Beatrice Read online

  NOËLLE HARRISON

  BEATRICE

  PAN BOOKS

  There is enough beauty, truth and nourishment in one small flower to last a lifetime.

  Amancio D’Silva

  The Lost Girl

  An open window, the door unhinged,

  Its lintel gleaming like a silver bone—

  A cold moon rises

  Over miles and miles of empty space.

  I search through all her chambers,

  In dark recesses

  Hope to find her face.

  Ciaran Carson,

  after Robert ab Gwilym Ddu

  PROLOGUE

  All Souls’ Day, dawn

  She woke; mouth dry, heart thundering, limbs stiff, rose from the stone floor and wrapped a blanket about her shoulders. She was still in her dress. She felt the shadow of her sleep and wanted to climb back into it. The boarded windows made the cottage as dark as death. It restrained her fleetingly. She opened the door.

  Birdsong enveloped her. A gentle mist had begun to rise from the fields, like steam, like breath, like life.

  She walked down to the stream, following the cattle tracks, and stood on the muddy bank, dropped the blanket, pulled off her dress and slipped out of her clogs. She stood naked for a minute, feeling the early winter chill encircling her. Her skin goosepimpled but she did not shake. Steadily she walked into the stream and immersed herself in the cloudy water.

  It was deep in the middle, and she could feel minnows brush past her body. The solitude of dawn made her feel safe. The world was not yet in motion.

  When the tips of her fingers started to prune and she began to feel blue, she got out of the water. Carrying her dress and clogs, she walked back to the cottage with only the blanket around her. She left the door open to bring in the light, lit a fire, and brewed some tea. When she was dry, she put on her clothes and an old jersey that was lying on the single battered chair. She waited.

  A breeze whispered through the trees behind the cottage; a solitary leaf spun down the chimney breast. She squeezed a small wild flower in her hand and smelt it.

  An hour later a car pulled up outside. She picked up her blanket and her bag, went out and got into the car. She handed the driver her bag; he looked inside. There was a pearl necklace, a blue silk scarf, a pink beret, a red leather-bound sketchbook, a mother-of-pearl compact and an embroidered purse.

  Contents

  ONE: THE PEARLS

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  TWO: THE SCARF

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  THREE: THE BERET

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  FOUR: THE SKETCHBOOK

  SARAH

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  JOSEPH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  SARAH

  JOSEPH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  FIVE: THE COMPACT

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  LISA’S LOOKING GLASS

  SARAH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  SIX: THE PURSE

  EITHNE

  SARAH

  BEATRICE

  PHIL

  EITHNE

  JOSEPH

  EITHNE

  BEATRICE

  ONE: THE PEARLS

  EITHNE

  She is in the woods, burrowing into the earth, under a giant lime tree.

  I found the pearls curled beneath a root; they gleamed at me. A delicate string, each pearl perfection, with an unopened gold clasp. Beatrice had bought them in Majorca that summer. Pearls. Belonging to somewhere exotic. I held them in my hands, still a child’s hands, my skin soft and unblemished, my fingertips sensitive. I closed my eyes and fingered each iridescent orb. Such glamour hidden in my woods. What were they doing in this dark, wintry place? These treasures from the sea were so far away from their source. Were they a gift from my sister, like all the secrets she had shared with me in the dark, in our bedroom?

  I stood in the woods, the pearls twisted around my wrist, silently stroking them. The land cleared around me then, and suddenly I had perfect vision. I saw a thousand trails which wound in and out of the trees. Zones of green ferns picked up patches of sunlight, and clusters of milky white mushrooms cleaved to the sides of gnarled roots, which looked like bony fingers gripping onto the dark earth for dear life.

  I came here nearly every day. Walking about, observing, never being part of anything, looking in from the outside. The woods were just five minutes away from our house: take a left outside the front door, swing to the right, past the old dive of a pub, and then down the hill, climb the fence, edge round the field on a muddy track, and into the dark until the spindly broken-down trees surrounded you. My wood was not a place most would choose to walk in. It wasn’t attractive – no broadleaved trees, or dainty beech, just churned up mud track and the bitter scent of spruce. Once you were inside, solitude enveloped you. I had always liked this, and I had never been afraid of being on my own . . . not until this day.

  Now I had found the pearls, and with them I uncovered fear. In that instant, my innocent, thirteen-year-old mind conceived the inconceivable – I was not safe.

  I stuffed the pearls into my pocket, and called the dog. We ran then, slipping and sliding – such a long way – to the field. Out in the open it had begun to rain – a bleak, lashing downpour. Only when I reached the hard tarmac did I slow down; then I could not hurry home. My feet dragged as I stomped back up the hill. Was I crying? It was hard to tell with the rain streaming down my face.

  Mammy went white, then sank back in her chair.

  ‘Beatrice,’ she whispered.

