Birdcage Walk Read online

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Helen Dunmore

  Title Page

  Preface

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Afterword

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  It is 1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence.

  Lizzy Fawkes has grown up in Radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism.

  But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol’s housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. Soon his plans for a magnificent terrace built above the two-hundred-foot drop of the Gorge come under threat.

  Diner believes that Lizzie’s independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him: law and custom confirm it, and she must live as he wants.

  In a tense drama of public and private violence, resistance and terror, Diner’s passion for Lizzie darkens until she finds herself dangerously alone.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Helen Dunmore is the author of fourteen novels. Her first, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led to D.H. Lawrence’s expulsion from Cornwall on suspicion of spying and won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize, now the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her bestselling novel The Siege, was described by Antony Beevor as ‘a world-class novel’ and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize. She has also written a ghost story, The Greatcoat under the Hammer imprint.

  Helen Dunmore’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

  ALSO BY HELEN DUNMORE

  Zennor in Darkness

  Burning Bright

  A Spell of Winter

  Talking to the Dead

  Your Blue-Eyed Boy

  With Your Crooked Heart

  The Siege

  Mourning Ruby

  House of Orphans

  Counting the Stars

  The Betrayal

  The Greatcoat

  The Lie

  Exposure

  HELEN DUNMORE

  Birdcage Walk

  Towards the end of the eighteenth century there was a frenetic building boom in Bristol. Builders and developers competed against one another, borrowing heavily to buy up land. Between 1789 and 1792 work began on several terraces which were to be sited spectacularly on the steep slopes of Clifton, two hundred feet above the River Avon. Among these were Royal York Crescent, said to be the longest terrace in Europe, Cornwallis Crescent and Windsor Terrace. But in 1793 war was declared between Britain and France. Bristol’s housing boom collapsed, and more than fifty builders and developers went bankrupt within a few months. Hundreds of houses were left unfinished for years, in a roofless spectacle of ruin.

  Prelude

  If my friends hadn’t decided that I should have a dog I would never have opened the gate and gone into the graveyard. I always took the paved path between the railings: Birdcage Walk, it’s called, because of the pleached lime trees arching overhead on their cast-iron frame.

  In late summer the rosebay willowherb grew taller than the battered headstones and monuments. Every so often the graveyard would be strimmed and the stones would show naked. The tide of green would be stemmed for a few weeks, but it could never be held back. I once saw a man doing t’ai chi in a clearing, but usually only dog-walkers ventured among the graves. The church itself had been bombed to rubble during the war. In its place there was a lawn where children were not supposed to play ball games, and some rose trees planted in honour of a forgotten royal occasion.

  I liked Birdcage Walk, especially late at night, when darkness and the rustle of nocturnal creatures gave an edge to the safety of the paved path.

  I was still learning to be a dog-owner. I’d never considered becoming one, but when I was left alone I soon saw how uncomfortable my solitude was for everybody. Walking on my own was no great pleasure, and we had always walked. I thought of joining a ramblers’ group, but I’d never liked being organised and so the idea melted away.

  Jack had belonged to a girl I’d known from babyhood, the daughter of two dear friends. Nora was moving to Australia. I took Jack on a whim, perhaps because I couldn’t think what else to do. And besides, everyone was so eager to match me with the dog, and they had been very kind since I was left alone. There was no question of taking on a puppy. Jack was five years old, perfectly trained.

  It didn’t seem like much more than an idea until the day Nora brought Jack round, with all the paraphernalia about which I knew less than nothing. We’d had a couple of introductory sessions, of course. I’d taken Jack for a walk, feeling an entire fraud. I knew what food he liked and that he must not have it more than once a day. But this time, when Nora left, she didn’t take her dog with her.

  So there we were, alone together. Jack was a mongrel, or mixed breed as they say now. He was rough-haired and had a strong little body and a pointed, foxy face which at the same time expressed a willingness towards the human which you would never find in a fox.

  He took to me. I let him sniff my hand and I fed him and made him walk behind me through doorways – Nora had told me this was important – and we began to go for long walks together. Everybody talked to me. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s not until you’ve been left alone that you realise how very few people want to pass the time of day with a solitary and no doubt rather grim middle-aged man. I entered a little world which had obviously always been there, running parallel to the one in which I lived. I talked about Jack and enquired about Rosie, Dexter, Ebony, Skye. It was pleasant, but I still liked a solitary walk from time to time.

  It was one of those long, slow summer dusks and Jack and I were the only creatures on Birdcage Walk. I heaved the gate open and Jack flashed away into the dense tangle of ivy, long grass, bramble, periwinkle and wild clematis. I could just see his hindquarters quivering in ecstasy as he explored a hole where a stone had keeled over. I whistled and he came to heel in a way which still astonished me – and, if I’m honest, delighted me.

