by Clare Boyd
Now John remembered. Edward was the man who had visited too often. He and Robert had had a crush on Edward’s blonde, sex-bomb wife, Hettie.
‘Oh, Hettie and Edward, yes, of course.’
Immediately, John was alert.
His laces were undone but he ran through the bluebells to the hollow tree. It was the perfect hiding place for the game of Sardines.
‘Mum?’ John called, hearing his mother’s laughter.
His mother and a tall man were shadows in the dark of the dead tree.
‘John!’ Camilla breathed, bending down to scoop him up in her arms. ‘Ssshh. Come and join us.’ She turned towards the man, her son in her arms. ‘You know Edward, don’t you?’
Edward shook his hand and whispered, ‘Welcome to our little secret, John.’
John looked at this tall, blond man and then at his mother and, for a split second, he wondered if this shadowy man had been the same shadow he had seen in the poolhouse that night. They might have been playing Sardines then, too, he thought.
It didn’t quite fit, but he had badly wanted to believe it.
Twigs cracked in the woods near to their hiding place and John coughed loudly to give their location away. He did not want to be alone with his mother and Edward any longer.
His mother hissed in his ear: ‘Be quiet, for Christ’s sake.’
But the guest, a little girl called Anoushka, joined them.
His mother was irritable with John for the rest of the day and he felt guilty for being a spoilsport.
His mother shoved the photograph back into the back of the album, where John had found it loose, and then she shut away all the albums. This chest, this house, seemed to be a haven of secrets, going back generations, and he had an urge to be hidden here too, with their family secrets forever shrouded.
‘They moved to Somerset.’ She sniffed.
‘You’re not friends any more?’
His mother turned to him. ‘Hettie was a nasty piece of work.’
She closed the lid of the chest and stared out into the garden. Her eyes were filling with tears. It seemed she had been in love with this Eddie. In spite of everything, he felt sorry for her.
‘Yesterday is gone,’ she murmured, blowing a kiss at a lone magpie that hopped across the garden.
Her red lipstick left the perfect shape of her lips on her fingertips. He thought about her lipstick on Edward Dillhurst’s lips in the dark of that tree. John would be a hypocrite to judge his mother. He saw the echo of her secrecy reverberating through his own life. His mother had perhaps felt the same about Edward as he did about Francesca. For whatever reason it had ended, and nobody had found out. He imagined the alternative, being that eight-year-old boy again, and finding out that his mother was leaving his father for Edward, leaving Byworth End. It would have destroyed him. Then again, if his parents had split up, Robert’s secret visits to the poolhouse would have stopped.
John’s skin bristled at the thought of his brother’s unnatural desire to see their mother fool around with this family friend. To return regularly was a compulsion; to harbour it must have felt heavy, distracting, as though hiding a disease that was smouldering in the pit of his stomach. The urge must have filled his confused ten-year-old head with a ghastly shame, while he suffered alone with the terrible secret.
Their mother had unwittingly handed Robert unsavoury memories – of shame and secrecy – on a silver platter, ensuring he would spend his whole life trying to find extreme ways of spitting them out, getting them out of his head, getting out of his head.
John yearned for his brother now, longed to wrap his arms around him, to bring him back to life with the magic force of his love and understanding and acceptance.
If only they had talked about it, if only they had been brave enough to confront it together. If only they had stood up to their mother. If they had, he wondered whether Robert would have been able to kick his addiction, and whether he might still be alive today.
‘Do you think we’ll ever find the money?’ he asked, moving them both away from the pain and sadness of the past.
She snapped out of her reverie. ‘Darling, we’re not really looking for that bloody money. It doesn’t exist.’
‘What are we doing here then?’
‘We’re using the money as a ruse,’ she whispered. ‘As a way to clear the house so we can put it on the market.’
‘Does Uncle Ralph know?’
‘Of course he doesn’t bloody know, and don’t you dare mention it.’
‘You can’t just sell it under his feet.’
‘Your dad’s the estate executor, darling. The money will go on his care, and then the rest will go in trust to your three, and to Alice, when he dies. I thought I’d ask Dilys if she’d sell it privately for us.’
‘That’s really sad,’ he said, looking up at the beautiful vaulted ceiling. But John couldn’t argue with the fact that Uncle Ralph needed the help. As usual, his parents had got it all worked out.
‘He’ll be better off in one of those nice, posh care homes.’
‘This place will be a dream for someone who wants a project.’
‘Well, your dad thinks we’ll get top dollar for it if we spruce it up a bit ourselves. I was hoping you’d help.’
‘I’ve certainly got the time.’ It wasn’t a yes but it wasn’t a no.
