She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!’
The ‘dark fen’ reminds me of Cambridge and the drive over the causeway, the road the highest point in the landscape, the flat fields stretching away on either side. It’s a spooky passage: the night fowl, the darkness, the cold winds and the gray-eyed morn. Did Holland’s Mariana feel like this? Did she too wish that she was dead? I must find out more about her. This could be my breakthrough, my reason for getting the book published. But, more than that, I feel a strange fellow-feeling for her, this girl who seems to exist only in words. Holland obviously loved her but he was also very patronising, ‘not that she’s exactly a literary critic’. But maybe Mariana was clever as well as being ‘sweet-natured and kind’, maybe she too was a thwarted writer . . .
My curtains are slightly open and I can see the moon high over the old factory, illuminating the broken windows and ghostly tower. I get up to close them and, just for a second, the light reflects on glass as if a candle is flickering, high up in the ramparts. Then all is dark again. Another Tennyson line comes back to me, ‘Four grey walls and four grey towers’. I have the ridiculous feeling that someone is watching me. I pull the curtains tightly and turn back to the bookcase. Herbert, who is sitting on my bed, growls softly. ‘Don’t you start,’ I tell him.
I select Jeeves in the Springtime and get back into bed. Herbert continues to gaze at the window, doing that whole annoying ‘psychic animal’ thing. Sometimes I regret naming him after the dog in Holland’s story. I remember what I said to my students on Monday, ‘Animals are expendable.’ Why would I say such a thing?
‘It’s all right, Herbert,’ I say. ‘There’s no one there.’ I stroke my beloved companion animal and let Jeeves and Wooster lull me to sleep with Homburg hats, lunch at the Ritz and a scheme to prevent Bingo Little from being disinherited for wanting to marry a waitress.
Clare’s diary
Sunday 29th October
I’m dreading school tomorrow. All the students will be hysterical about Ella — half genuinely upset, half enjoying the drama of it all. These last few days — Cambridge, Saturday with G — I’ve managed to put Ella to the back of my mind but now she’s here again. I don’t dream about her but the bad dreams are back. Last night I had lost Georgia in a forest and had to make a path for her by pulling out my own hair. I don’t need Freud to tell me that there’s some deep mother anxiety going on there. Is it pelicans who feed their offspring by tearing the flesh from their own breasts? I would do that for Georgie, but I doubt she’d be delighted to be offered chunks of human flesh on toast. She’s always threatening to go vegetarian.
I rang Mum and Dad for our traditional Sunday phone call. I didn’t want to tell them about Ella but I thought they might read about it in the papers (despite only reading the arts pages of the Guardian). Mum seemed to have trouble understanding the word ‘murder’. ‘Is she dead?’ she kept asking. ‘Yes, Mum. She’s dead.’ ‘But she was such a lovely girl,’ said Mum, not seeming to realise that lovely girls often do get murdered. Neither of them seemed to think about how it would affect me, one of my best friends and closest work colleagues killed. Dad said it was ‘shocking’ but in a way that seemed to close down the conversation. Mum said how sad but immediately started talking about arrangements for Christmas. I told her we’ll just stay for one night. That’s about as much as I can take and G is sure to want to see her friends on Boxing Day. Martin isn’t even staying for that long. He thinks he’ll be ‘on call’. I swear he makes it up. He’s been on call for the last five Christmases, by my reckoning.
I put the phone down feeling obscurely resentful, as I always do. But I’ve had a good few days, despite everything. Last night G’s friend Tash came round and we all watched the Halloween Strictly. I did think about Ella then because I often used to text her during the show. But it was so nice, just the three of us and Herbert on the sofa, yelling insults at Craig and cheering on Jonnie and Susan. The girls are merciless — ’they need more swivel in the cha-cha’ — but I just love the whole thing, the glitz and the glitter, the big band renditions of pop songs. I did briefly wonder what Henry Hamilton would make of it. Probably far too low-brow for him although he wasn’t the grey-bearded academic that I had imagined. Georgie said that he ‘liked’ me. Did I like him? I suppose I did a bit. He was attractive in an Abe Lincoln kind of way and it was nice to meet someone who had actually heard of Holland and seemed interested in him.
Georgie is out with Ty tonight. Nebulous plans, ‘going to see some friends in Brighton’. No point in saying she can’t go, though I did mutter about homework and made her promise to be back by ten because it’s school tomorrow. It’s ten o’clock now and I wish she would come in. At least Ty has a car and she’s not shivering at a bus stop. But, on the other hand, a car brings all sorts of new worries. Ty could be drunk or on drugs for all I know. High on something, the modern equivalent of opium, like Wilkie Collins. Why am I still suspicious of Ty? OK, he’s too old for Georgie but he seems sensible — he didn’t drink on Friday night — and he’s cleverer than I first thought. It’s just, there’s something opaque about him; I felt as if I wasn’t seeing the real person behind the good-looking agreeable mask. But he’s not the sort to drive under the influence of drugs. His parents died in a car crash, so he’s probably a super cautious driver. Nevertheless, I can picture him swerving all over the coast road, music playing, Georgie laughing, neither of them looking where they’re going. Shall I turn on the local radio or Google ‘car crash West Sussex’? No. Thank God. There’s her key in the door.
Chapter 6
I can sense the atmosphere as soon as I drive in through the school gates. There’s still quite an impressive entrance left over from the Holland House days, with wrought-iron gates and stone lions on either side, but today the driveway is full of teenagers in blue sweatshirts, the girls with kilts rolled over at the waist to form strangely unflattering minis, the boys wearing black jeans in defiance of school rules. They move to let my car past but it seems to me that they stare more than usual, nudge each other and point. I can imagine them saying, ‘There’s Miss Cassidy. She was best friends with Miss Elphick.’
Georgie is almost horizontal in the front seat.
‘Let me out here,’ she says.
I stop and she leaps out of the car. Within seconds she is lost in the blue crowd. I drive on to the car park in front of the Old Building. Rick has called a department meeting before school today. He has to do this, I know, but I am dreading it. I collect my bag, crammed full of half-term marking, and walk quickly in through the main doors, not looking left or right.
The English staffroom is on the first floor of the Old Building, next to the library. It’s hot in the summer and freezing in the winter but at least it has high ceilings and sash windows, unlike the science block which is in the basement and never sees natural light. But, today, when I push open the door, there’s a pall of sadness and shock over the place. Vera and Alan are sitting on the sofa in silence, Anoushka is in tears and Rick stands hopelessly in the middle of the room as if he’s just finished speaking. There’s a stranger sitting in the blue armchair. I can’t see his face but assume that this is the supply teacher brought in to cover Ella’s classes.