Eloise (7 page)

‘The mistress asked us to look after you, and you’ll catch your death out here without a fire. It is February, after all.’

Eric said nothing, but lit the fire, smiled gummily and creaked off. Annie fussed about with the tea and the blanket, tucking it solicitously around my legs, informed me that lunch was at one o’clock, and followed Eric out of the gazebo.

This is ridiculous, I thought; Juliana is living in the nineteenth century. Yet Eloise had been so modern, so down to earth. No servants for her – although, thinking about it, she could certainly have afforded them.

Money. Was that the elephant in the room between her and Ted? We had never discussed it. Eloise always seemed slightly embarrassed about her aristocratic background, although she loved her mother fiercely, and Ted had sometimes referred obliquely to his wife’s wealth, teasing her about what they could do, the lifestyle they could enjoy, if only Eloise could persuade her mother to release more of her trust fund now, instead of waiting for Juliana’s death. But his teasing was always light and playful, and Eloise had seemed to be nothing more than amused.

‘Oh, Ted,’ she’d laugh. ‘Always wanting to be the gentleman landowner. Well, I find you much more sexy as you are. An impoverished artist. That’s what Cornwall’s all about. And we’re hardly living in a garret, are we? We’ve got more than enough.’

And in truth they seemed happy then. Very physically wrapped up in each other. Sometimes when Ted looked at her, his eyes smouldering with desire, I felt quite jealous. Not that Chris and I weren’t close. We were, but somehow Ted and Eloise seemed such a romantic couple, she so beautiful, he so glamorous with his dirty-blond surfer good looks. She from such a rich and distinguished background, he a talented artist whose paintings were attracting more and more interest, with an exhibition due in London later this year. Chris was a psychiatrist; a professor no less, doing a distinguished and important job. But somehow Chris’s worthy profession lacked the edgy glamour of a Cornish painter …

I sank down into the comfy squashy armchair, old but beautifully upholstered with white linen cushions, poured a cup of tea and, looking at the glowing wood fire, felt impossibly pampered. Looked after. Like a child again, I thought to myself, not entirely happy with this regression into childhood, a mood that had enveloped me deliciously ever since I arrived at Juliana’s. I loved feeling so protected, but I couldn’t possibly accept it. This was all part of a dream, a fantasy into which Eloise’s death, Juliana’s grief and my own sense of dislocation and shock had sucked me.

I opened
Wuthering Heights
.

The pages parted easily and fell open at the part when Mr Lockwood, the unsuspecting new tenant of Thrushcross
Grange, an isolated mansion in North Yorkshire to which he has retired to escape ‘the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s heaven’ pays a visit to his landlord, Mr Heathcliff, at the latter’s gloomy and festering moorland pile, Wuthering Heights.

‘A capital fellow,’ enthuses Mr Lockwood, at first welcoming as a fellow recluse the satanic neighbour into whose lair he has just unknowingly strayed.

That night, because of driving snow and howling winds, Heathcliff is reluctantly forced to admit that his visiting tenant cannot possibly cross the moor to reach home. With extreme bad grace, he allows Mr Lockwood to stay the night, and in a distant, cold and lonely bedroom, the poor man attempts to get some rest.

The quietude he craves doesn’t happen. He discovers the window ledge on which Catherine had inscribed her name, for this had been her bedroom as Catherine Earnshaw; ‘Here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.’

Lockwood, filled with a maudlin curiosity, reads Catherine’s diaries, lying mildewed on the window ledge. After falling eventually asleep, his dreams are vivid and tortured.

Then, his thoughts mangled by strange and vivid images, he wakes up. Or believes he does.

In Juliana’s copy of
Wuthering Heights
, the following
paragraphs charting the rest of Mr Lockwood’s hapless night were heavily underscored in black ink.

And here the narrative changed. For in the book, of course, the ghost replies ‘Catherine Linton.’

But on the page of Juliana’s
Wuthering Heights
, that name was heavily crossed out, and written in large black letters above the type was

ELOISE TRELAWNEY

Her maiden name.

And underlined in the same heavy black ink next on the page:

Startled, I jumped up from the chair. What
was
this? A true message from Eloise, sent to her mother from beyond the grave? Or a result of Juliana’s own grief, a deep, tortured but unconscious response to the absolute despair she felt that her only daughter had left her so abruptly, so completely bereft? Suppose Juliana, in a fit of furious denial, had altered the words in her copy of
Wuthering Heights
? What if she, in the middle of the night, sleepwalked from her bed downstairs to the library, took up the fountain pen which lay on a blotter on the cherrywood desk, and wrote her daughter’s name so boldly in the book which had meant so much to both of them? And then took it back to bed with her, and woke up in the morning to find, with genuine shock, that she had received a supernatural message from her beloved dead child.

I didn’t know. Agitated, mind churning, I left the book, the rug, the tea tray and the cosy stove, walked out of the gazebo and blindly followed a narrow path which wound away from the farmhouse.

As I pursued the lovely, ancient way, I gradually felt soothed. Cornwall was timeless. These grounds, this parkland of Roseland Hall, had remained unchanged for centuries. Eloise’s ancestors had played as children underneath these
trees, secure and loved. And, of course, the whole estate lay just at the foot of Bodmin Moor.

With that thought peace fled and I shivered. Those haunted words wailed through the wintery trees.

I’m come home. I’d lost my way on the moor!

Juliana was waiting for me when I got back to the farmhouse and we sat down in front of the fire in her sitting room. She was agitated.