  She squeezed the pearls tight in her fingers, as if she could make them burst.

  ‘Get her a brandy,’ Uncle Jack said. I got the decanter.

  The Garda shook his head.

  ‘This does not look good,’ he whispered to Jack.

  Beatrice had been gone a week.

  Beatrice’s hair rippled over her shoulders and down her back like a waterfall of fire. My sister Beatrice was beautiful. She was tall, and she held herself like a dancer, although she had never been to a ballet lesson in her life. Even her imperfections were beautiful: the little scar by the side of her eye, where she had knocked herself on the side of the bath as a toddler; her nose was slightly crooked – my fault, playing handball. Her hands as well were incredibly elegant, with long slender fingers and perfect almond-shaped nails. And they were always busy: painting, drawing, holding a cigarette, tickling me . . .

  I sit in my bay window, looking at night spreading across Dublin. I have walked a long way today, the length of the South Pier, hitting the Irish Sea and a sense of anonymity. I massage my sore feet as lights come on in the streets outside, a
nd my reflection becomes clear in the glass. I scrutinize myself. I am thirty-two, although I don’t look it. My eyes still hold their shocked innocence, the way they looked when I was thirteen. I have no child; I cannot begin to imagine how my mother felt when my sister Beatrice disappeared nineteen years ago. It was Hallowe’en and she was coming home for the weekend, but she never arrived. She left Dublin on time, catching a bus at half past eight and arriving in the village at about ten. She knew Mammy was working so, instead of waiting around, she decided to hitch the last few miles home. It’s something we all did, although maybe not at night . . .

  Who saw her standing there in the dark? Who stopped and put her into their car? Was it someone we all knew? Was there a monster among us? Who was it and where did they take her?

  Beatrice was never found. Just some of her things: a string of pearls, a scarf, a hat, a sketchbook and a compact. She must be somewhere in the woods, but they dug and they dug, and they searched every nook and every cranny and never found her. It was a mystery; Beatrice had just disappeared. She was an open book, a life with no end that had hardly begun.

  When the search for Beatrice began to slow, my mother sat down and it felt like she never got up again. Not for years. She kept vigil by the back door, staring out of the window across the bog as if she could will her daughter to return. At first, everyone came to see how she was – friends, neighbours, my father’s family – but when they could get nothing out of her, so that they felt even more useless and redundant than before, they all gave up. After six months they began to say she was wallowing in her anguish, and she should pull herself together: for Joseph’s sake; for me . . . but really, they just couldn’t face the honesty. My mother’s brutal misery was too much. It was not the way things were dealt with. A good Irishwoman shoulders her misfortune and carries on no matter what. But my mother was English. She was different.

  There was one neighbour who didn’t say or think these things. Her name was Assumpta Lynch. The very day after Beatrice disappeared, Assumpta came round. She came straight in the back door without even knocking, went up to the kitchen table, grabbed a chair and sat down next to my mother. She said nothing, just held her hand. She sat there for well over an hour, and not a word was said between the two women. Then just as suddenly she turned to me and said, ‘Put the kettle on Eithne, there’s a good girl.’

  Assumpta came every day. She made tea for Mammy, lacing it with brandy. She cooked the dinner for us all; and then she just sat next to Mammy for hours.

  On the third week Mammy began to cry. As Assumpta gripped her hand, Mammy shuddered and wrenched out deep, guttural sobs from her belly from some place close to her womb. It was desperate.

  And where was Daddy? He was like a shadow, at that time, drifting in and out of the house. Mammy’s grief lost him, and so he dealt with it the only way he knew how – in the pub.

  One day when Beatrice was about twelve, Mammy sat her down and told her everything about her past. She did it because of Daddy’s drinking. He had collapsed in the main street again, this time in the middle of the day. Mammy was so mad with him. He had shamed her, and she got back at him the only way she could think of; by telling his daughter she was not his. It was Mammy who broke up the family.

  I was only eight then, and had no interest in their chat so I played out in the garden while Mammy and Beatrice sat huddled at the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking till way past dark.

  That night, as we lay tucked up in our beds, Beatrice repeated the tale in broken whispers. I was completely absorbed by the drama and romance of my mother’s past. This girl Beatrice talked about had passion and spirit, she was like a heroine from one of Beatrice’s romantic novels. I could not identify her with the worn woman who was my mother.

  ‘My real father is completely different from Daddy,’ Beatrice whispered.

  ‘Do you mean we don’t have the same Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, of course stupid. That’s what I’m telling you . . . my father was called Jonathan. Not Joseph, but Jonathan. Mammy called him Jon.’

  ‘But why didn’t they get married? Why did Mammy marry Daddy?’

  ‘That’s a long, long story. You see, Eithne, things weren’t that simple, especially then. Jonathan, my daddy, and Mammy came from very different backgrounds and well, in those days, it was very hard for the two classes to mix.’

