And yet she never quite shook off the feeling that Alraune was much closer than any of them guessed. She occasionally woke from disturbing dreams – dreams that were half sad but that were also half terrifying, and that had always left her with the feeling that Alraune was not someone she would ever want to meet.
And now Trixie Smith had stirred those dreams up, so that back at her desk after Deb’s funeral, determinedly concentrating on Quondam’s horror-film presentation, Lucy caught herself thinking about Alraune, and thinking as well that these days all kinds of information was accessible at the flick of a computer key. Births and deaths, and marriages and divorces. Electoral rolls and property tax accounts and census records. Yes, but would Alraune figure in those kind of lists? And if so, under what name, because presumably you would not go through life with a name like that if you could help it. Mandragora officinarum. Imagine having that called out in a school register. Imagine giving it as your name if you were applying for a driving licence or making a dentist’s appointment or collecting your dry-cleaning. And even if Lucy did find the right name and was inclined to make a search for Alraune, where would she begin? And if Deb had not died so abruptly, could she have talked to her about Alraune? Would she have opened up a bit more? Lucy had sometimes had the feeling that Deb would like to have talked to Lucy about the family, but it had never happened. Was that because Edmund had always been around?
In the house where Lucy had spent her early childhood there had been boxes of stuff about Lucretia and her life; corded trunks and tea-chests full of newspaper articles and photographs and posters, all stored away in attics. Lucy’s mother had once said that when Lucretia died, her entire life had been packed into those boxes and those tea-chests. ‘After her death no one could face any of it,’ she had said. ‘Some pasts should die, never forget that.’
‘Rot, Mariana, you’re simply being melodramatic again,’ Aunt Deb had said tartly. ‘You love all that stuff about Lucretia, in fact you dine out on it – I’ve heard you telling your friends all the stories,’ she added, and Lucy, who had been hoping for a story about the mysterious Lucretia, had seen something flicker on her mother’s face that made her look so unlike her normal self that she had felt suddenly nervous.
‘Oh, yes, of course I do,’ Mariana had said at once. ‘It’s all the greatest fun. Dear Lucretia and all the lovers and the scandals. What else is there to do but make capital out of it? But there were other things, weren’t there?’ She gave an exaggerated shiver, like a child deliberately trying to frighten itself. ‘That suggestion that she spied for the Nazis in the war…’
Aunt Deb had said, ‘Mariana—’ but Lucy’s mother had not paused, almost as if, Lucy thought, she wanted to stop Aunt Deb from going on.
‘…but of course the war was over years ago, and we’ve all forgotten it, and in any case Lucy’s too young to understand any of this, aren’t you, my lamb?’