The Peacock Summer

by Hannah Richell

  Lillian nods and tries to smile. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Bloody awful.’

  ‘Of course you are. Your poor legs,’ adds Joan, glancing down at the bandages. ‘Does it hurt terribly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Joan’s words suddenly chime in Lillian’s foggy head. ‘You’re leaving?’ she asks, trying to adjust herself on the mattress, trying to ease the growing pain in her legs.

  Joan nods, looking a little sheepish. ‘Gerald’s been offered a posting to America. I wasn’t keen at first but when he said it was California . . . well . . .’ She smiles. ‘Imagine the mischief I can get up to in LA! I’ll write to you with all the gossip. But I’m sorry, darling. It’s just the most awful timing.’

  Lillian tries to smile but all she can see is another void opening up in her already barren life. ‘Of course you must go. It will be a wonderful adventure.’

  ‘You had such a lucky escape,’ continues Joan, gazing back down at Lillian’s legs. ‘They say it could have been so much worse. That poor, poor man.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That lovely artist.’ Joan nods, her eyes brimming with tears.

  Lillian stares at her friend, uncomprehending. ‘Jack?’

  Joan bites her lip and nods.

  ‘But Charles said—’

  ‘He helped to pull you out, did you know? What a brave thing to do.’

  Lillian stares at her, cold fingers wrapping tightly round her heart. ‘He was in the room?’

  Joan nods slowly and Lillian senses something dreadful in her friend’s eyes. ‘What is it? What happened to him?’

  Joan presses a hand to her mouth. ‘Didn’t Charles say?’

  Lillian shakes her head.

  ‘Oh, my dear. It’s his hands. I overheard a nurse saying they’re completely ruined. He suffered terrible burns when he pulled you out of the room. The poor man will likely never paint again.’

  Lillian stares at Joan. ‘His hands?’

  Joan nods, a tear spilling from her eye and landing on the bag in her lap.

  She sniffs. ‘Oh, perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything?’

  Lillian rests her head back on the pillows, her eyes gazing up at the blank white ceiling overhead. The pain in her legs rising through her body like fire.

  Joan squeezes her hand. ‘Don’t cry, darling. Shall I call the nurse? You look like you’re in terrible pain. Oh, thank goodness. Nurse! I say. Nurse!’

  Lillian tunes out all sound and motion around her bed as a nurse stands beside her, tapping a needle before bending to inject the clear liquid into a vein on her arm. Jack – her lovely, talented Jack – will never paint again and it is all her fault. The morphine flows through her vein and Lillian allows it to do its work, welcoming the numb abyss that swallows her up.

  Chapter 29

  The wheelchair has been parked at an angle in the shade of a tall plane tree. Lillian sits slumped in it, a blanket spread across her lap. Maggie spots her from up on the terrace and feels a flicker of annoyance. Will has taken her right down to the edge of the retaining wall. What if she gets tired or cold? What if she wants to come back up to the house? And where is he, anyway?

  She looks around, growing increasingly worried, until she sees his head pop up over the edge of the wall, like a rabbit emerging from a burrow, just a few metres from where Lillian sits. A spade is thrown up over the ledge, followed by several large pieces of stone. He says something to Lillian and Maggie watches her grandmother acknowledge him with a raise of her hand, before he is gone again, ducking down behind the wall. Maggie lets out a long sigh. She knows she needs to talk to him. She can’t let what happened at his studio the other night hang over them forever.

  She joins them a little later, rolling out a picnic blanket beside Lillian’s chair and pulling a Thermos of tea and some of Jane’s walnut cake from a Tupperware box. She is careful not to disturb Lillian, who is now dozing, her chin resting on her chest, hands folded loosely in her lap. In the shade of the tree, Lillian’s face looks as translucent as a sheet of crumpled tracing paper. Maggie studies her for a moment, then picks up the stick of charcoal she has brought with her and begins to sketch the outline of Lillian onto a page in her sketch pad. While she draws, the leaves overhead move and rustle in the breeze, accompanying the rhythmic sound of Will hammering stones into the wall.

