‘Yes, I’d like to take botany,’ I replied firmly.
‘Well, Cambridge is renowned for its Botany School. You could not do any better.’
‘I must of course discuss this with my grandmother before I go any further, but I’m sure she will be very supportive. Though of course, I might not get in, Miss Sumpter.’
‘One doesn’t achieve anything if one doesn’t try, and out of all the pupils I have had through my doors, you are amongst the most gifted. I have every faith in you, Posy. Now, off you go and enjoy Christmas.’
Although the anticipation I felt at returning home to Cornwall – especially for Christmas – no longer prevented me sleeping for a week before due to the uncontrollable fizz of excitement in my tummy, it was still a special moment as Bill drove us through our tiny village. A mist had begun to descend, and the darkening sky indicated dusk was imminent, even though it was just past three o’clock. I smiled with pleasure as I saw the coloured lights on the magnificent pine tree that sat in Granny’s front garden. She had told me her own grandparents had planted it one Christmas in the hope it would take root. It had, and now the entire village gathered for the traditional switch-on of the lights on the day of the winter solstice.
‘Darling Posy, welcome home!’
Granny stood on the doorstep, arms outstretched, but before I could reach them, a small boy pushed past her and hurtled towards me.
‘Posy! It Christmas! He’s coming!’
‘I know, Ross. Isn’t it exciting?!’ I leant down and took the boy in my arms, kissing the top of his head, which was covered with straw-coloured hair just like Daisy’s, and carried him inside.
Daisy was hovering in the hall, waiting to greet me. Ross wriggled in my arms to get down, desperate to show me a painting of Father Christmas he’d made that hung on one of the kitchen cupboards.
‘Miss Posy can see your picture later, Ross,’ Daisy chided her son affectionately. ‘She’s had that long a journey, I’m sure she just wants to sit in front of the fire awhile and have a nice cup of tea and a scone.’
‘But . . .’
‘No buts.’ Daisy steered him towards the kitchen. ‘Come and help me make the tea.’
I followed Granny into the sitting room, where a cheerful fire was burning. The inside tree had been erected in its pot of soil, but had not yet been decorated.
‘I thought I’d leave you the pleasure of doing that,’ Granny smiled. ‘I know how much you love it. Now, come and sit down and tell me all about your final Michaelmas term.’
Over tea and scones, I told Granny all about the past three months. She had been so very proud when I’d been made Head Girl in September.
‘I haven’t liked all the responsibility that has come from it, though; having to dole out punishments to some of my friends has been the hardest bit. I caught Mathilda Mayhew smoking in the woods at the start of term. I let her off because she promised me she wouldn’t do it again, but she did, and I had to say something. She was gated for three weeks and she now loathes me,’ I sighed.
‘Yes, but has it stopped others who might have been tempted to do the same?’
‘It has, yes, or at least, the girls are far more careful to make sure I don’t catch them. But all that means that they steer clear of me and don’t let me in on their fun. It doesn’t help that I now have a room to myself, either. I feel isolated, Granny, and school hasn’t been half as much fun since.’
‘As you’re learning, with responsibility comes all sorts of challenges and hard decisions, Posy. I am sure the experience will fit you out for the future. Now, tell me more about applying to Cambridge.’
So I told Granny about the new ladies’ college and how Miss Sumpter thought I had a good shot at winning one of the few places available. I watched her eyes fill with tears.
‘You father would be so terribly proud of you, Posy, as am I.’
‘Hold on Granny, I haven’t got in yet!’
‘No, but just the fact she thinks you might is enough. You’re growing into a very special human being, dear girl, and I am so very proud of you.’
