The Crystal Cage Page 23

  ‘What was all that Marianne stuff?’ I asked Nick when we finally escaped to the bedroom.

  ‘It’s evident—she’s been nominated Martin’s partner for the evening.’

  I plumped down on the bed and promptly sunk into two feet of goose down. ‘He didn’t appear too happy with the arrangement, but your parents seem very keen on his having a girlfriend.’

  ‘Lost causes tend to be their speciality.’

  ‘Why so lost?’

  ‘Martin is gay, but the olds don’t know.’

  I gaped at him. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘They’d freak, that’s why not.’

  ‘They have to know some time.’

  Nick threw several tee shirts and a pile of socks into the top drawer of the chest. ‘Not necessarily. He lives in London and rarely comes home. They live in Gloucestershire and rarely go to London.’

  ‘But doesn’t he want them to know?’

  ‘I doubt it. He didn’t want us to know but Lucy discovered it by accident and told me. Martin got us together in a solemn powwow and made us swear we’d never tell. It was like something out of Enid Blyton.’

  This evening’s party would prove interesting, I thought, but in the event I had little time to watch Martin negotiate the tricky business of keeping Marianne Dauncey at arm’s length while also keeping his parents happy. I was far too busy answering questions. Like their hosts, the Heyshams’ guests were kind and welcoming, but a little overbearing. I had the strong sense they were there to inspect me as much as to make the party convivial.

  ‘Is your family local, Grace?’

  ‘What university did you attend?’

  ‘Would we know your parents?’

  ‘How long have you lived in London?’

  ‘Where did you meet Nick?’

  And the killer of them all, ‘Do you hunt?’

  I forced myself to keep smiling, but at times I felt I was taking part in a mystery audition. It seemed as though a whole corner of Gloucestershire had come out to assess me for a role that was never spelt out, though I had my suspicions what it might be. When they weren’t asking questions, they were discussing the relative merits of four-by-fours or the best saddlery to patronise or the disgraceful conduct of the parish council. On and on it went, and I smiled and nodded until my face ached. The last guests lingered and by the time they left, I could barely stand straight to wave them goodbye.

  ‘They like you,’ Nick said happily as we fell into bed around midnight. During the evening, apparently, I’d passed a test I hadn’t even wanted to sit.

  I don’t remember much of the following day. Sunday passed in a blur although I do recall some less than subtle comments from Mrs Heysham on how she and her husband were getting tired of waiting for their children to marry and how they didn’t want to be too old before they became grandparents. I felt a momentary guilt at the thought of the secret I harboured. But the baby might not be Nick’s and if it were, I’d want it raised a million miles away. This was such a narrow world, kind but narrow, and ultimately stultifying. I could see why Nick had had to escape, but I could also see why he’d begun to revert to type. The nest was agreeably feathered, undemanding and secure.

  ‘You must visit again, Grace,’ Mrs Heysham made a point of saying, when after a monumental Sunday roast, the bags were being stacked into the boot of Lucy’s car.

  ‘It’s been wonderful to meet you, my dear. You’re obviously very good for Nick.’ I couldn’t see how she’d decided that, but it was clear his parents were delighted their youngest offspring had finally confounded expectations. ‘It would be nice to see him settled, wouldn’t it, Victor?’

  Victor growled his approval. ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘Young people these days…’ She shook her head. ‘It’s all so different. We were married in our early twenties, you know.’

  This was beginning to feel uncomfortable but worse was to follow. Mrs Heysham came right up to me and stood very close. ‘We’re so pleased Nick has found you, Grace,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘We’ve rather been relying on Martin. He’s the eldest after all. But now—well, my dear, we must see.’

