The Key to Flambards

by Linda Newbery

  Today’s more dramatic events would have to wait for a proper conversation on Skype.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Perfectionist

  Roger moved into the Flambards flat on Sunday, helped by Ian and the boys. Mum and Grace went up to see. It was spacious and clean, still smelling of fresh paint. Roger had opened all the windows, most of which looked out over the garden and the meadow and woods beyond. They all admired the view, Grace hoping that it would always be there for Roger to look at, not obscured by the brand-new houses and garages of Mr Naylor’s Flambards Fields.

  ‘It’ll be great to live here on site,’ Roger said. ‘And it makes more room at Ian and Gail’s, with Marcus staying for I don’t know how long.’

  Grace and her mother spent most of the afternoon unpacking boxes of books and arranging them on shelves, which took a long time as Mum kept exclaiming over books she’d either read or wanted to read, and ended up with a pile to take back to the flat and a promise to lend Roger some of hers. Borrowing books, Grace thought; sharing books, talking about them. What clearer sign could there be that they liked each other? Surreptitiously she sent a text to Marie-Louise, who replied: Aha! Proof.

  Only later, back in the Hayloft, did Grace remember the dachshund lady whose message Roger wouldn’t have seen yet, as the office had been locked up all day. Although it could easily wait till the morning she thought she’d tell him now, and went back over to the house while her mother was in the shower.

  Unusually, the front door was locked. There would be no guests until tomorrow, and she had no key.

  She stood outside, looking through the library windows, feeling that the house had closed itself against her. She had no right of entry. Perversely, that made her yearn to be inside, while no one was there – to breathe the air, walk through the rooms, have the place to herself.

  Dusk was falling, the sky streaked pink, the last woodpigeons cooing in the chestnut trees. The air was cool and still. Turning, Grace imagined Christina walking round from the stables, tired from a day outdoors; she’d be looking forward to a hot bath and a hot dinner, her muscles aching the way Grace’s sometimes did after riding. And Christina would have ridden with far more skill and dash, and for longer. The door would be open for her, perhaps with an old dog waiting, getting up slowly from the mat as she approached, thumping its tail in greeting. This was Christina’s home. She belonged here.

  The crunch of feet on gravel made the back of her neck prickle. For a tingling instant she believed it really was Christina approaching round the bend in the drive. Her eyes went swimmy, then focused on Roger, who was walking as if lost in thought, abruptly becoming alert when he saw Grace by the porch.

  He seemed taken aback, then recovered. ‘Oh – hello! I was just having a walk round, now that I properly live here. It’s nice having the place to ourselves for a change. I was imagining I was one of the old Russells.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘You made me jump. I was thinking about Christina. For a minute I thought you were her, standing there.’

  ‘That’s weird! I was just thinking about her too.’ Grace was touched, even flattered. ‘Sometimes it seems as if she really is here.’

  ‘It does,’ Roger agreed. ‘Were you trying to go in? Sorry, I locked up, as there’s no one in.’

  In those few moments Grace had forgotten why she’d been looking for him. Remembering, she explained about yesterday’s visitor. ‘And there’s a note in the study from Irina, with the phone number.’

  ‘Marion Duncan, you said? And her mother was a Wright?’

  ‘Yes. Jenny Wright.’

  ‘Jenny Wright. Now, how does she fit in? I’ll go and look at the family trees.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s a bit late to phone now. I’ll do it tomorrow. Thanks, Grace.’

  When Roger did make the call, next morning, Grace was in the office helping her mother with lists for the Bank Holiday weekend.

  ‘Well!’ He rang off, greatly animated. ‘I assumed Mrs Duncan’s mother must be dead – but it turns out she’s still around, ninety-eight, a bit deaf, but with all her marbles. She worked here till the house was sold, and knew Christina right up till she died!’ He and Grace’s mother looked at each other; then he remembered Grace was there too, and smiled at her.

  ‘That’s brilliant!’ Mum exclaimed. ‘Could we meet her? Would she talk to us?’

  We. Us. The family history was a joint project now, not only Roger’s.

  ‘Yes, she’s in a care home on the edge of Chelmsford.’ Roger waved a piece of paper with a handwritten address. ‘I looked her up in the family tree. She was married to the Thomas Wright who’s always puzzled me because he suddenly appears on the census with Richard and Amy but with no record of his birth – adopted, I assume. She’ll know about that.’