  We plunged on together through the graves. Some of the inscriptions were legible, some worn away. There was a particular type of stone which flaked off in layers, taking the inscriptions with it. Whatever care had gone into choosing the words, they did not matter now. It was hard to credit that real bones lay thick in the soil, but perhaps they too had dissolved. I wasn’t sure how long it took. The graves were all more than a hundred years old.

  Jack vanished beneath a wild rose bush, snuffling and then barking. I called him off and he came reluctantly. His look was so urgent, so abjectly enthusiastic that I didn’t have the heart to keep him back. Let him dig if he wanted. It could do no harm, after all this time. I was careful. I was not one of those wh
o festooned the iron railings with little plastic bags of dog crap. Jack barked again. He was looking back at me, as if he wanted me to come too.

  I waded through the undergrowth, lifted a thorny branch and peered at the grave where Jack was digging. It sounds fanciful, but I half believed that Jack had brought me here for a purpose. The stone leaned only slightly backwards and the inscription was deep cut. I could not read it all but a name jumped out at me: Fawkes. For some reason I was curious. I suppose I thought of Guy Fawkes, and his awful fate, and the bonfires that still burned in his name. I bent down to look more closely. Jack was flurrying up earth with his paws but otherwise doing no harm as far as I could see. He had probably found a rabbit hole. I flattened the undergrowth with my boot and knelt down. Now I saw what I had not noticed at first: there was an object carved beneath the inscription. I puzzled over it, and then I saw what it was: a quill pen, beautifully drawn in stone. A craftsman must have done this. I ran my fingers over the inscription, for most of the words were hard to read. The script was flowing and copious.

  To the Beloved Memory of Julia Elizabeth Fawkes,

  Wife of Augustus Gleeson,

  This Stone Was Raised on 14th July 1793

  In the Presence of her Many Admirers.

  And underneath, immediately above the quill, was written:

  Her Words Remain Our Inheritance.

  The inscription struck me as unusual. No dates of birth or death were given, and although Julia Elizabeth Fawkes was clearly married to Augustus Gleeson, she had not taken his name. Of course it was the many admirers who interested me most. She was a writer, clearly, but what had she written? I had never heard of her.

  I called Jack to me. He came, whining and reluctant, but this time I was firm. We were going home.

  I found nothing online about either Julia Fawkes or Julia Gleeson. They had quite vanished. I tried Augustus Gleeson too, but again I drew a blank. I decided to forget about them. Whatever Julia Elizabeth Fawkes’s many admirers had cherished, it had disappeared as surely as the flesh from her bones.

  There it would have ended, if there had not been an Open Doors day that September. One of the houses on the list was 18 Little George Street, which had never been open to the public before. The house dated from the mid-eighteenth century, and had later become a gathering place for poets and radicals. Coleridge had stayed there. Wordsworth had visited. Shelley had declaimed a poem on the top-floor landing and then attempted to slide down the banisters. Speeches had been made and it was believed there had been a printing press in the basement. The house still belonged to the same family, the Frobishers, but it had passed to a cousin who lived in Canada and wished to sell in due course. He had recently employed an archivist to go through the many papers which were lodged there. The archivist would be on hand on Open Doors day. There was some idea, according to the Open Doors leaflet, that the house might be bought by the City Council as a museum. I doubted that. This was probably my only chance to see it.

  I planned my day carefully. I would go to Redcliffe Caves in the morning, have a bite of lunch down by the water and then go to 18 Little George Street as soon as it opened at one o’clock. Jack couldn’t come. He would have loved the caves, but the multiplied sound of his barking might annoy other visitors, and I doubted that he’d be allowed into Little George Street. I noted with some amusement that I was already thinking like a dog-owner, with a faint resentment that anywhere should be off limits to Jack.

  It was a mistake to come early. The house was busy and the archivist was engaged with a group of local historians. I looked around. The bones of the house hadn’t changed much, as far as I could see. The Frobishers had clearly been happy enough with one magnificent, outdated bathroom and a separate lavatory with a cistern which must sound like Niagara Falls when the chain was pulled. The windows all had their original glass. I liked that: it pleased me to think that Coleridge had looked out of these windows. I lingered, but the historians were tireless, and I went away.

  I was halfway home when I realised what a fool I’d been. The house might never be open again. It was entirely possible that Julia Elizabeth Fawkes had visited Little George Street. She was a writer. She was well enough known then to have had ‘many admirers’. Was it possible that she had left some physical mark there? I felt that I owed it to Jack to search a little farther. After all, he had made me come to the grave.

  It was almost three o’clock. The local historians had gone and the archivist was drinking a cup of tea, well away from the papers which he had spread out for display over a broad polished table. He looked up somewhat guardedly as I entered the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to interrupt your break.’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said with an alacrity which might have been a bit forced but which I pretended to take at face value. I turned over some of the papers. They meant nothing to me, but it would be polite to dwell on them for a few minutes.