  * * *

  Lucy and Nick chatted all the way back to London, but the Heysham visit had given me a lot to think about and I contributed very little to the conversation. In particular it had made me think more deeply about families, particularly how most are dysfunctional to some degree. Nick’s got along well together, almost too well it seemed, but it was a surface relationship and most of what was important was left unsaid. His parents had no idea that their eldest son was gay or if they had, they were not going to voice their suspicions. And his father had merely nodded in a satisfied way when Nick had spoken about his new job. He hadn’t wanted to know the details, hadn’t wanted to know why Nick had suddenly given up his alternative lifestyle. I imagine he’d never understood why he’d taken it up in the first place. It was an eccentricity to be airbrushed from the family story. It was all immensely civilised, but it was empty. Nothing objectionable had been said to me, even Saturday evening’s question marathon had been delicately phrased, but the visit had made me surer than ever that I didn’t fit in, and more than that, that I didn’t want to fit in. A few months ago when I was still content living my own version of the cocooned life, I might have felt differently. But not now.

  * * *

  Thinking about the Heyshams naturally got me thinking about my own damaged family: two parents dead through a senseless row and a sister estranged by the squalid antics of a pervert. The thought suddenly hit me that Verity would very soon be an aunt. Would she want to know? Would I want her to know? Strangely I did. I toyed with the idea of writing to her—eleven, twelve years too late—writing to tell her that she was about to gain a niece or a nephew. I had no idea whether she was still in the house our parents left us or whether she’d sold up and moved on. If she had, she surely would have tried to find me to pass on my share of the sale. Perhaps I would write to the old address; after all, what had I to lose?

  ‘Want a glass of wine?’

  Nick was standing in front of my chair, bottle in hand. I’d been daydreaming so hard that I hadn’t heard him come out of the bedroom. Every evening he chose the next day’s clothes with an almost religious devotion, arranging them on multiple hangers on the back of the bedroom door. And this was the man who for years had seen wardrobe as synonymous with torn jeans.

  ‘Not for me,’ I said.

  ‘Have you gone on the wagon?’ He’d noticed that I wasn’t drinking.

  ‘Not entirely.’ I scratched around for a credible excuse but ended up sounding limp. ‘I’m getting stuck into the freelance stuff in the morning and I need a clear head.’

  He looked ruffled. But then he always did when I mentioned writing, so I didn’t often mention it. In a way I’d changed places with him. He was now the well-dressed and manicured professional, I was the dropout. Perhaps he didn’t like to be reminded of the change.

  ‘Are you still looking at Royde?’ His tone wasn’t encouraging.

  ‘Living History is interested in a second article on him—I think I told you. But I’ve got a few other ideas, too.’ I hadn’t, but I was sure they would come.

  ‘The mag will hardly pay much.’

  ‘It will be a beginning.’

  I shouldn’t have had to defend myself, and I wasn’t going to say more. Over the weekend I’d been mulling over whether or not I might be able to make a living freelancing or enough of a living to survive alone. Actually, not alone. That thought was the sharpest of arrows, piercing me for the very first time with its truth. There would be two of us, the baby and me. For the moment I was struck dumb.

  Nick came to stand behind my chair and leant forward to cradle me in his arms. His voice took on a coaxing tone. ‘Gracie, why don’t you call the agencies again?’

  ‘It’s pointless.’ I tried to suppress a yawn.

  ‘Then go back to the sits vacant.’

  When I said n
othing, he came round to the front of the chair and stood a short distance away. He looked like a schoolmaster, his expression fair but firm. ‘The writing is never going to be more than a hobby, you must see that.’

  I didn’t see it, but I wasn’t going to argue and I wasn’t going to look at the sits vacant column either. Somewhere I heard the sound of glass cracking.

