What Lies Beneath

Chapter 11

London, 1912

Serena thought it was curious how one secret could bring about another. She and the Flaggs and Dr Martlet had kept the knowledge of Julius’s insanity from the world for years – far longer than Crispian or anyone else had suspected. At first the attacks had been of quite short duration; Dr Martlet had talked about overwork and brain fever, and been reassuring. He had kept Julius docile with various draughts and potions at those times. Serena had agreed to it all, relieved to have the decisions made for her, but she had found it deeply distressing to see Julius, usually so vigorous and energetic, sitting meekly in a chair, staring vacantly at nothing.

The room at the top of the house had been Dr Martlet’s suggestion; the spells of confusion were becoming more pronounced, he had said in the summer of 1910. It was possible they might spiral into violence. Serena had reluctantly agreed.

During the periods when Julius had to be locked inside the appalling room, Dr Martlet called at the house every day – sometimes twice a day. Mrs Flagg set meals on a tray, which Flagg carried upstairs. Serena knew quite well that without Dr Martlet and the Flaggs, Julius’s condition would certainly have been known earlier. Crispian would have known, and Colm. The bank… She had never known a great deal about the running of Cadences – it had never been expected that she would – but it did not take much logic to see that investors in Cadences would be uneasy if they were aware its head had sometimes to be locked away for fear he injure himself. Even so, Julius had never displayed violence towards anyone until the night Crispian came home.

‘I’m that sorry, madam,’ Flagg said, challenged as to how Julius had got out of the room. ‘Like I told Mr Crispian, the only thing I can think is that he finagled a key out of the workman when the lock was put in. He might do that, you know. He might have gone along to have a word with the man, friendly like, and the man, not knowing any different, would give him an extra key.’

‘Yes, that’s possible. It’s not your fault, Flagg.’

After that attack, Serena stayed in bed for several days, pleading a bilious turn. In fact, she genuinely felt sick and on the third morning she had to rush to the water closet just off her bedroom, where she was violently ill. When the same thing happened the following morning and the one after that, a faint alarm stirred within her mind, but she managed to dismiss it and hid the bouts of sickness from Dora and Mrs Flagg.

But by then she was aware of another symptom – or, not a symptom exactly, more of an omission. She counted up the days, a small frown creasing her brow. One week after Julius’s attack she should have felt the familiar ache in her womb; it should have been necessary to make use of the discreet padding arrangements kept in the bottom drawer of her dressing table. But she had not needed them and she still did not. Also, a swollen tenderness was starting to be apparent in her breasts, a feeling she remembered from the months before Crispian’s birth.

It could not be that, it could not. She counted up the weeks again, this time using her diary to be sure, but the result was the same. Then she reminded herself she was forty-two and this was surely nothing more than the start of that last watershed of a female’s life, the process that signalled the ending of child-bearing years. But the memory of Julius ramming into her body, brutally and convulsively that night, was still with her.

‘I’m afraid there can be no doubt,’ said Dr Martlet, four weeks later, having performed the hateful intrusive examination. ‘You’re going to have a child, Lady Cadence.’ He sounded stern but he also sounded deeply sad, as if he thought he should have been able to prevent this.

‘Are you quite sure about it?’ asked Serena.

‘I am. I’m sorry. I should have been firmer about Sir Julius, and I should have warned you… The male instincts are still strongly with him, it seems. I should have warned you he might want to—’

‘You couldn’t have known,’ said Serena quickly, because it would be curdlingly embarrassing if he referred to the marriage act. Nor could she possibly let anyone know that Julius had forced her. Let Dr Martlet and anyone else believe this conception had happened during one of Julius’s normal spells – one of the times when he was living in the house as usual, talking to people, behaving ordinarily.

Martlet did not press the point. He merely said, ‘I shall take very good care of you.’

After Dora had shown him out, Serena sat by the window of her bedroom for a long time. Her mind was in turmoil. People said nowadays that the manner of a child’s conception could not influence its character.

But what of a child fathered by a man at the height of insanity? A child conceived from out of that violent darkness.

