Mr Kendall chuckles. ‘Strange isn’t it, Ms Wood, but also, in a way, fitting. All along, you’ve been the one who’s shown the most interest in Rosemont Hall. You’re the best person to preserve what we know of its history. At least that’s what Jack said when I told him his grandmother didn’t want the letters. He’s entrusted them to you.’
I sit up straight in the deep, leather chair. ‘I’m sure that’s very noble. But I can’t take them. You once told me that the house was less important than the people who live in it. The others are dead, but Mrs Bradford is still alive. After all, if I was her…’ and suddenly it strikes me how alike we are – both loving men who were unattainable to us, and both loving Rosemont Hall. ‘I’d want to know the truth.’
Mr Kendall shrugs. ‘As far as the estate is concerned, the letters passed to Jack when Mrs Bradford didn’t want them, and he said to give them to you. What you do next is up to you.’
I stand up. ‘Thank you for clarifying that, Mr Kendall. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘It’s been a pleasure.’ He stands up and we shake hands.
‘Yes it has.’
Just as I’m at the door, he stops me. ‘Oh, and Ms Wood, one more thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘The final probate decree is supposed to come in this week. Please can you let Mr Bowen-Knowles know that the sale of Rosemont Hall should be able to complete immediately after?’
‘Of course. We’ll have our part of the paperwork ready.’ I swallow hard.
As I leave Mr Kendall’s office and walk back to mine I have a strange sense of anticipation and foreboding, like somewhere, a wave is building up and about to crash over my head. I text Jack saying that I’ve read the letters, and can he please ring me. At the very least, I want to keep him informed (and remind him that I haven’t stopped thinking about him). I get an almost immediate reply: ‘Will phone later. Love, Jack.’ I reread the last two words about ten times. Then I do a quick directory search on my phone. For the ‘Cup o’ Comfort’ tea room in Little Botheringford.
- 41 -
The little bell on the door jingles as I enter. The teashop has a cosy glow about it, and the gas fire is on. There’s a heady smell of baking and coffee, and on the counter is a fresh lemon cake and a tray of chocolate and salted-caramel flapjacks. It’s just after three o’clock, and luckily, no one in the office even looked up when I fibbed that I was off to do a viewing.
I’ve wrapped the letters in a plastic bag for protection. Mrs Bradford’s sister, Gwen, whom I spoke to on the phone to arrange the meeting, blinks like she’s seen me before but can’t quite remember.
‘Hello.’ I set the bag on a table by the fire. She walks over and I order a pot of tea for two and a plate of cake and flapjacks. I grab a newspaper from the rack, sit down at my table, and wait.
When the bell tinkles again, I close the newspaper. The hunched-over woman with unruly grey hair and swollen ankles looks at me with piercing blue eyes: Maryanne Bradford – the girl in the pink dress – paramour of the late Henry Windham – grandmother to Jack and Flora – the housekeeper with an axe to grind. And behind her pads Captain, her faithful, blind Saint Bernard.
She hobbles towards me, her cane thumping across the floor. The dog lets out a low growl, then a sharp bark. If my heart hadn’t already been thundering, it is now.
‘Captain,’ she rasps. ‘Down.’
The huge dog whimpers, his pink tongue hanging out. He slinks on his belly under the table and lies down on my feet. Unable to stand up for fear of losing a leg, I stay seated, the bundle of letters in my lap.
Her eyes never leave my face. She scrapes a chair across the floor. Her joints creak as she lowers herself down like an old-fashioned lift.
‘It’s good to see you, Mrs Bradford,’ I say. ‘Are you well?’
She chuckles. ‘As can be expected at my age.’
I smile back, remembering what she said to Jack. We aren’t exactly friends, nor exactly allies, and yet, who knows? Maybe one day, we could end up being both.
I put the bundle on the table. ‘These belong to you,’ I say. My hands fumble to untie the pink ribbon.
The lines on her face deepen, all companionability gone. ‘I told Jack I didn’t want them,’ she says.