  ‘When can we go and see her?’

  ‘Soon as possible, I hope. It’s a busy week, from tomorrow … but I’ll phone and find out.’

  Adrian did not return. Grace knew from her mother that Sally had visited him in Maldon, but she was still going back to her parents’ cottage each evening, while Marcus stayed on at Marsh House. How would things be resolved? Grace had the sense that something was simmering, and that everyone was watching carefully. Her mother was anxious to support Sally however she could; but surely Marcus would never forgive his father for the attack on Flash, let alone trust him not to do it again.

  Marcus said nothing at all about his family situation, and was as withdrawn and unhappy as when Grace first saw him. He spent time with Jamie, more often alone with Flash. She wished she knew how to help. In secret she worked on her Flash drawings, beginning at last to feel pleased with her efforts.

  One morning she met Marcus heading over towards the farm, with Flash by his side. She noticed that he kept the dog on a lead now whenever they were anywhere near sheep, and was stricter with him than before.

  ‘Is he back, your dad?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘No. Mum wants me to go to the workshop to check an order from one of his customers, see if it’s ready to collect. Come with me?’

  ‘Yeah, course.’ As always when she had his attention, Grace felt a flush of pleasure; besides, she was curious to see where his father worked. As they approached the cattle grid Marcus spoke sharply to Flash and made him walk to heel, but still the sheep eyed him warily all the way through to the farmyard.

  Marcus unlocked the workshop and slid back the double doors. The spacious interior smelled of wood and sawdust and varnish; there was a workbench, open shelving and storage units tall enough for long pieces of wood. Everything was orderly, meticulously so: tools in crates and drawers, larger ones hanging on hooks. Several doors were finished, leaning against a wall.

  ‘This is what he was working on last week,’ Marcus said. ‘I was doing the varnishing.’ He showed Grace a pair of finished doors, panelled and stained a dark walnut brown. ‘It just needs the handles fitted, but I can do that. I know which ones.’ He ran a hand over the wood as if it were the shining coat of a horse or a dog, asking to be stroked.

  Grace had never given doors or handles the slightest attention, but looking around she saw evidence of skill and craftsmanship: the beauty of the wood, the richness of the dark stain, and even the handles, dark and heavy and traditional, curved to fit the hand, so that something as simple as opening a door would give pleasure. It surprised her; she had been half-expecting chaos and shoddiness, not this almost loving attention to detail and finish.

  ‘He’s a perfectionist,’ Marcus said when she remarked on it. ‘About his work, at any rate. He can’t bear anything that’s not quite right.’ There was a pause before he added what Grace was already thinking: ‘Especially himself.’

  Grace remembered something Jamie had started to tell her once: that Marcus thought he could never be good enough for his dad. She didn’t understand that. Wouldn’t most fathers be proud of a son like Marcus?

  ‘Do you want him to come back?’

  ‘Yes. No. I
don’t know.’ He looked away. ‘I want things back like they used to be, before.’

  She knew that feeling, all too well. It was as if there was a deep sorrow within him that answered something in her. Not knowing what to say, she could only express silent sympathy.

  Now that Marcus was staying at Marsh House, he had been persuaded by Charlie to take Sirius out for light exercise. Grace rode with him, preferring his company to Charlie’s constant demands and criticisms. Marcus said little, but seemed quite at ease on Sirius, more relaxed on horseback than at any other time. On their second ride, reaching a broad uphill track at the side of a field, he let Sirius surge forward into a fast controlled canter. Plum did her best to keep up, Grace leaning forward, easily in balance now as she thrilled to the speed and the thrum of hooves. When Marcus pulled up by the hedgerow at the top he turned to her, smiling broadly. Flash caught up, panting and excited, and they walked on, the horses side by side. Sirius was meant to be having only slow exercise, but the burst of speed and energy had been a release of tension that Grace sensed Marcus had needed.

  They returned to Marsh House to find Skye there with Jamie, brought out to see them by the clatter of hooves. ‘Ooh, don’t you two look cool! Wait – can you make them stand still?’ She produced her phone to take photographs. ‘One more. And another. Sit, Flash – I want you in it too. Are you on Instagram, Grace?’

