Cecilia
*
9thNovember 1898
My darling Odette,
I have had no reply, and really, I worry very much about you. Please, when you have a moment, can you send me one message?
Yours always,
Cecilia
*
14th November 1898
Oh God, Odette, Mother has just written to me with the news. Are you all right? It must be an unbearable shock. She says Uncle George has written to you first, and surely the letter has reached you by now? I did not even know they had left the country – did he tell you?
I did not think it could be possible – the Marriage to a Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill has failed enough times that we should certainly know if it had passed, but Mother has enclosed something from Leo who says it is legal because Claudine is still resident in Germany, and since she and Uncle George could marry there, then it must be accepted here.
I do not know what to say.
Odette, please reply to me.
I love you.
Cecilia
*
19thNovember 1898
[There is no signature, the ink is blotchy and the lettering spidery and unsure.]
I don’t understand. I don’t understand this.
What have they done?
I think I must go mad
Act Two
December 1898, Hampstead, London
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
‘Ode to a Nightingale’, John Keats
1
Cecilia
CECILIA STOPS AT THEunsettled earth below the wooden marker. A host of stone angels watch her from beneath the branches.
In the months since Lydia’s death, she has learnt that gravestones are long, like teeth, stubby and blunt, with a tapering root going down to the nerve. One must wait for the earth to settle before they can be planted.