Lying awake at the top of the house on Gillygate, Zoe’s thoughts kept returning to the Minster, to the deep blue sky above, and the fog billowing around it like smoke. In the intervening hours, after a hearty meal and two glasses of good red wine, she had regained both nerve and logic. Natural phenomena, she told herself firmly, had created that rolling mist, and floodlights an illusion of light and movement. Better than any theatrical effect, although that vision of death could have had no bearing on weather conditions, freak or otherwise. As for that tingling sensation, warming her blood like a caress...
She shied away from it, not wanting to examine her own reactions too closely. With something of an effort, Zoe pushed it to the back of her mind, concentrating instead on the pretty little bedroom with its daisy-patterned wallpaper and matching curtains. She wondered what it had looked like ninety years ago. Considerably more austere, she decided. On the top floor and without benefit of a fireplace, it had probably been part of the servants’ quarters, and in a house this size, servants would have been essential.
Mrs Bilton, sadly, knew little of its history, but her interest had been aroused by Zoe’s questions, and she had obligingly shown her guest all the unoccupied rooms. She explained that extensive alterations had been made to the kitchens some ten years before, when the range had been ripped out, together with massive shelves and deep, floor-to-ceiling cupboards. The last owners, however, had seen the novelty of retaining the open fireplaces elsewhere, and Mrs Bilton was particularly pleased about that.
Admiring the polished mahogany mantelpiece in the front sitting room, and imagining Letitia’s family gathered before a blazing coal fire, Zoe had asked, only half jokingly, whether the house was possessed of any ghosts.
Her reply was in the negative, but Mrs Bilton had gone on to mention ghosts she did know about, from the well-documented Roman soldiers in the cellars of the Treasurer’s House, to other, less publicity-conscious apparitions. There was a story about ghostly children playing in Bedern, and at the rear of a shop down Gillygate, assistants sometimes saw a little old lady dressed in black – ‘as solid-looking as you and me, they say’ – crossing the yard...
With her own strange experience still fresh in her mind, Zoe had shivered a little at that, but made no comment. Brought up between divorced parents and the hearty, no-nonsense tenets of an Anglican girls’ school, she tended to be wary of revealing too much to strangers, especially on this particular subject. Although in the past she had never seen anything untoward, she was always aware of place and atmosphere, sometimes acutely so. She tended to think that places absorbed events, in the manner of a sponge, and that strong emotions leaked back into the atmosphere, slowly, over hundreds of years. But it was no more than a feeling, which put into words sounded silly; although no more so than the idea of ghosts clinging to one place, perpetually re-enacting one moment from long and human lives which must have contained far more dramatic events than crossing the yard to bring in the washing.
But York was old, with almost two thousand years of history behind it. Perhaps, as Mrs Bilton claimed, the city was a place where the past had no means of escape. If ghostly figures were indeed as commonplace as she maintained, then possibly that experience by the Minster was less strange than she imagined. Part of the city, part of the place itself.
Except that the last pitched battle York had witnessed was during the Civil War, some three hundred years ago; and the images Zoe had seen were not those of Roundheads and Royalists, but of men more modern than that, in uniforms of the Great War...
Three weeks later, after several hours closeted within the charity-sale atmosphere of St Catherine’s House, Zoe fought her way home through the misery of a wet London rush-hour. There was fine, drizzly rain in the wind blowing off Kensington Gardens, but she lifted her face to it in gratitude as she stepped off the bus. Despite the chilliness of early December, for her it had been a hot, crowded, frustrating day, in which she had learned more about sharp elbows, territorial rights, and the extent of human obsessiveness, than she had so far learned about the Elliotts.
Scorning her umbrella, she slowly walked the few hundred yards down Queen’s Gate. The policeman on duty at the middle-eastern embassy was one she knew. He said good evening as she passed, and touched his cap. Zoe continued smiling as she climbed the steps to her own door, knowing that she should not flirt so obviously yet with no intention of discontinuing the habit. Such old-fashioned manners seemed to match the dignity of these elegant, stuccoed terraces. She loved Queen’s Gate, loved the broad pavements, the porticoed houses, the tall plane trees, and the sheer, Victorian grandeur of it all. It was such a pity, she often thought, that the air of ease and confidence it exuded was no more than a lingering breath from another age. Family houses, with servants by the dozen, had mostly been split into apartments decades ago; and since then had come hotels and offices, and most recent of all, the embassies. Diplomats from oil-rich middle-eastern countries now occupied the former homes of men who had ruled an empire. Zoe found a certain irony in that.