  ‘I’m interested in a writer who may have come to the house in the late eighteenth century,’ I said at last, still looking at the papers.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Julia Elizabeth Fawkes. She was a woman,’ I added stupidly.

  ‘Julia Elizabeth Fawkes,’ he repeated. ‘No. I don’t believe I have seen any reference to her.’

  ‘She had another name. A married name: Gleeson.’

  ‘Gleeson … Gleeson …’

  ‘She was married to a man called Augustus Gleeson.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the archivist, suddenly all keen attention. ‘The pamphleteer, I assume?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Let me just check …’ To my surprise, he ignored the laptop in front of him. ‘I’ll just have a look at the card index.’ He got up, fetched a long dingy cardboard box and began to fossick about inside it. ‘Gellborough … Gifford … Glanville … Ah yes, I thought so. Gleeson.’

  He pulled out a card and laid it in front of me. There was nothing but a name: Gleeson, Augustus Shovell, and a sequence of letters and numbers: 2nd F L/g R/H Bc Sh 2/R/14.

  ‘I knew I’d seen something.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Second floor landing, right-hand bookcase, second shelf from the bottom, 14 items in from the right,’ responded the archivist. ‘It isn’t my system, of course. This card index must be forty years old at least. But so far, I’ve found it reliable. Any matter relating to your man will be there.’

  ‘Could we look now?’

  He glanced at the door. No one was coming. The interest of the day had peaked. I heard voices downstairs, then a door shut and they were cut off.

  ‘Why not?’

  He went ahead of me up the stairs.

  The bookcases were glass-fronted, and locked. The archivist brought out his keys and selected one. It turned with difficulty and he had to prise the door open with a fingernail.

  ‘It’s all waiting to be properly catalogued,’ he said apologetically. ‘The card index is primitive. They want a digital archive, but of course people don’t realise what an undertaking that is. And if the house is sold, then the collection must go to a museum.’

  ‘You don’t think the house will become one?’

  He gave me a sharp look over his shoulder. ‘It’s not very likely, is it?’

  He was kneeling now, searching along the rows and still talking. I looked over his shoulder and saw that while there were plenty of books there were also leather-bound boxes lined up on the shelves.

  ‘I’m afraid this chap in Canada has absolutely no idea of what’s involved. He thinks I can wave a wand and everything will be online – but the place is more or less untouched and that’s what makes the job rewarding … Ah, here we are.’ The box was unlabelled. He drew it out and undid the clasp. ‘Here we are indeed.’ A faint whiff of oldness reached me. ‘I haven’t got as far as this bookcase, you understand.’ He held the box and peered into it. I could see nothing.

  ‘May I look?’ I asked, and at the same
time I reached out smoothly. Without waiting for his permission, I took the box. In the bottom there lay a fragment of paper with writing criss-crossed over it. Most of the sheet had been torn away. The writing was smooth and flowing. It looked as if it ought to be easy to read, but I could not decipher it. I had the feeling, suddenly, that the archivist had not known the paper was there and did not want to share the discovery with me.

  ‘I can’t make head or tail of this,’ I said and, as I had hoped, he responded.

  ‘It’s part of a letter. There, that’s where the seal has broken. People often crossed their letters at the time. The post was very expensive and they wanted to fill the paper as much as possible. There’s a trick to reading it, and of course you have to ignore the orthographic changes. Let me see. The light’s not very good here, and the ink’s faded. We might take it downstairs and have a look at it under the lamp, if you’re interested?’ His eyes peeped at me.

  ‘I’d like that very much,’ I said.

  We settled at the broad table and he drew down the lamp so that it shone clear on the paper. Every so often he scribbled down a phrase; then he pored over the document again. He turned it, read again, jotted down his notes. I sat perfectly still, waiting.

  At last he said, ‘There’s not much in it, I’m afraid. Rather frustrating. It breaks off and then the writing across – here – seems to refer to quite a different matter. It must be written by someone who knew Augustus Gleeson well, but unfortunately there is no clue to the writer’s identity. Possibly my predecessor – the person who created the card index – knew more. He must have done, to give Gleeson’s full name as a reference, since it isn’t given in the document itself.’

  ‘Would you read it to me?’

  ‘For what it’s worth – but it doesn’t shed any light on the lady you mentioned. This is the first part:

  ‘… the Eagerness with which we read your letter giving Assurance that you are safely come to London. By Providence or the Act of Man you have been preserved in health and safety. Augustus, as you know, is staying with me at Little George Street for the present, and the Frobishers have been most Constant and Tender in their Attentions to us Both. When Augustus had read your letter he could not sit still but must rise and walk about the room to express his Emotion. How my Heart bounded, I cannot …’