A Tempest

Fiona Morrison

Early evening, 24th January 1899  

The storm has begun. I cannot stop pacing. John has said I’m wearing out the carpet. In an attempt to still me, he has given me a notebook and told me to write. It is thick and green, the leather cover as soft as butter. I told him it was a ridiculous idea with the windows about to blow in and us all to be washed away to kingdom come. But, in that infuriating, matter of fact way of his, he has insisted that this is the perfect time, that in fact there will be no better time because, ‘there will be a before and there will an after.’ I still didn’t know where to start and turned my heel again in the carpet and began another lap. He laughed at me then and said, ‘Katie Caldwell, you know where to begin. For sure, you begin at the beginning.’

The beginning 

I have been at the Vicarage with the Reverend John O’Kane and Old Alice for nearly two years. Joining them has been the most rebellious act of my twenty-four years. I’d done it! I’d got away. There was a chance meeting between Lady Loveridge and my mother. A charity event. Somewhere formal and dull. Mother no doubt pushed, or more likely, elbowed her way in. She mentioned my ‘studious’ habits (I can just imagine…). Lady L spoke of her local vicar and his search for someone to help catalogue his amateur scientific finds and assist with his burgeoning correspondence. She herself was interested in the natural sciences and had some projects she also needed support with. An afternoon tea over a slice of Battenberg had set the whole thing in motion. 

Though I was to be based at the Vicarage, Lady L was to be my guardian for the project. Mother happily put me into her care. Very readily in fact. No doubt the thought of my regular visits to Underwood Manor House spurred her on. But thank heavens she did. Space from my exhausting, prattling, sisters, my appalling, wailing, and kicking niece and nephews. Away from my dreaded brother-in-law Freddie and his expanding barrel of a belly. No more being sprayed with spittle when he laughs at his own jokes and, God save me, away from those monstrous music hall winks. 

John O’Kane is thirty-nine, a man in his prime, and much younger than most think. His unsteady feet and reliance on a walking stick trick most people into mistakenly believing he is a man of more advanced years. On my arrival, it quickly transpired that he was more of an armchair explorer than a man of the field. His letter writing, though wide and prolific (current correspondence includes a saddle-maker in Idaho, a photographer in Seattle, and a meteorologist at the observatory in Valencia) is far from focused on intellectual thoughts alone. More often than not, it covers sport (horse racing in particular), card games, natural history (a genuine love of fossils), novels, horoscopes, and art. And gossip. Lots of gossip. This he attributes to his being Irish and being blessed with an excess of language that an English person cannot begin to comprehend. He also sings, often and very well. Gambles, daily and badly, and has a curious and wide-reaching memory that is so encyclopaedic as to be unnerving. He is unbeatable at Whist, drinks tea by the gallon and has, quite literally, given the shirt of his back to help someone (though on second thoughts perhaps I am mistaken here, and he more likely lost it in a bet.) He is, thankfully, not Godly, nor interested in the hierarchy of his chosen profession. Without doubt though, he is a man of deep and boundless kindness.  

My sisters write to me to complain, mainly about mother and gripes about her business and the general business of her life. (The two are so entwined as to be inseparable. Indeed, I could sit now and fill this entire notebook with thoughts about mother, but I refuse to do so.) My dear siblings warn me that I will end up an old maid, but they are ambitious social climbers and any advice or warning offered by either of them is motivated by fear of social embarrassment. There is only Daniel who I really miss. Dearest Daniel. Forever a most loyal and true friend. I know that despite his innate sense of curiosity, and journalistic thirst for the new and different, his abhorrence of fresh air and open spaces coupled with a genuine horror of the general dullness of country life, means that he will never be enticed to visit me here.  He is a creature of the city. And a nocturnal one at that. I fear that despite my freedoms he would be astounded by the smallness of my life, though I feel sure John and he would become instant friends. The sweat and lather of horses, and the spit and sawdust of the boxing ring, would be enough to bond them. Daniel claims to have gypsy blood and credits it with the fighting spirit and steel knuckles of his youth but now the blue-black magpie sheen of his tamed and sleek hair, is the only indication of any link to hedgerow or field. 

Alice knew that the storm was coming. Of course. Guardian of the Vicarage, soothsayer and undisguised old witch that she is! She had been muttering about it for days. The sky has been so blue and the weather so still, that I had started to wonder if perhaps her mind was beginning to unravel. She solemnly declared that when the tempest hit, it would be of biblical proportions and would bring with it a gift. John in his usual good humour had cried out in delight, ‘A boon is it!’ and said he would fervently pray it would find its way directly to us. As far as I know, the furthest that John has ever travelled by sea, is his journey from Ireland to England. He is very fond of a seafaring turn of phrase though. Perhaps his crooked feet and his unsteady balance are suited to a boat roiling on the crest of the waves.

