She wondered what it would be like, to live out one’s days alone, without having someone to love and be loved by. She thought of the Virgin Queen again, the illustrious donor of the goblets. She had never married, of course. Perhaps no one would ever marry Violet, either. Father would be most put out by that. Miss Poole, too – Violet imagined her bemoaning the waste of a perfectly good trousseau.
Violet had never much liked the idea of being married. She would have been quite happy to pursue her ambitions alone, like Elizabeth I – though Violet’s ambitions were rather more prosaic than victory against the Spanish and conversion of the nation to Anglicanism.
She thought, with powerful longing, of the giant moths and scorpions from Father’s atlases. She pictured herself bending to stroke a scorpion’s glittering head, the desert heat pressing against her skin … perhaps discovering a new species, being the first to decipher the secrets of its cells …
Might it be possible to have both things? Love and insects? Perhaps Frederick would fall in love with her, and then, once they were married, would be quite happy for her to become a world-travelling scientist. But even as these thoughts made her feel warm and light inside, doubt rolled in like a dark cloud.
She remembered the way that her heart had punched in her chest while Frederick kissed her. There was that feeling again, of being pulled by a tide. Her lungs tightened. She hadn’t expected that love – if this was what she felt – to be so similar to fear.
Truthfully, she wasn’t sure that anyone had ever loved her in her life, apart from Graham perhaps, in an irritable sort of way. Violet supposed that her mother must have loved her, but other than the faint memories triggered by the discovery of the handkerchief and feather – now somewhat tarnished by Frederick’s story – it was impossible to imagine what this might have felt like.
It was hard to tell if Father loved her. Often, it seemed that all he cared about was whether or not he could mould her into something pretty and agreeable, a present to be given away to some other man.
Though Violet wondered if there wasn’t another layer to her father’s feelings about his daughter – sometimes, she thought she could see regret cloud his face when he looked at her. Perhaps it was because – according to Frederick, anyway – she looked so much like her mother.
Now, Father was pouring three glasses of port to take into the drawing room. Graham was staring at the third glass with an expression of mingled terror and pride.
She cleared her throat. Father looked up at her and frowned.
‘Violet,’ he said, looking at her and then the grandfather clock opposite the door. ‘It’s late. You should be getting to bed.’
It was half past eight. Shafts of pink light patterned the staircase as Violet made her way back to her bedroom. As she passed the window on the second floor, she realised that she could no longer hear the chirp of the solitary cricket. Perhaps it had given up.
21
KATE
As the days grow warmer, Kate opens the windows and the doors, so that the cottage is filled with the scent of the garden. Sometimes, she sits for hours on Aunt Violet’s sofa, enjoying the sun on her skin as she reads. The fresh air helps with the nausea that still pulses in her gut, and she finds the distant murmur of the beck soothing. Outside, the otherworldly plants look almost beautiful, the ragged stems curling towards the sky. She rests one hand on her stomach, thinking of her daughter, blooming inside.
Violet’s bookshelves burst with tomes on science – insects, botany, even astronomy. One of them – a guide to local insect life called Secrets of the Valley – seems to have been written by Violet herself. Kate was relieved to find some fiction, too – even a few volumes of poetry.
Most of the novels are by female authors – Daphne du Maurier, Angela Carter, Virginia Woolf. In the last month, she has read Rebecca, The Bloody Chamber, Orlando. It’s been a long time since she’s derived such pleasure from it, from the stories spun of other people’s dreams. Those last days at the library, before she left Simon, had felt furtive, dangerous: she’d flinched at the tick of the clock on the wall, at every shadow that fell over the page. She had thought, for a while, that she’d lost the magic of it: the ability to immerse herself in another time, another place. It had felt like forgetting to breathe.
But she needn’t have worried. Now, worlds, characters, even sentences linger – burning like beacons in her brain. Reminding her that she’s not alone.
She’s just finished a slim novel called Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, about a spinster who moves to the countryside to take up witchcraft. A stamp on the flyleaf reads Kirkby’s Books and Gifts, Crows Beck. The bookshop next to the church. There is a handwritten message next to the stamp:
Made me think of you! Emily x
Looking through Violet’s collection, Kate sees that some of the others bear the same stamp. There are no other books about witches – although she does find a collection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, dog-eared at a poem called ‘Witch Burning’。 Two lines have been circled in pencil:
Mother of beetles, only unclench your hand:
I’ll fly through the candle’s mouth like a singeless moth
She remembers what she’d overheard the receptionist hiss at the medical centre. That one of the Weywards had been a witch.
Kirkby’s Books and Gifts is a red-brick building attached to the village church, St Mary’s. Small and squat, it nestles close to the church, as if trying to hide behind it. A bell chimes as Kate opens the door, welcomed by the comforting smell of dust and old leather bindings. Original floorboards are almost hidden by brightly coloured Turkish rugs, dusted here and there with glimmering strands of what seems to be cat hair.
‘Hello,’ calls a voice, its owner hidden by a maze of bookshelves. Kate peers around a sparsely populated shelf labelled ‘St Mary’s History’ and sees a woman in her fifties, standing behind a desk stacked high with new releases. The woman is wearing a sweet, woody perfume – patchouli oil. In her arms she cradles an enormous orange cat, which swats at the glasses that dangle from a chain around her neck.
‘Get off,’ she says to the cat, who meows and leaps to the floor. And, to Kate: ‘Can I help you?’
There is something familiar about her, about the way her eyes crinkle as she smiles. The greying auburn curls. Kate flushes when she realises: it’s the same woman she saw at the greengrocer, all those weeks ago.
Could this be Emily?
‘Are you all right, love?’ the woman asks, when Kate doesn’t answer.
‘Yes, sorry.’ She wipes her sweaty palms on her trousers. ‘My name’s Kate … Kate Ayres. I’m looking for Emily?’
‘Oh!’ The woman’s smile widens. Kate is embarrassed to see a sheen of emotion in her eyes. ‘Violet’s great-niece. I should have known – you have her eyes. I’m Emily – your great-aunt and I were friends. I’m so sorry for your loss. She was a wonderful woman.’
‘Oh, it’s OK.’ She colours. ‘I mean – I didn’t really know her. I didn’t even know she had died until her solicitor contacted me – she left me her house.’
‘We should get together sometime,’ Emily says brightly. ‘Me and Mike – that’s my husband – live out at Oakfield Farm. We’d love to have you round. Then I can tell you all about her.’