Sometimes she felt as if she would explode at the unfairness of it all. Watching her twin now, plodding up the hill, she wondered what it would be like if he had never been born. There would have been no other competition for her with Canleigh as their only other sibling was their younger sister, Victoria, two years their junior, so Canleigh would have automatically gone to Delia. She studied him as he rode his pony towards them at a snail’s pace, his face red from the exertion and the sun, and was horrified as the thought dashed through her mind of how simple life would be if he were dead.
“Are you coming back to Tangles for tea?” asked Philip, jumping athletically down from Verity onto the grass, leaving her to graze in the shade beside Star. He flopped down beside Delia, wiping perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand. “Nan has made your favourite chocolate cake.”
Delia turned her attention away from her twin and smiled warmly at Philip.
“Oh, how lovely she is.”
“I think there might be strawberry ice cream too, if we’re lucky … and her homemade lemonade,” Philip grinned, knowing Delia wouldn’t be able to resist either.
“Marvellous,” she enthused, gazing on his young Adonis body with adoration. He was dressed in indigo blue jeans and a white t-shirt, showing off his fabulously bronzed face and arms. Thick blonde hair topped his handsome slightly rounded face, in which his kind hazel eyes twinkled brightly.
Delia’s heart and soul filled with a strong aching love. Young as she was, she knew Philip was going to be the only one for her. She daydreamed constantly of the day she would drift up the aisle in a bubble of white to marry him and then, no matter what anyone said, or the legalities, and Delia didn’t have a clue how she would achieve it, but they would live happily at Canleigh forever with their horses … and their children. There would be a boy, looking just like Philip, bronzed from an active outdoor life, with an abundance of blonde hair and hazel eyes like his father … and there would be a girl for her, as crazy about horses as she was and with long dark hair and deep brown eyes. They would have a wonderful life living at Canleigh Hall, running the estate and holding lots of equestrian events, inviting top show jumpers and eventers to stay, and be the Mecca to which the horsey fraternity was drawn.
Delia smiled as her imagination roamed freely and her eyes flittered over the land in front of them; the woods, the fields, the lake with its abundance of wildlife including the mass of swans which from this distance were just a tiny speck of white in the corner of the lake. Finally, as ever, her gaze rested on Canleigh Hall, and in particular the south terrace and below, the formal parterre garden, consisting of planted beds in symmetrical patterns and then, in the centre of a vast stone pond, the figure of Pegasus, which had fascinated her since she was a toddler.
She sighed with pleasure. The scene before her was breathtaking and she was enjoying the afternoon immensely. Riding gave her utter satisfaction but to be topped off with a visit to Tangles for tea was always a real bonus. The welcome from Ralph and Betty Kershaw, Philip’s grandparents, was always warm and like Granny’s Dower House, it was more homely than Canleigh, which, especially in the depths of winter with such high ceilings and temperamental central heating, could be chilly and not a little gloomy.
However, she thought, looking at Philip who was chewing on a blade of grass and watching Richard and Dolly, she and her siblings did possess parents, although their mother might not be as adequate as they would have liked. Philip’s had been tragically killed in a motorbike accident on a winter’s night when they skidded on black ice and went under the wheels of a lorry when they were returning home from the cinema. Philip was only a baby at the time so he had never really known them. His grandparents, Ralph and Constance, had collected him from the babysitter and taken him home to Tangles, a lovely old rambling Tudor house neighbouring Canleigh land and he had lived with them ever since.
“Well done,” said Philip to Richard who had finally made it up the hill and was sliding thankfully down from Dolly.
“This heat is horrendous,” Richard moaned. “It’s far too hot to be outdoors.”
Delia looked at him disdainfully as he walked Dolly over to Star and Verity who were dozing in the shade of the tree. He then sat down beside Delia, wiping his sweaty palms on his pale blue jeans.
“We’re going back to Tangles for tea,” she said. “There’s chocolate cake.”