And then yesterday, after days of Alice saying that she could taste the sea, and that it was readying itself to come closer, I tasted it too. I went to find her in the garden, and there was without doubt salt on the breeze. A thin coating of it covered my lips. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. For all the world I could have been on the beach at Lyme, but we are a good twenty-five miles from the coast. Alice says that when she was a girl you could see the sea from the top of Lodge Hill. I’ve looked out from there on clear bright days, but I only ever see the flat hazy line of the horizon, never the ripple of water. 

Today she has proved us right. When I awoke, the day felt strange and heavy. By mid-morning a forceful wind had picked up and by early afternoon it was animal-like in its presence and howling beneath an almost black sky.  Alice took herself off to the garden of all places. She’s still there now with her good ear cocked to the squall. The gale whips and snaps at her swaying figure but she stands firm and each time I venture out she sends me in again. 

John is not concerned about Alice but then is he ever concerned about anything? He looked at me and just repeated Alice’s favourite retort to us that ‘a maiden lady learns to stand her ground with God, men and the weather.’ He’s told me not to let the old banshee back in until she’s good and ready, that she’s never wrong about the benefits of a new arrival. Just look at me. He’s busy getting ready to go down to The Crooked Crow. He’s going to see out the storm there. No doubt he’s got a bet riding on it. How his feet will keep him upright in this chaos, is beyond me. 

Late afternoon 

I can hardly see Alice in the gloom. Her tiny black frame is as thin and spindly as a newly planted apple tree sapling. I wonder sometimes if she was hatched in the garden. She was in the vegetable patch when I first arrived and looked for all the world like she’d just been dug up. 

On that first morning, I had rung the bell at the Vicarage and waited, nervously brushing down my skirt and composing my best smile. While I did so, I examined the exterior of the house. It was built of an old golden stone that on closer inspection looked to be crumbling. The lintel above the door frame was tilted at an alarming angle. Later, I asked John if there had been some sort of earthquake or if the house was sinking. He’d looked surprised and claimed never to have noticed. Inlaid in the stone to the right of the door was a large ammonite. I’d taken off my glove and traced my fingers in wonder over its spiral of deep, coiled ridges and shivered in delight. A house with fossils in its walls! What other mysteries might it hold inside?

The house had remained still and silent and after several minutes I had moved round to the side path and pushed open the rickety garden gate. Then, as now, the garden is wild and unkempt, a glorious fairytale of vivid colours and perfumes. The lawn is a meadow that blooms in the summer with a sea of wildflowers. Forests of roses, unkempt lilac bushes and soaring delphiniums and hollyhocks pack the flowerbeds. John maintains this natural state is good for the wildlife and reminds him of home. 

The vegetable patch is the only well-tended part of the garden, and, at first glance, I thought Alice was a tiny scarecrow skewered at its heart. When she raised a hand in greeting, I released a small scream into the sunny, spring afternoon. I tentatively moved closer. Face as wrinkled and brown as a walnut. Eyes bleached to the palest blue. Her first words to me? ‘Look to the sun girl, you’re the palest thing I ever saw.’ I returned her gaze with a mix of fascination and horror. She was chewing on something, which I now know to be one of her herbal concoctions that helps with the inflammation in her joints but on that first afternoon, I nearly turned tail and ran. Instead, it was she who turned and shuffled towards the house. A bony bent hand beckoned for me to follow. ‘He’s not here. He’ll have forgotten but he is expecting you,’ she said and barked a small, surprisingly strong laugh. As she moved, pebbles of gravel washed around the pool of her heavy coat hem as it dragged along the ground. That was my moment to flee and race pell-mell from the fossil house back to the railway station. I briefly thought of it but instead, thank heavens, I stayed. 

And I’ve grown so very fond of Alice. Our only source of conflict is over her clothes or rather the lack of them. I have long since given up on asking why she doesn’t get new ones and instead I’ve offered to alter the ones that she daily shrinks inside of. Each time the subject is raised, she looks at me in amazement.

‘You city folk. Wasteful you are. These were made to last,’ and she fondly stokes the faded and patched skirt of the old riding habit that she had been given for her eighteenth birthday. 

