John Harwood - The Asylum

“I am not sure I ever did believe in him,” said Lucia, “not wholly. Mama was always so vague; I could never picture him.”

“It was the same with my father,” I said. The thought was somehow reassuring, but my doubts persisted, until I remembered where she was staying.

“Lucia,” I said, “where exactly in Marylebone is your hotel?”

“In Great Portland Street.”

“Which is next but one to Portland Place.”

Her eyes widened.

“Even when I saw the letters, I did not realise—it just seemed natural that I should have chosen that place. I must have been drawn there.”

“Just as you knew—without realising that you knew—Thomas Wentworth’s name.”

“And what else is lurking in the dark corners of my mind, waiting for me to stumble over? I don’t like it. Still”—she set her chin, and made a banishing gesture—“no matter what we find, we have each other now.”

My uncle was quite bewildered by the prospect of anyone—let alone a young woman I had scarcely met—dining with us, but Lucia was so charming, and asked so many questions about the bookshop, that I feared we would never escape. Uncle Josiah, to my relief, showed no more interest in her history than he had ever shown in mine. I had always striven to please him, but now I found myself resolved that in the matter of Lucia’s staying, I would not give way, no matter how many objections he raised; indeed I promised her, as soon as we were alone again, that I would secure my uncle’s permission the following morning.

It was after eight o’clock before we left the table; I expected her to say that she must return to her hotel, but Charlotte had lit the fire in my sitting room, and Lucia showed no inclination to leave. The firelight glowed upon her cheek and in her hair, sparking red and copper and burnt gold when she turned her head. The French intonation seemed to have faded from her voice, or perhaps I had simply grown accustomed to it. I longed to hear more about her life with Rosina, which I could not picture with any distinctness, but I did not like to press her, imagining how I would feel if my own history had just unravelled before my eyes. For her part, she wanted to know everything, no matter how trivial or mundane, about my childhood in Niton; when I showed her my dragonfly brooch, she gazed at it like a holy relic, turning it slowly in her fingers so that its jewelled eyes burned crimson in the firelight.

We gave no thought to the time until the distant sound of the hall clock striking ten brought her hand to her mouth.

“Georgina—I had quite forgotten. The hotel locks its doors at ten; what am I to do?”

“You must stay here,” I said. “We can make up the sofa as a bed—or, if you do not mind, you are welcome to share mine.”

She accepted gratefully; I fetched her a nightgown and left her to change in front of the fire while I undressed in my bedroom, by the light of the two candles above my dressing table. As soon as I had put on my own nightgown, I opened the door again to let her know that she might enter, and began brushing my hair in front of the mirror.

“Let me do that,” said a soft voice in my ear, as the twin of my reflection appeared above my own. I turned with a start, relieved to see that Lucia was actually there; in the wavering depths of the mirror, the likeness was positively uncanny.

“I am so sorry; I must have tapped too softly. I didn’t mean to startle you.” She took the brush from my hand and continued while I gazed, half hypnotised, at her reflected self, who smiled when our eyes met, exactly as if my imaginary sister had come to life.

When she had finished, we changed places, but the change in the mirror was scarcely perceptible, which made the sensation all the more dreamlike. I had not done this since my mother died, and I had forgotten the intimacy of it: the soft tug and crackle of the brush, the warm scent rising from her hair. After a little, her eyelids drooped, and then closed, but small responsive movements of her head, and the smile that played about her lips, told me that she was not asleep.

At last I set the brush aside. Lucia rose to her feet and embraced me, murmuring, “I did not realise how lonely I have been.” She went over to the bed and settled herself in it like a child, her faced turned toward the light. I left one candle burning and slipped in beside her so that we were face to face, each with an arm around the other. Her eyes closed again; within five minutes she was fast asleep, but I kept myself awake for a long time, feeling the soft rise and fall of her breast against mine, her breath stirring my hair. This, I thought, is what people must mean by wedded bliss. But would it be the same with a man? I remembered the bull-calf in the field, and my aunt saying, “Same with humans—never cared for the idea myself.” Most novels ended in wedded bliss, but novelists never mentioned the bull-calf. I had always imagined something rough and clumsy and painful; now, bathed in the warmth of Lucia’s body, I knew that this was everything I had hungered for, safe within the circle of my arms.

I would happily have stayed awake all night, but sleep at last overcame me, until I woke in darkness to feel Lucia, now lying with her back to me, struggling in the grip of a nightmare. Her voice rose to a shriek; for a moment she fought to push my arm away, then turned, shivering, into my embrace. “Hush, Lucia, hush,” I murmured. “You are safe now.” I stroked her hair and drew her close, and felt the answering pressure of her lips before her breathing slowed and settled again. Again I strove to keep awake, breathing the scent of her hair and picturing our life together, in a cottage by the sea . . . Uncle Josiah had managed perfectly well before I came here and could surely do so again . . . perhaps at Nettleford?—we must visit, at least, and see the house where I was born . . . or on the Isle of Wight, though not so close to the cliff this time . . .

I woke to grey twilight and the smell of guttered candlewax, alone with the fear that Lucia had been nothing but a dream. Springing out of bed, with my heart pounding wildly, I ran to my sitting room. There was no trace of Lucia; except for my nightgown, neatly folded on the end of the sofa. And I had not even asked her the name of her hotel . . . I sank down upon the sofa, pressing the gown to my face. Out of it fluttered a slip of paper, on which was written in faint pencil, in a hand not unlike my own: “A thousand thanks—I did not want to wake you. I shall come to the shop this afternoon. L.”

Persuading Uncle Josiah proved even harder than I anticipated. I cornered him at breakfast, as I had promised, even though I was more than half afraid that Lucia would change her mind about staying—assuming she had not vanished like a fairy. But, I told myself, if she does still want to stay and I have not spoken to him, she may think that I do not really want her to. And so I steeled myself to interrupt—he was intent on a catalogue that had just arrived in the post—by asking if he had liked Miss Ardent.

“Yes, my dear,” he said without looking up, “a charming young lady.”

“I am delighted you think so, Uncle, because she is coming to stay with us.”

He set down his magnifying glass and peered at me in absolute bewilderment.

“I don’t understand.”

“Miss Ardent is coming to stay with us,” I repeated. “In the spare bedroom, upstairs.”

“But, Georgina, you cannot be serious. It is out of the question; we cannot have people staying here.”

“Why not, Uncle?”

“Why not? The expense, the inconvenience, the . . .” He threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. I had thought, watching him at dinner with Lucia the night before, how much frailer he had grown in the year I had lived with him. His skull was now entirely bare; even his drooping white moustache seemed thinner. My heart smote me, but I would not be put off.