It was sweet of Granny to say so, but as the Christmas season progressed and we attended the traditional village get-togethers, I realised that, even here at home, in the community where I’d done a lot of my growing up, my ‘specialness’ had definitely affected my friendships here too. Katie, who was normally knocking on the door the moment she saw Bill’s car pass the front of her family’s cottage, didn’t appear until Christmas Eve, at the drinks party Granny always threw for the village. At first glance, I hardly recognised her, for she’d had her gorgeous red hair cut off and permed into a ‘Poodle Cut’, which (I thought cruelly) made her look rather like one. She wore a lot of make-up, the pancake foundation forming a tidemark around her jawline, which, with the naturally pale skin of her neck beneath it, made her look as though she was wearing a mask.
‘You should come round one evening and I’ll do your face up like mine,’ she offered as we stood outside in the cold whilst she dragged on a cigarette. ‘You got lovely eyes, Posy, and with some black liner, it would really make them stand out.’
She told me how she’d just got a job as a trainee hairdresser in Bodmin. She was living with a relative there and had met a young man called Jago.
‘His Da owns the butcher’s shop in Bodmin an’ he’ll take over the business one day. There’s a lot of money in meat,’ she assured me. ‘So what’ve you been up to, Posy? Still studying at that school o’ yours?’
I confirmed I was and that I was hoping to get into Cambridge University, which she’d never heard of.
‘Judas, seems to me you’ll still be at your lessons when you’re an old maid! Don’t you want to have some fun? Go out dancing with a lad sometimes?’
I tried to explain that I found lessons fun, but I knew she didn’t understand. I saw her a couple more times after that before she had to return to Bodmin, but it was blatantly obvious we had nothing left in common. It made me terribly sad. And on top of that, maybe it was my imagination, but the little household I’d once felt very much at the centre of, seemed to have motored on without me. The new focus was on little Ross – who was, to be fair about it, enchanting – and even Granny seemed to spend more time with him than she did with me. Once Christmas had passed, I actually found myself counting the days until I was back at school.
Yet you couldn’t wait to come home, Posy, I thought to myself as I went for a solitary walk across the moor one afternoon. You don’t belong here either . . .
So, where do I belong? I asked myself as I trudged back home, feeling rather self-indulgently like the quasi-orphan I’d become since Maman had left me here almost ten years ago and never bothered to return.
The truth was, I just didn’t know.
The day before I left to return to school, I received an airmail letter, postmarked Rome, in Italy. It was my mother’s writing, so I took myself upstairs to my bedroom to read it.
My dearest Posy,
Forgive me for not writing sooner, but the past year has been such a whirlwind and I didn’t want to say anything until I was absolutely certain of my plans. The truth is, chérie, that I have met an absolutely delightful man by the name of Alessandro. He is an Italian and a Count to boot! – and he has asked me to marry him. This will happen in early June – the most glorious time of the year here – and of course, I want you to attend as my very special maid of honour. I will send more details and a proper invitation for both you and your grandmother of course, but before that, there is the question of having a dress made for you.
I know you are still at school, but I was thinking that perhaps, sometime in your Easter break, you could fly out to have a fitting and also meet darling Alessandro. You will love him, I know. We will base ourselves in his palazzo in Florence – imagine a much warmer and older version of Admiral House (some of the frescoes date from the thirteenth century) with cypress trees in place of the chestnut trees. It is utter heaven and your Maman is curren
tly the happiest woman on the planet.
Posy, I do know how you loved your Papa – as did I – but the past ten years have been so miserable and lonely as I have grieved his loss. So I hope you can find it in your heart to be happy for me. We must all move on and even though I will never forget your darling Papa, I feel I deserve a little joy before it is too late.
Please let me know when your Easter holidays are, then I can book you a seat on the aeroplane, which I promise, is an adventure in itself.
I cannot wait to see you in person and hear all your news. Granny tells me you are a star pupil at school.
A million kisses, chérie,
Maman
A few seconds was all it took to catapult me out of the house and have me running towards the moor, where I screamed my head off in a place no one could hear. Tears spurted out of my eyes as I yowled like I imagined the Beast of Bodmin Moor would do at the horror of what I’d just read.
