The Edge

Until that moment I had not realised just how much she hated me. I did not know that her misery and her years upon years of sadness and despair over her parents lack of love had managed to twist her so. Inside she was still the little girl who felt rejected by everyone apart from her older brother. The little girl who never managed to be quite what her parents had wanted and who had escaped her own misery and loneliness by forging her own path. She had a husband and children, money and status, everything she wanted but she could never have the one thing that she wanted most. Her parents were dead and in her last days, it was me that her mother had turned to and not the daughter of her own blood.

Did I feel guilty? No. I did not. This sad tale had already been written long before I married Michael. By then Victoria had already been long gone from home. She had never come back. Her choice, although I could not blame her. I had never wondered what Lord Robert had been like as a younger man, as a father. I knew that he had loved his son, in a gruff way. He had never shown it but I knew there was pride there. Rhiannon had loved her children but except in her last months, she had been quiet because of her illness. I knew she had been vibrant but could not imagine her as a mother.

I remembered her words to me though. 'You are the true daughter that I should have had.' Her words, sad sad words, words which showed how little empathy there was between her and Victoria. There had been suffering on both sides and it had not been talked of and so it had festered. How much better it would have been if they had spoken of it. They had not and it had taken root inside Victoria. Her pain and her loneliness and her regret and her anger had turned themselves onto me.

She would take away everything from me. I knew she meant that. She wanted her brother and her home and her family to herself. I was in the way. I must get to Daniel and then go from this place! I stood up and decided to find the house keeper, my last line of communication with the outside world.

I saw no sign of Mrs Evans in the corridor and so I slipped as quickly as I could along to the housekeepers room. Mrs Levin was sat in her parlour, reading. When I came in, she started, put down her book and stood up and curtseyed. What could she do for me? I asked if I might sit down and have a few private words with her? She gave me a seat beside the fire, made sure I was comfortable and shut the door carefully. Sitting down opposite to me, she leaned forward and waited.

I asked if she knew what I had been doing that morning? She nodded, yes, she had happened to pass by the door of the morning room and had inadvertently heard Mrs Eveleigh and myself having a conversation. Her pinched lips showed that she had also heard not just the tone of the conversation but the content as well and she disapproved. I decided to throw caution to the wind, I was desperate and this woman was a good kind person, I felt sure she would help me. I leant forward.

“Mrs Levin, I know that you have been housekeeper here for a long time. You are well respected and with good reason. When I came here you were always so helpful to me in finding my place as lady of this house and I have always regarded you as an equal. I believe that the Late Lord Robert ad his good wife thought of you in the same way as they left you a legacy for your loyal service. It is well deserved and it is partly because of their inferred regard that I am speaking with you today. I ask that you make allowances for my discussing matters that to anyone else but you,as the most respected friend and confidential servant, would be kept private.

Last year when my husband and I began to have troubles, you were kind enough to help me and to support me through a very difficult time. Since then you have always behaved with the same kindness and your conduct has been exemplary. I wished to thank you for this first of all, to give you my heart felt thanks and to tell you that you have been truly invaluable to me and to this family.” Mrs Levin bowed her head and murmured that I was too good as to say so but that she accepted my praise. Indeed, she was sure she always tried to do what was right and good by everyone. I rushed on, I could feel that she was listening to me keenly, waiting for what I would say.

“Mrs Levin, you know that for weeks past I have been kept under guard and away from the rest of the house, under pretext of my being unwell. You know that good Nurse Ruth, who is known in the community as a woman to be trusted at her job, was sent away with little warning and that Mrs Evans, who has taken her place, is not a woman to be trusted with any patient.”

Mrs Levin held up on hand and stopped me.

“Pardon me, your Ladyship, but I must beg to explain that I have never said so. Mrs Evans is perhaps not so skilled a nurse as Ruth Riley but I am sure that she is a nurse who can be trusted, although perhaps not with giving medicines.”

“I understand your point and accept this. You were kind enough to be present after my fainting fit and heard from Sarah that Mrs Evans had given me something not proscribed and that Dr Crowner thought it highly inappropriate. You were good enough to speak out and say that she should not maid me either as she was not qualified at that and that you disliked my being shut up.” Mrs Levin nodded her head at this.

“I do recall that, your Ladyship, and I stand by those comments. It was highly improper and while I dislike your use of the words 'shut up', they are accurate, at all events.”

