An Episode of Remnants.

Content Warnings

• Vivid allusions to skinning rabbits
• Implications of violence
• Descriptions of violent, traumatic birth, resulting in death
• Implications of child abuse and neglect
• Internalised misogyny

Transcript

SIR
Where are you going?

APPRENTICE
Does it matter?

SIR
I want to know.

APPRENTICE
According to you, I can’t go anywhere. It’s the place that moves, not me.

SIR
And yet, you are going.

APPRENTICE
I just need to… go. Alright?

SIR
I understand this about you.

[THE APPRENTICE SIGHS]

SIR
Are you feeling any better?

APPRENTICE
About what?

SIR
Yourself.

APPRENTICE
I don’t know. I’m just going for a walk. I’ll come back. Or. You know. We’ll find each other again eventually. We always do.

SIR
We do indeed.

[FOOTSTEPS IN DUST. THE WIND PICKS UP.]

APPRENTICE
What’s…? Hmm. You know, I don’t remember ending up out here again. Or not out here. Or. Whatever. But we looked like we were in the corridor with the furnaces and now we’re out here in the dust again and. Hmm.

[FOOTSTEPS]

APPRENTICE
A hole.
Hello?

[SKITTERING]

Oh, go away won’t you? I don’t care.

[SMALL THUD]

Ouch! You’re throwing things at me now?! God. I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet to clear my head! Won’t you leave me alone?!

[SKITTERING]

Yeah! Good! Get out of here. Freaky ominous presence. Fuck’s sake.

[HE SIGHS]

What is it, then? A fountain pen. I… think I’ve seen it before but… hmm. Is it broken? Probably because you threw it at my head, by the way. There’s ink all over the… it’s red. The ink is red, like blood, and it— god it’s on my hands, it’s all over me, I— ah!

[WHOOSH]

Eliza is crowing about dancing on stages all across the word, running on her tip-toes through the grass. Pearl copies her, the mirror of her younger sister, and she aches. Eliza is prettier, daintier. Her hair is silky soft and the colour of corn silk as it bounces over her shoulders. Pearl’s is tamed in a bun, slicked back with oil to tamp down its consistent frizz. Her mother says she’s her sister’s shadow, and she feels it.
They hunker down by the shrubs at the top of the curated part of the garden, watching for rabbits. Eliza witters on about how maybe they’ve gone on holiday. Snorting at her sister, Pearl suggests they’re all dead. ‘Maybe daddy shot them all.’
Eliza squeals. ‘Oh Pearl! You are horrid.’
Pearl smiles smugly and hunkers closer to the grass. She hopes they see nothing. She hopes they have rabbit stew for dinner and Eliza cries and cries until there’s snot coming out of her pretty little nose.
But Eliza gasps and points at the hydrangeas. There, one rabbit, brown fur trembling as it nibbles at the grass. Pearl thinks about how soft its fur would be under her fingers. She thinks of the sound its skin would make as cook pulled it back to expose its rich, dark flesh. Eliza curls her knees to her chest.
‘I wish mummy would let us keep some for pets,’ says Eliza.
Pearl wants to wrap her sister in her arms, but she doesn’t. Instead, she explains that rabbits are full of diseases. Appearances can be deceiving. Adorable as they are from a distance, the rabbits were truly no different from rats.

[WHOOSH]

Pearl peers closely at the orchids lining the shelf in her mother’s greenhouse. The flowers are like strange, delicate alien creatures, a mane of pointed petals framing a stuck-out tongue and bright yellow uvula, looking up at Pearl expectantly like rows of strange, beautiful dogs. Some are pink, others purple. The tongue-petals on some of them are spotted, others plain. A stunning variety, even in this small of a collection.
Pearl loves that her mother allows her to help with the orchids. It is the only time they spend alone together, filling the hours where Eliza is away from the house at rehearsals. Her mother keeps other plants too, but those are less temperamental and she allows the staff to help with them. With the orchids, though, she entrusts only Pearl.
Her mother picks which of the plants will die, and leaves the others on the shelf. Pearl cannot see what dooms the condemned flowers, but she trusts her mother’s judgement and helps her tip the waste into the big bucket by the door, ready to be taken out for composting.
The orchids smile up at her from the dirt, unaware that they are already dead.

