by Mavis Cheek
As they leave she turns and takes one final look at Anna but the portrait is hidden by a horseshoe crowd of interested spectators. That, at least, is something. A small legacy from her to the most remarkable Anna. And out they go.
Later, as they collect their coats from the cloakroom she looks at herself in the mirror – not a pretty sight – and the cherry red reflects on her cherry-red cheeks and cherry-red eye-whites. She steps back, grimaces and thinks yet again that if Mankind cannot take too much reality – she has just proved to herself that Womankind bloody well has to.
And does.
At which point Hilary emerges from her cubicle to find her mother vigorously washing her hands.
‘Do you want your hankie back?’ she asks and holds out the damp, creased, ball of a thing. Flora looks sadly at its scrumpled lace for a moment and then says brightly, above the handdryer’s roar. ‘No – you keep it. That’s fine.’
18
Three Queens United
My funeral, thinks Anna cheerfully, was a triumph. Mary, a Queen then and my friend, gave me pride of place to the right of the altar in Westminster Abbey. A vast, expensive shelf of marble it was, with the chamber below covered with carvings and ornate decoration and inlay and semi-precious stones. A tomb monument fit for a Queen. Mary arranged for a craftsman from Cleves to make the carvings but to her design and ‘In a place fit,’ she said, ‘for a noble Queen’. My horses and bearers were dressed in purple and gold and I had gold and purple hangings and rich velvets to hide my coffin which was set inside the tomb.
I lived and died a Catholic. I was buried in marvellous pomp with as much finery as at my marriage. And I was mourned. My Ladies – few enough by then since my great wealth had gone – wept, my menservants broke their staves and I was laid to rest – as I had lived in my adopted country – with love and admiration – and tears of genuine sorrow. How much I had seen – and how much I lived through – and made good – and survived. It was too soon for me to die – I was only forty and still enjoying dancing and gaming and music and living well – too well perhaps?I died at Chelsea (a sweet place, with flowers and good gardens and I loved it) in the month of July. I had made my will and I died a good death.
In my will I remembered both Mary and Elizabeth (poor Elizabeth for whom there was nothing to be done and who was under close guard for fear of uprisings and who could not be there at my end even had she asked it) and I am glad to say that the will was executed by Queen Mary in proper manner, including the second best ring bequeathed to Elizabeth. I am glad now that I remembered her as she remembered me, it seems. Even in death I could unite those two irreconcilable sisters in a good and peaceful act. All in all I had a good life, and a fine burial. And those who wish can see my place of rest in the Abbey, though it is no tomb of grandeur now, and those who wish can also see me to the life in Holbein’s true portraits. Despite what they have said of me his portrait and his miniature are – very lively. And in them I live on.
Once the gallery is closed Mary turns towards Elizabeth. This is not something she relishes, but speak she must. ‘I should,’ she says, ‘have allowed you to be at Aunt Anna’s funeral. I should have let you participate and have a role, and make a public sign of your mourning. That would have been fitting and I did not do it and for that I apologise to you both.’
Elizabeth looks amazed for a moment, as well she might. She is also lost for words. But she is Henry’s daughter and raises her chin, looks back at her sister and eventually manages to say, quite evenly, ‘Yes, so you should. But I accept it was a difficult time for you – you were unwell.’
‘No,’ says Mary. ‘Before God I cannot claim that as excuse. I was afraid of the people seeing you and loving you more than me. And I am ashamed of that now.’
Both women go back to their proper portrait poses but it has been said, and it has been accepted.
Then Anna looks towards Elizabeth. She says, ‘I am touched that you made me such noble memorials, Elizabeth. And that you remembered my swans.’
But then Mary says, in a voice softer than she has ever used to address her sister, ‘As am I. This has been a revelation, Elizabeth, a revelation. I did not think you had such good grace in you. It makes me happy to know it.’
Elizabeth bridles slightly but says evenly enough. ‘It was for Aunt Anna. And to thank her for her kindness to us both in those dark times of our youth.’
‘A little late,’ says Mary, in the way of elder sisters. ‘But a happy outcome from your wilful adversity.’
