‘Besides,’ she adds, thinking of the letter she’d found in Charles’s desk drawer, ‘I have something else that I think might belong to you – something from Lillian that you should have received years ago. Promise me that you’ll come? Bring your sister, your nieces, Lucy. You’re all welcome.’
Jack doesn’t say anything and Maggie waits, fearful that he will say no. She has no idea what even the thought of returning to Cloudesley might stir up for this man; but she knows that she is asking a lot of him.
‘I always felt that I left part of myself in that house,’ he says, softly.
Maggie holds her breath and after another long moment he nods and wipes his eyes. ‘It would be an honour.’
Chapter 32
Maggie approaches the room along the west-wing corridor, the sound of clinking glasses, conversation and laughter bouncing off the wood panelling and drawing her on. She is wearing one of Lillian’s dresses, a simple cream silk shift that she pulled from her wardrobe. It seems fitting somehow, and fitting too that they should be opening the house to the public for the first time on May Day, given the history of Charles’s infamous annual ball.
Frankly, she’s relieved they are ready. A team of fine-art specialists has been working long hours over the last four months to clean, stabilise and retouch the murals. She had silently wondered if they would pull it off, but they had performed a miracle. The room is a phoenix, risen from ashes, dazzlingly beautiful.
She’d walked Jack Fincher privately through the room earlier in the day, aware that it might be an overwhelming and emotional experience for him after all these years. She knows that the look on his face as she opened the door for him that morning is something she will never forget. ‘What do you think?’ she’d asked. ‘Is it how you remember?’
He’d nodded, a single tear on his cheek catching in the sunlight falling through the restored glass dome in the ceiling and refracting off the painted peacock eyes. ‘It always did get the best light in the morning.’
She’d given him a little time to wander the room and reacquaint himself with his work, before joining him over by the restored window seat.
‘We thought we’d keep that one section of fire damage on the wall there. Just for now. It feels important, like part of the story of the room, somehow. But if you prefer, we could replicate the original. We have the sketchbook you left here all those years ago, with all your ideas drawn out, so we think we can accurately recreate it, if you didn’t mind another artist working on the room at some point in the future?’
Jack had looked out of the window. ‘You still have peacocks,’ he’d said.
Maggie had followed his gaze to where two males strutted through the arboretum, their extravagant tail feathers trailing through the recently mown grass. ‘Actually, no. We had a couple brought in especially for the launch. It seemed only right. But they look quite at home, don’t they? Look at them preening and posing. Perhaps we’ll have to get some of our own.’
‘I wonder what Charles would make of all this?’ Jack had mused, looking back around the room.
‘I hope he’d be pleased. After all, wasn’t it his original intention to create something for the public? A “jewellery box of a room”, you said when we last met. I get the impression he was a bit of a show-off himself.’
Jack had smiled. ‘Has there been much interest? Do you expect many people to attend this afternoon?’
Maggie couldn’t help her laugh. ‘Mr Fincher, we’ve been turning them away in droves. Today’s launch is the hottest ticket in town.’
‘The hottest ticket in Cloud Green? You do surprise me,’ he’d said, a little drily.
Maggie had given him a sideways look. ‘Talented and feisty. I can see why Lillian liked you.’
She hadn’t been exaggerating. Since they had announced their find in the west wing, the interest from the art world had been overwhelming. The National Trust had invited both the local and national press to the launch and Maggie had opened up the invitations to the village as well, wanting to keep as many locals as possible on side and invested in the changes at Cloudesley. So far, she’s been thrilled that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. The room has been billed by many as an exquisite lost treasure, brought back to life.
It isn’t just the room, either. The whole west wing has been restored and reopened, now the site of an exhibition about the house and Jack Fincher’s hidden commission. The Tate gallery had very kindly agreed to loan their Fincher paintings, which now make up an extra-special part of the display. In addition, glass cabinets dotted throughout the room reveal Jack’s original box of paints and brushes found in the barn, the techniques he adopted to paint on such a grand scale, as well as some of his original sketches – everything from his pencil drawings of feathers and leaves, right down to a simple image of a jug of sweet peas Maggie had found while clearing out Lillian’s dressing-table drawers, the words ‘Get well soon’ written in one corner.