  ‘What do you mean classes?’

  ‘Mammy’s family were poor, they were what you would call working class. Her father had to work very hard to make not very much money, and then, she said, her mother used to spend it all.’

  ‘Why don’t we ever visit them over in England?’

  ‘Wait and let me finish telling you about my father – you see his family were very rich, so rich in fact that his father didn’t really have to work – he was a lord—’

  ‘Wow! Did they have a castle?’

  ‘No – they weren’t those kind of lords – they were just very – posh – and Mammy worked for them so that’s why they didn’t want my daddy, Jonathan, to marry Mammy . . . he was very good-looking she told me. Very fair she said, blond hair with streaks of gold and thick like mine, and he was tall and elegant.’

  I could sense her eyes closing and her mind dreaming. I wanted to know more – why didn’t he fight for Mammy like a real prince? And where did my daddy come into it? Was he working class too?

  SARAH

  Sarah Quigley left for London on a bright sunny day in October 1962. She had packed one small case with a change of clothes, some stockings and underwear, her nightdress and a hairbrush. In her handbag was a new lipstick called ‘Sweet Cherry’, which she had bought the day before, some violet eau de toilette, which her mother didn’t want, and the old mother-of-pearl compact which had belonged to her father’s mother. Her father had also handed her five one-pound notes, the night before, which she had carefully folded into her new leatherette purse. She had the directions to her new home, meticulously written down on a large sheet of paper, which was also folded and in her handbag. She had everything she could need for her new life.

  Her train was at ten o’clock, in exactly one hour. She looked around her sparse bedroom one last time, at the row of tiny china dolls from all over the world which her father had bought down at the docks – the Chinese one in its red silk top winked at her, and Sarah felt it knew she wasn’t coming back. She went down the narrow staircase; her parents were sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of tea.

  ‘Do you want a cuppa?’ asked her mother.

  ‘No, I think I’ll be off,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit of a walk; I don’t want to miss the train.’

  ‘Shall I come with you pet?’ asked her father.

  ‘No, Dad. It’s best I go on my own, don’t you think?’

  He nodded, his Adam’s apple rising and falling.

  She walked towards the door; her mother’s back was to her and all she could see were her father’s watery eyes staring across the kitchen table. He looked very small, whereas her mother’s back was a hulk, a giant boulder of flowered material. Sarah watched her pick up the pot and pour more tea.

  ‘Well, mind you don’t get into trouble now,’ her mother warned her. ‘You work hard, and be a good girl.’

  Sarah bit her tongue. ‘Yes, mother.’

  ‘We’ll see you at Christmas, then,’ said her father. ‘It won’t be long. Be careful, love.’

  ‘I will, Daddy,’ Sarah said and left.

  She stepped out into the narrow street, and walked its length for the last time, past row upon row of neat red-brick houses, and rounded the corner. She could see Southampton docks in the distance, cranes crowding the skyline, a heavy grey smog hanging over them. She breathed in, as relief began to warm her chilled hands: she was getting out of here. The fear had always been with her that she would never leave. But now, at only sixteen, she already had her first job, a good one in London. She and Sally Langley had been determined to move away, and the day they had finished school they had bought
a copy of the Lady magazine between them. Inside its pages were all kinds of advertisements for nannies and housekeepers, cooks and gardeners, as well as more mundane domestic positions, which were what the two girls were after. Sally’s long-term plan was to train to be a nanny. But Sarah’s desire to go to London came from romantic dreams on rainy Saturday afternoons; it was the place to be, the hub of everything, where you’d be bound to meet someone and fall in love.

  The two girls had spent a whole week labouring over their letters of application but it had been worth it. Sally was thrilled to secure a position as an au pair in Tunbridge Wells, and Sarah had got the first job she applied for: doing general domestic duties for Sir Eric and Lady Voyle at their house in Kidderpore Avenue, Hampstead, London.

  Sarah settled well into the Voyle household. Lady Voyle took an immediate shine to her.

  ‘Aren’t you a pretty little thing,’ she had commented the day Sarah arrived. ‘You’ll certainly brighten the place up.’

  The Voyles’ house was at least three times the size of the houses back home, no, more like four, thought Sarah. It had four floors. There was a basement, which she was never asked to go into, but was told housed the wine. The ground floor was dominated by an incredibly grand dining room with a table which seemed to stretch for eternity. When Sir Eric and Lady Voyle dined at home, they sat at either end of the table, and Sarah had to walk between them to serve their food. Next to the dining room was a succession of different living rooms; Sarah couldn’t work out which was which and what they were all for. Finally, there was the kitchen where Sarah spent most of her time, staring out of the window and looking at the trees out the back and the blustery London sky, while she topped and tailed vegetables, things she’d never seen or heard of like French beans.