[WHOOSH]

Eliza turns and twirls across the stage. Pearl feels the memory of the steps in her bones as she watches her sister dance even though it has been years since she tried it herself.
In the interval, Pearl’s mother drifts between the other spectators, laughing and preening before them. She does not catch the knowing looks shared between the people she walks away from. Eliza is a pretty dancer, yes, but it’s not proper for a girl of her standing to make such a show of herself.
Pearl stands tall next to her father, adjusting the headband that pins her wily hair back from her face. She is glad she’s not a dancer anymore. She wishes her mother would see sense and stop letting Eliza dance to. Perhaps if it was the National Ballet, it would be different, and Eliza’s time in the spotlight might be an asset to her prospects, rather than an embarrassment. But it’s not at the National Ballet, it’s at their local theatre. So as pretty as Eliza is, she’s also a disgrace.
It baffles Pearl that her mother cannot see this. Her father does, she thinks, but he does not speak up. He adores Pearl’s mother too much, and usually her judgement is so sound. Maybe it’s because Eliza is the second daughter, and the weight of maintaining the family name falls on Pearl. She is so sensible it outweighs her sister’s showy, reckless abandon. It mattered less that Eliza pranced about on stage in little more than her underwear because Pearl was sat in the box, watching, dressed in a pale blue evening dress, neatly groomed and softly spoken.
If the price of Eliza’s prancing was Pearl’s restraint, maybe it was worth paying. And yet Pearl could not help but think Eliza would be better served as a spectator too.

[WHOOSH]

Eliza creeps in late, stirring Pearl from her nest on the chaise in the hallway. She is holding her heels in her hand, clutching her shawl around her shoulders with the other.
‘This is the third time this month, Liza. You’re going to get caught.’
‘Is that why you waited for me?’ Eliza sighs. She sets her shoes on the tiles and stands in front of the mirror. ‘Help me with my hair, would you? I’m starting to get a headache.’
Pearl gets up, helps set Eliza’s curls free from carefully pinned style she’s set it in. As Eliza’s hair tumbles down, it wafts out the smell of wine and cigarettes.
‘Did you see him again?’ Pearl asks.
‘You can say his name,’ Eliza snaps.
‘Christian is a married man, Liza. You’re going to ruin his life; he’s going to ruin yours.’
‘He says his marriage to Maud is as good as over anyway.’
‘That doesn’t matter! They still aren’t divorced. Besides, you’re half his age!’
Eliza glowers at Pearl in the mirror. ‘If you weren’t so uptight, maybe you’d get invited to parties too.’
‘I’m not uptight, I just know how to conduct myself.’
‘So, what? You think I’m being reckless?’
‘Foolish, more like,’ says Pearl.
Eliza’s expression goes smooth. She picks up her shoes and climbs the stairs. Pearl watches her go, staring at the muscles moving beneath the milky skin of Eliza’s calves. She thinks of the rabbits that live at the end of their garden, soft fur peeled back to betray the strength hidden underneath. But all the power in a rabbit’s legs is not enough to save them from the muzzle of fox, or the barrel of a gun.
When Pearl finally follows Eliza to bed, she finds her sister tucked up under the blankets, pretending to be asleep. She’s not, of course. She’s breathing too deliberately, eyes pressed too tightly closed. But Pearl does not challenge her.
Instead, she slips out of her house coat and climbs into her own bed, across the room.
This is their peaceful warren. A place of safety were guns and foxes cannot reach them. Eliza has just not realised its value yet, but she will, in time. Pearl just hopes it will happen before her guts are strewn across the lawn.

