Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

What light there was still seemed to fall in the same way — unhurried, as if it entered the library to rest. The considerable floorspace was scattered with armchairs and low tables. In the centre of the room were the promised refreshments. The wine decanter gleamed red; a clean glass stood next to it. There was a movement from one of the armchairs that sat with its back to him, and a thin hand extended, its fingers covered with jewels that echoed the wine sleeping in the decanter, and placed another glass, part-filled, on the table next to the first. There was a rustle of fabric and the lady stood. Crowther saw thin shoulders and hair swept up from the neck and powdered. Then, slowly, she turned.

Crowther would not have known the woman before him as his sister if they had passed on the London streets, yet as he looked at her, around her eyes, in the height of her cheekbones and slimness of her form, he saw something he recognised from the mirrors in his own house, or the reflections he caught in the glass of one of his preserving bottles. She could have been a statue, but the lines around her eyes and mouth were too delicate for any sculptor to have made. He felt her eyes travel slowly over him, and he made his bow. She dressed a little young. Suddenly her shoulders relaxed and she came towards him with her hands extended. Crowther fought the impulse to step backwards.

‘Charles!’ she said with apparent delight. ‘Or rather I shall call you Gabriel. I have so rarely heard either name in my mouth. I can swap them with ease.’

He set down his cane to take her hands. ‘Margaret. You look well.’

She gave a shrug. ‘Oh, I look old. You missed me at my bloom.’

‘I am sorry for that.’

‘Are you?’ She returned to her seat and perched on it, slightly pouting, and watched him settle himself opposite her. ‘I rather doubt it, but I give you credit for saying so.’

Crowther did not reply but poured wine for himself and drank it. It was very good and he remembered vaguely that Mr Briggs had had an interest in the import of liquors.

‘So, my lord, what do you think of our childhood home? This room excepted, it is all much changed.’ Her tone suggested she did not entirely approve. ‘Do you remember how Addie used this space to put on his little plays? When he came up from London I would beg to have a part. Did he ever recruit you?’

‘From time to time,’ Crowther said, studying her, ‘but I fear I was never much of a performer. I found the whole business humiliating.’ She gave a knowing smile at that which Crowther found irritating.

‘Have you reached that stage of life where one becomes terribly interested in one’s own past? Is that why you are here?’ she said.

‘I came because I was asked,’ Crowther replied.

‘Is it so simple to conjure you? I had no idea. You mean to say that if I had requested you come to me as a girl in Ireland, or as a young wife in Vienna, I would have had the pleasure of knowing my brother before now?’

Her voice was still light, the babble of the drawing room, but there was a brittleness there too. Crowther regarded her carefully.

‘I have never observed that my acquaintanceship gives much pleasure,’ he told her. ‘I cannot say, Margaret, if I would have come; the occasion did not arise. But it is possible I would not have done so unless the circumstances were extraordinary. We have never known each other; perhaps I would have thought it better to leave it so.’

The Vizegrafin lifted her hand to cover her lips as she drank, blinking rapidly. ‘And of course, I have never been able to offer the additional attraction of a mysterious corpse before now. You are honest, at least. I am not surprised. I knew when I was established in Ireland that you wanted nothing to do with any of us.’

‘Any of us?’

‘I mean my mother, my father, our brother or myself.’

Crowther leaned back in his chair. ‘Three of the persons you have mentioned were dead. It would have required some great spiritual intervention for me to have any commerce with them.’

She set the glass back a little sharply on the table. The coquette disappeared; her features seemed to sharpen and age. ‘They were somehow a great deal more dead to you than they were to me, Gabriel. You would not even do the duty of thinking about them. I did. I felt my losses. You cut them off from you like rotten wood, and myself with them.’

Crowther paused, looking into the air above them as if considering the question for the first time, then replied, ‘Yes. That is true.’

He heard his sister take a sharp breath and wondered how this scene had played in her imagination before he had opened the door. Had she expected him to be ashamed? Had she thought he would approach her on his knees, weeping in self-reproach the moment she put out her hands? If so, he felt a sudden burst of pleasure to have disappointed her. She continued: ‘I note you do not come to me in a penitent or sentimental mood. Good. I would not think better of you for it.’

Crowther realised he did not care very much what his sister thought of him. Part of his mind told him he should feel guilt, but he would not. He had made his decisions and would not now revel in feigned regret. ‘Do you feel I have wronged you so greatly, Margaret? You have always been well provided for, and as I said, you have never made the attempt to establish any communication with me.’

‘I was a child. It was your duty to write. And later in life. . Your pride is in our blood. You were born with it forming the spine of your character, as was I. How could I turn to someone who had so conclusively turned away from me?’

Crowther did not reply directly to this.

‘I hope your time with the O’Brien family was not unhappy.’

‘They were kind to me.’

‘I am glad of it.’ They were silent for a while until Crowther asked, ‘And your son is well?’

She watched him from under lowered lids. ‘You shall meet Felix at dinner. He is young and more idle than is good for him. I wish I had had more children, but I had already remained longer with my husband than I should have. My pride again. I did not wish to admit it to myself, let alone to the world at large, but the marriage was a mistake.’

Crowther dropped his hands to his lap, feeling tired and somewhat trapped. It was an emotion he knew well and associated strongly with rich women speaking of their disappointments. Why had he come here? If he had not seen his house being pointed out as a curiosity in Hartswood the day the express arrived, perhaps he would have resisted. If his sister had left the room now with a promise never to see him again, he would have been quite happy to let her go. When she spoke again, her voice had resumed the dancing cadence of the drawing room.

‘Who is this Mrs Westerman who has dragged you back out into the light again, Gabriel? Who has succeeded where so many before have failed? A Naval wife, is she not? Is she of good family?’

Crowther stood and retrieved his cane.

‘Her father had a parish in Norfolk, I believe.’ The Vizegrafin snorted into her glass, her eyes a little brighter. He thought women of her age should not wear so many rings. They made their fingers appear more clawlike and scrabbling. ‘And her husband was an extremely successful Commander until his murder in eighty-one. She has not your taste for fine jewellery, but if what I understand is correct, his prize money could purchase your husband’s estates twice over.’ His sister continued to sip her wine without looking at him, smiling. She knew she had needled him, and Crowther felt a surge of irritation that he had showed it.

‘I find the journey has wearied me more than I had thought,’ he said now. ‘We shall meet again at dinner.’