“Sounds wonderful,” he smiled at Philip. “Your Nan is a super cook … and I could really do with a drink of her marvellous homemade lemonade. You’re so lucky, Philip, having her. I couldn’t imagine our Granny doing such stuff.”
They all laughed. The autocratic Anne, Dowager Duchess of Canleigh, was far too busy to think of spending time in the kitchen to bake a cake.
“Don’t mock darling Granny.” Delia’s look softened. “You know how busy she is. I’ve lost count of all the charities she’s patron of, especially those for abandoned or neglected animals and look how many she rescues herself,” she waved a hand at the three dogs further down the field. “And she’s always going to meetings and fundraising. Then there’s the gardening. She’s made it so beautiful at the Dower House and because Mother hasn’t a clue about anything to do with horticulture, all our gardeners still take their instructions from Granny. After all, it was she who designed the parterre and the rose garden after the war when nothing else but vegetables could be grown. Then she takes a massive interest in all of Father’s books, painstakingly proofreading them before he sends them off to the publishers. She’s helped me so much with my homework too … and you know full well she’s always there for us, whatever we might need … I really don’t know what we would do without her.”
“Okay, okay,” laughed Richard. “We know how you dote on Granny and how she can do no wrong in your eyes.”
Delia gave a slight pout. “That’s right. She can’t. She’s simply wonderful. An absolute rock. She never lets us down like Mother does. She’s always there if we need her. She’s very precious and don’t you forget it!”
“Talking of Mother,” said Richard, thinking about the snippets of conversation they had overheard from the library between their parents, “I wonder what she’s done for Father to insist she can’t go back to London or anywhere else until after the summer holidays.”
Delia’s eyes clouded over. “Well, I'm glad. I want her here for the Twyfield show. She never attends normally but she’ll have to if she’s here and I would dearly like to have her approval on something I do.”
Richard sniffed. “You’ll be lucky. I can’t remember her ever saying something nice about anything we achieve … and I wish she wasn’t coming to Blairness with us in August. She’s such a drag, always complaining about the midges and how wet and cold it is and never wanting to join in anything, just mooching about in thick sweaters virtually down to her ankles and carrying a blanket with her everywhere. It would be much better without her.”
They all collapsed into giggles, remembering how ridiculous Margaret had looked last year, covered up from neck to toe so that she could stay warm and prevent the midges from gaining access to her skin. She wasn’t very successful and spent a fortune on antiseptic cream, virtually having hysterics when they had a go at her face, her makeup only tending to aggravate the bites.
All the children loved visiting Blairness. Every August it was a mad exodus from Canleigh up to Granny’s thirteenth-century Scottish castle she had inherited from her father, the Earl of Glenmyre. The whole family, some of the staff and Granny’s dogs made the long journey up to Highlands, near to Inverness, and stayed and played in the wonderful Scottish countryside for three weeks. The children were allowed to invite a friend each. Delia always chose Philip, Victoria took her little chum, Emily, and Richard invariably invited Stuart, his best friend who had medical ambitions on similar lines to him. They all adored the trips to the castle and the only dampener on their spirits was having their mother accompany them. She was always so moody, hating the Highlands even m
ore than Canleigh.
In fact, their mother was a real pain, both at Blairness and at home and Delia greatly envied her friends whose mothers involved themselves so readily in their children’s lives. They didn’t disappear for weeks or months on end and most galling of all, they were tactile. They hugged and kissed, and smiled and laughed with their sons and daughters. Delia couldn’t remember the last time her mother had thrown her arms around her and frequently experienced pangs of sorrow when her friends were picked up from school by warmly, beaming mothers, eager to hear all about their day. Hardy always collected Delia but as nice and kind as he was, he wasn’t her mother.