From what I can see, she hasn’t taken it off since then. What was once a tight fitted jacket now hangs loosely around her. She gathers it in with a soft leather belt of John’s which she ties at the waist in a big knot. The skirt seems to have a life of its own. It spreads out further each day and I’m terrified Alice will trip or drown in its dirty folds. The jacket sleeves are turned up several times. This morning there was a fresh rotation, and a flash of peacock blue satin now encircles her tiny wrists. The sight of that beautiful birdsong slash of fabric giving a hint of what the clothes must once have been like, made my eyes sting with tears. 

She caught me looking.

‘My father bought me and my sister a complete outfit each,’ she said proudly. 

I know by heart what is coming next, and I readily jump in and say, ‘and he bought you matching capes and ermine muffs,’ which always pleases her greatly.

She insists there was no better seamstress than Mrs McGovern who had made the outfit, ‘light and bright with a needle, Mrs McGovern. You’ll be all darkness and stubbing.’ 

I have a totally irrational notion, which I have never shared but which I cannot shake off, that Mrs McGovern stitched Alice into the outfit. It stems from a nightmare I had when Alice first told me the story of her clothes. I can still recall the pale, prone, naked woman of my dreams, a panting rib cage beneath a skein of white skin, a slick of sweat that pooled between sharp pelvic bones, the silver needle that pierced smooth, goose pimpled flesh. 

There is so much clattering in the hall, John must be leaving – 

Sometime very late in the day…

Alice with her sixth sense came back into the house as John was wrestling himself into his coat. We all jostled together, giddy in the hallway. Alice raised an arthritic hand and made a sign of the cross in the air. The words ‘may God light your way,’ rushed to my throat but I bit down on my lip before they could escape. I am a rationalist, but habits are hard to change. Though I reminded her that John was only actually going to a public house, and such drama was not called for, my stomach was alive with butterflies. From nerves or excitement, I could not tell.

The force of the wind when I opened the door nearly blew us all over. I took one final despairing look at the soft laced up sports boots that John was wearing. A present from his brother in America that now never seem to leave his feet. He was soaked before he had even cleared the house steps. 

Midnight

As we waved John off, the thought skipped into my mind that Alice had taken Mrs Govern’s needle and sewn John’s feet into the boots, but I pushed it away. 

It comes back to me now at the witching hour of this deafening night. I have put the lamp back on and sit here writing and I am again afraid. Afraid of what?! The darkness? The wind? Myself? How utterly, utterly, tedious I am.

Deepest night

I am in bed shivering but elated. Wrapped in John’s best coat. The heavy black one that he puts on when he visits Underwood.  It smells of Pears soap, woodsmoke and that underlying mustiness that gets into everything in the Vicarage. The wool on the collar is itchy and scrapes my neck but the cold, silk lining is smooth and soft against my bare skin. I roll my legs against it, as the blood returns to my chilled body. I can feel my toes again thanks to the thick stockings that mother sells to her intrepid female walkers. I have a whole bottle of Alice’s homemade sloe gin to help warm me. The storm bangs and crashes and tries to raise the roof but it holds no fear for me now. I have stood naked in nature at its wildest! Ever since Alice first spoke of the incoming storm, that moment in the garden when I tasted salt on my lips, the sea on the very tip of my tongue, I have felt a growing sense of elation. 

Alice was right. Something has come. An awakening. 

26th January 

There are rumours that a drowning woman has been saved at Underwood Manor. Who she is or where she came from no one yet seems to know.

As Alice predicted, both the Vicarage and The Crow stayed dry. John has won his bet.

27th January 

A huge lake has formed around Underwood Manor that stretches as far as the eye can see. The water is so deep that the trunks of the mighty copper beeches are half submerged. All manner of birds’ skim and swim across its surface. This morning, I saw a heron, its wide white wings, slowly beating as it soared into the sky. 

‘Sea sprites,’ Alice insists. ‘The water will be full of them.’

I have told her that unless these sprites have long slimy snakelike bodies, then I think not. Reports are that Underwood is littered with dead eels that hang from the gutters and swing from the highest branches. 

29th January 

Silver moon shimmers on midnight water. Such beauty outside. Such inner restlessness. I am consumed with a feeling of excitement and change that feels like a premonition. Outwardly, Alice seems nonplussed by my fancifulness and has recommend chamomile flowers in hot water and eggs as calming antidotes to my disquiet. 

‘Poached or boiled,’ I query. 

‘Poached,’ is her swift reply.

 Her milky eyes hold a mysterious glint of mischief as she watches me and mutters on about her sprites.

6th February 

Life is beginning to return to some sort of normality though the chitter chatter of who or what washed up with the storm is rife. Charlie, the pharmacist, has said it’s some sort of sea monster with no legs. I’m surprised that such a professional man is indulging in such silly gossip, but he is in the amateur players and has tendency for the dramatic.