[WHOOSH]

Pearl turns the pen Eliza got her for her birthday in the shaft of light that pours in through the curtains in their bedroom. The mother of pearl inlays shimmer in the light, a rainbow of colours hidden in its pinky grey.
It’s been weeks since Eliza left, now. Pearl has not heard from her. Nobody has.
Days stretch on and Pearl waits for news of her sister’s scandal to break, for it to come out that she’s runaway with a married man with children at home. But it doesn’t come.
Pearl sits on this knowledge like a goose upon a golden egg. At any moment it could hatch and when it did she would lose control of what she’s cultivating. But until then, it’s her job to sit and wait. If she cracked the egg open herself all that would do would cause a bloody, gooey mess. Why do it then when she could wait, let the scandal come out on its own, fully formed?
She wonders if that is truly what she wants. Eliza, hung out to to dry by a monster of her own making. She does not think this is a resentful desire necessarily; smaller offers of help and guidance did nothing to stay Eliza’s wiliness and her mother was blind to it, dazzled by Eliza’s dancing and skills in conversation. It had so clear to Pearl for so long that it would only lead to disaster, and yet she could not prevent it.
She could only be grateful that she was the less pretty sister, the less showy one. Temptation had been pulled out of her reach. Eliza was not so blessed.
Pearl thinks it would all be easier if Eliza had not been so clever, too. Her sister was not just a fool but an intelligent one. Though she’d been sneaking around with Christian for months before the two of them eloped, they’d been able to keep the whole thing under wraps. Eliza was known to be a bit of a party girl but it seemed like nobody suspected she was breaking apart a marriage, or even that she has ongoing relations with any man.
Their parents entreated Pearl for details about Eliza’s disappearance again and again but Pearl would not give them. It was important that this played out on Eliza’s terms, that when the disaster struck it was wholly caused by Eliza’s actions, and Pearl had not tipped the scales.
And maybe, maybe then, things would work out. This scandal might ruin Eliza for a while but the Grenville name would still be enough for her to recover, in the end. She’d come home cowed, maybe cut her hair short. Find a nice husband to make pretty babies with. She could live the life she was supposed to.
Yes, it was a shame that disaster was necessary for this to happen, but reason and discouragement had not cured Eliza. She had to fall to be saved. Like a plant in severe need of pruning, violence was the only way.

[WHOOSH]

Eliza is home. Every morning, Pearl checks in on her in the guest room, as though she might’ve vanished in the night. But she’s still there, sleeping soundly, the dome of her belly rising and falling beneath the blankets. Their parents are away; they will be away for another month yet. Pearl has not decided if she ought to write to them first, and she’s frightened of what will happen either way.
Eliza has not been tucked away in some secret bolthole of Christian Bevan all this time, no. He left her, went back to his wife, abandoned Eliza to herself and her choices.
Eliza could have come home then, but she didn’t. When Pearl presses her for answers as to why, her answers all feel so unsatisfactory. Their life is not a prison, and Eliza had never been restricted at all. In fact, Eliza clearly needed to be on a shorter leash; all she’d done with the extra rope was use it to hang herself.
Now she was with a child. The child of some communist dancer! It was not a straightforward scandal as Pearl had been imagining, but something else, something stranger, wronger, more base. The way out would be more complicated than Pearl had ever imagined, but she was sure she could help, she just had to figure out how.
So for now, she stays quiet, keeps her sisters secrets, as she has done for years.

[WHOOSH]

There is a scream so loud it feels like it’s coming from Pearl herself, but it isn’t. It’s Eliza.
Pearl rushes downstairs. Eliza is standing in the drawing room. Her silk nightdress is stained red from the waist down as she stands there, feet shoulders’ width apart, liquid dripping from between her legs. For a moment Pearl is paralysed. There is more blood than she has ever seen in her life, and with horror Pearl realises she has no idea if this is an ordinary birth or something strange and worse.
She runs into the hall, calls for a doctor, but by the time she returns to the drawing room, it’s clear he will not arrive in time.
Eliza is on the ground on her back, lips pale, hair sticking to her face with sweat, the gore that has poured out of her body sticking to her clothes and her skin.
Pearl clutches Eliza’s hand. She is wishing, praying, begging for Eliza to hold on. Perhaps absurdly, perhaps obscenely, she hopes this violent end belongs only to the child, not Eliza herself. That when the doctor bursts into the house and pulls Pearl aside, he will yank the thing out of her sister and it will be dead, it will be over, and Eliza will be alright.
But that’s not what happens.
Hours later, Pearl stands in the parlour, a squawking infant in her arms. Eliza is on her bed in the guest room upstairs, a white sheet pulled over her face, dead.

