4
Cecilia
THERE IS A WINDOWat the turn in the stairs of the Gate House that overlooks the Heath; in it is set a seat, and here Cecilia makes her home. Leo stays out at the office and comes home late. Cecilia takes a tray of soup or mutton chops in the parlour. The servants come to her with the small decisions that are to be made about the house, what preparations she would have them begin for Christmas, and she gives answers as best she can. There is no deference to her, and she commands no authority. It is all like a game, the cook and maid humouring her as though she is a girl playing with her teacups and dolls. Cecilia is happier to shrink away from the questions, to pad up to the window seat and sit, watching the wash of the wind through the treetops.
leave the world unseen
fade away into the forest dim
There are no new letters from Odette, so she takes the volumes of Keats and Coleridge, Malory and Tennyson, and runs her fingers over the soft pages, the words that have been their secret communication.
There have been no letters from anyone else either. She has no family other than Leo, no friends other than Odette. She has no hobbies, no skills. She doesn’t evenwritepoetry – she only reads it. She consumes, and makes nothing – she offers nothing. There is nowhere to go and nothing to do and so little in herselfto fall back on. She has not quite understood it until now, how friendless she is. Perhaps her mother was right; she has built her life to orbit Odette’s sun alone, but she cannot find it in herself to regret it.
She does not cry. It is all beyond that now. She would be crying every moment of the day if she were to start, and it is easier simply to run into her mind, leave her body, her life, the world to one side like worn clothes.
She misses bodies. Odette’s warm and vital against hers. Her mother’s frightening and comforting in turn. Bodies are real. Her thoughts – it all unravels.
to think is to be full of sorrow
She should not have written to Odette in the way she did. It was a moment of anger, confusion, when the world rushed in and pressed against her with clammy hands, steaming winter breath – Odette betrayed her, left her, and she cannot understand it still. How is it they have ended here? How is this where they find themselves?
She must write again.
That rouses her at last.
She must write to Odette and tell her to come back as soon as she can. That she forgives her. God, she has done nothing but tell Odette she loves her, and it hardly changed a thing, but maybe this time – this time, she will hear it.
She has no address for her. There is little she remembers about Odette’s departure – something about the Continent, a rest cure.
Now, it seems imperative to know.
Claudine has won. There is nothing to fight anymore.
Odette will come home, and maybe – she doesn’t know how – but maybe, they can find each other again.
If they cannot, then Cecilia will be utterly alone.
She will be as good as dead.
She walks across the road to Odette’s house –Claudine’shouse – through the mizzling rain and to the doorway under the portico. The pull of the bell and the long wait.
She will only be here briefly. It can be lightly done. She does not need to show her soft underbelly.
A maid answers whom Cecilia does not recognise. How strange. She has known all the staff at the London residence and Herne House for years.
A memory of her mother’s words comes to her:a new wife will want a clean house.She hated her mother for her disloyalty to Lydia and Odette, but now Cecilia can see that Penelope understood more of the truth of the world than Cecilia was willing to admit.
‘Is – Mrs Fairfax-Waugh at home?’ Cecilia corrects herself at the last moment. She cannot call her Claudine in front of this stranger – and she has not been Miss Hutton for many months. It is not an adjustment that comes easy.
The maid regards her blankly. ‘May I take a card, miss?’
‘Oh. No, I don’t have one on me.’ Cecilia stands there, with no coat, no hat, shivering in the wind that banks off the Heath. She has done this a hundred times – a thousand – the Hampstead house as much her home as the Gate House. ‘Will you tell her it is Cecilia – Cecilia Moore. I am known.’
That is not true though, is it, not anymore. She is not Cecilia Moore but Cecilia Hart.
She is not known.
The maid looks sceptical, and Cecilia is flushed with humiliation. What does she think of her? That she is attempting some elaborate begging scheme? That she is a pathetic hanger-on come to beg a favour?