‘Just hear me out – please. They were written after you went away. But they were never posted.’
Her mouth purses tightly, but her lower lip quivers ever so slightly.
‘You were upset because Henry never wrote to you,’ I say. ‘But actually, he did.’
She clenches her gnarled hands into fists. ‘Don’t mention him to me,’ she snaps. ‘He was just as bad as his father. Worse, in fact, because he was weak – and stupid too. He thought he could outplay his father at a game of human chess. But there was never any doubt who was the more cunning and shrewd.’
‘Maybe so, Mrs Bradford. But the letters confirm that his feelings for you were real.’
She tsks angrily. ‘Feelings – what use are they in the real world? When I was a girl, I loved staying awake late at night reading silly books. Some people might call them classics – Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights. But I call them dangerous. They gave girls like me the wrong notion. That life was some kind of grand “rags to riches” romance, and if we looked pretty and talked clever, then we’d have the world at our feet.’
‘Yes,’ I gulp. ‘I guess you could see it that way.’
‘I thought that because I had a pretty face, I was somehow entitled to something better than my lot. I told you that I practically grew up at Rosemont Hall. It was my Pemberley, my Thornfield, my fairy-tale castle. You know?’
I nod, knowing all too well.
‘Back then, Henry was just another freckle-faced, snot-nosed boy. At age twelve, he went off to boarding school. When he came back for school holidays, I barely recognised him. He’d become a proper young man. And I was just the daughter of a servant.
‘When I was sixteen, Henry came upon me reading a book in the rose garden.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘It was Jane Eyre if you want to know. We got to talking – about books and things. I knew he was interested in me, but for a long time, I played hard to get. I remember every second of that summer.’ She smiles dreamily, her mind far away. ‘He would chase me through the gardens and steal a kiss under the weeping beech tree. I was “his Annie” – he’s the only person who’s ever called me that.’
‘Annie,’ I whisper. ‘A’.
‘But no matter what the books promised, there was never any hope for Henry and me. Never.’ She glares at me like it’s all my fault.
‘I know it’s painful, Mrs Bradford, but please hear me out.’
She curves her lips over her dentures like she’s tasted something sour. After a long moment, she sits back obediently in the chair.
‘You thought that Henry never gave you another thought. But he did. I think that Arabella must have intercepted Henry’s letters before they were sent.’
She hisses but says nothing.
I summarise the salient points: Henry loved her. He wanted her to live at Rosemont Hall. He didn’t throw her over willingly. If she came back, then he would leave Arabella – have the marriage annulled. But none of what Henry wanted ever happened. I leave out how devastated Arabella must have been when she found out. In the end, it seems, it’s her story that won’t ever be fully told.
As I speak, Mrs Bradford’s face, hard-set with years of resignation, begins slowly to soften. In fact, her whole body slumps in her chair.
‘All those years…’ she says, ‘I loved him. I never forgot him. Or forgave him neither.’
‘I can understand that.’ My throat wells up as I think about her tangled and tragic life. She may have been the villain when it came to blackmailing Henry, but she was a victim too – one of several, it seems.
She puts a hand over her mouth and rests her elbow on the table. She stares at the bundle of letters, but doesn’t touch them.
‘I’m sorry,�
� I murmur.
Suddenly, she raises her wrinkled arm and sweeps the letters off the table. They flutter to the floor like wounded doves. Captain jumps up and yelps, his hackles raised.
Mrs Bradford calmly sits back and pours herself a cup of tea.
‘You were his Annie,’ I say. ‘He never stopped loving you.’
‘What does it matter now?’
‘It matters to me,’ I say. ‘Tell me your story.’
She analyses my face. For a second, I’m worried that I’ve spooked her. I want to look away, but I force myself not to.
‘All right.’ She plops four sugars into her tea. ‘I suppose I should be grateful that you’re here and you’re interested. That’s a lot more than any of the rest of them ever were.’ She sighs. ‘You’ve earned the right to know the whole story.’
