Lady Cavendish

Lady Cavendish

Every corridor is so cold and none of these doors can take me where I want to go. I float down the corridor, I breathe on the cold of the mirror, ‘ahhhhhh’ like this and watch my breath as fog on the glass. Sometimes I write your initials in it, sometimes, a heart shape, but sometimes I am so angry that I rub my fingers through it harshly, when I do this, sometimes I can make it squeak very quietly, and it is, for a moment, as though I am still here.

It is always night here and it is always a full moon, I am so familiar with the grey light as it passes through the arched windows, gliding lightly above the staircase to smooth the upstairs carpet and landing walls. It presses gently on the plush carpet and nestles closely into the soft, giving wallpaper. It is a comfort to me, although there is so much that confuses me, the moonlight is always here.

It makes me pause, as though it is a barrier as I float along the corridor. It is here I must stop, just before the moonlight caresses my skin, I must stop and it all comes back.

Then I am screaming, standing in the middle of the corridor screaming, screaming and screaming and watching as the blood pours from my belly and gushes onto the floor. My screams echo and rebound in this hallway, they rush like a river down the corridor, down the stairs and out into the open spaces below.

I want to be noticed, there is something or someone down there and I desperately want them to notice me. I am bleeding, surely I am dead, surely someone will come to help me?

I remember the look of it, the gold and silver fringed, rainbow coloured centred, gaudiness of our passion. It must have been blindingly beautiful; it must have shone.

I sit in the breakfast room, the daylight pours in and makes our chinaware shine, the silverware is almost blinding. My parents sit opposite, and by brother by my side, they fade into the background like the darkly wooded furniture, the sideboard, the dresser, the old picture of the lady in the hat.

You are serving us, you are serving me and your hands, you lay out the dishes carefully so I can reach them, the toast, the jam, the fruit, the cold meats and I am obsessed with your hands. You play the routines of serving us breakfast as though the table were your piano, your fingers tap lightly as you place items down, move them around, serve us this, serve us that, you place toast on my plate and I am only feeling the melodies you are creating. You move around the room as though you are on a dancefloor, it is ludicrous to me that my family notice nothing of your grace, your elegance, your strength. I am only imagining what would happen if I stood now and you grasped me around my waist and we waltzed as though we were the only beings alive.

Every corridor is so cold and none of these doors can take me where I want to go. I pad softly along the corridor, my finger tips brush the wallpaper, and I pause a moment as I reach each door. They are all entrances to the family apartments, this one belongs to my mother, through here is her day room, dressing room, bathroom and bedroom. I imagine her, she used to sew, she would sit by the window in her sitting room, the wallpaper was yellow, and sew and sew and sew. I remember her smiling face, I wonder where she is now. Is she in the family crypt? A skeleton, I am sure of it.

This apartment, the door facing hers, is my father. He has a study, a library, a dressing room, a bathroom and a bedroom. I don’t think he’d be glad to see me. I imagine he knows what I did. If they ever caught my lover then he knows.

It all comes back and I am screaming again, screaming as I have done every single night of my life. Because this can not be, I can not be dead, I can not have been killed by my lover.

I stare up at the canopy above me, I run my eyes over the intricate tapestry woven into the fabrics that hang gently above me. Everything is perfect. I feel my silk nightdress upon my naked skin that just feels alive. The candles flicker and mimic my excitement, and though I am alone, I am smiling.

I picture you, how do you know when to come? Do you sleep and then wake and come to me? Or do you stay awake? Do you plan what you will do to me, or does it just flow?

My toes tingle and I must move. I picture you now, creeping along the corridors. It is a long way from the servants’ quarters, far away in one of the many attics. I do not in fact, know how you make it here. Do you use the warren of the servants’ passageways and stairs? Or are you bold and climb our grand staircase? The very heart of the mansion, I picture you walking confidently up the red plush carpeted stairs, allowing your strong hands to caress the banister, Lord, perhaps you think to yourself, I could be Lord of all this.

Momentarily, reality comes back as I face the impossibility of this. I let it slide and I sit up now, on my bed, that contains one but soon will contain two, and stare fixedly at the door. Please let him come, I whisper, please let him come…

Every corridor is so cold and none of these doors can take me where I want to go. I continue my endless journey, silent, empty, sick, so very sick of this corridor. I walk with my arms spread so I can run my fingertips gently against the furniture, tables, statues in our fine corridor. It brings me remembrance, I can recall the names of the items, I sometimes can recall, when it arrived, who purchased it, where it was from.

I stop suddenly, there is a new object, a heavy blue vase, it’s skin mottled, pitted with darker grains, and from the top, erupts the most insane array of flowers and I just stand there, stupidly. The flowers are wildflowers, but dried, there a poppy, there a small bunch of cornflowers and daisys. To me, it is like suddenly being confronted with a lightning storm on a very dark night, here is vibrancy, power thrusting its way into my very dark world.

I think I have stood here forever, when a noise rouses me. I listen as someone comes up the stairs, I turn and run desperately towards the sound. Maybe it is someone to help, someone who knows me who can be angry so I no longer need to be.

The moonlight barrier prevents me from standing right at the top of the stairs, but I can see her. I can see me. She is young and beautiful and elegant and it is like looking in a mirror. We share brunette hair, a heart shaped face and thin willowy frame.

But worse and worse, I discover she is in love. I can see it, her heart glows red and bursts almost from her chest. It throbs with an urgent and incessant energy. The red bleeds outwards with every throb, soaking her clothes, dripping onto the carpet. No! Someone must warn her! Love only leads to death…

Seasons change. I stand in our garden under the oak tree and watch the crisp leaves fall, there is such a chill in the air, all the world seems tense, bracing itself against the coming cold. The grass seems brittle, the bushes and foliage across the lawn near the borders are poised, ready to hide themselves away at the tiniest hint of snow. Only the birds seem immune, they flit here and there, making little forays to the bird table, stabbing at seeds and racing back to the bushes. I wonder briefly what they have to fear.

