Now I had reached the first-floor landing. I thought I heard whispering voices. I stood still listening. Silence ... deep silence.
I imagined it, I thought. It was easy to imagine voices with the rain pelting against the window and the wind sighing through the branches of the trees which would be completely leaflets after this violent storm.
I opened the door of the bedroom which Carlotta had liked best of all. The room with the four-poster bed with the red velvet curtains, the bed where I had come across her lying and talking to herself.
I stepped into the room. I took a few paces forward and almost tripped over something lying on the floor. I looked down There was enough light to show me a riding habit.
.. dove grey with a hat with a little blue feather.
I gave a little gasp. At that moment a flash of lightning illuminated the room and I saw them clearly. Carlotta and Matt. The were lying on the bed ... naked ... They were entwined about each other.
I took one look and turned. I felt sick. I did not know ,,v hat to do, what to think.
My mind was a blank. As I shut the door the clap of thunder burst out.
I ran. I did not know where I was running. All I wanted to do was to get away. I could not bear to think of what I had seen of what it implied. It revolted me, nauseated me.
I did not know where I was running. I was unaware of the rain beating down on me.
I came to the gate of the forbidden end. Where to hide? Where to be alone with my jumbled thoughts? In there ... there at the side of Belle’s grave.
I climbed the gate and went stumbling through the leaves. I flung myself down beside the disturbed earth. I lay there trying hard not to think of that scene in the bedroom.
It was dark. It was still raining but it was a softer rain now. I felt dazed and lost to the world. I was not sure where I was. Then I remembered. I was in the wood and Belle was murdered and I had seen something in the bedroom at Enderby which I could never forget. It had shattered my own personal dream; but it had done more than that. I did not want to know anymore. I wanted to forget. My father ... my mother... my sister ... I could not bear to be with them. I wanted to be alone ... by myself ... here in the forbidden wood.
My mind started to wander, I think, because I fancied I saw the will-o’-the-wisps dancing around me as though to claim me as one of their band. I was not afraid of them. I understood something of human unhappiness now. I just wanted to be wrapped round in nothingness. “Nothing, nothing,” I whispered. “Let it stay like this for ever.”
It was long after that night before I wrote again in my journal. They found me in the morning. It was my father who came into the wood looking for me and carried me home. Tomtit, sensing that something was wrong, had late that night left the hut and gone back to the Dower House. They were at that time very anxious about me and when he came back alone they were frantic with anxiety.
Then they searched ... all through that night of rain and storm.
I had a raging fever and I came near to death. For a whole year I was in my bed.
My mother nursed me with all the love and tenderness of which she was capable.
They didn’t question me. I was too ill for that. It was more than three months before I discovered that the Pilkingtons had left. Elizabeth had grown tired of the country, they said, and had left for London and put Grasslands up for sale. Matt had left a week or so after that terrible night.
My limbs were stiff even when I was recovered, and for a long time it was agony to move my hands. How devoted my mother was to me, how tender was my father. I found that I loved him just as much as I ever had, and we never spoke of Belle. I think he knew that I had gone to look for Belle and what I feared, for he had found me at that spot.
Carlotta did not come to see me. “She was here for a long time in the beginning,” said my mother. “She was so anxious about you. She wouldn’t go until she knew you were going to recover. I have never seen Carlotta so put about. Then she had to go home of course. She had been away so long. When you are well enough we will go to Eyot Abbass.”
Sometimes I thought I would never be well again. The pains in my limbs were excruciating at times and they were stiff when I tried to walk so that I tired easily.
My mother would read to me, my father played chess with me. They were anxious to show me I was their precious child.
So the time began to pass.
CARLOTTA
A Willing Abduction
For months I believed I should never forget that moment when on the night of the great storm my sister, Damaris, opened the door of the red room and saw me with Matt Pilkington. It was a bizarre scene with that sudden flash of lightning showing us there .. caught flagrantly, blatantly, so that the truth could not be hidden.
To her I must have seemed the ultimate sinner. The adultress taken in adultery. I could never begin to explain everything to Damaris. She is so good; I am so wicked.