I smile encouragingly. Maybe friends…
She looks down at her tea, stirring it slowly. ‘Henry and I sent each other little notes,’ she says. ‘It started as a silly game – using initials only in case they were ever intercepted. But as time went on, everything got more urgent. We just had to see each other, and when we couldn’t, we just had to tell the other everything.’ She smiles. ‘I lived for those notes; for his words spoken from the heart. When he returned from university that last time, we met up in the attic of the house. It was our special place.’ She pauses for a moment, lost in the memories. ‘One thing led to another, and all of a sudden, I was pregnant.’
She plops an extra sugar cube into her tea and watches it dissolve. ‘I was so besotted with Henry that I didn’t even stop to think that it might be a bad thing. He’d promised me the world, you see. Or at least, Rosemont Hall. He was always writing how we belonged there together and he wanted to grow old with me there. I bought it, hook, line, and sinker, let me tell you. But there was one tiny little detail that never seemed to get sorted.’
‘His father?’ I venture.
‘His father.’ She sniffs.
‘Henry had been waffling for weeks – promising to tell his father about us. But each letter he wrote me had another excuse as to why he’d kept quiet. I suspected that he was losing his nerve. And until Henry came of age, Sir George could revoke his inheritance. But it was more than that. Henry adored that old devil, who never gave him the time of day. Henry was like a lapdog – always there to lick his father’s boots, no matter how often he got kicked.
‘And then the preparations for the party began. I suspected Sir George was up to something – he wrote to Henry as much. Henry thought that the party was the surprise. And then, when the artist turned up, he thought the portrait was the surprise. But I knew – or should have known – otherwise. Because why on earth would Sir George spend every last penny on an extravagant party for the son who was a disappointment from start to finish?’
She purses her lips and stares down at her cup. ‘Henry said his father had “plans” for him, but he was too thick to guess what they might be. I guessed that someone was coming to the party that he wanted to impress. Sir George couldn’t afford to have regular servants, but he hired some girls from the village to make it look like he did. I got myself taken on as a temporary servant for the party.
‘You already know about me and some of the other hired girls trying on the costumes we’d found upstairs. It was great fun pretending we were ladies – and I almost told them my secret – that soon I would be Mrs Henry Windham: the real lady of the house.’ She shakes her head.
‘Then, when the others went back to work, I tiptoed up the back stairs to the attic. I was still wearing the pink dress I’d tried on – I wanted to surprise Henry by looking like a real Lady of the Manor. Instead, it was me who was in for a surprise.
‘I found that our attic had been taken over by an artist – some Spanish chap that Sir George knew from the war. He was there to paint Henry’s portrait, though he never did it. I stood and watched him work for a few minutes and was about to leave when he spotted me. He beckoned me inside and started to fuss over how lovely I looked, and how he wanted to sketch me. I was flattered, of course, so I let him. I had no idea that he was going to do a painting of me. All I was hoping was that Henry would come as he’d promised. I twisted his note in my hand until it was practically in shreds. But when I finally did hear footsteps on the stairs, suddenly I felt afraid. I jumped up from the chair and hid behind the door.’
‘What did you see?’ I coax.
‘It was Sir George, not Henry,’ she says. ‘He looked around him with his demon black eyes like he half-suspected that someone was watching. The artist took out a canvas and they stood and poured over it together. I remember thinking it odd at the time – the canvas was white and blank – there was no painting on it.’
‘A blank canvas?’ I lean forward in my chair.
‘Yes. But Sir George was examining it as carefully as if it was the Mona Lisa. They spoke in low voices, but I heard Sir George say: “It does look good – I’d never even know it was there. But are you sure it won’t be damaged?”
‘“Zere will be no damage,” the Spanish chap said. “You know I am zee best.”’
‘What do you think they were they talking about?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ she snaps, dropping the bad accent. ‘But I knew it was something I shouldn’t have overheard. And when Sir George finally left, he looked right at the place where I was hiding. It chilled me to the bone. As soon as his back was turned, I slipped out and ran down the back stairs. I can still feel those dark, demon eyes boring into my back as I went.’