‘How dare she?! How dare she?!’ I cried to the rough grass and the skies over and over again. Those three words encompassed all the wrongs she had done me; firstly, and worst of all, expecting me – Daddy’s beloved daughter – to be ‘happy’ that she had found such a new and wonderful love. Secondly, after not even bothering to visit her daughter for so many years when I – especially at the start – had been distraught and grieving so terribly, to just assume that she could simply order me to board a plane to have a fitting for a dress, when I would be in the midst of studying hard for my final school examinations and my Cambridge entrance test, was just so dreadfully selfish. And the June wedding itself – had she not even bothered to think that it was the actual time when my exams took place?!
And . . . on top of that, my eighteenth birthday was also in June. I had overheard Granny whispering to Daisy in the kitchen about some form of celebration and it had crossed my mind then that Maman might – just might – return to England for it, but it was obvious that she was so busy planning for her own celebration that her daughter’s eighteenth birthday had never entered her head.
‘Of course it hasn’t, Posy! Golly, she’s only spoken to you by telephone a handful of times since she left,’ I said out loud, pacing back and forth across the coarse moorland grass. ‘What kind of mother does that make her?!’ I shouted to the grey clouds scudding across the sky.
I sat down abruptly, the emotion of the moment turning my legs to jelly as I, Posy – no longer the frightened little girl I had been, but Posy, the almost-woman – finally accepted the truth. Over the years, even if the thought had fluttered through my consciousness, I hadn’t allowed it to enter my head, for fear of what it would mean: that my mother didn’t love me. Or at least, she loved herself more than she loved me.
‘She’s a terrible mother,’ I told the moors, anguish in my words and my heart. I realised that even in the old days at Admiral House, she had left me mainly to the care of Daisy. Even though it was quite normal for a wealthy family to have staff to look after their children, I tried to remember a single occasion when Maman had come to collect me from school, or to my bedroom to kiss me goodnight, or read me a bedtime story. However hard I searched through the mists of time, not one of those occasions came to mind.
‘She was never cruel to you, Posy,’ I told myself, wary of how easily I could slip over into self-indulgence, ‘or hurt you physically. And you were always fed and clothed,’ I added for good measure.
And I was, and when Daddy had been there to give me all his laughter and love, I’d had everything I’d needed; like the seedlings on my windowsills at home and school, with the right balance of sunlight, water and nurture, I had blossomed.
I then thought about Granny, and how wonderful she had been, stepping into the role of my mother, and immediately, I realised how lucky I was. Nobody’s life was perfect and even if I had an absentee mother (who had probably been absent from the start) I had to count my blessings. Not everyone was born with the maternal instinct that made it easy to care for and love their child; I thought of animals in the wild who would abandon their young at a few hours old. Maman had certainly not done that.
‘Posy, you have to accept her as she is,’ I told myself firmly, ‘because she will never change, and it will only cause you pain to think she might when she won’t.’
On the walk back home, I gave myself a good talking-to, knowing from what I’d read of psychology that it wasn’t only the things that happened to one that mattered, it was often how you dealt with them.
‘From now on, you must see Maman as an auntie, or maybe a godmother,’ I told myself and my psyche. ‘Then it won’t hurt any longer.’
However, there was still the problem of the Italian wedding.
‘How can I possibly go, Granny?’ I asked her the next morning over breakfast, when I’d had time to calm down.
‘I am sure if you write and explain that it is right in the middle of your final exams, she will understand that you can’t attend. And I must tell her I cannot go either.’
‘Are you busy too?’
‘I . . . yes,’ Granny replied after a slight pause. ‘June is always a busy month in the village, what with the fête to organise.’
I understood then that Granny didn’t want to go either – the fête wasn’t until the end of the month and it hardly took more than a few days to hang some bunting around the garden and set up the cake stall. It made me feel better somehow, and also made me wonder whether, if I hadn’t had a valid excuse, I would have gone anyway. I certainly had no interest in meeting Maman’s new husband and raising a glass to their ‘love’. How could I? And more importantly, how could she think I would? Maybe if we had been closer, spent time together in the past ten years and I’d seen her grieve in person for Daddy, it might have been different, but this bolt from the blue had only ignited anger inside me.