  In spite of Skye’s friendliness and the lovely ride, Grace felt newly sad as she unsaddled Plum and brushed her down. She led the pony out to the orchard with an end-of-holiday feeling; these leisurely afternoons were running out so fast.

  ‘Oh, Plum. I’ll miss you.’ Grace offered a Polo mint, which she had discovered the pony loved. Plum’s whiskery nose tickled the palm of her hand as she took it, and crunched noisily. ‘Will you miss me?’

  In little more than a week she and Mum would be in London, and school would start, and all this would be pushed into the past: a summer holiday, soon obliterated by timetables and bells and homework, all the clamour of school life. Without Marie-Louise. She didn’t want to think about any of that.

  She cycled back, overtaken by Roger’s car as she rode up the Flambards drive. After working hard to get ready for tomorrow’s meeting, he and Mum had finished early and driven to Chelmsford to visit Mrs Duncan’s mother at the care home. Roger stopped, and Grace’s mother lowered the window on the passenger side.

  ‘Grace, come up to the Hayloft! Mrs Wright told us some amazing things.’

  ‘Oh, what?’

  ‘You can listen for yourself. We’ve made a recording.’

  Upstairs, Grace sensed their suppressed excitement. They all sat at the table, Mum with a notebook and pen ready.

  ‘I started to make notes while she was talking, but then it got too exciting – there was more than I could get, all at once.’

  ‘Here she is.’ Roger showed Grace a photo on his phone: a very old lady, white-haired in a pink cardigan, with eyes that seemed glazed over with a pearly sheen. ‘She’s frail, in a wheelchair, can’t do much for herself – but pin-sharp.’

  ‘And with a fantastic memory, which is brilliant for us,’ Mum said. ‘Listen to this.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  No Accident

  Roger touched the screen, and his own voice said, ‘So, Mrs Wright, you worked at Flambards for a good many years?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Same as my grandad before me,’ said a husky old-lady voice – slow, enunciating carefully, as if conscious of being recorded. ‘He was head groom at Flambards for years – Fowler, his name. I was a Fowler before I got married. I started just after my Thomas was killed – in the D-Day Landings, that was – and stayed on there till I retired. Mrs Christina was always good to me.’

  ‘And that’s Christina Russell you’re talking about?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I always called her – Mrs Christina. She’d been Wright for a couple of years, mind, when she was married to Dick, my father-in-law.’

  ‘Dick? So that was Richard Wright?’ asked Mum’s voice.

  ‘Yes, but everyone called him Dick. Anyhow, that didn’t last long, like lots of people said it wouldn’t from the start. Everyone round here thought Christina was a flighty piece, but she’d gone through a lot. And it was shocking the way Mr Mark died. So after three husbands she ended up living alone when she was still quite young.’

  ‘Shocking? What do you mean by—’ said Roger’s voice, but Mrs Wright talked on without pausing. Grace glanced up at the actual Roger, who put a finger to his lips and said, ‘Hang on! She comes to that, in a bit.’

  ‘Course, I lived out, in the village. Me and my Tom, we had the cottage next to the old forge. Then when he was killed I was left with the two kids. Just five and three they were, when they lost their dad. Like I said, Mrs Christina was always kind to me and the kids, used to give them Christmas presents, and a nice tip for me, and a bit more now and then. I think she felt a bit guilty – there was bad feeling between the Russells and the Wrights. Not her fault, at least not all of it, but there you are.’

  ‘She felt guilty? For what?’

  ‘Oh … we never talked about it so it was easy to forget. Now you most probably don’t know this – but my Tom was a Russell too, as well as a Wright.’

  Two voices in unison – Roger’s and Grace’s mother’s – said, ‘What?’

  ‘Oh yes. Dick took him in and brought him up as his son, but he wasn’t really. Anyone could see he was the spitting image of Mr Mark, more and more as he grew up.’ A throaty chuckle. ‘No surprise there. He was Mark’s son.’

