
through her blurred vision she could see that blue thing again. It was quite
close by the water’s edge now, directly across from her. She brushed the tears
away. Alfonso.

She must have gasped rather loudly because several passers-by paused
to offer her their puzzled glances. And of course, he was wearing the blue and
silver waistcoat she’d given him last year for their anniversary.

Something made her want to grin suddenly. He really was the most
outrageous looking man, getting fatter by the day it seemed and hardly a hair
left on his head. But he had such a comical, amiable face, like a big over-fed
baby. The sort of cheeks that women loved to kiss and knead fondly at with
their fingers.

It made her think of the first time they’d met, at Sally Feversham’s
party for which she’d told her father all manner of lies to get to. She’d never
been to anything like it: lights dimmed to virtual darkness, half dressed women
perched on men’s laps and a sweet smoky flavour to the air which left her
completely light-headed.

‘May I introduce myself princess?’

Even the voice had been round and jovial.

‘Alfonso Eden, manager of The Empress Theatre Soho. But I’m afraid
you’ll have to leave soon as I’m already rapidly falling in love with you.’

He was a little slimmer then of course, never handsome but fuelled
with enough charm to more than compensate for his lack of physical prowess.

He was looking back at her now, open mouthed with surprise from
across the water. He raised his hand in a small wave. And then from the midst
of the crowd another figure joined him. Petite and feminine, dressed in canary
yellow. Betsey. She put her arm through his and then gave him one of her
insipid smiles, all sweetness and vulnerability like a little lost fawn. He
seemed flustered, looking back and forth at the two of them with coy snatched
glances.

‘Stupid fool,’ she murmured under her breath.

‘There’s a note here for you ma’am.’

‘Not now Sarah,’ she said, marching past the maid and into Alfonso’s
old office. ‘I’m not to be disturbed for the rest of the afternoon.’

She threw herself into the arms of the deep leather chair, lit a
cigarette and watched the curious fingers of smoke rise up into the air. It
wasn’t dark enough in the room, even with its heavy wooden shutters firmly
closed. The blasted sunshine had found ways of wheedling itself in through the
small joints in the slats, bouncing impishly against the angles of the
furniture and lighting up the painted faces in the stained glass panel of the
door.

‘Idiotic man,’ she spat out at the gaudy display of glass; a crude
rendition of a Bacchanalian feast that Alfonso had had commissioned. ‘Ridiculous
thing for an office door, really.’

She rested her head against the side of the chair and waited for the
last sliver of burnt tobacco to fall from her cigarette before lighting another.
There was a knock at the door. Sarah again.

‘There’s someone here to see you, it’s Mr Burke from the grocer.’

‘What, again? Wasn’t he here yesterday?’

‘I know ma’am but he’s getting awful persistent that you pay him.’

‘Tell him to go away. I don’t have time for visitors at the moment.’

But Sarah peered around the room instead, squinting in the
semi-light.

‘I know what you’re doing and the money simply isn’t in here. Please
just leave.’

Sarah crossed her wiry arms and stayed exactly where she was. ‘Ma’am
I hate to say this but sooner or later you’re gonna have the law on you. You’ve
got to pay your bills and Mr Burke, well he’s been coming day after day. We’re
getting a bad name for ourselves.’

Lucinda forced her fingers through her hair, tugging at it
aggressively until her scalp hurt. ‘Am I never to be left alone? Am I to be
bombarded, constantly? All I have asked for is peace. Am I to be denied that
again and again?’

She pressed her fingers to her temples; a dull tribal thud had
started to resonate deep within her skull. ‘Take the money from the box. It’s
over there on the second shelf, behind the vase. Found it? Good. Now, please,
for mercy’s sake, make sure I’m not bothered again today.’

‘Thank you Mrs Eden. Oh, and here’s what came through the door for
you this morning.’

An envelope fell into her lap and she cast her eyes quickly across
the note inside.

Dear Mrs Eden,

We so enjoyed having you to dinner the other night. I do hope your
head is better. I owe you an apology I’m afraid with regard to our planned trip
to the theatre next week to see Hamlet. Unfortunately a charitable event which
I foolishly overlooked has clashed with the outing and I am much relied upon to
man the tombola. Although I adore the theatre I’m sure you will understand
where my duty lies. Perhaps instead we should have tea together one day?

Yours sincerely

Mrs Whitestone

The headache turned into one of the worst yet: a grotesque
kaleidoscope of garish colour and cruel confrontations. She curled herself up
as tightly as she could in the armchair, but nothing could stop that miserable
hollow thud, endlessly approaching, louder and louder all the time until she
longed for it to just take hold of her and complete whatever it had set out to
do.

Snatches of her childhood came back to her. Things she hadn’t
thought about for years. Her father proudly leading her along on a new pony. Her
mother, cold and far away. And then that time when she’d walloped nanny clean
across the face with her old doll Amelia. How she’d cried after that; having to
watch Amelia dying on a bonfire, her face disintegrating into ash.

And yet between those flames dolphins suddenly appeared, blue and
silvery, swimming up into the sky towards something garish, canary yellow.
Betsey with her insipid smile. And then the whole world was laughing at her:
people in restaurants, passers-by on the street, Hamlet in the midst of a
soliloquy pausing to hunt her down in the audience, his face wrinkling up in
hilarity.
Thud thud thud
.

When she woke up it was pitch black in the room. The headache had
gone, but in its wake had left her with a strange hollow feeling, as if a part
of her brain had been removed. It was eleven o’clock. Downstairs the house was
empty but Sarah had left her a meal. She took it to the library.

Funny that they’d called it the library, because it didn’t have much
in the way of books. There were an awful lot of shelves, filled mainly with old
theatre programmes from The Empress. She stroked her hand along the grand
piano, the best bit of the room. It felt so sleek and glossy, like patting the
flank of a prized racehorse.

The air was stuffy. She raised the window to let in the night, but
with it came the pungent smell of a cigar. She leaned out and there was Tristan
Whitestone, smoking idly in the street. He was lounging against the railings;
such an elegant figure, so perfectly proportioned.

She glanced at herself in a mirror on the opposite wall and pinched
her cheeks. The evening shadows had smoothed out her skin a little and her hair
still looked good at least, unadorned and hanging loosely down her back.

Heart galloping, she tip-toed to the front door and, with just
enough of a click to make sure that the still night air was only a little
disturbed, she unfastened the latch. The door yawned open an inch or two so
that a thin sliver of light poured out onto the street from inside.

Back in the library she drank whiskey and waited. The smell of the
cigar slowly faded away but nothing happened. Not a sound, not one ripple of
movement in the air. The minutes passed and soon her pounding heart smothered
itself in disappointment. The bottom of her glass peered mockingly up at her.

‘You have a funny way of inviting people into your home Mrs Eden.’

Her eyes darted up and there he was, leaning against the doorframe.

‘I didn’t. But now that you’re here you might as well help yourself
to a drink.’