The musty smell in the Vicarage has been made worse by the dampness of the surrounding flood waters, so on Alice’s orders it is being cleaned from top to bottom with water infused with her lavender oil. 

We have received post and have groceries and meat. Underwood Manor is still cut off by road but they’re getting supplies through on a rowing boat! I feel sure Minnie will jump on board soon and bring news. It will be interesting to hear the truth of what is happening at the big house. The talk this morning in the butchers is of a veritable plague of dead eels, butter gone rancid, a horse that has bolted and drowned. 

The fishman arrived from Bridport. Haddock for tea.

13th February 

I’ve ordered some chloride of lime for the drains. Something stronger than lavender is needed. Since the storm there has been a mist that begins to rise in the late afternoon and by nightfall it is thick and heavy. It hovers over the newly formed lake and makes the stone flags in the hall and kitchen glisten with damp. 

The Racing Post came today which made John very happy, and I had a package from mother (a Valentine’s gift! Only mother…) A sample of a new bathing costume which she will be selling. Perhaps I could get another for Minnie, and we could venture to the coast.

24th February 

The most glorious day. High blue sky. Fresh breeze. The flood waters are receding quickly now. I will miss the lake. But it feels like a new beginning.

At night I sleep naked. In bed I feel a desire that I cannot contain, one that’s released at the slightest touch. Something discovered that can no longer be undiscovered. It’s as if there is something in the very air we’re breathing. Intoxicating. 

6th March 

The weather is so unseasonably good that everything Alice can lay her hands on is being washed. White sheets flap in the spring breeze and form a flotilla across the garden.

8th March 

Minnie finally arrived. What news she had. There is a woman, a stranger, at the house and her name is Tempest.  She is recuperating. Beyond that she could add very few details.

‘That cannot be her name,’ I had snorted with laughter. ‘It must be invented.’

‘Too true Kitty. Named by Lady Loveridge no less,’ Minnie sniffed sarcastically and arched one fiery red eyebrow. ‘She claims to have lost her voice, so it’s Lady L that’s named her.’ 

‘Named her?’ I repeated back. This news stilled my laughter. Agatha, the most pragmatic and unfanciful of any woman I have ever met, and that includes my mother, naming someone and with such a flamboyant and romantic name to boot? 

John and I have still received no word from Agatha herself. 

17th March 

I felt quite foolish in the bathing costume. It reminded me of the sailor suit my nephew Teddy wore when he was very young. But despite the layers and the silly mop cap which came with it, my arms were bare from the elbow down, and though the stockings felt thick (and why, oh why would you have your feet covered in the water?) I still felt liberated. The hem of the costume finished just below my knees. Alice rubbed the material approvingly between her bent finger and thumb. I sent her a warning look. She has a habit of snipping material from all my dresses which she then pastes into a large scrap book. When I describe some of Agatha’s evening gowns, I see her old, bleached eyes become dreamy and her gnarled fingers twitch at the thought of taking her shears to those fine silks and satins. 

I plan to try to out the costume at the river by Underwood. Agatha sent a cursory reply to my note and said that I was to be sure to stay close to the house. Though there is still no invitation to visit, I think her fear of my drowning is enough to allow me access if needed. 

22nd March 

The trial of the swimming costume was a disaster. On the riverbank I scratched my hands and laddered the confounded stockings as I pushed through brambles. Then, I slipped and landed flat on my back. It was so green and lush where I lay with fronds of huge ferns, and thick lolling slivers of hart’s tongue that it was surprisingly pleasant. When I gathered myself and sat up, I spotted a small square of material missing from the navy and white stripe at the bottom of my skirt. Alice’s scissors had been at work. 

I gasped as the icy rush of water soaked through my stockings. The river, which had sounded like a gentle murmur when I had lain on the bank, was loud and fast. Slowly, I inched forward but my numb legs became tangled in river weeds, and I fell headfirst into the freezing torrent, choking on a mouthful of water. I flayed my arms and legs in panic and surfaced coughing and gasping for air but stumbled and went back down. The water wasn’t even deep. My first thought of my demise was that mother would be furious. As much about the negative impact on her sales of the suit as anything. My heart was about to burst when I felt hands lifting me up, and with one strong push I was propelled through the water and back onto the bank. I knelt in the mud, spluttering and retching. I shuffled around on all fours, like Dolly, the Loveridge’s old dog. My eyes were cloudy and streaming but I saw, just for the briefest moment, a woman facing me in the water. She was smiling. A wide and generous smile. Dark amused eyes. I could see her shoulders, bare and strong. Her beautiful skin burnished and black. I blinked my eyes, and she was gone.