  She tries to push her tasks for the afternoon out of her thoughts. She tries not to think of the pile of marketing brochures for drab-looking care homes lying on her grandfather’s desk awaiting her attention. Or what Harry will say when she calls him to ask if the Hamilton Consortium might still be interested in negotiating on the house and land. She concentrates instead on the smooth path of her charcoal moving over white paper.

  ‘We saved one once.’

  Lillian’s voice breaks through Maggie’s reverie. She puts down the pencil. ‘Hello. I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Just resting.’

  ‘What did you save?’

  ‘Up there,’ Lillian says, nodding towards the sky.

  Maggie shields her eyes with her hands and sees a dark shadow hovering against the blue. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A sparrowhawk.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘We saved one once,’ she says again. ‘It crashed into a window. We carried it into the woods, convinced it was dead, but moments later it was up, hopping about; then it just took off through the trees.’ Lillian smiles. ‘A tiny miracle.’

  Maggie looks across to her grandmother and notices how her face is transformed by the memory; a sudden burst of animation, as if the echoes of the young woman she once was hover over her again.

  ‘Maybe this is a descendant, returned to say “thank you”?’

  Lillian smiles again. ‘Far more likely he has his beady eyes trained on a field mouse in the meadow.’

  They watch the bird for a while, gliding in the thermals. ‘It’s funny. Granddad never struck me as much of a conservationist,’ says Maggie. ‘You know, what with his shooting and hunting and all those stuffed animals everywhere.’

  ‘Oh. Not Charles,’ says Lillian with a small sigh, as if Maggie were a very foolish girl indeed. ‘Jack.’

  ‘Jack?’ Maggie frowns. ‘Who’s Jack?’

  Lillian smiles and looks out towards the woods. ‘I went to find him. Just the once, a few years after Charles’s stroke. He was feeding the ducks with his wife and daughters.’ Her smile falters a little. ‘Sweet little things they were. All rosy cheeks and curls.’

  Maggie is still puzzled. ‘I’m not following.’

  ‘I couldn’t face him in the end, knowing what I’d done to him. But I was glad to see that life had been kind to him in other ways.’

  ‘Gran, who is Jack?’

  But Lillian either hasn’t heard or doesn’t want to answer. She turns her face towards the sun and closes her eyes once more. ‘Life was kind to me, too,’ she murmurs, her eyes still closed. ‘It brought me you.’

  Maggie doesn’t know if she is still talking of the mysterious ‘Jack’. Another one of Lillian’s addled moments. Maggie pats Lillian’s hand and adjusts the blanket over her legs.

  ‘I’m glad to see you’re drawing again,’ Lillian says, her eyes still closed.

  ‘It’s early days,’ says Maggie, studying her rough sketch of Lillian through critical eyes.

  ‘He’s a hard worker, your Will,’ Lillian says quietly, after another long silence.

  ‘He’s not my Will,’ says Maggie, and she waits for her grandmother’s response, before realising that her breathing has slowed and she has fallen asleep once more.

  She sits cross-legged on the grass beside Lillian, running her fingers through the soft green blades, picking the last of the daisies and threading them into a chain on her lap. Not her Will. Saying the words out loud is painful, but it’s the truth. She has to let him go. She can’t keep up the fantasy that one day they will be together. She blew that
chance a long time ago and it will be far easier on all of them if she can accept it.

  He appears again, hoisting himself up over the edge of the dry stone wall, and, seeing her sitting beneath the tree, nods at her in greeting. She pours him a cup of tea from the Thermos and carries it over to him. ‘A peace offering?’

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, lifting his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face before taking the cup from her hands.

  Maggie shrugs. ‘Thank you for repairing the wall.’

  ‘If I hadn’t done it, you’d have had some of the farmer’s more friendly livestock marauding through your grandmother’s gardens.’ They share a smile at the thought of a herd of cattle grazing the lawns of Cloudesley.

  ‘I suppose that would be one way to keep the grass under control.’ Maggie feels the moment of levity fall away. It doesn’t matter how many stones they put back into place, she isn’t going to be able to save this place for Lillian.