When he’d seen enough, she had taken Jack into the drawing room to rest, helping him to Lillian’s armchair. ‘I’m sorry. It must be overwhelming.’
‘A little, but I’m glad to be here.’
‘I mentioned when we met at the Tate that I had something for you.’ She had moved across to Lillian’s writing desk in the window and reached inside for the envelope she’d placed there earlier that morning. ‘I’ve had this for a while now. I found it in my grandfather’s desk, though I believe it belongs to you.’ She’d held out Lillian’s letter and Jack had reached up and clasped it in his damaged hands. ‘Would you like me to give you a moment?’
Jack had looked down at the folded paper. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll bring you some tea.’ And she had left him on his own, sitting in a pale square of sunshine.
Stepping into the painted room now, scanning the throng of guests milling in the space, champagne flutes in hand, many of them gazing up at the ceiling, admiring the extraordinary painted murals, she can’t help smiling. She wonders if this is how Cloudesley used to feel, back in the day, when her grandfather would open the house for one of his infamous parties. Through a gap in the crowd she spots Jack sitting on the restored window seat, a plate of cucumber sandwiches resting on his lap and Will beside him, the two men chatting intently.
The house is filled with noise and laughter. There are so many admirers – many of whom want to congratulate her on the opening’s success. She accepts their greetings and praise while steadily making her way across to the window.
‘What are you two talking about?’ she asks, finally reaching Will and Jack.
Jack smiles up at her. ‘Nothing too serious. Life. Love.’
‘I see, just a little small talk, then.’
‘This nice young man was asking if I had any wisdom to share. He seems to think my advanced years might give me some sort of advantage over the rest of you.’ Jack laughs, a warm, natural laugh, and Will looks down at his lap, a small smile playing on his face.
‘And do you?’ asks Maggie.
‘All I can tell you both is that life passes in the blink of an eye. It’s a cliché – but it’s true. I think we owe it to ourselves, and each other, to go after what we want – what we love. Who we love. We won’t always get it right, but I believe it’s better to live a life of passion and make a few mistakes along the way than to suffer a lifetime of regret.’
Maggie studies Jack for a moment. She thinks of the love letter she passed to him earlier that morning. She glances across to Will again, but he is still staring down at his hands.
‘But what if loving someone means hurting others?’ he asks quietly.
Jack shrugs. ‘True, passionate, life-altering love is rare. When you find it, you must fight for it. If this tired old heart of mine has anything of any value to share, it’s probably that,’ he says, with a matter-of-fact smack of his lips.
Will looks up at Maggie and throws her a sheepish smile, but before she can reply, Jane is at her side, gently touching her arm. ‘
Maggie, love,’ she says, looking worried, ‘I’m afraid we need you.’
Albie is sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. Two employees from the catering company stand at the sink, rinsing and drying champagne flutes, eyeing her father awkwardly. ‘Would you mind giving us a few minutes?’ she asks, waiting as they nod and discreetly disappear.
Albie looks up at her voice. She notices for the first time what a terrible state he is in, his clothes rumpled and his eyes bloodshot. He looks like hell. ‘I didn’t know about Lillian,’ he says, tears welling in his eyes. ‘I didn’t know.’
She joins him at the table. ‘I’m so sorry, Albie. I tried to get in touch with you but I had no idea where you were.’ She covers his hand with her own.
‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’ He slumps further down in the chair. ‘I thought we had more time. All these years when I could have been there for her . . . but I couldn’t do it.’
Maggie sighs. She doesn’t know how to console him.
‘I tried, but it was always too hard to face her, to stay close, knowing what I had done. It was the guilt. It festered inside me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Maggie. ‘What had you done?’
