He had also felt sorry for her. He had asked, as he was packing up to leave, about her school, and a look of deep regret had come upon her face. ‘I had such high hopes, Mr Gilbert, but it was too soon. I knew that compromise would be necessary; that in order to attract sufficient students I would have to concede to certain parental expectations. I had thought I would be able to honour my promise to shape the girls into “young ladies” whilst also instilling in them a love of learning.’ She had smiled. ‘I don’t think I flatter myself that there were some whom I started along a road they might otherwise not have found. But there was rather more singing and sewing than I’d envisaged.’
As she spoke about the school and its students, it had occurred to Leonard that the house bore very little sign of them. All indication that schoolgirls had once filed through the halls en route to class had been erased, and one would be hard pressed to imagine Birchwood Manor anything other than a nineteenth-century artist’s country home. In fact, with all of Radcliffe’s furnishings and fittings still in place, entering the house felt to Leonard like stepping back in time.
When he’d said as much to Lucy, she mused in reply, ‘A logical impossibility, of course, time travel: how can one ever be in two places “at the same time”? The phrase itself is a paradox. In this universe, at any rate …’ Not wanting to be drawn into another scientific debate, Leonard had asked how long the school had been closed. ‘Oh, decades now. It died with the Queen, in 1901. There was an accident, a most unfortunate event, a couple of years before. A young girl drowned in the river during a school picnic, and one by one the other students were withdrawn. With no new enrolments to take their place, well … one had little choice but to accept the reality. The death of a student is never good for business.’
Lucy had a frankness that appealed to Leonard. She was forthcoming and interesting, and yet, as he reflected on the conversation, he had a distinct feeling that she’d shared nothing more with him than she’d intended. There was only one moment in their interview when he’d sensed that the mask had slipped. Something niggled at Leonard in the way she had described the events of 1862. It struck him now that she’d sounded almost guilty when she spoke of Frances Brown’s death and her brother’s consequent decline. There had been that odd crossroads tangent, too, in which she’d reflected on guilt and the need to forgive oneself, impressing upon Leonard his need to do the same.
But Lucy Radcliffe had been a child in 1862 and, from the way she’d told it, a spectator rather than a participant in the summertime antics of her brother’s brilliant and beautiful friends. There had been a robbery, a priceless gem had been stolen, and Frances Brown had been killed in the process. Lily Millington, the model with whom Edward Radcliffe had been in love, had disappeared. Apparently, police reports from the time would suggest that she’d acted with the thief. Lucy’s beloved brother had never recovered. Leonard could understand Lucy suffering grief and a feeling of general regret, but not guilt. She had no more pulled the trigger that killed Miss Brown than Leonard had been responsible for the piece of flying shrapnel that killed Tom.
Do you believe in ghosts, Mr Gilbert?
Leonard had thought carefully before answering. I believe that a person can find himself haunted. Now, as he contemplated her evident but irrational guilt, Leonard realised suddenly what she’d meant: that, despite her talk of folk tales and mysterious spirit lights in windows, she hadn’t been speaking about spooks in the shadows after all. She had been asking whether Leonard was haunted by Tom in the same way that she was haunted by Edward. She had recognised in him a kindred spirit, a fellow sufferer: the guilt of the sibling survivor.
As he passed The Swan, and Dog appeared from somewhere to fall into panting step beside him, Leonard took a small rectangular card from his pocket and thumbed its well-worn edge. He’d met the woman who gave it to him at a party several years before, back when he was still living in London in the bedsit above the train line. She’d been set up in the corner of a room at the back of the house, sitting behind a round table with a purple velvet cloth covering it and some sort of board game laid out across its top. The sight of her, with a brightly beaded scarf wrapped around her head, had been enough to make him stare. And then there were the five party guests sitting at the table with her, all of them holding hands around the circle, their eyes closed as they listened to her muttering. Leonard had stopped and leaned against the doorway, watching through the haze of smoke.
All of a sudden, the woman’s eyes had snapped open and fixed on him. ‘You,’ she’d said, pointing a long red talon as the others at the table turned to take him in. ‘There’s someone here for you.’
He’d ignored her then, but her words and the intensity of her stare had stayed with him, and later, when he found himself leaving the party at the same time she did, he’d offered to carry her awkwardly shaped carpet bag down the four flights of stairs. When they reached the ground and he bade her goodnight, she’d taken the card from her pocket and handed it to him.
‘You’re lost,’ she’d said in a calm, cool voice.
‘What?’
‘You’ve lost your way.’
‘I’m fine, thank you very much.’ Leonard had started down the road, shoving the card deep into his pocket, shaking off the strange, unpleasant feeling the woman had given him.
‘He’s been trying to find you.’ The woman’s voice, louder now, followed him down the street.
It was only when Leonard reached the next streetlight and read the card that her words made sense.
MADAME MINA WATERS
SPIRITUALIST
APARTMENT 2B
16 NEAL’S YARD
COVENT GARDEN
LONDON
He’d confided the conversation with Madame Mina to Kitty soon after it happened. She’d laughed and said that London was full of crackpots looking to exploit their victims’ loss for profit. But Leonard told her that she was being too cynical. ‘She knew about Tom,’ he insisted. ‘She knew I’d lost someone.’
‘Oh, God, look around: everyone’s lost someone.’
‘You didn’t see the way she stared at me.’
‘Was it anything like this?’ She crossed her eyes and pulled a face, then smiled and reached across the sheet to grab her discarded stockings, tossing them at him in fun.
Leonard shook them away. He wasn’t in the mood. ‘She told me he’s been trying to find me. She told me I was lost.’
‘Ah, Lenny.’ All the sport was gone now; she sounded only tired. ‘Aren’t we all?’
Leonard wondered now how Kitty had got on with her interview in London. She had looked smart when she left that morning; she’d done something different with her hair. He wished he’d remembered to comment. Kitty wore her cynicism well, but Leonard had known her before the war and he could see all the stitches that were holding the costume together.
As he passed the church and started down the empty lane towards Birchwood Manor, Leonard picked up a handful of gravel from the verge on the side of the road. He weighed the small stones in his palm before letting them sift through his parted fingers as he walked. One, he noticed as it fell, was clear and round, a perfectly smooth piece of quartz.
The first time Leonard and Kitty slept together was on a mild October night in 1916. He was home on leave and had spent the afternoon in his mother’s drawing room drinking tea from a china cup as his mother’s friends tut-tutted alternately, and with equal verve, about the war and the politics of the upcoming village Christmas Fair.
There’d been a knock at the door and his mother’s parlour maid Rose had announced Miss Barker’s arrival. Kitty had come with a box of scarves for the war effort and when Mother invited her to stay for tea, she had said that she couldn’t: there was a dance on at the church hall and she was in charge of refreshments.
It was Mother who suggested that Leonard ought to attend the dance. It had been the last thing he’d imagined doing that evening, but anything was preferable to remaining in the drawing room as the merits of serving mulled wine next to sherry were weighed, and so he’d leapt to his feet and said, ‘I’ll fetch my coat.’
As they walked along the village street together in the creeping dark, Kitty had asked after Tom.
Everyone asked after Tom, so Leonard had a ready answer. ‘You know Tom,’ he’d said. ‘Nothing makes a dint in his swagger.’