You arrive, you are between jobs, you do not have long. Neither of us could explain why we were in the garden together so we must talk and we must talk quickly. But we both know what this is. My father has started to talk of marriage and I…I don’t feel the same.

You come towards me, and look me in the eye. Strange how a face that could engender so much excitement could become so flat and tiresome. You look like a person in a portrait. Not really real anymore, even your expression, I can see it says ‘sad’ but this is a semblance, you are the creation of a painter, nothing you are is real, nothing you feel is real either. So I am not breaking your heart, we are making a performance of this, but we will go back to our lives unscathed.

‘Darling…’ he says.

‘Don’t.’ I say.

We look at each other, I wonder what he does see. Am I still beautiful to him? Or has this hurt undone my beauty for him forever?

‘Father has been talking of marriage. I can’t marry you, we know that. This had to end.’

He’s angry, really angry. Why? Because he knows all this, he’s known this from the moment we went to bed together. But he’s angry all the same.

‘I love you.’ He says.

Suddenly I want to cry. What have we done? What the hell have we done?

‘Oh Roger, please don’t.’

Our time is agonisingly short, someone will miss him, I will be missed, they will put two and two together, and we will be discovered.

‘I have to go.’ I can’t look at him as I leave.

 Every corridor is so cold and none of these doors can take me where I want to go. I am staring at the vase again, or still? I am not sure. All I know is I am transfixed by these flowers, I have missed flowers. So beautiful in their simplicity, so commonplace, but so missed.

I hear a noise on the stairs, and I remember her, I just have time to turn my head before she is stood at the end of the corridor at the top of the stairs. She has stopped and is looking at me. There is a moment when I think she can see me, that she has come to find me and help me from this place. But the moment ends, she wraps her arms around herself, around her beautiful silk nightgown and she goes into a room.

I float along the corridor now and look into the room. I don’t go in but I remember this room. This used to be the nanny’s bedroom. She’d stay there overnight in case my brother woke in the night, but that was many years ago, since then, it has been empty.

She’s left the door open and I can see her. She sits on her tiny bed, there is no frame for it and the covers look thin and worn. Her curtains seem equally thin and have such an odd pattern on them it makes me feel uncomfortable so I don’t look. The chest of drawers is still there but it now has a black thin box on it, I can’t really woke out how it can be making so many odd noises and flashing lights, so I ignore that. I look at her face, her pale, darling face. She is so young, and so pretty, I wonder if she knows it? I look for a long time at her soft brown hair that sits neatly about her face. Her large doe eyes framed themselves by long eyelashes. How lips are full and shine in the weak lamp light. After a period of time, the box stops making light and noise and she gets into bed. Now I can see her heart even more clearly, it burns red in her chest, she is desperately in love.

I shiver and it all comes back to me. I wonder back into the corridor and scream.

I stare up at the canopy above me, I run my eyes over the intricate tapestry woven into the fabrics that hang gently above me. I am afraid. I picture your eyes, they pierce me with their anger.

At breakfast, father was discussing the possibility of me being introduced to Lord Emmerson. He saw me at a ball the previous summer and seems interested in me. Father is very pleased and mother is practically squirming with joy.

You are serving us breakfast and I can feel the hatred radiate off of you in waves. As you stand by me in order to serve my eggs, I can feel how much you despise me, it is all I can do not to cringe or move away from you. Now your hands do not play the piano and I would not have you waltz me around the room. Now you treat the items for breakfast with contempt and you stamp around the room aggressively. I can not believe you can be so bold, surely my family will notice. I am deeply afraid,

I feel the heavy fabric of my duvet pressing on my skin, making me feel cocooned, who can I tell? I can’t go to my father, he would protect me but he will be angry, and may not introduce me to Lord Emmerson for shame. Maybe he will lock me up or put me in a nunnery.

I wiggle in my bed, wishing I could disappear.

I did not hear you open the door, electric flies through my body when I realise you are standing there. I stare at you, transfixed, desperately trying to work out what you are thinking, what you are feeling, to have come to my bedroom like this.

I don’t have time to cry out before you cross the room and your hand is on my mouth.

At no point do I ever see the knife. I feel a sharp pressure in my belly and a wetness, my entire body recoils then attempt to curl around what can only be a stab wound. My breath is caught high in my chest and I know that if I can only scream, someone will come and I will live.

You pull the knife out and stab me again. Desperate thoughts race through my brain. It’s only two stab wounds, I can be saved, I can live. I just need to scream.

I bite down on your hand and squirm my body as hard as I can, surely I can push you from me, surely I can escape.

You pull the knife out and stab me again. I feel sick, things feel blurry, it will be okay, I just need to scream and I can be saved, I can live.

Every corridor is so cold and none of these doors can take me where I want to go. Except this one. I push myself forward and I find I can enter her room. I stand by her bed as I have many times before, just looking down at her. She is young and beautiful and in love. Her red beating heart torments me, she can be saved, she needs to be saved.

I try talking to her, I tell her she can be safe, she just needs to get away from him, get far far away, and tell everyone you know that he is evil, he is deranged and he will hurt you if you let him.

After a period of time, I realise she can not hear me, she does not stir and she sleeps soundly.

It all comes back to me and I scream, I scream and scream and scream, I scream with anger and frustration and fear. I scream right in her face, in her young beautiful face, because she is in love and must be saved.