Albie rubs his face with his hands. He looks even worse close up. Maggie wonders where he’s been all these months. Something tells her it’s nowhere good.
‘She asked me to find her something beautiful.’
‘Who did?’
‘Lillian.’
‘Right.’ Maggie isn’t following. She decides it might be best just to let him ramble.
‘And I did. I found a flint. Arrow-shaped with a flame of orange at its core. It was perfect.’
She is still completely lost, but she nods encouragingly.
‘I was going to take it to her in her room, but then I saw her in the gardens, admiring the roses. She turned and began to walk towards the meadow. I followed. I was so excited to show it to her. I called out, but she didn’t hear. She didn’t stop. She just kept going, through the meadow and on into the woods, walking so fast, I thought I’d lost her.’
Maggie frowns. She doesn’t know what Albie is talking about, but she senses she shouldn’t interrupt.
‘And then I came upon them. They were standing among the trees.’ Albie swallows. ‘At first I thought they were fighting. I thought he was hurting her and I was about to step forward and tell him to get his hands off her . . . but then I saw that I was wrong. They weren’t fighting. They were kissing.’ Albie wrings his hands. ‘I sat there for ages after they’d gone. I sat on a tree trunk in a daze. I saw a pile of cigarette butts – too many for just one day – and I realised that it couldn’t have been the first time they had met in the woods like that. It must have been going on for ages, perhaps all summer. And I knew then that he was going to take Lillian away. I knew he was going to steal the one good thing in my life.’
‘You mean Jack?’
Albie can’t look at her, but he nods. ‘It was only as I stood to leave that I saw it. It was lying on the ground near the tree trunk: his lighter, staring up at me. Boldness be my friend, it said.’ He lets out a bitter laugh. ‘It seemed like a sign.’
Maggie stares at her father, sitting at the kitchen table so shrunken in on himself, and understanding finally dawns. ‘You had the lighter. You set the fire.’
‘I couldn’t let him take her away from us.’ Albie leans back in the chair, defeat written on his face. ‘It was all there in the room. A few paint-covered rags. A little turpentine. There was a sheet of paper on the table. I was going to use that too but then I saw Lillian’s handwriting. It was a love letter – to him. I stuffed it in my pocket – I wanted to make sure that he would never have it – and I put a flame to the rags and threw them into a corner.’ Albie rubs his hand over his face. ‘The fire took so quickly – too quickly. I panicked. I left the room, locking it from the outside, I think just on sheer instinct, so no one would see what I had done, and then I ran into the garden.’
Maggie doesn’t interrupt. She is both spellbound and horrified by Albie’s confession.
‘I was going to run away. I knew the whole house would go up if the fire wasn’t put out.’
‘What happened?’
‘Bentham was outside, with the dog. Monty was going crazy, trying to pull him on his lead round towards the arboretum. Bentham saw me and he must have known from my face that something was terribly wrong.
‘He came and shook me out of my panic and I told him – I told him I thought there was a fire in the nursery. I dragged him round to the outside window of the turret room and the dog was still going crazy as we peered through.’ Albie’s face is ashen with the memory. ‘But it was then that we heard her. Calling for help, from inside the painted room. And it was then that I knew I had done the most terrible thing of all.’
Albie puts his head in his hands. ‘I didn’t know she was in there. I never saw her.’
Maggie reaches out and squeezes Albie’s arm. She can see from his tortured look that he is spilling long-held secrets he has never told a soul before.
‘It was Jack who saved her. He broke down the door and pulled her out of that burning room with his own bare hands. And it was Bentham who saved the house. He smashed the window and put out the fire with the pump – him and then Blackmore, the gardener, who had heard the racket and came to help. Everyone in the house, Mrs Hill, Sarah, my father. They all came and helped, using anything they could to carry water from the fountain. And I just stood there, useless . . . doing nothing. Watching. Paralysed by fear and guilt.’
Maggie squeezes Albie’s hand again. She tries to think of something comforting to say. ‘You were just a child.’