Entries From an Undated Journal

There were no darknesses in Crispian’s life. I always knew that. All that lay ahead of him were good and happy things. Inherited money and property, and let’s not forget Cadences itself. I could see him very clearly indeed sitting in the bank’s famous oak-panelled boardroom, presiding over directorial meetings, issuing orders, controlling the lives of so many people. And the thing that hurt most was that he would do it so well and all those people would like and trust him. They would like him right up until he died, and probably afterwards. Whereas it’s unlikely anyone will mourn me, or even remember me after I’m dead.

It’s a curious feeling to know so definitely when you’re going to die. There are four and a half days left to me now. One hundred and eight hours. Or have I miscounted? Dear God, have I? No, I’m right. Why I should panic so massively at the thought I might have miscalculated a few hours, I can’t think.

I believe if I could put an end to my life now and avoid what’s ahead I’d do so, but it’s impossible and, believe me, gentle reader, I’ve checked. I’ve bloody checked every fucking possibility and there’s absolutely no way I can commit suicide…

Rereading that last sentence, it amuses me to juxtapose flowery Victorian or Austen-esque phrasing with stinging obscenity. In any case, they weren’t so very prim, those Victorians, it was just that they had to appear to bow to the conventions of the day. I’ll bet Charles Dickens sometimes had to restrain himself from adding a saucy paragraph or two when he chronicled the exploits of his street women and his gangs of ruffians. And let’s not forget H. G. Wells and his numerous liaisons and freethinking outlook, or Oscar Wilde…

I’m straying from the point. I’m trying to explain, to anyone who might read this, that there’s nothing I can do to cheat the inevitable. But there’s also the fact that I haven’t entirely given up hope. I still have a tiny, absurd green shoot of belief that something will happen, that some long-odds, outside chance will rear up and come hurtling in like a deus ex machina. God in a machine, riding to my rescue? Some chance.

God was certainly nowhere to be seen during that sea voyage, and if anyone walked with me that day the ship docked at Messina, it was the Devil…

I sometimes think if any of the great actor-managers had witnessed my behaviour during that sea voyage, they would have whisked me off to their theatres there and then, and set me down on their lighted stages.

I was good. No, dammit, I wasn’t just good, I was inspired. Believe me, David Garrick and Henry Irving had nothing on me, and as sure as God is my judge I fooled everyone. It’s extraordinary how, once you adopt a role, it starts to become part of you. I think it’s safe to say I almost became the person I was trying to portray. I wanted to become that person as well, I honestly did. I wanted to be normal. But every time I thought I might be within grasping distance the darkness would stir.

It was with me on the day the ship put into Messina and it was one of the times when I let it have its way – one of the times when it was too strong for me.

Messina is a very old city, but it suffered an earthquake a few years before our visit – 1908, I think it had been – and a lot of it had been rebuilt. Even so, the traces of the ancient city were still visible. There were fragments of Greek and Byzantine influences, if anyone reading this likes that kind of historical detail. And, like most cities, you can walk along a modern street with smart new buildings, then turn a corner and find yourself in an ancient cobbled square, as if you’ve stepped back three or four centuries. I’ve done that many a time in London.

That day in Messina, there was one moment when I was in a broad street, with bustle and shops and people, and then the next moment I was in a dark narrow alleyway in the shadow of one of the ancient cathedrals. There was a service going on inside the cathedral. I could hear faint chanting voices and the sonerous notes of an organ. It sounded as if they were reciting the General Confession. It was in Latin, of course, and although I’m no scholar in the accepted sense, I remembered enough of my schooldays to translate most of it. Mea culpa, they were chanting. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa… And even though the darkness had its teeth and claws into me, I stood there in that ancient corner of an old city, my mind splintering with pain, and found myself asking forgiveness for what I was going to do. It was very nearly medieval behaviour, like those sly, venal priests who traded in indulgences and sold pardons before the sin was committed. Like building up a credit balance with God. But I stood there and thought – God forgive me for what I can no longer help. Then I went, like that poor wretched creature Edward Hyde, deeper into Messina’s Old Quarter to slake the hunger and reach the peace that always came afterwards.

