‘Stop!’ he said, his voice raised so that the sheep looked up from their sheltering place beneath the hedge. ‘Tell me what is troubling you. Is it the storm? I went further than I intended, and I heard thunder in the distance. I was hurrying back as fast as I was able.’
She couldn’t bear to look at him. He took her firmly by the shoulders and suddenly all the fight went out of her. He looked back towards the house where lights now shone brightly from every window.
‘They have been digging,’ she said quietly, ‘beneath the willow tree.’
She felt his fingers tighten around her.
‘Why would they do that?’
He seemed to be speaking to the ominous sky as much as to her.
‘To bury a broken mirror,’ she replied. ‘Apparently it prevents bad luck if it is buried.’
Now she had the strength to look up at him.
‘And do you know what they found, Isaac?’
He didn’t reply, but she felt his fear. Be gentle, Eliza, a voice seemed to echo in her ear, but she could not. Compassion had left her.
‘They found bones. Not one of our beloved dogs, as I first believed.’
She paused, not knowing she could be so cruel.
‘They found the bones of a baby. Our baby. You see, I remember now.’
He released her and she took several steps backwards.
‘All of these years I’ve struggled to remember, knowing that there was something missing, something important, something vital to my wellbeing. How could you let me go through that, Isaac? How could you not have told me what it was I needed to know?’
His whole face contorted in anguish. She would not stroke those lines away.
‘I was trying to protect you from pain. We had been through so much.’
‘But you stopped me from all the memories of motherhood, that I had finally carried a baby to full term and, for a few precious months, nursed her. You denied me all of that joy as well as the pain. Did that not occur to you?’
‘We had struggled for so long to have a baby. To lose her felt like a punishment from God. It was the worst of times, and I nearly lost you, too. You were ill for weeks with the consumption, Eliza, barely conscious for much of that time, and when you began to recover you were so weak. Any setback would have been dangerous so it seemed to be a blessing that you had forgotten.’
‘But I dreamed about her. I thought she was the baby I had never had. That it was my mind playing tricks because of the longing. But she was real.’
Isaac let go of her and collapsed to his knees.
‘Yes, she was real. She was the most beautiful baby I’ve ever set eyes on and just like her mother.’
‘And you buried her beneath the willow tree?’
‘I wrapped her in the shawl you had knitted and laid her to rest here. I wanted her close to us in the garden where I used to carry her and point out the flowers and the birds and let her hear the sound of the wind rustling in the trees. I would show her the gleam of the sea in the distance and promised to take her in our little rowing boat one day.’
‘And the articles beneath the floor. You placed those there, too?’
He nodded, unable to look at her, lost in his memories, which she could tell were as painfully fresh now as hers.
‘Her little bonnet, apricot like her curls which were just beginning to blossom, the rattle which I bought even before she was born, and her name.’
‘Philly,’ Eliza whispered, ‘my precious Philly. But I didn’t recognise that as your handwriting, Isaac.’
He shook his head in shame.
‘I disguised it just in case you should ever find the little box.’