Albie shakes his head, miserably. ‘I got my wish. The artist left and Lillian stayed.’
Maggie’s mind has caught on a detail from Albie’s story. ‘Lillian’s letter. What did you do with it?’
Albie’s eyes are bloodshot when he looks up at her. ‘I left it on your grandfather’s desk. I wanted him to know. I thought he might . . . he might change if he understood how close he had come to losing her.’
Maggie nods. It makes sense: the letter she’d found jammed at the back of Charles’s desk, thrust there by her angry grandfather. It must have remained there, forgotten, for all those years, until she’d come upon it by chance.
‘But Father didn’t change. He held Lillian like a prisoner, dangling Helena’s care like a prize she had to earn, right up until the day of his stroke.’
‘And you never told Lillian the truth?’
Albie shakes his head. ‘She never knew. She thought it was Charles.’ He looks up at Maggie, the anguish clear on his face. ‘I tried so hard to be a good son to her, but I couldn’t bear to see her sadness – to know what I had stolen from her. I’d come to visit with the very best intentions, but the guilt always got the better of me. It always drove me away, eventually. Over the years, it became easier to stay away than face what I had done to her. I couldn’t bear to think about the happiness I had stolen from her.’
Maggie stares at Albie and understands, for the first time, how tortured her father is. What she had thought of as careless indifference to Lillian and the problems of Cloudesley, she now sees as something altogether different. Her father has a channel of guilt and pain running like a rich seam through his veins. ‘Oh, Dad,’ she says, squeezing his hand. Maggie is at a loss for words. ‘What a terrible thing to live with.’
Albie looks up at her, his eyes swimming with tears. ‘Do you think she would have forgiven me, if I’d ever had the courage to tell her?’
Maggie sighs. ‘I don’t know. I’d like to think so. You were just a kid.’ But then she thinks about the painted room. And she thinks about Jack’s thwarted career. She thinks of an intense love affair cut short and she knows she can’t be certain what Lillian would have felt and thought, had she known the truth. ‘It’s done now,’ she says. ‘Lillian isn’t here to forgive you. But I think it’s probably time that
you tried to forgive yourself.’
Albie doesn’t say anything else and they sit in silence, the far-off sounds of the party echoing down the long corridor towards them.
‘I read about the room,’ Albie says after a long time. ‘It’s amazing what you’re doing here.’
‘Thank you.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Would you like to see it?’ Albie looks at her, a little boy’s fear written on his face. ‘I don’t know if you could face it, but Jack Fincher is here, too. He came for the opening.’
Albie looks away from her, down into his lap.
‘You’re right that you can’t apologise to Lillian,’ she adds gently, ‘but perhaps you could find some peace in talking to Jack?’
Albie looks up at her and then nods. ‘You’re very like her, you know.’
Maggie gives a small smile. ‘Thank you.’
Maggie watches nervously from the door as Albie approaches Jack. She sees the way her father walks across the room, slowly, cautiously, his eyes scanning the painted walls, his gaze taking in the extravagant, jewelled feathers spread across the ceiling. As he reaches the window seat, he hesitates. She sees Jack glance up, then double-take at the sight of Albie. Albie says something, then holds out his hand. A soft smile breaks across Jack’s face. Albie clasps the older man’s ruined hand in his own, then settles on the window seat beside Jack. Albie turns to the older man and bows his head as he begins to speak.
Turning away from the scene, she finds Will waiting for her. ‘Do you have a minute?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He leads her out onto the terrace where they move to the far end, away from the milling crowds of guests. Maggie leans against the balustrade and looks up at the house towering before her. ‘It’s gone all right, hasn’t it?’
‘It’s gone brilliantly.’
‘I don’t think I could have done any of this without you.’
‘Yes, you could.’
She shakes her head.
Will shifts his weight from foot to foot, looking suddenly uncomfortable. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. The job I accepted off Lillian, well, it doesn’t really exist anymore, does it?’
The Peacock Summer Page 34