[WHOOSH]

The boy is stroppy and petulant. He has Eliza’s worst attributes of narcissism and thoughtlessness but none of her redeeming charm and candour. He spits out his food and he bites his nurses and he rarely seems to sleep. Precocious little brat, he began to walk at nine months and could speak in full sentences by the time he was a year and a half old. He used these powers to follow Pearl around and make snide remarks about her clothes, her gait, her flowers.
Of course, Pearl’s mother adores him. She is raising the boy as her own. She berated Pearl for calling a doctor, creating a trail of evidence that would suggest that he was anything but her child. She speaks of Eliza as though she is still missing, and not buried in the small graveyard at the edge of their house’s grounds.
The boy is three now and chases the rabbits in the garden, throwing stones. His nursemaid follows after him hopelessly, bleating useless admonishments at him, whilst Pearls’ mother laughs from her chair by the backdoor.
Eliza’s eyes stare out of his face, stolen jewels. A thief and a devil. What a monstrous little thing. Pearl prays that on one of his evening escapes from the house, he will fall into the pond and drown.

[WHOOSH]

Pearl’s parents have all but abandoned the house now, setting up a permanent home for themselves in America. Pearl hoped they would take the boy with them, but realistically, escaping him was likely the motivation for their relocation.
Disgusting creature. He plays cards and loses money as often as he wins it, out all hours of the night, returning in the early hours of the next day stinking of sweat and beer and foul cigarettes.. He is supposed to be marrying young Harriet Grace Powell, but Pearl is sure he’s stepping out with at least three other women. He certainly seems to spend a lot of time with them, anyway.
No matter. At least if Stephen were married, he’d be at the house less.

[WHOOSH]

The third wretched spawn of Stephen’s loins mewls on the carpet in the sunroom. It screeches worse than all the others before it, matched only by Stephen in volume and persistence. Its useless mother sits drained and pasty, unmoved by her offsprings demands. Pearl would pity her if her disdain did not result in Pearl having to parent all of the children.
She cannot tell if it is a blessing or a curse that Stephen is not often home. She chooses to conceive of it as both. The blessing is Stephen’s absence. The curse is that he’d not take his brats with him.

[WHOOSH]

The news of Pearl’s parents’ passing comes a week after she has put Stephen’s wife and two of his children in the ground. The littlest child, the only one to survive her mother’s heinous act, has been near silent, since. All the brats inherited their father’s eyes but only in this little baby’s face do they truly resemble Eliza’s. Fitting, then, that the baby was named for her.
In the long, silent days of waiting for her parents to be shipped home in their coffins, Pearl sends the nursemaids home. She tells Little Eliza who she is. The baby is quiet in her arms, stirring only now and then to give a short, soft mew like a kitten. When this happens, Pearl feeds her, changes her cloth nappies, washes her velvety skin.
When she grows up, Pearl thinks, she will outshine everyone. She will live the life Pearl’s sister was meant to have.

[WHOOSH]

