The Diary

By the third afternoon, the house had begun to look as though no one had ever lived there.

The ornaments had been lifted from the mantelpiece and wrapped in old newspaper. The china stood in shallow crates with straw between the plates. Drawers that Kate had known all her life now gaped open and empty, their contents divided into small, practical heaps: keep, give away, discard.

Her grandmother would have hated the disorder.

She had never tolerated an object being left where it did not belong. Even in her final years, when walking from one room to another had become an effort, she could detect a misplaced candlestick from across the parlour and direct its return with a single pointed finger.

Now the candlesticks were wrapped together, and there was no one left to object.

Kate sat on the carpet beside a wooden chest, rubbing dust from the heel of her hand. Rain tapped intermittently against the parlour window. Beyond it, the garden had gone wild around the edges, though the centre lawn was still neatly clipped from the gardener’s last visit a few days before the funeral.

Most of the family had already departed. Her aunt had taken the silver. Her cousins had argued over two oil paintings and then discovered that neither would fit comfortably into their hired coach. The solicitor had removed the papers he required. Kate was left with the rest.

She had volunteered to remain for a few days and finish the work.

In a few weeks she would return to the school and become Miss Bell again, assistant mistress, keeper of exercise books and reluctant referee of quarrels involving ink, ribbons and imagined insults. There would be lessons to prepare and girls who had forgotten everything they had learned before the summer. The familiar routine ought to have been comforting.

For the moment, however, the house still belonged to her grandmother.

She opened the chest beside her. There were bundles of receipts, old birthday letters, sewing patterns, several sermons copied in her grandmother’s looping handwriting and a packet of dried lavender that had long since lost its scent. Kate sorted through them without much interest.

At the bottom lay an old leather-bound book tied shut with faded blue ribbon, its corners worn pale.

Kate untied the ribbon.

On the first page, written in a careful but uncertain hand, were the words:

The Journal of E. Bell
Begun January 1778

Kate smiled.

Her grandmother had been eleven years old at the time.

It was difficult to imagine her at eleven. Kate’s earliest memories were of a woman already well into middle age, upright in a dark dress, with a silver watch at her waist and no patience for foolishness. The child who had owned this book seemed an entirely separate person.

Kate turned the pages.

The early entries were brief. A lesson had gone badly. A neighbour’s dog had stolen a meat pie. Someone named Harriet had been punished for whispering during prayers and insisted afterwards that she had not whispered at all. There were several careful descriptions of the weather and an indignant account of a broken doll whose damage the writer attributed to a younger cousin.

Kate continued turning the pages until a small drawing caught her attention. It showed a pony with four unequal legs pulling a cart shaped rather like a bathtub. Beneath it, in smaller writing, her grandmother had added:

Solomon did not really look quite so cross.

Kate settled back against the chest and began to read.

Tuesday, 18 August 1778

Mama woke me before seven and told me to put on my brown dress, though I said the blue was better for going out. She said the blue would show the dust and that we had a long road before us.

She had put flowers in a basket and covered them with a damp cloth. I asked where we were taking them, but she said I would know when we arrived.

The pony-cart came after breakfast. The pony was called Solomon and he had a white mark on his nose. He tried to bite the gate while Mama was speaking to the driver.

We left Derby while the shops were still being opened. Our shadows stretched long before us. Solomon’s ears looked so long upon the ground that I laughed, though Mama said I must not distract the driver.

Her grandmother’s adult handwriting had been narrow and forceful, every word leaning slightly forward as though impatient to reach the end of the page. The child’s hand was rounder, with loops far too large for the letters they belonged to.

Even so, the voice was recognisable.

The same dry attention to other people’s shortcomings was already there. Even at eleven, her grandmother had apparently considered herself responsible for recording who had behaved sensibly and who had not.

She looked again at the little drawing of Solomon.

The pony’s expression bore a remarkable resemblance to her grandmother’s.

We passed through the last houses and came to the toll. The man there had a red face and only three fingers upon his left hand. Mama gave him a coin. He peered into the cart as though he expected to find something hidden there.

Beyond the toll, fields opened on either side and the road began to climb.

We came upon a great stone gateway with towers upon it. I thought it was a castle and asked whether the king lived there.

The driver laughed and said there was not enough castle left for a king, unless he were a very small one. Mama said it was only the gatehouse now, though once it had guarded a much greater place.

There were windows high in the stone and an arch through the middle. I should like to live in one of the towers, but Mama said it would be cold in winter and there would be too many stairs.