  ‘Mark? Christina’s husband, Mark?’ said Mum’s voice, and Roger’s: ‘But how could—’

  ‘Well now. Dick’s sister, Violet, was my Tom’s mother, so Dick was actually his uncle. Violet was a maid up at Flambards, oh, before the first war, that was. Same time as Dick worked in the stables and my old grandad was head groom. Young Mark – a bit of a tearaway, he was, by all accounts, and handsome enough to turn any girl’s head – got Violet into trouble. She left and went to London, had the baby – my Tom, that was – and married someone else. But when Tom was still a small boy, he was brought back to Flambards to be near his Uncle Dick and the horses – always loved horses, he did. For a while he lived with Mrs Christina and Dick, while they were married, but then that came to an end and Christina married Mr Mark soon after. Well, even though Tom knew by then that Mark was his real father, he was much closer to his Uncle Dick, who he’d known all his life. And – to tell you the truth – he was a bit scared of Mark, with his temper, and I don’t blame him, from all I heard. So when Mark married Mrs Christina, Tom left Flambards and went back to his Uncle Dick.’

  ‘So – Dick brought up Mark’s son as his own?’ said Roger’s voice.

  ‘That’s right. So Tom went from living at Flambards to being a farm boy, not that he minded. Changed his name to Wright. Dick did get married again but he never had kids of his own, so Tom was as good as his son. I told you Dick was my father-in-law, but strictly speaking he was my uncle-in-law. Mr Mark was really my father-in-law, only I never saw him that way and I’m quite sure he never gave it a thought.’

  ‘My goodness!’ said Mum’s voice. ‘I think I need a diagram. Christina and all her husbands – it’s hard to keep up.’

  Roger paused the recording to tell Grace, ‘We’ll make one. But this solves the mystery of the Tom in Fergus’s letter we were wondering about. It was this same Tom who went to live with Richard Wright – I’d thought they were two different people. Wait for this next bit, though.’

  They all listened intently.

  ‘Oh, but you must know my great-grandson, mustn’t you?’ the voice said. ‘Adrian. Adrian Gregg. Served in the Army for a good few years. I don’t see him at all these days, but I heard he’s living in one of the Flambards cottages with his wife. You can see the Russell in him, and he’s got a temper to match, so they say. I don’t think he even knows. Some things are best forgotten.’ Again, the husky laugh.
‘Probably shouldn’t be telling you now, but if you’re doing a family tree you might as well get everything right.’

  ‘Adrian’s your son’s grandson?’

  ‘That’s right. Got a son of his own too. A teenager, by now.’

  ‘Marcus!’ said Mum’s voice. ‘Yes, we know him too.’

  Roger pressed pause and looked at Grace for a reaction; she stared back.

  ‘Adrian? And Marcus?’ she exclaimed. ‘So they’re Russells, like us? They’re relations?’

  ‘Yes,’ her mother said. ‘Descended from Mark. That makes them third or fourth cousins to you and me, or something like that. We all go back to the first William Russell, the hunting-mad one, the father of Mark and our Will.’

  ‘But – don’t they know that?’

  ‘No, it seems not,’ Roger said. ‘And wait – there’s more. I’ll go on right to the end now without stopping.’

  His recorded voice took over. ‘You said something about Mark – that it was shocking, the way he died. What did you mean by that?’

  There was a ruminative sigh, then: ‘I was only a baby at the time, course, but everyone in the village knew about his terrible accident. Only it wasn’t.’

  ‘Wasn’t an accident?’ said Mum’s voice.

  ‘No, no.’

  Grace caught her breath, for a moment imagining that Christina had murdered Mark; but surely not. I know Christina, she found herself thinking. She’d never do that.

  ‘Mrs Christina told me the truth of it later,’ the old lady went on. ‘Mr Mark, he’d been in the fighting over in France, and he was injured so bad he nearly died. They brought him back in a terrible state and he had to be nursed at home for months, the hospitals were so stretched. Internal injuries it was. And he was never the same, after. Had to rest, couldn’t eat proper food. It was a wonder he fathered another son, if you get my meaning. And for a strong, vigorous chap like he’d always been, it was a torment. He loved his riding and hunting and his horses – Mrs Christina did too, all her life – but he’d go out for a day’s hunting and it’d nearly finish him. He’d have to spend the next couple of days resting to get over it, and he couldn’t stand that, hated any kind of weakness. But he’d keep doing it, all the same, and paying the price. He’d always had a temper on him, like his father before him, old Russell. Mrs Christina told me she knew that when she married him.’