Little Eliza sits quietly in the corner, reading a book. A young man from the solicitor’s office is sat opposite Pearl in the drawing room. There is no sign of the carnage once wrought in there, but there is something sinister in the air which no amount of bleach and polish could ever undo. Peal likes to hold all her business meetings in there. She likes to think it gives her an edge.
‘The trouble is,’ says the young man, ‘that there appear to be two valid versions of your parents’ will.’
‘Oh?’
‘In one of them, all of their money is intended for their eldest son. In the other will, you and your brother are to have an even split of all your parents assets.’
‘How can it be that two contradictory wills are valid?’
‘Well. It’s impossible to tell which was the more recent copy. The records of one were damaged in London during the war, and the other, which was stored here at the house, seems to have been dated long before your brother’s birth, even though it explicitly names him.’
Pearl frowns. ‘How odd,’ she says.
‘It is quite curious, yes.’ The young man leans down to his leather briefcase and pulls out some old, tattered pieces of paper.
‘Is that a birth certificate?’ Pearl asks.
‘It is indeed, and this one is a death certificate, signed by a doctor. It looks like before your living brother was born, your parents had another child, also named Stephen, who passed away in infancy. It happened a year or so before you would have even been conceived, for your own birth records, so I imagine they were hoping to put it out of their minds.
‘Forgive me, Miss Grenville. We hardly move in the same social circles, but given the nature of my work, it’s important that I pursue all lines of enquiry when it comes to settling matters like these. I have more to show you, but I’m afraid the nature of it may be a little upsetting.’
Pearl frowns. ‘Whatever could you mean?’
‘Forgive me, Miss Grenville,’ says the young man again. ‘But I have had to investigate some rumours about legitimacy.’
Pearl sat up straighter. ‘I didn’t think solicitors trafficked in rumours.’
‘I’m not a solicitor yet, Miss Grenville. I’m just an apprentice. Much of my job at Cratchet and Pocket is to investigate tricky conundrums like this. You can think of me as a sort of detective, but for paperwork.’
‘How novel. But I would still think you’d know better than to indulge in fiction when concerning matters of estate.’
‘I’m afraid it seems more a little more substantial than that, Miss Grenville.’
Pearl glances over at Little Eliza. As if sensing Pearl’s attention, she looks up.
‘Darling. Go see cook about fetching us some tea,’ says Pearl.
Eliza carefully closes her book and bounces to her feet, her neatly pinned back curls bobbing around her face. ‘Yes, Aunt Pearl.’
When Little Eliza is gone, Pearl leans over the table. ‘I will not have the legitimacy of my sister’s place in the family line questioned. Whatever she did, whatever her reputation, she’s a Grenville. I’ve seen her birth certificate. My father’s name is on it.’
‘Actually,’ says the young man. ‘It’s your brother’s legitimacy I’m concerned with, actually.’
Pearl goes col. ‘Explain.’
The young man sets a third piece of paper on the coffee table. It was smaller, the text almost blurry and difficult to read.
‘This is a prescription from a doctor, issued shortly after your sister, Eliza, was born. You see here? They recommend that your mother was to wear a surgical brace around her abdomen for several weeks, and she was to drink extra dairy products to strengthen her bones. I’ve spoken to several doctors and it seems this was the standard advice given at the time to women who had had hysterectomies following traumatic births.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘From what I can glean, though of course full details of this are not available to me, it would seem your mother would not have been able to bear another child after your sister was born. And I did some digging. Although therw was a birth certificate issued for a second child names Stephen Grenville born to your parents, six weeks earlier, a report of death for your sister was filed, listing the cause as haemorrhage from traumatic birth. Given neither your mother nor your sister seem to have told anyone they were pregnant, these stories are difficult to reconcile but not impossible. Except, of course, for your parents trip to America the same year this baby, the second Stephen Grenville, was born.’
The young man sets down some photographs. Pearl’s parents stand in front of a rock formation. Her mother’s waistline is slender, just as it always was.
‘And then, right after, she and your father made the crossing back to England and your mother received treatment for nausea on the ship, without informing the physician she was with child. The medication she was taking could have caused an early labour and may have even caused a miscarriage. Given her history with child-loss and traumatic birth it seems odd that she would take such risks, especially considering she was well into her forties by then and it would have been some miracle for her to have conceived at all. All this without accounting for the possible – probable – hysterectomy she had after yous sister was born.’
Pearl purses her lips. ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘I see. And in terms of the will, what are the implications?’
‘Well. That is why I’ve come to you now. I know your brother is out of the country at present, and I thought it best to discuss this with you discreetly. My grandfather tells me that’s something you value.’
‘It is. And about what are we being discreet?’
‘Based on this information, I have enough to substantiate the claim that it is the second will, naming you and your siblings as having an equal share in your parents’ estate, as the more valid one. We can assume the other will was made before the loss of the first child your parents named Stephen Grenville and just set it aside without much fuss. But, of course. The information I’ve gathered also suggests the second Stephen Grenville, who was raised as your brother, was not in fact your brother. But there’s not enough here for me to prove who he really is. Which leaves us in a strange position. At the moment, I can’t substantiate any of it. But. If there was anything you might know that might suggest otherwise. It is possible you could be the sole inheritor of your parents’ estate.’
Pearl’s heart quickens in her chest. She thinks of the money Stephen has already frittered away on gambling and failed projects. She thinks of his frightful drinking habits. She thinks of her sister lying in a pool of her own blood on the floor of this very room.
‘And what of my niece?’ Pearl whispers. ‘What would become of her, should her father be disinherited? What of her reputation?’
The young man sighs. ‘I see no reason for any of this to be made public. It’s a private matter of estate. At the moment I can’t substantiate any of it anyway. But, whatever the outcome of this, whatever relation you bear to the girl, you could always name her as the benefactor of your own will, if you wanted to.’
Pearl pressed her eyes shut. ‘There are some things you probably ought to know. And some paperwork you probably ought to see.’

