‘Why is he afraid?’ I ask.
‘He’s an old dog full of bad habits,’ says the doctor lightly, although I can see he’s as keen to get back upstairs as I am.
‘Where does it lead?’
Henry doesn’t know. ‘I should think there’s a lot of old rubbish behind there,’ he says. ‘Tipper can smell it.’ He’s struggling to restrain the dog. ‘Let’s go.’
We head back the way we’ve come, Tipper dipping his head, his tail bowed, staying tight to his master’s heel. ‘That’s the last time I bring you with me, do you hear?’ he says gently to the hound. Before we ascend the final staircase, I look behind, wondering at this cold, abandoned netherworld, seeing that strange door, beyond which Tipper knew about something we did not.
I hear her name again.
Laura.
I sleep well that night. When I wake at the usual time, I imagine for a moment that it is still the small hours, for my room is drenched in a sooty, dim light.
Climbing out of bed, I pull the curtains and see why. The mists have rolled in. I can scarcely see a foot from the window, the air obscured with dense, swirling fog. The sea has vanished, the sky invisible. I glimpse the position of Winterbourne in my mind’s eye, high on the Landogger Bluff, closeted in vapour; cold mists press against the walls and turrets, drifting beneath the arches, smothering the roof of the chapel…
All is quiet. All is still.
As ever when I go to tie back the drapes, I am faced with that eerie painting. Each day, I like it less. Something prevents me from taking it down, some sense that it has been here longer than I. Today, I try not to examine it, focusing instead on the silk knots that draw the curtains into place. And yet I cannot resist. The girl at the window lures me, as determinedly and insidiously as the fogs that roll in off the sea, creeping overnight, slowly, stealthily; it is as if she is whispering to me: Look, look… Is it my fancy, or has her gaze changed? Her regard has moved to one side, towards me, towards the ancient, indecipherable sea. I could swear that yesterday it was not so.
Don’t be ridiculous, Alice, I tell myself. The print is honestly so small, and the girl within it even smaller, that to pick out such an unlikely discrepancy is absurd.
At Burstead, my lover and I once spent a night together in the music school. I remember those handsome, silent pianos, dozens of them, and the way they shone in the moonlight, like war heroes at a gathering, mute but magnificent. I kept thinking, then, that I heard noises in the dark, people who had found us as we lay in Practice Room 3, or some noise beyond, a flit of wings, a whisper, some flight of my nervous disposition. ‘There’s nothing,’ he said to me, as he turned to kiss me in the purple light. ‘There’s no one here except you and me…’ I try to hear him now, but his voice grows fainter with every passing year. There’s no one here. Just me.
I obscure the painting as far as is possible with the material and go to my dressing room, slipping off my nightdress and laying it on the bed. It’s only when I’m buttoning my skirt that I notice the smudge on the inside of my elbow, where the skin creases and softens in the bend of my arm. Thinking it must be soot from the fire, I try to wipe it away and when it doesn’t come, I lick my thumb and try again. Pressing harder this time, it smarts. It’s a bruise, clearly: bluish-brown and shaped like an almond. It seems an odd place to have it, not the sort of bump one might acquire from walking into a bedframe or knocking one’s arm on the newel post.
Surely I struck it in a game with the children. I’ve been so occupied with those happy souls since arriving at Winterbourne that I can’t promise I’d even have noticed. Filled with pleasure at the thought of seeing them at breakfast, I finish dressing and go downstairs to greet my wards.
*
‘Be careful, miss,’ says Tom as he helps us into our coats and boots. ‘The captain doesn’t like the children to go out when the mists are in. It’s awful cold and damp.’
‘We’ll be fine, Tom. Fresh air is good for the children – and, besides, we’ve already sought the captain’s permission.’ This is only true in part. I would have sooner received consent directly, but when I tapped on de Grey’s study door an hour previously, asking if we might venture out for a walk, I was met only by silence.
Instead it fell to the boy Edmund to reassure me that his father had given approval. ‘It’s quite all right, Alice,’ Edmund told me with confidence. ‘I met Father in the drawing room and he agreed we could go. He trusts you, Alice,’ he said, his eyes sparkling, ‘he knows you’ll take care of us.’ I flushed at the unexpected compliment. Could the captain have formed a positive opinion of me so fast, and in such an obvious way that it would be clear to the children?
‘Take this,’ says Tom, producing an old dog whistle and looping it round my neck. ‘Like I said, you’ll fast lose your bearings.’
‘We’re not going far.’
‘I’m excited!’ Constance is pulling on her mittens. Next to her, Edmund yanks his cap down over his ears. ‘We’re going on an adventure,’ he says.
I smile at Tom in a way I hope reassures him that we are doing no such thing. But Tom doesn’t look reassured.
‘Take the whistle,’ he says, ‘and watch your step.’
Minutes later, the door closes behind us. I cannot wait to get out on the moors. The world seems changed, magical and deeply peaceful, as if we might slip into it unheeded, like woods on a snowy morning awaiting a first footprint.
‘Can you hear the sea?’ Constance cries. ‘I can hear it – but I can’t see it!’
She’s right. It’s an odd impression because we are so close to the cliff drop and yet we cannot detect a thing. The sea crashes in with a deep, mellow roar, which takes on a new personality in this muffled, sunken world. Without bearings to situate us – a few steps from the house and it disappears completely – our senses are primed elsewhere. The tide bellows louder; the cold snap in the air smells startlingly clean.
‘Hold my hands, children.’
‘Look at our boots!’ Edmund exclaims as we walk, emerging in pockets of better vision that enable me to reclaim our situation, before we are engulfed once more. Our boots do indeed look strange, uncannily real as they plod ahead, three pairs in a line, two small, one big, and bizarrely separate from the rest of us. It is as if we are walking on clouds, and for a moment the ground beneath us feels precarious, as if we could fall through it at any moment.
I stop. The fog is closing in, too close. I cannot breathe.
‘What’s the matter, Alice?’ Constance asks.
‘Nothing, I—’ My lungs strain. ‘Nothing.’
‘Listen for the lighthouse,’ says Edmund, in a voice that sounds much older than his own. ‘That’s how you can tell where you are.’
‘Do you often come out in the mists?’ I ask, with a nervous laugh. Edmund doesn’t reply. I listen for the Polcreath tower, and its sharp fog blasts tell me we are over the westernmost brow and close to the sea. But in the next instant, I wonder that I don’t hear it to my other side, or above, or behind. The blasts grow louder and more aggressive. My knees weaken. I’m back in London, on a cold March night during the Blitz, and the air-raid sirens are wailing, louder and louder, louder and louder…
‘Bombs away!’
Edmund releases my hand