Four flights of broad, shallow stairs led to her flat, and it was a matter of pride to run all the way up, even though she usually fell through the door, gasping. This evening was no exception. As usual, she filled the kettle, switched it on, then collapsed on the sofa to recover while it boiled.
Considering her scribbled notes over a pot of scalding coffee, it became apparent that the day had yielded little in the way of fresh information. The Reference Library in York had proved a gold-mine, while St Catherine’s House seemed full of dross where the Elliotts were concerned. Expensive dross, too. The birth certificates she had ordered were several pounds each, and she had only ordered those in pique at being unable to find the two she had set her heart upon.
‘So where were you born?’ she demanded of the sepia photograph on the bookcase; but two half-smiles returned her frown, and two pairs of eyes regarded her with silent amusement, as though they shared a private joke.
The two young men in the photograph were Letitia’s brothers. Zoe knew because Letitia had said so, once, a long time ago, but without that information she might never have guessed. To begin with, they were not very much alike; and secondly, they were wearing the uniforms of different countries. In what seemed to be standard British infantry issue, one was seated in an armchair, a peaked cap resting against his knee, while the other, dressed in the uniform of the Australian forces, leaned against the arm. By comparison, he looked crumpled and scruffy, leather gaiters and boots appearing white and dull, as though covered in mud. His distinctive bush hat, caught up at one side, was pushed back, lending a slightly rakish air and revealing hair and brows which were much lighter in tone than his brother’s. He might even have been blond, whereas the other was dark, his hair close-cropped above a slender, handsome face.
Nevertheless, despite that youthful perfection, Zoe found the Australian more attractive. Less obviously handsome, his features were broader, stronger, the mouth more full. It was the kind of mouth she would have liked to see drawn back in a hearty laugh. She had the impression that his smile in the photograph was a shade quirky, suppressing amusement which longed to burst forth over that studiously casual pose. As though the two of them had had a great day together, rounded off by a few drinks and a decision to have their pictures taken for the folks back home.
She did not have to remove the frame to know what was written on the back of that cheap postcard sent from a small French town in the summer of 1916, it had been committed to memory years before. ‘Found each other at last! Congratulations on the wedding, Tish – wish we could have been there – Yours, Robin and Liam.’
But which was which? And had either of them survived the war? Letitia never said, and Zoe had no way of knowing. Having possessed that photograph for more than half her life, until recently she had not given it much practical consideration. Hidden away for years amongst old sketchbooks and the reading matter of her youth, it had been resurrected during an attempt to dispense with rubbish and create more space.
Strange, she thought, what a turn of the heart it had given her; like some forgotten memento of an old love-affair.
She smiled, but at an age when the other girls at school were screaming over pop stars and busy joining fan clubs, Zoe had been sighing over this very photograph and reading Rupert Brooke. A strange passion for a young girl, some might have said; although in terms of accessibility, the two were about equal, and the war poets were as young and blighted as any chart-topping rock group. In those days the brothers had been her secret fantasy, part of a necessary insulation against the very public, overwhelming and lonely life of boarding school. They had fulfilled the roles of lovers and guardians, coming to her in the quiet times before sleep, listening to her thoughts and comforting her tears. To Zoe at that time, their presence had been unquestionable; only now, remembering, did she find that faintly disturbing. To appease herself, she put it down to adolescence and a peculiarly vivid imagination, which she had thankfully managed to harness to better use.
It was odd, however, that her rediscovery of the old photograph and its companion – one of Letitia when she was in her twenties – should have set her wondering about the Elliotts as a family. Questions never before considered had leapt to mind and taken hold, becoming more insistent as the answers continued to elude her.
Marian apparently knew nothing, and the more Zoe pressed, the more annoyed her mother became. She could not understand why Zoe wanted to know these things. The Elliotts were as remote to her as aboriginal tribesmen, and what they did, whether they were the landed gentry Letitia had once been known to claim, or paupers dying in the local workhouse, Marian neither knew nor cared. They were dead and gone, so what did it matter? What possible use could knowing about them be to people living now? Zoe should concentrate upon improving her social life, which was non-existent as far as Marian could see, and let the dead rest in peace.
