I was frozen, stiff as a board, when the man bent down to see where the water was coming from. His head was as big as a bear’s and the skin of his face was all jowly, like an upside-down bloodhound. There was a black beard and a pair of red, swollen eyes with bright blue circles. He grinned at me, showed me his gold tooth, and left.
My mother’s foot hung over the side of the bed. For two days I watched as it turned from white to purple as the blood settled. I was meant to die in that room, but I didn’t because the landlord came to collect his rent. Pure chance.
30
There were now just three of us in the house, three souls living in purgatory, no more connected than floating pieces of driftwood. I could feel something coming; an oppressive cloud suffocated the house, filling every room, like the odorous fog that crept under the door. Cook had found another position in Kensington, and Sarah followed a week later. The gardener, who used to work for us on the second and fourth weekend of every month, simply stopped turning up. My house was shutting down from the inside, and those who were not in the eye of the storm could see it approaching and jumped. Autumn became winter, the house grew dark and cold, and everything inside it turned a listless shade of blue. Now that Mrs Wiggs had no one to bark orders at, the house fell silent.
One evening, Thomas and I had an encounter on the landing. We stopped on sight of each other. I hesitated, I wasn’t sure why, and he took this as an invitation. He smiled at me, and I felt immediately guilty.
‘How are you, Susannah?’ he said.
I ignored him. Even then, I feared that if I were to sympathise with him, I would be underneath him within the hour, if only for the sense of normality it might offer. I hurried into my bedroom, pressed my ear to the door and heard him come closer. I could sense him outside, knew his face was inches from my own. I put a hand over the handle and it turned a fraction. I held it still, felt him try to turn it the other side. I held my breath until he gave up and went away. I never knew if it was a performance; trick or truth.
Another time we met in the hallway. He was about to leave and was wearing his long blue coat with the skin of thirty-two wolves. The sun was just rising and light was streaming through the glass either side of the front door. He made a thin silhouette, a slender black shape in a top hat with a black bag, and in this featureless shadow I could perceive the devil the papers wrote of. He tipped his hat, wished me a good morning, and left.
I could not stop thinking about my grandmother’s words. They were like a generational curse to me now, the notion that my father’s badness – whatever that was – ran through me like black tar. I had begun to believe that the bad blood she spoke of had sought out my devilish husband, so that I had not acquired him consciously but in a prehistoric, animalistic way. I had found the husband I deserved. If we were both cut open, the badness would run from the both of us.
One day in early November I heard voices near my bedroom door again. I crept over and took the key out of the lock, knelt down and squinted through the keyhole. I could see Mrs Wiggs’ head and shoulders. She was standing on the stairs. Thomas was on a higher step and I could make out his torso but not his head. Mrs Wiggs’ face was turned up to him in blind adulation, as if he were the son of God; a religious rapture. She reached up an open palm, and in a gesture of tenderness extended it lovingly towards his face – or so I had to assume. Thomas put up an arm, I supposed to cover her hand with his own, also in affection.
I fell back in shock. My first reaction was disgust, but when I looked again, I understood that the gesture was not passionate but maternal. Even so, this was not normal, surely, between nannies and their adult charges?
The intensity of their mutual devotion bothered me. I made it my new vocation to study them and drew up mental notes of their physical attributes. They were both tall and slim, with loping strides and a swift gait, but it was their ears I became obsessed by. Thomas had such small and feminine ears, with barely any lobes at all, and so did Mrs Wiggs. I had a suspicion that somehow they shared blood. That was the epiphany I needed.
The next day I wrote a letter to Mr Radcliffe, my solicitor. I told him I would need to return to Reading imminently and I would be taking ownership of my house so the tenants would need evicting. I would find work as a private nurse or in the hospital, even the workhouse infirmary if I had to. I could forge a reference, but maybe I wouldn’t need to. Matron might provide one now that several months had passed since she’d fired me. I would take in lodgers in the upstairs rooms and live downstairs as landlady. I posted the letter.
Some days later, I returned home from an outing to the shops to discover an envelope addressed to me on the sideboard. I tore it open in a frenzy. I thought it was from Mabel and took that to be a good omen, but when I saw it was from Dr Shivershev my heart sank. I had