  ‘How was your head the other morning?’ he asks, not quite meeting her eye.

  ‘Dreadful. I’m sorry for bringing my drama to your doorstep. I won’t let it happen again. I promise.’

  His gaze settles on her face and he seems to study her for a long moment before nodding. ‘OK.’

  ‘Do you want some help?’ she asks, eyeing the pile of rocks at his feet.

  ‘Sure,’ he says, throwing back the last of his tea. ‘I’m almost done but you can help me with the last stones.’

  She takes the hand he offers and jumps down into the meadow where she spends the next half an hour in surprisingly satisfying activity, passing the stones to Will for him to fit into the wall.

  ‘Great,’ he says, standing back to survey their work when the last rock is in place. ‘Now I just have to fix the gate down by the lane and we’re good to go.’

  Maggie nods. She hasn’t yet broken the news to Will that all his hard work could be in vain, if Todd Hamilton gets his hands on the estate. She turns to look out over the meadow. ‘The trees are just starting to turn,’ she says, noticing the copper colour creeping across the green foliage. A gust of wind moves across the meadow, combing the long grass like fingers moving through hair. ‘I should take Gran back to the house. I don’t want her to catch a chill.’ She looks across to where Lillian is seated beneath the tree, still asleep but slumped forward again, her chin resting at an awkward angle on her chest.

  ‘I’d be happy to speak to Joe about moving his livestock next week?’ Will is making the offer as the first flutter of unease comes over her. Without replying, she turns and pulls herself up over the retaining wall, heading for the tree.

  ‘Maggie? What is it?’

  But she doesn’t stop, not until she is kneeling at Lillian’s feet, reaching for her hand.

  ‘Gran?’ she says. ‘Can you hear me?’

  A gust of wind catches the pages of Maggie’s sketchbook where it lies forgotten on the blanket, making them flutter and stir; but Lillian doesn’t move. Her grandmother’s hand, resting in her own, feels stiff and her skin strangely cold. ‘Gran?’ she says again, even though as she does, she understands that Lillian can’t answer.

  Will moves alongside her and crouches down. He reaches for Lillian’s other hand and feels for a pulse in her wrist.

  Maggie tries to take a breath but finds her lungs have turned to stone. She already knows what Will is going to say when he turns to her.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  A terrible, empty ache opens up inside her. A hard lump rises in her throat. Not yet, she wants to cry. Not now.

  Will stands and opens his arms to Maggie. She leans in, resting her head against his shoulder, gazing out across the meadow where the wind still moves across the grass and plays in the trees beyond. Higher up, above the treetops, she sees the sparrowhawk still wheeling on the breeze. It soars on the thermals, performing several slow turns, before heading away towards the distant spire of the church. She watches it, a distant speck of black against the blue, until it vanishes completely from view.

  Chapter 30

  The fine weather breaks on the day of Lillian’s funeral, the late Indian summer departing in a rush of grey storm clouds and cold drizzle. Maggie sits on a hard pew at the front of the village church, Lillian’s casket resting on a plinth before her. It’s hard to imagine her grandmother lying stiff and cold inside the wooden box. It’s hard to believe that the woman she has loved all these years – the woman who helped to raise her, the mother she never had – has gone. Maggie knows she hasn’t resolved in her head or her heart that she will never see her again. She is too numb.

  Seated somewhere behind her are Will and Gus, Harry Granger, and a handful of stalwarts from the village. There is no sign of Albie, though she has turned to check several times throughout the service, hopeful he is just running late. She’s done all she can to try to track him down and pass on the news of Lillian’s death, leaving messages at various hostels and with odd friends he has collected over the years. But she’s had no word since Lillian’s passing, and sitting there at the front of the chapel, she has never felt so alone. What would Lillian tell her? What words of advice would she have for her in this moment? She can’t seem to conjure her – not even her voice.

  After the service, Maggie stands outside under an umbrella and accepts handshakes and condolences from the few who have attended. Gus gives her a stiff hug. ‘I wanted to come, but I’m afraid I have to run straight back for a meeting.’

