“I just wish,” Oliver says, interrupting my thoughts, “that things would go back to the way they used to be, way back when. Before Dad’s accident.” I raise my brows into a question. “There was an accident,” he explains, his face so stark that it is hard to look upon. “Dad’s boat was wrecked; he was found thrown on a beach. It was a miracle, they said, that he was alive at all – but he was never the same after that. He wouldn’t take me out in the boat any more. He would go to the beach alone – back to the place where he was found, swimming out to sea and going further and further each time.” Oliver presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “And then he stopped,” Oliver says. “He took to his room, and I wasn’t allowed in there so I would sit outside. That’s all I can remember from then, the locked door and the smell of fresh paint from inside. I was only little at the time, I didn’t know what was going on. We should have kept him at home,” he mutters to himself. “I told her, Dad would have preferred to be at home but…” He sniffs back tears again, and I pretend that I haven’t noticed. “I would never have survived if it hadn’t been for George and Rupert,” he says. “And Viola.” Viola, Viola.
Another night, he tells me more about her. It’s a good thing, I tell myself, even though it hurts to hear him speak of her in such an intimate fashion. But it means he trusts me. “We were kids when we first met,” he says, lying on the ground. The sky seems so close tonight, as if you could fill your mouth with stars if you so desired. “Five, maybe six. It was around the time my father died, anyway. I needed to have some fun, you know?” He looks pleadingly at me, as if asking for my absolution. “And Viola was fun. She was always first to climb a tree, no matter how tall, or to take a dare to dive off the cliff edge, or to sneak out of the house when she had been punished. She was fearless. She was my best friend.”
Fury seethes in me, like scraps of smouldering coal. Did Viola give up her family for him? Her voice? Did she change her body in order to please him? Why must it always come back to Viola Gupta?
“Thank you,” Oliver says at the end of these conversations. “You are such a good listener. I can’t talk to anyone else about this.”
He trusts me, I tell myself. He confides in me. Daisy tells me what his valet says; that his nightmares have stopped, that he no longer calls out for Viola in his sleep. That has to be significant. It has to mean something.
And yet, he still does not kiss me.
We are by the sea again. Oliver staring at the water as he talks. I have never known anyone to talk so much. Black night stroking black sky, softly. No moon to show us the way.
“Here,” Oliver says, holding a seashell to my ear. A queen conch, I want to tell him when I see the peach and opal husk. Lobatus gigas. Unusual to find it in these waters.
“Listen,” he says, and I find the sound of home captured in its skull. “Can you hear that?” He takes it away, pressing it against his own ear and it is all I can do not to wrench it from his hands. “My father showed me that,” he says, throwing the seashell away from him, on to the sand. “Before he went mad.”
I listen to Oliver breathing, in and out. I want to hold him like a seashell and listen to his heart. Listen to his home. “And he did go mad, Grace,” Oliver says. “We used to find him here, in the middle of the night. Knee-deep in the water, screaming at the sea. Come back, he kept shouting. Come back.” Oliver allows the silence to blanket us both. Who was his father shouting for? Who had left him?
If I had my voice, what would I say to him now? Would Oliver even want to listen? Or does he just see me as a wishing well, a cavern that he can throw his words into, waiting till they hit the bottom?
“I miss him so much,” he says. “I miss all of them.” He stands, head thrown back to the sky. I used to look up, I want to tell him. I looked up because I thought it would be better here.
“But,” he says, and he holds out a hand to pull me up, before turning for the house, “perhaps it is finally time to let them go.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Oliver walks me to my bedroom, and I do not limp once. He cannot see me as anything less than perfect. Inside, I sit in the armchair by the window, a grey and green tweed shawl pulled up to my neck. Watching the waxing moon. It will be full soon. And then my time will be up.
The house is eerily quiet, as quiet as the night when I crept away from my father’s palace. I lean my forehead against the pane, breath fogging up the glass. I do not want to think of the time slipping through my fingers. I pull myself to standing, balancing on the sides of my feet so I shuffle forward like a crab into the corridor outside.
I can examine the photographs more intently now that there is no one here to catch me in the act. There are many to examine, most of them were presumably taken by Eleanor as it is just Oliver and his father in the frame. The exception is a photo of the couple on their wedding day; Eleanor beautiful in a simple slip dress, her hair a halo of tight curls around her head. She is gazing at her new husband with adoration, but he is laughing at a joke an unknown person has made, pointing at someone off camera. The famous Alexander Carlisle. He looks like Oliver; the same chiselled features, that glint of mischief in his eye. I wonder what he would think of me, were he still alive. Would he view me with misgiving, like Eleanor does? Or would he be more welcoming? My charms might be more persuasive with a man.
I pause outside Oliver’s room, pressing my ear against the wooden door. A loud rumbling sound comes from within, a scrape as a breath whistles through his nose. No difficulty in sleeping, as I have.
I walk on, through the house. It’s much more pleasant at this time at night, without the hustle and bustle of the servants and Oliver’s friends and Eleanor, watching me. Waiting for me to make a mistake. It can be very draining, pretending to be something you’re not. I limp on, moving further along this winding corridor than I have ever been before. At the very end, there is a turn to the left. The photographs have disappeared, the carpet becoming frayed, threadbare in patches. There is just a door ahead of me, the cream paint peeling off its wood as if scratched off by sharp fingernails. A musty smell is wafting from its heart and there is a recording playing, seemingly on repeat, a melancholy voice humming over the sound of waves crashing open on to the patient sand. I find myself inside then, as if against my own will, like a current has caught hold of me and is dragging me through the door.
The room is empty of any furniture, the blinds drawn, dust gathering on their thick slats. The walls are painted to resemble waves, but those in the grip of a storm, fish whirling in panic, seeking the ocean floor. There are canvases strewn in every direction, roughly drawn with no real skill, but it is clear they depict the same face. Eyes so blue and hair so red. A woman so beautiful it is almost unnatural. I reach out to touch one, my fingers caressing the paint. I am moving through dreams, as I stare at that face, swimming through songs of my childhood. It doesn’t feel real.
It is my mother.
“What are you doing in here?” My heart hurtles against my rib cage and I put a hand to my chest, as if trying to hold it in place.
“I asked you a question.” It is Eleanor. How long has she been there? Did she follow me from my bedroom? Did she see me walking in such a peculiar manner? “What are you doing in here, Grace? How did you open that door?”
She is in a cream lace nightgown, her hair protected with a silk cap. Her face is bare of make-up, and she looks younger than usual, even with the ashen shadows beneath her eyes.
“Oh,” she says. “You can’t explain because you have no voice. Most convenient.” She looks around the room, her mouth tightening. “Look at these monstrosities,” she mutters, moving from one painting to the next. “This was Alexander’s room,” she continues, as if she’s giving me a tour; ever the polite hostess. I stare longingly at the open door. “I kept it just the way he liked it, or the way he left it, anyway. He was holed up here for months, Grace. Months. The smell.” Her face curls in disgust. “If it was up to me, I would burn everything in here. I can’t do that though, can I?”