She takes a breath and continues. ‘After that, I knew that Sir George was onto us. I’d turn around and there he’d be, watching me. I tried to see Henry, but his father kept him busy, running errands and entertaining guests.
‘I knew the game was up for Henry and me the minute Arabella arrived at the house for the party, looking like some kind of pale, fragile, porcelain doll all dressed up in her finest clothing. I served tea to her and her father while Henry and Sir George were closeted up in the study together. She was so frail and simpering – all huge eyes and sharp cheekbones.’ She lets out a snort of disgust. ‘Her father was singing Henry’s praises and talking about how he’d pay for a lavish wedding for them. But the look on her face…’ She chuckles. ‘It seems like the news came as a shock to her as well.’
‘Anyway, I went back downstairs and told the cook that I was ill. I went home to think – I suspected that if Henry’s father wanted him to go from lapdog to pedigree stud hound, he’d do it. I was devastated and angry – I wanted to hurt them. I decided that I had to go back for the party – that, whatever happened, Henry would have to look me in the eye.’
‘It sounds awful,’ I whisper.
‘That night, I dressed up in a maid’s costume just like Sir George wanted us to. I blended into the background, bringing up the serving trays and filling glasses of champagne. Everyone was decked out to the nines – I’ve never seen so many sparkling gowns in my life. It was as if the wars had never happened and we weren’t in the twentieth century at all.
‘Then, in the middle of the dancing, Sir George silenced the musicians and said he had an announcement to make. Henry came forward, leading Arabella by the hand – a mousey little waif in a green silk dress.’ She sniffs. ‘Sir George announced the engagement. Henry smiled at his bride-to-be. He looked contented – even pleasantly surprised. I knew it was all over.’ She shakes her head. ‘But I’d come prepared, you see. I’d brought with me every little simpering love note that Henry had ever written to me. I put them on the tray of drinks that I carried into the ballroom. When they made the announcement, I dropped the tray, the notes scattered everywhere.’ She chuckles softly. ‘It was less than they deserved, but it certainly disrupted the moment.
‘A quarter of an hour later, Sir George came down to the kitchens. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the pantry. I still remember the stink of his breath against my face.’ She grimaces.
‘He had a letter in his ha
nds – the last one that Henry wrote to me. “Whatever you’re playing at, it stops now,” he said. He took out the gold cigarette lighter that I’d given Henry and lit the edge of the paper. We stood there together watching it burn. Then he dropped it and ground out the flame with his foot.
‘“It’s rubbish,” he said. “Just like you are.” Then he thrust a purse into my hand. “Your train leaves tomorrow at 7 a.m. You’ll go to Portsmouth. There’s a boat in the afternoon. To New York. You’ll be on it.”
‘“No!” I screamed. “Henry loves me. He went along with your silly party, but he won’t marry HER.”
‘Sir George laughed in my face. He called me a few more nasty names and pushed me. I slipped and fell to the floor. I knew that if I lost the baby, I’d lose everything. I lay there on the ice cold floor, very still.
‘“You will be provided for if you leave now. And if you don’t…” He didn’t need to finish the threat. He slammed the door and left me on the floor, shaking. The last ember went out on the paper and everything was pitch-black.’
‘But that’s terrible,’ I blurt out.
She eyes me like she’s pleased that I’m affected, while she no longer is.
‘Terrible?’ She shakes her head. ‘So many things in life are terrible.’ She takes a sip of her tea.
‘I lay there until I was sure I hadn’t lost the baby. Then I changed out of the maid’s costume, put on my own clothes, and went home. There was no sign of Henry – he didn’t come to try and find me. Most of the guests had left or were leaving. They passed by me as I walked all the way back to the village. That walk is the thing I remember most clearly. The lights of all those fancy cars going past me, but no one stopping to offer me a ride.
‘But by the time I got near to the village, there were lights and sirens going the other way – back towards the house. The sky turned an awful shade of deep red. I didn’t know at the time, but the East Wing was burning.’
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