Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

In their sympathy and attempts to offer comfort and consolation, her acquaintances had often hurt her. Harriet had never realised quite how dull-witted some people could be. Some had suggested that widowhood would be easier for her to bear as her husband’s duties had often kept him at sea for long periods. It was as if they expected she would forget from time to time that he was dead at all. Others intimated that her husband would be pleased she was still young and handsome enough to attract a man who might take his place. She had managed not to let her temper rise on such occasions, at first because in the desperation of her loss she had hardly heard the words. Later she had found she could bear to keep a resigned smile on her face and her tongue still if she drove her nails into her palm as such people spoke to her. She already had a reputation for unconventional behaviour, and though letting loose her tongue would be a relief, society would begin to distance itself from her if her manners in company were not impeccable, and to some degree her estate, her family and her friends would suffer.

Such social niceties had never troubled Gabriel Crowther. He visited only two houses in the neighbourhood, Caveley and Thornleigh Hall, home of the young Earl of Sussex, his guardian and his family. There Crowther found people whose company he could tolerate, or even enjoy in moderation, but he would trouble himself with the local gentry no further. He ignored them, and when that was insufficient he was rude. It was an effective strategy that gave him the leisure he required to continue his anatomical studies in peace.

Harriet completed another column of figures in her firm neat hand, then frowned when they did not add up as she expected and twisted her mourning ring. Crowther had noticed Harriet’s habit of driving her nails into her palm when the local ladies fluttered about her; he had told her sharply not to be foolish. A week later, a matron of Pulborough was unfortunate enough to quote an improving passage on grief to Mrs Westerman in his presence. It was a passage she had been to the trouble of memorising for the poor widow, and she was rather proud of it. When she was done and blinking damply into Harriet’s face, waiting for her reaction, Crowther had put his fingertips together and in a cold drawl began to speak. For anyone other than the families of Thornleigh Hall and Caveley to hear his voice was a novelty, but from between his thin lips there emerged such a devastating critique of her logic, and of the literary quality of the passage, that the matron wished he might be struck dumb again at once, and her husband thought he might have to issue a challenge.

Mrs Westerman’s sister, Rachel, and the Earl of Sussex’s guardian, Mr Graves, tactfully intervened. Such were their skills, the company could convince itself no insult had been offered and the matron’s husband was allowed to return to his discussion of the current sport. The story of the encounter must have spread, however, for no one was seen pressing improving books and quotations on the widow again, at least not when there was any danger of Mr Crowther overhearing.

Harriet heard a snort of contempt from the sofa and looked up again. Crowther was reading the page in front of him with arms extended and lip curled.

‘I conclude you are reading the letter from Paris about the causes of this strange weather we are suffering under.’

‘I am, madam.’ He paused. She remained looking at him. ‘Do you wish to explain your fortunate guess?’

Harriet raised her eyebrows. ‘It was no guess, Crowther. News of the war with the French you read without feeling, news of the court or the arts you do not read at all, news of death or crime you read with weary disdain. Only an individual offering conclusions you think faulty in the natural sciences could rouse you to anger.’

Crowther looked back down at the paper in front of him, and said sullenly, ‘I have reason to be angry. This correspondent begins well enough. Listen: “ The multitude therefore may be easily supposed to draw strange conclusions when they see the sun of a blood colour shed a melancholy light and cause a most sultry heat ”. Very well, and so they may do — but so does this man. To leap from there to “ This, however, is nothing more than a very natural effect from a hot sun after a long succession of heavy rain ,” is nonsense. Any child knows a damp fog. This summer has nothing of that in it.’

Harriet stood from her desk and moved towards the French windows that gave her a view of the lawns and shrubbery to the west of the house, putting her hand to the base of her spine. The grass looked yellow and feeble. She felt this summer that her home was becoming small and pinched after the pleasant cool of spring. She was breathless, confined, and there was no clean air; the season seemed to pant with its little hot winds and lash out with sudden lightning like a child with a fever.

‘It has been a foul month, with the heat, and this dry wind that seems to parch the leaves and claps the doors, but gives no relief from this mist.’ She turned away from the window and began to walk up and down the length of the salon. ‘I have had three workers collapse in the heat, yet the sun itself is hardly visible. If you scorn this gentleman’s explanation, what is your own?’

Crowther shrugged. ‘Because I cannot give you an alternative does not mean I have to swallow any pap that is offered to me. However, accounts of earthquakes in Italy this year make me suspect that the matter thrown up from the earth on such occasions may be the cause. Think of this sulphurous tang in the air.’

Harriet paused in her walking and sniffed the air above her head a moment before replying, ‘True. Mrs Heathcote believes it to be the smell of the Devil come out from Hell to breathe on the land. She tells me so every morning when she gives me my coffee, and complains that the brass fittings of the house are tarnishing as quickly as she can make the maids polish them. But can foreign earthquakes also produce the storms we have been victim to?’

Crowther buried his chin in his chest. ‘We English must make such a mystery of our weather. There are storms every year, yet we always think them harbingers of the Apocalypse and act as if we saw lightning for the first time. Because two things happen at once does not mean they originate from the same cause.’

Harriet put her hand to her forehead. ‘They have been unusually severe, but very well, sir. I shall not hide under the altar of the church as yet. But if someone gave me a witching cure for this weather, I would try it. It pushes me down so, Crowther. I feel as if I am carrying a body across my shoulders every step I take. Yet I must always seem cheerful.’ She noticed he was looking at her from under his hooded lids with careful attention. She restarted her walk and said in a lighter tone, ‘But tell me what has caused you to come to us in such an unpleasant mood this morning.’

He put the paper down. ‘I had the pleasure of seeing my house pointed out to a party of pleasure-seekers this morning, and found myself, in my own parlour, being identified as a curiosity of the area like a bearded woman at the county fair.’

She turned again on the carpet and her skirts rippled, falling over themselves in an attempt to keep pace with her. ‘You are a curiosity, Crowther,’ she said, folding her arms across her bodice. ‘You should have waved your scalpel at them. They would have drunk all of the best brandy at the Bear and Crown to recover their nerves and you could have charged Michaels a commission on the sales.’

She dropped into a seat opposite him with a rustle of silk and leaned back, trying to pull the warm air of the room into her lungs. Her conscience was still a little troubled by her role in forcing Crowther out of seclusion. Three years previously, she had persuaded him to become involved in her enquiries into the affairs of Thornleigh Hall. There had been deaths, and Crowther’s own history of family scandal had been thrown into the light and picked over in the newspapers. Yet they had managed to protect the current Earl and his sister, and seen them take possession of the Hall in the care of their guardians. It had cost them both, and neither were the people they once had been, but she could not regret those decisions made.