The rain had thickened, blurring the garden beyond the glass.

In old age, her grandmother had complained bitterly about the stairs to her bedroom, while refusing every suggestion that a room might be prepared for her below.

Kate shifted the diary nearer the fading light.

The road continued beyond the stone gate. Solomon went more slowly upon the hill, though the driver said he was merely idle.

At the next village, the houses stood far apart beside the turnpike, with farms between them. A narrow lane disappeared among the trees. Mama said the church stood somewhere beyond them, though I could not see its tower.

We stopped to let Solomon drink from a bucket. Mama bought me a currant bun, but told me not to eat it in the cart because I should cover my dress in crumbs.

A boy who had come to watch said Solomon was too old to pull us much farther. The driver said Solomon had more sense than the boy and twice the manners.

The church bell struck ten while we were there.

The village was not named.

Kate turned the page, expecting to find it in the next sentence, but her grandmother had evidently considered the argument about Solomon more memorable than the place itself.

Beyond the village, the houses fell away again. We stayed on the turnpike for nearly another hour. A wagon carrying fleeces passed us, and we saw two men mending a ditch. One of them called to ask whether we were going to the fair, but Mama shook her head.

The hedges were high in places. Where they opened, I could see the road running on before us for a long way.

Mama held the basket upon her lap. The cloth had slipped, and I saw white flowers beneath it. I asked again who they were for.

She said they were for someone who had no one else to bring her flowers.

I thought she must be a widow, because widows are often alone, but Mama had become quiet and I did not ask.

Her grandmother had rarely spoken of her own mother. Kate knew only that she had been gentle, prone to headaches and long silences. She had never imagined them travelling together.

Near noon we came to another village. We stayed on the turnpike only a little way before the driver turned into a narrower lane. The houses soon fell behind us. Then I saw the church tower beyond the fields, with no village gathered around it.

The lane was so badly rutted that the currant bun was crushed inside my pocket.

Kate smiled.

On the following page, the writing had grown smaller, the lines pressed close together.

The churchyard wall was low and green with moss. The driver stayed with Solomon while Mama and I went through the gate.

There were no people in the churchyard. The church door was shut.

Mama went around the side of the church without hesitating. Beneath a yew stood a plain stone, paler than those around it, its letters still sharply cut. She wiped a little dirt from its face with her handkerchief and placed the flowers beneath the writing.

I asked whether the lady had been her friend.

Mama said the lady was my cousin Catherine and had died the year before.

Mama said that, whatever Catherine had done, she was family still and ought not to be forgotten.

On the way back to the cart, she made me promise not to speak of our visit to anyone else.

I asked why.

She said some stories were easier for families when they were left alone.

We ate our dinner beside the churchyard wall. My bun was quite flat, but it tasted the same.

Kate sat still beside the open chest, listening to the rain.

Catherine Bell.

The name looked almost like her own. She had been Kate for as long as she could remember, but in full she was Katherine Bell.

The name belonged to one of those old family stories which no one remembered learning. Kate had heard it first in the nursery, stripped down to its simplest and most scandalous form.

Catherine Bell had been a travelling performer who had been invited to entertain at Kedleston Hall and accused afterwards of stealing a valuable heirloom. Before she could be arrested, she had fled.

She had never returned to her family.

The story ended with her death somewhere on the road, though the details had become muddled through repetition. In some versions she had been pursued. In others she had fallen ill while hiding. Whenever Kate had asked about it, her grandmother had said only that Catherine had brought disgrace upon herself and inconvenience upon everyone related to her.

Yet at eleven years old, Kate’s grandmother had travelled out from Derby with her mother to place flowers beneath Catherine’s name.

Kate turned through the remaining pages, but the outing was not mentioned again. The following entry concerned a disagreement with Harriet over a length of blue ribbon.

The rain began to ease.

Kate rose stiffly and carried the diary to the writing desk beneath the window. Several local maps lay among the papers there, including a recent county map on which her grandmother had marked the homes of distant relations.

She unfolded it across the desk and laid the diary open beside it.

Kate looked from the map to the childish handwriting and then back to the map.

The place was close.

She found she did not want to return to the school without seeing the stone herself. With an early start, she could go there and be back before evening.

Outside, water dripped steadily from the eaves. A narrow line of sunlight appeared between the clouds, brightening the wet lawn.

Kate closed the diary, though she kept one finger between its pages.