Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

“Aunt Jane!”

The voice was deep and fluting by turns, the voice of a boy on the verge of manhood. I turned towards the doorway, and discovered Edward standing there — his taper, lit from the lamp left burning in the hall, trembling in the draughts. He looked ghostly and forlorn in his long striped nightshirt, his grey eyes shadowed. Edward, whom I had considered too stoic for nightmares.

“What is it, my love? You should not be awake.”

“Might I have a drink of water? The pitcher in our room is bone dry.”

I laid down my pen and reached for the earthen jug that sat on the dressing table. “Then pray avail yourself of mine. You do not suffer from fever, I hope, as a result of your drenching at the Abbey?”

He shook his head, and took the proffered cup.

“Was that you I heard, calling out in your sleep?”

“The wind howls so — it woke me, Aunt. I hear voices crying.”

I searched his countenance. He was not a youth to bare his soul. Even when his father’s letter from Godmersham arrived, with an account of his mother’s funeral service, Edward had read over the whole without flinching. It was George who had sobbed aloud.

“There are voices in the wind, I tell you.” The grey eyes slid up to my own. “I heard a woman cry. And the wail of a baby. Aunt Jane — is my brother well? My youngest brother?”

The child whose birth had somehow killed his mother.

I brushed back the tumble of hair at his forehead. His skin was clammy with nightmare. “Your Aunt Cassandra wrote that Brook-John is thriving. It was not his voice you heard, Edward, nor was it your mother who wailed. You must imagine her free of all care and pain, my dearest. You must imagine her — happy .”

He drained the last of my water and silently returned the cup. I could not believe my words had convinced him. His mother’s first joy had always been her family. How now, divided from all she held dear, could Lizzy find solace in the Lord?

“It seems a chilly sort of faith,” Edward said.

Wednesday, 26 October 1808

Lord Harold’s fear — the spur that had driven him to Southampton despite the claims of family duty — urged the most serious consideration. I had meant to be up at dawn, in preparation for a morning’s work of sketching among the ruins — though what argument I should offer my mother on behalf of such a scheme, I could not think. I was prevented this essay in prevarication, however, by the combined application of Fate and Habit: the former being the tendency of public conveyances to break down, and the latter, my excellent parent’s inclination to fancy herself ill.

She kept to her room before breakfast, but as there was nothing surprising in this, I saw no cause for alarm. It was Martha’s office to disabuse me.

“Your mother, Jane, believes she has taken an inflammation of the lungs,” she said as we settled ourselves at the table. “She ascribes it to the quantity of moisture introduced into the atmosphere of the house last evening, and her exposure to Mr. Hawkins. The Bosun’s Mate, I am persuaded, resides in a most unhealthful part of town.”

“He never does!” George cried in outrage. “He is a famous fellow, and cleaner than Grandmamma by a mile!”

“That will do,” I told him sternly. “Apply yourself to your toast. I should judge your Grandmamma to be merely tired.” Privately, I recognised a tendency to believe herself ill-used, and a determination to cause as much trouble as possible for everybody, but saw no occasion to abuse the lady before her relations.

“She has a decided cold in the head,” Martha supplied, “and I have begged Cook to provide her with a hot lemon cordial — though where we are to find lemons in such a season, I am sure I do not know. You might carry the boys to the docks this morning, Jane, and discover whether there is an Indiaman at anchor; they are sure to have preserved lemons aboard, against the scurvy.”

The boys whooped; my heart sank. Much as I loved them, I felt a more pressing claim upon my attentions this morning. I had meant to ask Martha to take them in charge — but could hardly do so now . Martha was always my mother’s favourite nurse; she had learned the art at the bedside of her own dying parent, and would be much in demand for the rest of the day.

We had settled it among ourselves that the boys should be sent back to school after an early dinner, so as to enjoy to the full their final hours of liberty. But as we carried the teacups into the scullery, amidst much scolding from Cook, a messenger arrived from Roger’s Coachyard requiring us to present our charges early, as the conveyance intended for the four o’clock stage had suffered a split in its axle-tree.

“Places for the noon stage are sure to be hotly contested,” I observed as I herded my nephews up the stairs. “We must set about packing.”

A quantity of goods flew into the boys’ trunks — mourning clothes fresh from the tailor, academic robes, stray books and spillikins, horse chestnuts and toy boats, along with a tidy box of confections prepared by Martha’s hands in the Castle Square kitchen, against the scanty commons likely to be afforded them hereafter. Half-past eleven found us hurrying through town to Roger’s, hallooing for Mr. Wise to secure the young gentlemen’s seats beside him on the box. It is George’s greatest ambition to someday win admittance to the Whip Club, and he is zealous in observing what masters of the art fall in his way — though Mr. Wise is quite elderly, and must disappoint with his care and steadiness. [8] The Whip Club was known after 1809 as the Four-in-Hand Club, and was comprised of a fashionable set of gentlemen who emulated the skill of public coachmen by handling the reins of four horses driven as a team. They met quarterly for group driving expeditions and wore white drab driving coats with numerous capes, over a blue coat and a striped kerseymere waistcoat in yellow and blue. Membership was based upon the skill of the driver and was thus highly exclusive. — Editor’s note.

We were in good time to witness the arrival of the London mail, and with it, a quantity of disembarking strangers. It was unlikely I should discover any acquaintance among their ranks — the mail being the lowest, and least preferred, form of transport available — but my eye wandered over them all the same. A few women I judged to be superior domestics, or the wives of shopkeepers; a middle-aged clerk; a common seaman returned from leave; and a young man — a young man so extraordinarily handsome, and genteel in his looks, that I all but gasped aloud to see him emerge from such a conveyance.

He was fair-haired and blue-eyed, his countenance fresh and open; and there was an air of easy competence in his figure as he gazed about the bustling coachyard. His clothes were good, though hardly fashionable. I judged him not much above twenty, and country-bred — the younger son of a gentleman, perhaps, intended for the Church.

“Is it rooms yer wanting, sir?” enquired Mr. Roger in his brisk and friendly way, as the gentleman’s trunks were let down from the coach. “Or perhaps a hack?”

“An inn, I guess.”

The drawling voice fell strangely on my ears; the elegant young man was an American . They washed ashore in Southampton on occasion, but such as I had observed were merchant seamen who haunted the quayside. This man was gently-bred, accustomed to ease, and nice in his manners. Distinctly an oddity; and all my assumptions regarding him must be false. Being an American, he might be anything — it was impossible to judge.

“There’s the George,” Mr. Roger ticked off rapidly, “the Star, the Vine, the Dolphin, and the Coach & Horses. Shouldn’t think you’d be comfortable at the last, but any of the others’d do. The Dolphin’s a bit dear,” he added doubtfully.