I found what I wanted quite quickly. Any city has its women of the streets, and ports probably have more than most. The alley I entered was narrow and sunless, with tall deserted buildings on both sides, warehouses of some kind, their windows boarded up. Arched bridges spanned the street overhead and it was a slightly sinister place. But oh God, it was so very exciting to stand in a shadowy doorway, waiting. It was, in fact, an excitement that tipped over into actual sexual arousal. I write that without comment and once again the reader may judge me as he or she wishes. But I’ll wager that a great many murderers – and murderers manqué – go to their macabre work in a semi-erectile state. The books don’t describe that, of course.

As I waited, my heart thudding with anticipation, one or two people walked past, but I pressed back against the wall and none of them seemed aware of me.

There’s a line from some Shakespearean play, I forget which one, but it goes, ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes…’ Those words resonated through my mind and, standing there, I understood what Shakespeare, wily old bard, had meant, because between one heartbeat and the next, I knew, absolutely and utterly, that my victim was approaching. That’s something else the books about murderers don’t relate. That in the last few moments, an instinct – almost primeval – tells you your prey is within your reach. By the pricking of my thumbs, something tempting this way comes…

Footsteps, quick and light, came towards me and I felt my fingers curl into predator’s claws. This was it… In another few moments… I watched her walk along the street – there was a faint drift of cheap perfume, and anyone with half an eye could have seen she was a prostitute. She glanced over her shoulder as she went past the doorway where I stood – the quarry scenting the hunter, you see. That pleased me because her fear would lend an edge to what I was about to do.

I stepped out of the doorway before she could reach the far end of the alley, and caught her up. When I put my hand on her arm she turned sharply and fear showed in her eyes, so I smiled and held out a handful of cash. I have no idea how much money I was actually offering her, but the faint fear was instantly replaced by greed, so it was probably quite a lot.

Neither of us knew the other’s language, and although I dare say I could have made myself slightly understood with a few Italian phrases, there was hardly any point, and the language of money is universal. She looked at the money, then she looked at me and nodded. She glanced up and down the street, which was deserted, then up at the buildings. Apparently satisfied, she pointed to the doorway where I had been standing.

If I had been in my normal frame of mind I would not have considered, for a moment, performing that act in such a public place. I’d like that understood. But as it was, I pulled her into the shadows and pushed up her skirt, unbuttoning my trousers with my free hand. Then I backed her against the wall and we strained and heaved and sweated together in that doorway. But since it’s no part of this journal to record what it has pleased someone to call the slaking of fleshly lusts, I shall merely say the encounter was brief and achieved its culmination. Even with the lure of the money, she flinched several times, and once, just as I reached a climax, I slammed into her with such force she cried out in pain.

On a purely physical level I was satisfied. But on a wholly different level – on the dark plain where my other self walked – there was more I had to do to her. I had to. It was the only way to slake the insistent hunger and appease the agony in my head.

I did it there in the shadowy doorway, closing my hands round her neck – rather a coarse-skinned neck she had, I remember – and pressing hard into her windpipe. She choked and spluttered, flailing at me with her hands, trying to gouge my eyes, the vicious little slut. But I was too strong for her and within minutes spittle was running from her mouth and, as she jerked and fought, urine streamed down her legs and splashed over my shoes. That’s from the spasms that strangulation causes and it’s something that nearly always happens. In fact, I remember once in London— But I was much younger then and not so experienced.

It was only when her tongue started to protrude from her mouth and her eyes rolled up that the darkness began to loosen its grip. I let her fall to the ground, fastened my trousers, sufficiently calm by this time to feel annoyed at the mess over my shoes; they were handmade leather, bought in Jermyn Street. It was my own fault; I should have known better than to wear them.

I stepped back into the sunlight, and went briskly along the alley, back towards one of the cathedral squares. You’ll note that I had no concern as to whether I might have left any damning evidence behind me – that’s the weakness in my armour. Anything could have fallen from my pocket or my wallet that could have identified me when the girl’s body was found. That’s why I never made an attempt on Crispian during one of these darknesses.

Later

When I sat down to make this journal entry it was night-time. But now, as I set down my pen, I realize I have written all night, for I see that a thin dawn is breaking and it’s the start of a new day. A new day. When I began writing a description of the Messina episode, I had a hundred and eight hours of life left to me. Now I have ninety-eight.