  She nods. ‘She would have appreciated you being here. Thank you.’

  Will studies Maggie. ‘How are you holding up?’

  She nods. ‘OK.’ She clears her throat. ‘I’m sorry to ask, but could you come back to the house with me after this?’

  Will looks a little uncomfortable, glancing at Gus, who turns away, his jaw clenched. ‘I’m not sure that’s—’

  ‘It’s Gran’s lawyer,’ she says, cutting through the awkward moment. ‘He’s going to read the will and he’s specifically asked that you be there.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, looking surprised. ‘Yes, OK.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She glances across the graveyard at Gus retreating, hunch-shouldered, through the rain. ‘It was good of him to come.’

  Back at the house, Jane makes a large pot of tea and unwraps the plates of sandwiches she made earlier that morning. Maggie, needing something stronger, opens a bottle of wine before they all gather in Charles’s study, sitting cramped around her grandfather’s desk.

  Harry reads the will. The last few shares Lillian held in the business, which Maggie knows are all but worthless, are bequeathed to Albie, along with several of Charles’s most valuable pieces of Chinese porcelain. Maggie isn’t sure she knows the pieces. Perhaps Albie has taken them already, sold them off. Serves him right, she thinks.

  Jane is given a large silver platter and a pearl choker that Maggie knows is worth a small fortune. There is a small bequest for Mr Blackmore, the former gardener of the estate, and a rather strange note for Will: ‘Look in the hay barn on the edge of the estate. You’ll find Charles’s last remaining sports car hidden under a tarpaulin – an Aston Martin he couldn’t bear to sell. If you can get it going again it’s yours to enjoy.’

  Harry had looked up from the will with a raised eyebrow. ‘It’s a little unconventional, I know, but Lillian thought you might appreciate the gesture.’

  Will is smiling. ‘God love her.’

  Finally, Harry tells Maggie that she is to inherit the house and the estate with instructions to do whatever she thinks is best – and apologies for the mess she finds it in. Maggie glances across and sees Will nodding in approval. She feels numb. Cloudesley is hers – for now.

  ‘Oh, and there’s this one last thing.’ Harry reaches for a wooden box next to his papers. ‘In Lillian’s own words, Maggie, she says, “I can’t give you the house without also giving you the key.”’ He pushes the box towards her. ‘Your grandmother says,’ he looks back down at the papers in his hands, finding his place, ‘“I hope you�
�ll understand why I kept it to myself all this time.”’ He looks up from the paper again and gives her a look that shows he is as baffled as she is.

  Maggie reaches for the box and lifts the lid. Inside is a large brass key tied to a piece of green silk. Maggie stares at it for a moment, confused. ‘The west wing,’ she says suddenly, understanding coming in a rush. She turns to look at Will again, a sense of trepidation rising.

  He shrugs. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘Come with me?’

  Will holds the tapestry in the entrance hall to one side as Maggie tries the key in the locked door. It turns smoothly. Maggie shares a quick glance with Will before turning the handle and pushing open the door. A corridor looms ahead of her, cloaked in darkness, a musty scent of dust and ash drifting towards her on a draught.

  They walk the corridor, heading for the faintest splinter of light falling from an open door at the far end, grit crunching underfoot. ‘In here?’ Maggie asks.

  ‘I guess so,’ says Will.

  She pushes on the door and steps into the room.

  The interior is cast almost in darkness, only a glimmer of daylight filtering through a grime-streaked glass dome high above their heads. Will tries the light switch but it doesn’t work, yet as Maggie looks up, tracing the source of daylight, she sees a faded map of something intriguing fanning out across the ceiling. Here and there, through the gloom, traces of gold and blue and green shimmer seductively.

  ‘Do you smell that?’ asks Will.

  ‘Yes. Fire.’

  She puts a finger to the nearest wall and it comes away dirt-streaked and sooty, but where she has touched, a burst of emerald green appears.

  ‘Look,’ says Will, pointing to the blackened shell of a bay window. ‘This part’s been completely destroyed.’ His shoes crunch on broken glass and fragments of blackened timber.