  * * *

  The next day, I went back to the information I’d uncovered on Alessia Renville and thought about my next move. I’d given up on the idea of finding the Exhibition plans: Nick was adamant that he didn’t want them found, and I had an instinctive feeling that they no longer existed. Instinct was also telling me that Lucas Royde had more to do with Alessia than simply being her partner in design. It was a very odd arrangement and I kept coming back to that. Why would her husband have sanctioned her being part of such an unusual collaboration and why would she have agreed? It might be that Edward Renville had encouraged her involvement as a distraction from the loss of a child. That was possible since premature death was hardly unusual in the period. But the 1851 census showed that she had two children alive and living with her in Prospect Place, so the explanation wasn’t that likely. Was it because she was Italian, as the Mercury suggested? She would have had useful knowledge about the Italian states, especially Lombardy where Renville regularly traded, but surely her husband would have had as much knowledge if not more, and up-to-date knowledge at that. Was it then a case of speed? Did she help get the display space designed, constructed and opened more quickly and if so, how closely had she worked with Lucas Royde?

  When Nick and I first got back from Dorchester, we’d visited Prospect Place or at least where Prospect Place had once been. Not only was there no Wisteria Lodge, the house named on the 1851 census, but there was no street at all: it had been obliterated by wartime bombing. Nick had pointed out that in any case the Renvilles might not have lived in the house all their married life. If Renville’s business had increased greatly, perhaps as a result of success at the Exhibition, the family could have afforded a more affluent lifestyle in a more prosperous neighbourhood. Prospect Place in the 1850s was respectable but not especially wealthy. Discovering the family’s whereabouts after 1851 would bring me no nearer the plans, but it would fill in some missing details.

  The first step was to consult the census taken in 1861. For some reason neither of us had thought it worth looking at before. If the family had moved in the intervening ten years, the census wouldn’t tell me when they had made the move or even if they had lived in another place in between times. But I needed more material for the second article, so it was certainly worth checking.

  I found the family immediately. The later census showed that the Renvilles had not moved. Ten years later they were still in Prospect Place, so Nick’s punt had been wrong. That must be a first in the investigation, I thought a little acidly. In 1861 Florence was fifteen and Georgina thirteen; Edward Renville was still going strong at fifty-five. But—and I couldn’t quite believe what I was looking at—Alessia Renville wasn’t listed. She was no longer living with her family. Divorce at the time was virtually unknown and separation most unusual, so could she have died in the interim? If so, it was a premature death since even in 1861 she would have been no more than thirty-eight. There might have been a tragedy involving childbirth after all, only this time including the mother as well as the child.

  I brought the General Record Office up on the computer and for some reason my hands began to tremble slightly. I started to trawl through the indexes of deaths, working backward from the last quarter of 1861. It seemed sensible to start at the later date since death at thirty-eight seemed more likely than at twenty-eight. I changed my mind, though, by the time I’d reached back as far as the first quarter of 1856 and there had been no mention of Alessia Renville. The indexing was alphabetical and the name reasonably uncommon, so skimming the records was not difficult, but it was still tiring. I broke off to make myself a cup of coffee before settling down once more to the job. Had Alessia perhaps gone back to Italy, leaving her daughters at Prospect Place? If she had, I would never find her. By why would she have gone abroad and left her girls behind? A father had complete control over his family and could have stopped his daughters leaving with their mother, but if so, something very bad must have happened to make her take off alone.

  The coffee was making me feel sick. It was stupid of me to try and drink it, but in my excitement I’d forgotten my newly fragile state. My nerve endings were bristling and it wasn’t just the coffee affecting me. This was something to do with Royde, I was sure. Back and back through the records I went until I reached the last possible quarter of my search, June 1851. And there she was! My hands shook even more when I read what was on the screen in front of me. Alessia had died in May 1851 at Old Grave Lane in the district of St George in the East. It can’t be the same person, I thought. In a matter of days she had gone from a healthy young woman living in a respectable family home and overseeing an influential project to a dead young woman who had breathed her last in an unknown house in one of the poorest boroughs of London. But it had to be the same woman; there was no other by that name. Something very strange and very terrible had happened.