The bridling increases. There is a swirl of silk and a sliding of feet and Elizabeth, trembling slightly, resumes her correct position within the Ditchley. Feet firmly on Protestant England. She looks out again, eyes blazing, and Anna puts up a restraining hand. Elizabeth, about to speak, if not spit out her words – stops herself. When she does speak it is in a considered way, as a queen. ‘You, Mary, may be as happy as you choose. But the mettle was in me, always in me. My father’s daughter. And you were your vindictive mother’s.’
‘And you, Elizabeth, may have had the mettle of your father in you – but it was your mother who proved that in the last years of your life – you were yours.’
Elizabeth is no longer white. There are high spots of colour on her glistening cheeks. Her eyes blaze, but she says nothing. Anna looks at her calmly and still she says nothing. But Mary is now in full flight. ‘I was happy in my tomb in Peterborough so why, I would ask, did you take me from the quiet of my mother’s resting place, and my own, and bring me to London to be re-interred so near to you? Why set me in the Abbey that once so despised my mother and myself? Why, Elizabeth, did you put me into the very bed of the tomb with you so that we spend the rest of our days lying with each other when we never did so in life? And my mother alone again?’
Elizabeth, still looking into Anna’s calming eyes, says, ‘Because it seemed right.’
‘Or you were superstitious about your religious iniquities.’ Anna sighs. That is too much. Too much.
After this a terrible silence descends. Both portraits resume their places.
Anna’s restraining hand falls back into its pose of restful resignation. Oh those Tudors, she thinks. Oh those insufferable, proud, wonderfully passionate Tudors. But just for a moment they were reconciled. And that, thinks Anna warmly, is the best she can do. It always was.
19
Also Reconciled
Back in Hurcott Ducis and after several weeks of kicking several metaphorical cats, Flora has come to her senses. She decides that there is, indeed, one way of living for those who have beauty, and one way of living for those who have not, and that, on the whole, brains do not always seem to come into it for a woman – yet, if ever. The response to brains and plainness is, to say the least, still mixed, most certainly in this age of botox and celebrity.
Beautiful Dilly, as Venus-given right, still does extraordinarily embarrassing things up and down the village, and Ewan continues to mop them up. It is called true love, or it is called blind love, Flora sees, and it is not likely ever to be hers. Not with even the most ordinary of men, like Ewan, or the most extraordinary, like Edward. She will remain undiscovered.
On the other hand, there is much to be said for the peacefulness of it all, she supposes, and now that time has moved on and she no longer has to play the grieving widow, she can get on with what remains of her life with as much pleasure as she can make of it. Remembering Anna and her sports and her simple happinesses, Flora wonders if she shouldn’t build a tennis court on part of the paddock (if she can get permission – she knows a good solicitor, after all) and then at least she can play with Ewan in one way, if not in another. She is certainly not going to take up golf. That is an amenable step too far. But a tennis court is possible. It is early days in her new-found affection from Hilary – very early days. Right now a tennis court might be too much levity for her daughter to accept.
They are still in negotiations about Edward’s gravestone and Flora and Ewan have only just p
ersuaded Hilary that they cannot wrest Anna’s stone from its place and put it at the head of Edward’s grave. Flora has suggested that the description Great British Eccentric covered the man who was Edward. And Hilary might agree. ‘Great British Eccentric’ fits the bill. Perfectly. The village likes it, too. Anna will stay where she is best remembered as the – now famous – Hurcott Ducis stone. At least Flora has achieved a little fame, very little, and a particle of admiration for herself. And that must be compensation enough. Despite Hilary’s best efforts, much of the praise is given to Flora for all her research, though The History of Hurcott Ducis and Its Stone is largely attributed to Edward Chapman, naturally, and the lettering, embossed on the cover, is in the same Italianate script of Anna’s stone. It was the final surrender to keep Hilary happy. The stone will remain in the wall and has a glass shield over it and a dear little fence of wrought-iron railings surrounding it, thanks to The Players’ fundraising. Flora can walk over and see it at any time, and frequently does so.
And the little Pink Pike? Well, poor Pauline could not believe, simply could not believe, that she had failed to be invited to join the theatrical group – but so it was. She left the village a broken woman. Well, brokenish. But of course she may be in a village near you. And recovering fast.
After She Stoops to Conquer, which Flora avoided for some reason, most likely the title, she went to see the first fundraising production. They chose the The Voysey Inheritance by Harley Granville Barker, which was long and tedious in her opinion, but which looked wonderful with splendid, richly furnished sets and the women in fine – quite anachronistic frocks swirling about (Myra did not trip up once). Flora, sitting in the stalls, looked around before the curtain went up on the Voyseys with satisfaction – not a Little Pink Pike in sight.
