Tyringham Park

Charlotte received a parcel from Ballybrian in the post. While she read the letter that had been inserted under the second layer of brown paper, she allowed Mary Anne to take out the tightly scrunched balls of paper that were packed around the object in a large cardboard box.

Dear Milady,

My name is Robyn Parsons. You probably won’t remember me, but I was a housemaid when you were a little girl at the Park and I saw a lot of things that upset me at the time but I was too green to do anything about them, like the time Nurse Dixon didn’t know I was watching when she took your doll from you and punched and slapped you as if you were her size and not a little girl and when she saw me she dragged you inside and I heard your screams and I still cry about how I didn’t try to help you, but at the time I didn’t think I could because Dixon was in charge of you and kept you away from us servants. I pray every day for . . .

Mary Anne squealed with joy when she lifted out a further handful of paper balls to reveal what was under all the packing in the box.

I found something hidden in the old nursery you might like to have returned to you, better late than never, now that you have a little girl of your own. I hope I have done the right thing. It’s so hard to know what to do for the best.

Charlotte glanced up and screamed when she saw, tucked under the arm of her twenty-two-month-old daughter with her pretty face and dark soft curls, a yellow-haired porcelain doll wearing a sapphire-blue dress. The doll that had once belonged to her and had been confiscated by Dixon. The companion piece to Victoria’s red-headed one, the one she had been holding on the day she disappeared.

She couldn’t breathe. She felt as if she would suffocate. Her ribcage heaved as she tried to force air into her lungs.

Mary Anne looked up and began to cry in alarm to see her mother’s contorted face.

There was roaring in Charlotte’s ears, and a sensation of pain in her chest. She was finally able to draw in a honking, rasping breath, the sound of which increased the volume of Mary Anne’s wailing.

Five minutes later Queenie found Charlotte in a state of near collapse and told her she would run straight for the doctor and not to worry. Charlotte made feeble gestures with her arms, signalling Queenie to get the child out of the room.

“I’ll take Miss Mary Anne to her aunt’s for the morning,” Queenie said and knew she had made the right decision when Charlotte nodded and tried to smile. “And I’ll fetch Dr Grace on the way back. Don’t panic. I’ll be here again before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Queenie put the sobbing child, still clutching the yellow-haired doll, sitting up in the pram she was now too big for and wheeled it with speed across five streets to Iseult’s house, where she told Iseult that Charlotte had a throat infection and didn’t want Mary Anne to catch anything. Three streets back she called to the Carmody house and rang the bell of the surgery at the side and, when there was no answer, banged on the knocker of the front door. Dr Grace answered and, as soon as she could make out what the breathless servant was saying, said she would come over straight away. On being questioned, Queenie said she had no idea what had brought on the attack or fit but it must be something drastic if ma’am was so out of sorts she couldn’t attend to Mary Anne.

“Has this happened before?” Dr Grace asked, picking up her coat and medical bag and pulling her door closed behind them.

Queenie wanted to run ahead, but had to wait for the doctor so she could guide her to Charlotte’s rooms by the back entrance to avoid being spotted by Lady Blackshaw. While they hurried along the street Queenie tried to answer the doctor’s questions as accurately as she could.

Hours after Dr Grace had sedated her, Charlotte tried to rouse herself but found it difficult to keep her eyes open. There was someone asleep in the chair across the room, she noticed, and the curtains were drawn, so it must be night. Where was she? What had happened? Why were her arms too heavy to lift?

She saw a child standing beside the bed. It was Victoria. Not the distressed one of her dreams who didn’t leave until Charlotte had made a deal with her, but a happy one, holding a redheaded doll. Charlotte turned with joy to welcome her lost little sister in her white linen dress.

“Thank goodness you’re alive,” Charlotte whispered so as not to wake the person in the chair. “I knew you’d come back one day to see me.”

“Come closer, my little darling, so I can take your hand,” Charlotte said in a coaxing voice.

“Don’t cry, my pretty pet,” Charlotte pleaded, feeling a terrible anxiety overwhelming her. “Come to me and I’ll kiss you better.” She tried to move so that she could rise from the bed to comfort the child, but her head wouldn’t lift from the pillow and her legs remained leaden. Her arms ached with the desire to enclose the figure, hold her close and keep her safe.

“I have a little girl just like you, with curly hair and a pretty face. You’ll be able to meet her in the morning when she wakes.”

Charlotte’s eyes snapped wide open at the sound of Queenie’s voice, and Victoria vanished.

“What did you do that for?” Charlotte wailed. “You frightened her away. Come back, Victoria, ignore Queenie! I have so much I want to say to you!” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch. “Come back and I’ll explain everything!”