That pious sentiment cut no ice with her daughter. Marian did not wish peace upon the woman who had reared her after her parents’ untimely deaths; indeed, Zoe suspected that her mother would have liked to think of Letitia suffering in purgatory for her sins. And that irritation at being questioned only served to make Zoe more determined to unearth the answers. Family history was a popular hobby, apparently: there were books on the subject, offering guidelines to research amongst archives both accessible and remote.
She would have the answers eventually. If frustrations were frequent, the satisfaction of discovery was equal to that of solving a complex detective story, with the added pleasure of knowing that the story would surely expand.
Back-tracking from Letitia’s marriage lines, it had been easy to establish her birth, but her brothers were proving something of a problem. If not born in England – and Zoe was almost certain they were not – then it was possible that their parents had been living in either Scotland or Ireland at the time. Or even, she thought wryly, Australia. Nevertheless, wherever their travels had taken them, the family had been living in York by 1897, the year of their daughter’s birth.
Pondering the possibilities, Zoe reached for the notebook in which she had written up all the information gleaned so far. At the top were listed details taken from Letitia’s birth certificate: father Edward Elliott, Bookbinder; mother Louisa Elliott, formerly Elliott. Zoe had added a note that Edward and Louisa were possibly cousins, a supposition borne out later by information gathered in York.
Before leaving the city, she had made a visit to the Reference Library, and, with the aid of a keen young assistant, managed to establish the tenancy of the house on Gillygate. Not all the street directories had survived, but of the half-dozen extant between the years 1880 and 1898, one Mary Elliott was listed as the householder. Having expected to see a man’s name, Zoe had been surprised; even more so to find that the house was described as a commercial hotel. Not a private residence at all, which rather deflated her illusion that the Elliotts had been living there in some style.
She was struck, too, by the coincidence of the house having been a hotel then, as it was now. Only for the past ten years, but still...
By 1902, however, ‘Elliott’s Commercial Hotel’ was in the possession of a Mrs Eliza Greenwood, who offered lodgings. Zoe could only assume that the Elliotts had left for larger premises.
Intrigued by the identity of this Mary Elliott, Zoe had then bearded the young assistant afresh, and been delighted to discover that a look at the local census returns might throw light on the matter. The hundred-year block on those ten-yearly returns was something of an annoyance, and meant that the year 1881 was the latest available. She waited for the relevant microfilm to be found, and watched in fascination as it was set up for viewing. Finding Gillygate for herself was a time-consuming task, but eventually the street came to light, and at last she found what she was seeking.
There, for one night in April, 1881, were all its residents. Not only their names and ages, but their occupations, relationships and places of birth. They were all there: Mary Elliott, head of household and a widow; her three daughters, he r nephew Edward, one servant and four guests. It was so exciting, she wanted to jump up and shout the news aloud; but repressed by the silence in the library, she simply left the screen and found her helper. ‘I’ve found them,’ she had whispered, grinning delightedly from ear to ear, and the girl had smiled with genuine pleasure.
She had written down, exactly, all that the census divulged. Mary Elliott had been born in Lincolnshire, while her three daughters, of whom Louisa at fourteen had been the eldest, were all born in York. Edward’s birthplace was Darlington in North Yorkshire, and he was twenty-six in 1881, and a bookbinder. As a family, Zoe reflected, they had certainly moved around, which destroyed assumptions that only in recent times had people become truly mobile.
So, they had travelled, and to have been in business presupposed a certain intelligence. In that day and age, widowed, with three young children to bring up and no social security as a safety net, Mary Elliott must have been both capable and astute. Also determined and strong. Zoe admired that. Recalling Letitia’s second name, Mary, she wondered whether her great-grandmother had favoured the old woman, and an image came to mind of a smart, plump, grey-haired woman with shrewd blue eyes and a slightly cynical smile. For all her eccentricities, Letitia had been nobody’s fool, and Zoe rather suspected Mary Elliott of being a similarly tough character.