Thankfully, Margaret’s frequent absences from Canleigh were long as when she was at home, she was aloof and grumpy and showed little desire to spend any time with any member of the family, even though the children tried to be nice to her. Father and Granny were polite to her but the atmosphere, especially when they all dined together, was tense and Delia, Richard, and even Vicky, were utterly relieved when they could escape up to their rooms at the end of the meal.
Richard flapped his hand in front of his face to make a slight breeze, although that only seemed to result in making him hotter. His black rimmed spectacles slid down his nose and he pushed them back up again impatiently. “I sometimes wonder if she really is our mother as none of us are a bit like her, apart from in looks, that is, especially you, Delia. Vicky and I are dark haired but yours is thicker, like hers, and you have her high cheekbones and you will be tall and slender like her too. You’re going to be stunning when you grow up … just like her.”
“Even in the winter your mother looks good … with her amazing tan,” commented Philip. “She’s tremendously attractive … for an older woman.”
Delia, tried to curb her annoyance. Philip was supposed to be admiring her, not her dratted mother. She actually felt a stab of jealousy but forced it away.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and smiled at her twin. It wasn’t like him to pay her compliments. “Well, wherever she has been this time, I do hope she hasn’t brought any more stupid presents back with her. That dreadful stuffed horse she gave me at Easter was fine for a child of five. She seems to forget I’m thirteen.” Delia grimaced. “Yet another present for Granny to give to Battersea Dogs Home for their next charity event.”
Richard laughed. “But she did give me Herbert a few years ago … and he is useful.”
Philip and Delia giggled, remembering Richard’s look of delight when he had opened the gold papered package and found a full-sized skeleton inside. Eight-year old Vicky had been in the room at the time and had screamed and screamed and shot down to the library to cry hysterically to their father that Richard had a dead body in his room.
“Do you remember how cross Granny was?” said Delia. “I thought she was going to explode at Mother as Vicky got the creeps and wouldn’t sleep at Canleigh and had to spend a few days at the Dower House to get over her fright. I know Granny is made of stern stuff with her Victorian attitude but underneath all that, she has a squashy, lovely inner core. I hope she lives until she’s really, really old so that I will be too and won’t die long after her. I love her so much and can’t imagine life without her.”
Philip and Richard looked at Delia sympathetically, knowing how close and alike Delia and Anne were, which was probably why they had a special bond. They laughed at the same things, had almost the same opinion on about anything which crept up in conversation and above all shared an intense passion for Canleigh.
“It must have been very hard for her,” mused Richard. “After Grandfather died … bringing up Father from the age of ten, running Canleigh, having it turned into a military hospital during the war and training to be a nurse herself and worrying about Father bombing the Germans … and then when he was shot down, being holed up in Colditz. She must have been desperately worried.”
“Granny is a tremendously strong person. She would have coped admirably. She is simply splendid,” stated Delia firmly.
“Splendid she might be but she can’t make cake and lemonade like Philip’s Nan,” said Richard. “Should we get cracking? I could really do with some of that lemonade and I expect the dogs and horses want some water.”
“Good idea,” said Delia, salivating at the thought of the promised cake. She possessed a dreadful addiction to chocolate in whatever form and the amount of it she consumed on a daily basis would certainly change the body shape of anyone who wasn’t as active as her.
“I mustn’t stay too long though,” she said to Philip. “I promised I would take the dogs back to the Dower House for five o’clock and feed them.”
“Your Granny is a marvel. How she puts up with this lot I really don’t know,” said Philip, laughing as the three mongrels charged towards the teenagers and jumped all over him, adding paw marks to his white t-shirt, licking his face and the more he laughed, the more they made sure he needed a decent wash. Delia giggled at their antics and agreed with him.
Freckles and her offspring finally decided Philip was clean enough and set off in pursuit of a rabbit who had dared to venture out of its warren further down the field but the rabbit was quicker than them and disappeared back down its hole seconds before they reached it. The teenagers mounted their ponies and turned them in the direction of Tangles, not surprised when the dogs decided it was too much effort to keep searching for the runaway rabbit and followed them.