Queenie rushed over to her side. “Take some more of this, ma’am,” she coaxed, lifting up Charlotte’s head and pouring liquid into her mouth. “Dr Grace said it will calm you down.”

“Get back – get away,” Charlotte spluttered, trying to spit out the potion, but ending up swallowing most of it. She turned her head away from the servant to avoid being given a further dose and said with as much force as she could summon, “I don’t want to be calm. I want to talk to Victoria. You go away and she might come back. Go on, leave immediately and don’t dare return unless I ring for you. Do as you’re told. Go!”

Queenie ran from the room and kept running until she reached the Carmody house for the second time that day and told the sleepy Dr Grace to come quickly as Charlotte had definitely lost her mind this time.

Charlotte looked at the space vacated by Victoria and pleaded aloud for the child to return but was met with emptiness and silence. The energy she had felt while talking to Victoria was dissipating. Her body was becoming heavier. That damned medicine Queenie forced her to drink was sending her to sleep. She called out to Miss East for help, but there was no answering voice.

A familiar person leaned over her and she felt the sting of a needle being injected into her arm.

The next time Charlotte woke she stayed still and didn’t speak so that Queenie, keeping vigil, wouldn’t rush over and pour that opiate down her throat.

There was a strange sensation in her head. It was as if her mind was a hundred-roomed mansion that was falling apart, each wall as it crumbled revealing its individual secrets to all the other rooms until the house was a single pile of rubble with all its furnishings and artefacts exposed.

She was eight years old again, back at Tyringham Park. Her mother was wheeling the baby carriage towards the stables. Charlotte, as was her habit on the daily walks with Nurse Dixon, began to follow.

“Not you,” Lady Blackshaw snapped at her. “I don’t remember including you in the invitation. Nurse Dixon, take her off.”

“Of course, ma’am.” Dixon reached out for Charlotte’s hand. “Come on, Charlotte, dear. We’ll go back to the nursery and do something nice.”

As soon as Edwina was halfway down the hill and too far away to hear, Dixon turned to Charlotte and said: “Go and make yourself scarce, Uglyface. I’ve enough on my plate without having to look after a nuisance like you. Why don’t you go off and build one of those bridges you’re so fond of? And straighten up them shoulders!”

Charlotte slumped towards the walled garden, but doubled back when the two adults were out of sight, and made her way towards the stables.

By the time she arrived and pushed open one of the double doors, the baby carriage was placed against the wall in the shade and the courtyard was empty. As she sidled along the wall she noted the sleeping Victoria and felt a sting of hatred for the sister she loved, before heading towards the voices she could hear coming from Manus’s office.

She put her ear against the door but wasn’t able to make out what was being said. The voices became softer and softer until the talking stopped altogether. The following silence was punctuated by odd sounds. She risked peering in the small side window and couldn’t believe what she saw.

Her mother and Manus weren’t wearing all their clothes and her mother’s hair was hanging loose and the two of them were lying on a horse blanket on the floor doing funny things to one another.

Charlotte watched for a few minutes with the same fascination she had experienced when she came upon Sid drowning a litter of kittens in the freshwater barrel.

Charlotte snatched the sleeping Victoria and her doll out of the baby carriage and passed under the arch through the open door which she had left ajar. She walked around the stables, following the narrow earthen path that hugged the stable walls, and headed to the river. The muddy verge was slippery from all the rain. She skidded. The jolting movement she’d made to prevent herself from falling woke the child, who was immediately alert, gazing around her to take in the unfamiliar surroundings.

As soon as they turned the corner onto the river bank and Victoria saw the rushing water, she wriggled to show she wanted to be placed on the ground. Charlotte put her down and took her hand.

Both sisters were conscious of the novelty of the two of them on an adventure without any adult supervising them. A forbidden adventure. Walking alongside the river, which had a deep Dark Waterhole and was always out of bounds.

Victoria was almost shy of her big sister, holding her hand and smiling up at her.

Victoria, wearing a white dress and carrying her doll, walked confidently. She was advanced for her age, as Nurse Dixon never tired of pointing out, steady on her feet at ten months, whereas Charlotte, the dummy, hadn’t taken her first steps until she was sixteen months old.

They continued on a little way to where a section of the bank had eroded, taking half the crumbling path with it. Victoria tripped on a dislodged lump of rubble and would have fallen into the water if Charlotte hadn’t held her tightly. The doll flew from Victoria’s hand and landed on the bank, its hair trailing in the flooded river.

“Stay back,” Charlotte shouted as they bent at the same time to retrieve it. “I’ll get it for you.”

Victoria ignored her and, snapping up the sopping doll with a squawk of relief, clutched it to the bodice of her white dress.

“Now look what you’ve done, getting muck all over your front. Give the doll to me so I can wash it so we don’t get into trouble.”