What was in sight, however, as the curtain rose on a perfectly furnished Edwardian office, were Flora’s eyebrows. For now she knows why Lucy walked away with so much of her home and wardrobe – there is Edward’s old desk, there is her curved hatstand that someone has mended, and there – good grief, is her old wicker wastepaper basket. Later she gasps again to see Edward’s plus-fours on Ewan’s – quite shapely – legs. Lucy is their props person, it seems, having obviously proved herself exceptionally good at it. Sometimes there is an answer to life’s difficulties and sometimes there is not. This is a good one. But Flora does not offer Lucy her job back. She wouldn’t want it anyway – she is busy preparing the Dobsons’cottage for their imminent return. She will clean for them now, and good luck to her, thinks Flora. When Mary returns life will be as it always was.
Normal.
‘What you need,’ Rosie says, when she finally comes to visit her bereaved sister, ‘is a man in your life.’ Rosie has taken a good look about the village and says, finally, that there is only one man who comes anywhere near being possible for Flora. Giles Baldwin. Which makes Flora laugh so much that she spills a precious drop or two of Edward’s prized Margaux. Perhaps Rosie isn’t so clever after all, thinks Flora. But she keeps what she knows to herself.
‘Don’t laugh,’ says Rosie. ‘All you need is a little more time.’ She gives her sister a knowing wink which makes Flora giggle again. ‘See,’ says Rosie, ‘you’re beginning to get over it already. All you need is a little more courage, that’s all. A little more courage to have a go at things and we’ll make something out of you yet.’
‘Thank you, Rosie,’ says Flora, most amenably. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’
Some time later, in the name of courage, Flora hired a balloon trip for herself. The person accompanying her on the balloon trip was fully cognisant of balloon procedure and never once, as they rose up and down over hill and dale, was there any danger of Flora following her husband into oblivion. She shed a few tears for him, of course she did, and smiled occasionally to think of all his many foolishnesses. She was glad to do so, very glad. But it was time to sail on. When the balloon reached a particularly dense thicket of woodland below, Flora waited until the balloon expert’s back was turned, and threw something out of the basket. It went spiralling downwards rather prettily in the cool, blue air, its fluttering streamer crackling in the breeze.
Some weeks later a gamekeeper passing through Hopes Wood picked up all that remained of a video which was much pecked at by his perplexed pheasants. Being a tidy-minded chap he took it home with him and put it on the bonfire, for it was too spoiled to be viewed. Probably pornography, he thought regretfully, and watched it melt and burn. Probably pornography.
In Paris they lovingly unwrap the Holbein portrait and rehang her between the portraits of those two rather attractive sixteenth-century young men. Not a bad bit of positioning, she thinks amenably, for a dull-witted Flanders Mare. The attendant stands in front of her, his head on one side as if seeing her for the first time. ‘There’s been a lot of interest in you, just recently,’ he says, ‘so it’s good that you are back. In fact, there has been so much interest in you that there is talk – only talk at this stage mind – that you may even be cleaned now. Then we’ll see what you’re really like beneath those years of neglect.’
Acknowledgements
There are always many kind and helpful people involved in the writing and editing of a book but especial thanks and acknowledgements must be made to those who added the light to the dimness of the daily routine of getting it done.
They are Jane Roberts who gave up her time to show me the Holbeins at Windsor Castle Library which was an exhilarating and inspirational experience. Carol Austin, also at Windsor, who then showed me some of the precious papers and artefacts kept there. Angela Scholar who also gave up her time to show me the Anna of Cleves portrait by Barthel Bruyn in St John’s College, Oxford, which was both very kind of her and extremely helpful. Lisa Kopper of Acton Court who showed me that building’s original Tudor wing and helped me get a sense of period architectural space. And dear John Guinness who kindly threw open his private archive for me and whose Norfolk home has better chimneys than Hampton Court’s and echoes the sound of Tudor footsteps if you listen hard enough.
Of the many helpful books consulted I must single out Mary Saaler’s Anne of Cleves (The Rubicon Press) which was marvellously detailed and a great guide for this book. Many, many thanks to her.
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