It took me ten drafts to compose a letter back to her. I asked Granny to read it before I sealed it and sent it off.
‘It’s very good, Posy. The best thing on these occasions is simply to state the facts calmly and that is what you have done.’
So I sealed it, popped it into an airmail envelope and took it down to Laura, the village postmistress. Then I packed my trunk and set off back to school for the most important six months of my life.
Chapter 9
Posy was in the middle of pruning the roses when she saw a Red Admiral alight on the purple flowers of the vervain, supping on the last of the nectar before the impending winter. Its wings were open to display its striking black, red and white pattern, and Posy watched it, fascinated, its presence taking her back to another, long-ago moment . . . She jumped when she heard her mobile ringing from her trouser pocket, and just managed to whip off her gardening glove to answer it before it stopped.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum, it’s Nick.’
‘Nick! Darling boy, how are you?’
‘I’m fine, Mum, you?’
‘Yes, I’m very well indeed, Nick, thank you.’
‘Listen, are you doing anything on Wednesday? I thought I might drive up and take you out for lunch.’
‘But . . .’ It took a few minutes for Posy’s brain to compute this information, ‘Nick, are you saying you’re in England?’
‘Yes, London, to be precise. I’ve had some business I wanted to sort out before I came to see you. I’ve done that now.’
Posy was torn between sheer happiness that Nick was back on British terra firma and maternal jealousy that he’d not let her know until now. ‘Well of course, I would absolutely love to see you.’
‘Fantastic. I’ll be there by noon and we’ll go to a restaurant of your choice. I’ve got a lot to tell you.’
And I’ve got a lot to tell you, mused Posy silently. ‘That would be splendid, darling.’
‘Okay, Mum, all news when I see you. Bye.’
Posy leant back in the weak October sun, thinking with joy of Nick, home after all these years . . .
She was then aware of the sound of a car snaking up the
long drive towards the front of the house.
‘Dammit! Who on earth can that be?’ she asked herself, eager to get the roses pruned before the winter frost set in. The Red Admiral, perhaps irritated by all the noise, had fluttered off.
She decided it was probably the nice chap who brought the parish magazine round once a month. She’d normally ask him in for a cup of tea, but today, she’d pretend she was out and he could simply push it though the letter box.
‘Posy?’
She jumped. The voice was very close and she looked up to see Freddie striding towards her.
‘Hello,’ she said, shielding her eyes from the sun and, despite herself, wishing she’d put some lipstick on earlier.
‘Forgive me for barging in on you like this. I did knock a number of times – the front door bell doesn’t work, by the way – but I saw your car and took a guess you were in the garden.’
‘I’m . . . it’s fine, and yes, I must get that damned bell fixed,’ she agreed.
‘It’s a beautiful house, Posy. I presume it’s Queen Anne from the symmetrical perfection of it.’
‘It is, yes.’
There was a short silence as Posy waited for Freddie to explain why he was here. She certainly wasn’t going to ask.
‘I . . . Posy, do you fancy a cup of tea?’
‘No, but I could certainly do with a glass of water.’ She stood up and watched Freddie surveying the gardens around him.
‘My God, Posy! This is quite incredible! Have you really made this all by yourself?’
‘Apart from the laying of the pathways and the gardener who mows the lawns and does the trimming and weeding in the summer, I have, yes. Mind you, it’s taken almost twenty-five years. I started when the boys went to boarding school.’
‘Do you ever open it to the public?’
‘I used to, yes, during the annual village fête. I’ve also had a couple of photographers here taking pictures for their design magazines, which was gratifying, but to be honest, I was only thinking this morning that it needs far more attention than I have the energy to give it these days. I’ve created a monster that needs to be fed and watered constantly.’
The Butterfly Room Page 15