  So where was she living before she died, if not at Prospect Place? She may have stayed with a friend, but was it likely that she would have had a friend living in such a seedy district as Old Grave Lane? A maternal relative, then? That was even less likely. And if I discounted the idea of a friend or a relative, then at her death Alessia must have been severed from her family without obvious means of support. That indicated only one thing: recourse to the workhouse. The National Archives provided me with the name of the local institution, the Raine Street Workhouse. My stomach was twisting itself into the severest of knots. I knew I was on the brink of discovering something huge but also something very distressing.

  Sure enough the Admission Register for Raine Street recorded that on 8 May, 1851, an Alessia Renville was admitted to the workhouse. I sat and stared at the screen for some time but then clicked through to the Discharge Book. Here there were lists of all the inmates who had left the institution and careful details of where they were bound. Alessia was bound for the graveyard: the brutal black strokes of a pen confirmed that she had died on the 9 May. Just one day after being admitted. I hadn’t known this woman, yet her fate resonated with me and not just from a common humanity. I felt that in some way she and I belonged together. My heart was leaden as I moved on to Raine Street’s Register of Deaths and learned that Alessia had died at twenty-eight years old from an inflammation of the lungs.

  I jumped up from the chair, unable to sit still any longer, and paced around the small living room. It was a totally unexpected find, and I didn’t know whether to be glad or appalled at what I’d discovered. From a financial perspective, it was gold dust. I would have no trouble now selling the new article, and I might even bargain for an increased fee. But this was a woman’s life, a life that had been torn to shreds by something terrible that I had yet to uncover. Should I go on? There was only one answer, and when I’d calmed down a little, I went back to the Raine Street Admissions Register and studied Alessia’s entry once more. Under the address column were the ominous words: ‘No fixed abode.’ So she had been homeless, living on the street at the time she was admitted. She must already have been ill when she passed through the workhouse doors, perhaps taken there because she’d been found collapsed, unconscious even. What could have occurred to transform this woman’s fortunes so dramatically and so tragically?

  I needed to see Nick, to share the immensity of what I’d found and mull over with him where to go next. But he wasn’t due home for hours and I couldn’t simply sit and wait. Perhaps if I looked ahead to the 1871 census? It was unlikely to tell me much from twenty years before, but it might hold a clue to the family dynamics that had led to Alessia’s dreadful demise. But when I got to it, the later census contained no Renvilles living at Wisteria Lodge. All thr
ee had vanished into the ether. Who was living there now? I logged into the Land Registry in the hope of tracing a sale. It was always going to be a long shot and cost me money to search, but I was so taken by the chase that I forgot for the moment that I was penniless. I knew that the Land Registry had been set up in the 1860s but had been little used at the time since there was no compulsion to register sales of property. But I was in luck. Wisteria Lodge was there, its first registration under the name of Benjamin Salter, solicitor. He had purchased the property in May 1866 for what seemed a suspiciously low sum.

  Another mystery, another link in what seemed to be a chain of disaster. My gut instinct told me that Lucas Royde had been at the very beginning of that chain, that he had somehow been involved in Alessia’s untimely death. But it wasn’t Royde that bothered me; it was Alessia. I couldn’t get her fate out of my mind, and I was desperate to talk about her. Nick got home that evening later than usual, and by the time I heard his key, I was wound into a tight little spring.

  ‘Guess what?’ I almost shrieked as he came through the door.

  He sauntered into the room, loosening his tie as he walked. ‘No idea, but let me take my jacket off first. I’ve a deal to tell you, too.’

  His words distracted me for a moment. ‘What is it? Tell me.’

  I wanted to get whatever he had to say out of the way before I hurled my thunderbolt. I was determined to spend the evening talking of Alessia and nothing else.

  ‘Shall I shoot first then?’

  ‘Yes. Quickly though.’ I was still fizzing, longing to share my discoveries.

  ‘Here goes then. Hughie—my boss—saw this great little flat just off Hampstead High Street and told me about it. It’s currently for rent, but it could be for sale later if we got a joint mortgage. That’s not impossible if…’

  ‘If I get a permanent job,’ I finished for him.

  ‘That’s right.’ He looked gratified.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’