“You have been good enough to speak for me in a trying time and I thank you again for that. I want to ask you to do something more for me, I know you will think me strange but I beg that you will take a letter down to Dr Crowner for me. I beg that you will take it to him and give it to him only, with your own hands. That you will stay with him while he reads it and then bring back his reply.” I stopped out of breath. Mrs Levin was thoughtful and she had a deep cleft of worry between her eyes.

“My lady, I think that the post bag can be trusted with a letter?” I shook my head.

“Please, I beg you! The post bag is not safe. I fear....I fear that my letter will be kept back and opened and used against me!”

Mrs Levin looked shocked. Suspicion clouded her face and she seemed to grow colder towards me.

“My lady, I think you are suffering under a mistake. No one in this house is against you....” I broke in, catching hold of her hands imploringly.

“Mrs Levin, I beg you to listen! I am not under a mistake and you know it! You walked past the door and heard something of the conversation with Mrs Eveleigh. You must know that she dislikes me? You know that there is at least one person in this house who is against me. You know that I have been virtually a prisoner under guard in my rooms, that my husband has almost forsaken me. I ask you to do nothing which is against your principals, I only ask that you take a letter to the doctor for me. He is a respectable man, you know and trust him, do you not? Please, please do this little thing for me, in the name of God, will you?”

Mrs Levin had pulled back from me but now she leaned forward again and her face softened.

“My lady, I do not pretend to understand this but I do believe you are disliked by some in this house. I think you are much too frightened but this is perhaps because of being kept upstairs. You must think more clearly, I really think you must not be so violent with your words! A letter is merely a letter. I will take it for you, if it means so much but do not grow so unhappy! You are shaking head to foot, your hands grip mine too hard. I really think I should call for Mrs Evans.....” So saying, she stood and went to ring the bell. I grasped her skirt as she went past and she looked down at me in surprise.

“Please, please will you trust me? Will you take my letter and not tell anyone but the doctor of our conversation? Will you swear to it? Will you?” She came back and knelt before me, stroking my hands.

“I promise to take your letter and tell no one of this matter. Now do sit still and be quiet a little. You are quite overwrought. And do not fear Mrs Evans so. She is perhaps a singular person, quite strange in her habits but she is still just a woman, one of God's children. There is little to fear in that. Now give me the letter.”

I handed it to her and she tucked it into her work bag. After promising that she would deliver it that afternoon, she rang the bell and had Mrs Evans summoned. By then I had managed to stop most of the shaking although I still trembled from time to time.

“Her Ladyship is a little out of sorts, I fear. Please would you be so good as to take her outside to walk in the gardens. It is chill but the wind has dropped and there is no rain. Take her out for half an hours fresh air, it will doubtless do her good.”

My and my 'nurse's bonnets and cloaks were brought. I said good day to Mrs Levin and was taken out into the garden. Mrs Evans was her usual self but, inspired by Mrs Levin's look on the world, I managed to be calmer and proposed that we walked over to the hothouse to gather some flowers to place by my son and his grandparents tomb. We walked side by side, not speaking.

Once at the hot house I gathered some blooms and arranged them into a pretty posy. The warm air smelt of earth and leaves and the acrid scent of things growing. It was so different from the world outside. As I went about my work Mrs Evans walked sedately about the place, looking at this flower and that, her eyes hardly leaving me. Once I was finished she escorted me around to the burial ground and I placed the flowers against the tomb where my son and his grandparents and ancestors lay.

Ignoring Mrs Evans, I knelt and shut my eyes, placing my hands on the stone tablet which had newly been inscribed with James name and the dates of his birth, death and a quote from the scriptures. Isaiah 54:10. I did not open my eyes to see the inscription or the grey stone of the tomb. I let my hands feel the cold smooth surface and the hard cut lines of the words that were written there. I tried to fix in my mind the feeling of my sons tomb stone, so that when I left I could remember how it looked.

A hand gripped my shoulder, fingers colder than the stone. I did not open my eyes still, I knew that it was Mrs Evans who was bent over me, like some old crone wishing me ill. I heard her hissing breath in my ear when she spoke.

“I freeze in this cold wind. Hurry and make your prayer, I wish to go back inside. And do not try to vex me or escape me by hiding in the house keepers room or by trying to weasel your way into Mrs Eveleigh's good graces. It will not work. I know your little tricks. I am watching you. So tell that to God and let him help you, if he has a mind to, for no one else in the world will. I promise you that.”

Her fingers left my shoulder and I heard her skirts brush against the grass as she walked away towards the house. I let my eyes open and saw the tomb stone properly for the first time. I let myself see the words that stood guard over my son.

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken.”