* * *
Delia felt rather sickly in the searing heat as she and Richard rode sedately to the Dower House from Tangles after tucking into too much of the chocolate cake. It had been truly delicious and she hadn’t been able to resist having a second large slice. Now she wished she hadn’t been so greedy.
Reaching the Dower House, they fed and watered the dogs and left them to sleep until the Dowager returned.
“I do hope it’s not so hot tomorrow,” said Richard, his face shiny with sweat as they walked the ponies back to Canleigh. “I’m certainly not riding again if it is. I shall spend the day around the pool. I’ve lots of reading to catch up on this hols and I don’t want to leave it till the last minute before we go back to school.”
“Oh, you are so boring,” snapped Delia, her tummy doing somersaults, although she would never admit it to her twin, determined to never show any signs of weakness in front of him.
“And you are very rude,” he replied as they reached the field at the side of the stables where the ponies could be released to enjoy good grazing and hopefully cool down under the shade of the oak trees. They let them free, checking first that there was plenty of water for them in the container by the gate and left them to it.
They walked back to the stables carrying the saddles and bridles and hung them in the tack room. Delia loved the smell of the room, the leather, and the saddle soap. She had spent many a happy hour there with Perkins, chatting about the horses and their care. It had been Perkins who had taught her to ride when she was small and she was very fond of the elderly man who had been so patient with her headstrong ways, wanting to gallop before she had learnt to trot.
“This room reeks of horses,” uttered Richard, “I don’t know why you want to spend so much time in here.”
“Oh, for goodness sake. I don’t know how you will manage when you eventually become Duke and are lucky enough to own all this,” she swept her arms around the tack room and over to the window where the Hall could be seen clearly up the winding path linking it to the stables. “I don’t understand you, Richard. I really don’t. Perhaps you take after Mummy more than you think and you will be more interested in the goings on in London when you grow up, hobnobbing with your friends and then cutting up bodies all day long at some hospital or other. Yuk . . . and double yuk!”
Richard moaned and made for the door, not wanting to get into yet another argument about his inheritance. He was so sick of it and sometimes wished he could just give Canleigh away. He really didn’t want it. He was only thirteen years old, it was already causing him massive
problems, and he had a nasty suspicion that as he grew older, it was only going to get worse, and he dreaded to think what Delia would be like when he did inherit. Miserably, Richard thought about how his life would pan out with the estate like a millstone around his neck, having Delia continually finding fault in every decision he made and interfering relentlessly. He knew she would. Even if she did marry and move away, she would still find a way to poke her nose in. Canleigh was her ultimate passion and he knew in his heart of hearts that she would never, never truly let go of it, and would make his life a torture forever.
Richard glared at his twin. “Do you know, Delia, I am truly fed up with your obsession with this place. If you want it, you can have it. There, I have finally said it.”
Delia stood stock-still and stared at him. “What?”
“You heard. You know I don’t really want it. You do, so you might as well have it when the time comes.”
“But you can’t do that, the primogeniture thingy …”
“Oh, fiddle. If I inherit, I can do what I like with it. Anyway, I don’t particularly want children so you would inherit anyway when I die. So, how about we draw up some kind of document indicating that I promise to sign it over to you the moment I inherit. Father need never know, as it won’t come into force until he isn’t with us anymore. Then perhaps we can live in peace until that time comes and I can get on with what I want to do without your continual harassment.”
Delia looked incredulous. She couldn’t believe her brother’s words. He didn’t know what he was saying; he was giving her the world. An enormous feeling of gratitude and relief swept over her and all the angst and bitterness she had felt for as long as she could remember dissolved in an instant. She turned to the drawer in Perkins desk and rifled through quickly for pen and paper, determined Richard would carry out his promise without further delay.
Rejection Runs Deep (The Canleigh Series, book 1: A chilling psychological family drama) Page 4