Victoria looked bewildered and clutched the doll more tightly to her side. “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head for emphasis.

“Give it to me or you’ll cop it. Teresa Kelly can’t help you now. She’s gone for good. Vanished.”

Victoria stepped back. Charlotte leaned forward, grabbed the doll by the hair and wrenched it out of Victoria’s arm.

Victoria toppled backwards inches from the water. Charlotte pulled her to her feet. Victoria wailed and tugged at Charlotte’s skirt.

“Stop that noise.” Charlotte held the doll above her head and tried to pull her skirt free.

Mummy’s pretty little favourite didn’t look so pretty now with all that mucus running down her screwed-up face.

Charlotte lowered the doll. Victoria let go of the skirt and reached up to claim it. Charlotte held it within an inch of Victoria’s desperate, fluttering fingers.

How easy it would be to give it to her and watch her clasp it close, cease her caterwauling, and look with pleasure again at her older sister, who could take her hand and lead her back to the courtyard, the dangerous adventure safely over. Easy, but not good for her, getting her own way just because she made a lot of noise.

With the dangling doll remaining just out of reach, Victoria’s frustrated screams rose to an even higher pitch and her contortions became so extreme she looked as if she was about to turn herself inside out.

Her face was so devilish it didn't look like Victoria's. Her voice was so harsh and piercing it didn't sound like a child's.

“I said shut up. Don’t you understand plain English? Do you want to be caught near the river and get beaten? Shut up! Shut up!”

Charlotte gave Victoria a straight-armed shove that shot her small frame, arms flailing, backwards into the river.

The white dress ballooned out around the child before the swirling water turned her slowly and propelled her away from the bank into the swift current where the water was deepest. Shock registered on her face. She re-emerged once downstream, her eyes and mouth wide open, her arms thrashing. Seconds later she disappeared from view, and Charlotte followed the course of the river with such unblinking concentration that her eyes flicked in and out of focus.

But you can’t give in to children like that. It turns them into spoilt brats, Nurse Dixon’s voice scorched through her mind.

But Victoria is not a spoilt brat, Charlotte shuddered to realise, holding the doll out to her little sister now, too late. Offering it to the empty space where the pretty darling had stood a second earlier.

Charlotte felt a taste of vomit in her mouth. Her boiling temper had cooled in an instant as if it had been quenched by an upturned barrel of icy water.

“Come back, Victoria! Come back!” she called, with the doll dangling uselessly from her proffered hand. “I didn’t mean it!” Her leg muscles had turned soft but she forced them to move, all the while repeating, “Come back, Victoria! Come back! Please, Victoria, come back! I don’t mind if you’re the favourite. You’re my favourite too. You can have the doll. Look, I’m giving it to you!” She ran downstream past the bridge, hoping to see Victoria’s dress snagged on the branch of an overhanging tree, and Victoria holding out her arms and crying out to her. What wouldn’t she give to be able to reach out and unhook the dress and pull her to safety? What wouldn’t she give to have her beside her on the bank again?

She would give up her jealousy and her misery and promise to love her mother and Nurse Dixon and even give up riding Mandrake and never go back to the stables or see Manus again if only Victoria wasn’t drowned. She would join in admiring her pretty face and wouldn’t be relieved if Nurse Dixon was being cruel to her rather than to herself.

Perhaps below the weir where she’d often watched a ball or a tin can dance on the churning water, trying to guess how long it would stay there before being swept along, she would find Victoria wedged at the bottom of the fall, held by opposing forces.

With the large volume of water passing over the weir there was no fall of water. Only a bulge and then a straight run.

To gain height she stood on the bridge and looked as far downstream as possible. All she saw was brown water and flickers of white that gave her hope for the second before she realised they weren’t Victoria’s dress but froth created by the tumult of the flood. Upstream was the deep Dark Waterhole that swallowed up young children, according to Nurse Dixon. Perhaps Victoria was lying on the bottom of it, held down by strange creatures always on the lookout for naughty children who didn’t do what their nannies told them.

Consumed by a terror of being discovered by her mother and Manus, who might by now have realised that Victoria was missing, she staggered along the path by the river, bent over so she would be hidden by the vegetation, until she was out of sight of any of the estate buildings, before circling back to the rear of the Park. Knowing Nurse Dixon was in the nursery, she went only as far as the ground floor where she stuffed the doll under the stairs – she would retrieve it later and hide it in a better place – and then went outside again where her energy deserted her and she fell beside a channel that drained water from the house where for weeks she had been building a bridge. While her mind filled with a silent, long drawn-out scream she rearranged the stones she had collected for her construction and it was there some time later Nurse Dixon had found her sitting in mud to tell her Victoria was missing and everyone was needed for the search party, including her, though God knew why, seeing she was so useless.

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