‘Did you read it, Cathy?
Wuthering Heights
? Did you see what she … ?’

Eric came slowly in with a decanter of sherry. He placed the silver tray it stood on on a little sideboard, and poured the sherry into two small, exquisite crystal glasses. We said nothing until he had left.

‘Yes, I read it,’ I said non-committally.

Juliana leaned forward eagerly.

‘Well, what do you think? I just don’t know what to make of it. What was she trying to tell me? I mean, she wrote that in the book, but what did it
mean
? Oh Cathy, please tell me I’m not going mad.’

Luckily, because I really didn’t know what to say, before I could answer Annie came in and announced that luncheon was served. Juliana had perfect manners; if she felt irritated, she didn’t show it. We moved into the dining room and sat
down at the old oak table, beautifully laid, as always at Juliana’s, with white linen, silver and crystal. Great vases of daffodils and forsythia stood on polished tables around the room. The atmosphere was gracious, tranquil and welcoming, but it did not calm Juliana’s obvious nerves.

She said nothing until Annie had served the first course, pea and ham soup, and withdrawn.

‘I can tell that you think I’m being fanciful and ridiculous.’

‘No, no, I don’t. Because I’ve had the most extraordinary thoughts and dreams about Eloise myself. But the thing is, we have to make sure we’re being sensible about all this.’

Juliana gave me an incredulous smile.

‘Sensible? Do you really think any of this, what I feel and
know
with every fibre of my body, could possibly be called
sensible
? Cathy, you know something is terribly wrong, I can tell. So please don’t tell me to be sensible. There’s very little sense to be found in any of this.’

I murmured my agreement. I was on her side, I really was, but at the same time I was becoming increasingly anxious to leave Roseland. The comfort and solace I had revelled in had given way to a febrile hysteria. Juliana, I thought, was even more fragile than I was. The mutual support and reassurance I had hoped for when I left Talland Bay was clearly not going to happen.

Again I heard Chris’s voice when I’d rung to tell him that I was going to stay the night at Roseland.

‘Darling, nothing good will come of your stay with Juliana. You’re both too damaged – she by Eloise’s death, you by your delicate mental state. I’m coming to get you, honey.’

I would go home now – gladly.

Annie and Eric served the main course – chicken and leek pie, so delicious it lulled me into a drowsy and contented stupor. By an unspoken agreement we no longer talked of Eloise; but it was an uneasy alliance, both of us keenly aware that we were skirting an issue of vital, urgent importance.

Instead, we discussed domestic things. I, with genuine curiosity, asked her if she always ate like this.

‘What on earth do you mean?’ she chuckled. ‘Everyone has to eat.’

‘No, I mean so formally. With the table beautifully laid and everything? It’s absolutely lovely, of course, such a gorgeous room, such a delicious lunch. But these days everyone tends to eat much more casually, unless it’s a special occasion of course.’

‘And what makes you think this isn’t a special occasion?’ she smiled. ‘Eloise’s best friend has come to lunch. But, no, I’m teasing. I only eat in style at lunchtime. This is my main meal of the day, you see. Supper is just beans on toast or
scrambled eggs on a tray in the sitting room while I watch the news.’

She smiled. ‘Charles would be horrified. He was always such a stickler for doing things properly. I think that’s why I feel I must have at least one formal meal each day. To appease his memory – and it’s good to preserve some discipline in one’s day-to-day life. Also it gives Annie and Eric something to do, a familiar routine. That’s important at their time of life.’

She went on to talk about her worries about her elderly manservant, who was an astonishing ninety years old.

‘I mean,’ she said, ‘it’s not that I’m worried he won’t be able to work. We have girls in from Fowey who do the real housework. No, the worry is looking after Eric in his great old age. I will be totally responsible for him, you know. He has no family, no home of his own. He will stay here, of course; I will never ask him to leave. But Annie is eighty-one, you know. Hale and hearty, thank God, but still … And I, of course, am an incredibly youthful seventy-five. Goodness, I might as well turn this place into an old people’s home!’ She looked suddenly wistful. ‘You know, I had always hoped I would hand the farmhouse over to Eloise in a few years’ time. There’s plenty of money, and she could have hired staff to keep the house cared for, not to mention us,’ – and with that she gave a small snort – ‘the decrepit pensioners’ army.’

‘But surely you could hire staff yourself to … to care for you all?’

‘Oh yes, I suppose I could. And now of course I will have to. Employ staff to look after my staff. And me. Not a prospect to be looked forward to, but inevitable.’

She looked up at me, her eyes wet. ‘Don’t you see, Cathy? I am old. I have no future.
Eloise
was my future. And now, nothing.’

‘But you
do
have a future. You are a grandmother. You have two beautiful granddaughters. That’s your future.’

‘I don’t think so. Ted won’t let that happen.’

Annie came in with dessert. Juliana straightened her back and thanked her elderly maid in a soft but controlled voice. But Annie was not fooled. She gave her mistress a sharp and worried look, then looked at me accusingly. I had obviously upset her beloved Juliana. She put the apple crumble before us and left the room with a troubled backward glance.

I felt awkward and brutal but I had to say it.

‘Juliana,’ I asked abruptly. ‘Who is Arthur?’

She froze. Completely shocked. She looked stricken.

I asked again. ‘Juliana, tell me, who is Arthur?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. Arthur? I’ve never heard of him.’

Her reaction surprised me. She sounded jumpy, her voice uncharacteristically sharp.

‘Well, OK. But Ted mentioned him and he sounded pretty fraught when he did.’