What really intrigued her, however, was the relationship between Mary’s eldest daughter, Louisa, and her nephew Edward Elliott. First cousins, with a gap of twelve years between them; she a young girl, ripe for romance, and he a man. Living in the same house, or just visiting? It was impossible to say, but Zoe could not help wondering whether he had taken advantage of close proximity, perhaps made Louisa pregnant, and then had to marry her. There may have been a family row, occasioned by disapproval of the situation and their close blood relationship — they could even have moved away from York, then for some reason been forced to return and eat humble pie at Mary Elliott’s table.
It was a tempting theory, but no more than supposition. With such slender facts to hand, a dozen different interpretations were possible.
Sighing, Zoe wished that her great-grandmother had not been so close-mouthed, wished she could have been the average elderly woman, delighted to talk about her own and her family’s past. That she had not, made Zoe wonder whether she was ashamed of those comparatively humble origins. Her claim to be descended from landed gentry seemed to bear that out; but Zoe was determined not to reveal Letitia as either liar or romancer until the full story was known. And for that, what she needed were some other Elliott descendants, people who had known Letitia, Liam and Robin, and understood something of their background.
It was a tall order, she realized that. The carnage of the First World War could have wiped out one or both of those young men, and it was quite possible that Zoe was the only descendant of that family left alive.
But no, she would not allow herself to believe that, nor admit defeat before every avenue of research was exhausted. Besides, something deep inside kept urging her on, something more vital than just the thrill of the chase.
Hunger impinged upon those considerations, together with the realization that in less than an hour, Philip was coming to collect her, and they were meeting Clare and David at yet another little bistro that David had discovered.
Her glow of pleasure was not entirely unalloyed. She liked Philip, but had always found his friend David rather overbearing. The thought of another evening in his company – the third in short succession – was not one she relished. It was a shame on more than one account since he had recently become engaged to Clare, one of Zoe’s oldest friends. Not the closest by any means, but the two women had somehow retained their connection since schooldays, while most of the others had fallen by the wayside.
Naturally, they had seen much less of each other once the romance with David became serious, and a small kernel of cynicism in Zoe was aware that these recent invitations were prompted largely by David’s desire to set up his old friend Philip with a girlfriend. He had been working in Brussels for the past two years, and was rather out of touch. But it was also to Zoe’s advantage, and for that she was grateful. In recent months she had become something of a hermit, too taken up with a sudden rush of commissions and her own desire to consolidate her reputation as an illustrator, to pay much attention to a social life.
So it had been a pleasant surprise to meet Philip, and to feel the pull of mutual attraction. He was really very good-looking, if a little unsure of himself, which Zoe found charming. And with the shyness in abeyance, he could be amusing, full of fascinating anecdotes about life in the European Community. Away from his friend David’s shadow, Zoe felt that he might be more interesting still.
Musing happily on the possibilities, she showered and changed into a flowing calf-length skirt and silk blouse, its dark emerald lending a touch of green to her clear grey eyes. For once, her hair was behaving, with little tendrils of curls framing her face. Surveying her reflection, she had just decided, as Philip arrived, that her ensemble needed something else...
Spotting the shawl she wanted as he waited in the lobby, Zoe whipped it off the sofa back, shook its silk folds vigorously, and arranged it around her shoulders. Her companion looked on in some surprise.
‘Isn’t that part of the decor?’
It was her turn to be surprised. ‘Well, yes...’ She gave him a consciously winning smile. ‘But it goes rather well with what I’m wearing, don’t you think?’
He smiled and nodded, but she had the feeling that he did not quite approve. She sighed. Perhaps his mother was a woman whose possessions were static rather than fluid; or he was afraid that the shawl was dusty after weeks on a sofa-back. Well, maybe it was, but to Zoe that mattered less than the fact that it completed her outfit.
For a moment she hesitated, wondering whether she should give in to his sense of propriety and discard the prettily-patterned shawl in favour of something more respectable; but no, that would be like shedding part of her personality, and Philip must learn to accept her as she was, warts, shawls, dust and all.
At the last moment, as they left the flat, he managed to save her mood and the evening by telling her that David had gone down with laryngitis. As the rising young barrister was due in court on Monday morning, he had felt he must stay at home and save his voice.
It was excellent news.
Waking alone next morning, she surveyed the disappointment of the night before and wondered what was wrong. Was she really so unattractive? Had she tried too hard to seduce him? Perhaps he was turned-off by pushy women.