[WHOOSH]

Stephen is back at the house again. Pearl watches from the upstairs window as her security man tackles him into the dirt. She hopes he breaks a bone, this time.
When Stephen has been muscled off the property, Pearl retreats to her bedroom. She picks up her most recent letter from Little Eliza, talking of a great, grand trip she had taken to India with her grandparents. A small photograph is attached, Eliza sitting on the back of a small-eared elephant. Pearl clutches it to her chest.

[WHOOSH]

Little Eliza is sat in front of Pearl’s lamp. It lights up her golden hair, making it a halo around her pretty little face. She clutches Pearl’s hand, her fingers absurdly warm. The only warm spot in Pearl’s whole body. ‘I have something for you,’ Pearl tells her.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. In the drawer by the bed.’
Little Eliza hesitates before she opens it and produces a small, prettily wrapped box. Eliza unwraps the gift carefully, delicately, just as Pearl knew she would. Inside, a beautiful fountain pen.
‘Your grandmother gave that to me many, many years ago. The shaft is inlaid with mother of pearl. I’ve had the nib replaced so it will write as beautifully as if it were new, but it isn’t, it’s old, and it’s very, very precious. And now, it is yours.’
Little Eliza clutches the pen to her chest. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispers.
Pearl smiles. ‘I hope it will serve you well.’
Little Eliza stays a while longer. She reads more of her book aloud to Pearl, long past sunset. Pearl is already drifting to sleep when she stops. She wants to ask her not to, to keep on reading, but she is so very comfortable in her bed. So very content.
Pearl dreams of rabbits on the lawns behind the house. She dreams of catching one her arms, holding it close to her chest. Most rabbits are pests, but not this one. This one is special. She will give it to her sister to keep as a pet. Together, the three of them will live forever, tucked safe in a warren of their own making, and none of the perils of the world will touch them, not even for a moment.

[WHOOSH]

SIR
Apprentice?

APPRENTICE
I didn’t steal Stephen Grenville’s money.

SIR
No.

APPRENTICE
It was my job to look to resolve disputed estates, and. It was just my job.

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE
So why did he say it was my fault? Why did he tell people I’d stolen his life? Why was he hunting me? Why? Why?!

SIR
If you ask me, I think it is because he needed someone else to blame.

APPRENTICE
His remnant. Stephen’s remnant. Have you seen it?

SIR
If I have, I don’t remember.

APPRENTICE
God damn it! Why’d I have to go and… god. But if I’d not wiped your memory, it’s not like you’d have told me, anyway.

SIR
Likely not.

[THE APPRENTICE SIGHS]

SIR
Did the walk help?

APPRENTICE
No. No it fucking didn’t.

[END]