Whatever the reason, it was a frustrating end to a wonderful evening. It had begun so well: dinner, then a nightclub, some great music, dancing. And he was a good dancer – she’d been seduced by his pleasure in the music into thinking they were really in tune. Coffee back here at the flat – closeness on the sofa, some passionate kisses, a bit of fondling – yes, it was all going well. Even then, she’d hardly been trying. But suddenly, just as she thought he was going to whisk her into the bedroom, he’d looked at his watch and said he had an early start in the morning. Regretful, apologetic, but he really did have to go.
He’d said he would call her, but she didn’t imagine he would. Something had turned him off, but she didn’t know what.
An hour later, Polly, her friend from the flat above, dispelled such ideas with an airy wave of the hand. ‘Listen, darling, you didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe he lives with his mother and she was waiting up…’
‘He never mentioned his mother.’
Polly dissolved into laughter. ‘Well, you never know – he’s just back from Europe, maybe he’s still flat-hunting and didn’t like to say he’s lodging with a dragon. Don’t beat your breast over it. He’ll call you, I’m sure.’
‘You’re right, Polly,’ Zoe agreed with a sigh, ‘but I thought…’ She shook her head, not entirely reassured. ‘Anyway, thanks for the coffee and the sympathy. I should go and do some cleaning – Mother is threatening a visit!’
Through tall windows the searching rays of low winter sun revealed layers of dust in places she had barely noticed for months. A dull grey film deadened the marble fireplace and softened the edge of black bookshelves in the alcove. Cobwebs hung like hammocks from the room’s high corners. Zoe groaned at the thought of dragging the stepladders out, but a blitz on the cleaning was probably just the thing to rid herself of gloom.
What the flat needed, Zoe decided, was redecorating, but it would have to wait until the spring. Four years since its last fresh coat of paint, and the memory of weeks of back-breaking work was enough to make the idea of starting again feel like masochism. But the place had been filthy before she moved in, the victim of years of neglect, requiring more physical effort than anything she had undertaken, before or since. Then, it had been the kind of challenge she needed, an effective cure for post-examination blues, and a broken love-affair.
But in spite of the dirt and mustiness, as soon as she saw the flat Zoe had been aware of its beautiful proportions, and a sense of welcome. That first impression never changed. It still gave her pleasure to return after even a short absence, and in this room she worked better and more consistently than anywhere else.
By lunchtime she had a pile of dirty dusters, but both she and the room were showing signs of improvement. By the time she returned to her work-table, her memory of the night before was ready to be pushed to the back of her mind. The quick flush of excitement as she glanced through a series of sketches was enough to banish Philip from her thoughts.
She was aware a strong sense of satisfaction. It was good, after years of study, struggle, and a few professional blind-alleys, to be doing what she had always wanted to do, and to be doing it with a certain amount of success. The illustrations before her were at different stages of completion, for a new, expensive edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. It was her most lucrative commission so far, and the kind of work at which she excelled, exotic, detailed, subtly coloured, reminiscent of another age.
Amongst her favourite books as a child had been some first editions illustrated by Arthur Rackham; and as a student she had been influenced by the sure, bold lines of Beardsley and Eric Gill. Her style as an illustrator reflected that early partiality, and a resurgence of interest in Art Nouveau had recently put Zoe’s work in some demand.
It was immensely gratifying. At last she could think of paying her father a more realistic rent, although true to form, James Clifford said she owed him nothing, that her success was enough and she should enjoy it. Zoe could not forget that he owned the roof over her head, and while he might be a wealthy man with several more profitable leases in his possession, it was no excuse to take his generosity for granted. To counter her protests, he often said that he might be thinking of selling the place now that it was so desirable, but she knew he had no intention of doing so. Since her abortive affair at college, with Kit, James Clifford had been delighted to see his only daughter progress, emotionally and materially, into independent adulthood. Other than her friendship, he wanted nothing more.
Thoughts of Kit made her smile, particularly when she compared him with Philip Dent. It was like standing a scruffy mongrel beside a well-trained pedigree gun-dog. But while the gun-dog was well-mannered – possibly too well-mannered, on reflection – the mongrel had been more fun to play with. For a while, at least.