‘That’s wonderful!’ she cried, adding, ‘I’d thought we’d enlist Fran’s help, too. I’ll talk to Archie Parr. Ask him if we can steal her for a couple of weeks.’
‘Why Fran?’ John shot back.
‘With the painting?’ she said irritably. ‘I need her help to choose modern colours. She’s a wonder with that sort of thing.’
‘Chromatically pitch perfect,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I’ll say goodbye to Uncle Ralph.’
Ralph was at the dining-room table working on an enormous puzzle. John kissed his uncle’s head. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Uncle Ralph looked up at him. His blink was slow. He scratched the side of his nose, where there was a small raw patch. ‘See you then, John.’
There was no ‘old boy’ or hearty handshakes now. He was subdued and vacant.
‘Will he be okay?’ he asked his mother, hesitating at the door.
‘He’ll be at that puzzle for hours,’ she said, pushing back a stack of books teetering on the edge of the hall console, nudging the other clutter. Something heavy crashed to the floor. ‘Oh, good gracious, look at this!’ she whispered, picking up a paperweight with gold swirls inside. ‘Robert, look!’ she snorted, looking up to the heavens – apparently addressing her dead son – and then back to John. ‘Your uncle found this blasted thing bulging out of Robert’s shorts pocket once, and he went berserk! Never forgave him. Called him Mr Sticky Fingers from then on.’
‘What? So that’s why…’ he stopped. ‘Did Robert ever come over to make it right – as an adult, I mean?’
‘He wouldn’t have visited Uncle Ralph for all the tea in China.’
‘He never told me.’
‘He made me swear not to. He was ashamed of what he’d done. With good reason.’
‘Wow,’ John said, thinking out loud, bowled over by this new information.
It seemed that he and Francesca had misconstrued Uncle Ralph’s outburst at Alice. His uncle had been referring to the theft of a paperweight, rather than his medication. It suggested that his mother might not have been lying, that Robert might not have been to Uncle Ralph’s house in his adult years, with his “sticky fingers”.
‘Why, “wow”?’ his mother asked, eyeing him as they walked down the steps to their cars.
‘Only because Robert never told me,’ he said, getting into his car.
His mother blew him a kiss. ‘Robert hated keeping it from you.’
‘I wish he hadn’t,’ John said to himself, slamming the car door, hard.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Francesca
‘Do you thi
nk you can colour-match it?’ Archie Parr asked me, handing me an emerald-green porcelain dish.
Life in Archie Parr’s shop was so different to being on a film set. Some might think it would be prosaic compared to the glamour of the film industry, where I had met film stars and worked as a scenic artist for big, box office hits. It was the opposite. The slow pace, the quietness of the back room, the unassuming wisdom of Archie Parr, the ebb and flow of customers, and the routine suited me so well, I wondered how I had coped in the stressful, back-stabbing world of films.
The solitude of mixing paints in Archie’s back room, and the satisfaction of knowing that the contents of those black and white tins could transform someone’s home, someone’s world, seemed deeply in tune with who I was as a person. I had found my rhythm creatively, and my independence.
Now that Alice was back at school, now that I had convinced myself that John was retreating back into the safety of his family once again, I resolved to get on with my own life. The Tennants could stay in the background for a while. I felt weightless with the release of one particular burden: if John was retreating, it was best to keep the document safely tucked away in the brown envelope, for now.
‘I can try.’ I knew I could match it. The pigments for the exact tone of green were swirling around my head. ‘What room is it for?’
‘Mrs Pendlebury’s library. She’s a lawyer with four children and she likes to re-do her house every two years.’
‘I’m on it. Cuppa?’
‘Love one. Here’s the list of other stock colours ordered.’
I began my alchemy, mixing the pigments and stainers, dripping minute amounts of colour from the syringe into the paint tub, stirring and perfecting; pouring from one tin to another, inadvertently adding more splodges and splashes to the dried splatters on the wooden platform and my trusty old overalls. While Archie Parr sat at his desk, or responded to the doorbell, chunks of time were lost.
At ten past two, with twenty minutes to go before I would go home and get ready to fetch Alice, Archie received a phone call.
‘Hello, Mrs Tennant.’
I let go of the mixing stick in the vat of paint. Which Mrs Tennant? I thought. Dilys or Camilla?
‘We’re rubbing along very nicely, thank you… Ah, yes, how’s he doing? I heard there was a spot of bother in the village last week… Hmm… Yes… Very good… We would be more than happy to help you out…’ Then, he said, ‘Oh…’, and the tone of his voice had changed.
The stick was slowly sinking down into the liquid, drowning in a swamp.
I tried to pick it out. Straining to make out the words, waiting for Archie to come off the phone so that he could tell me whether it was Dilys or Camilla, or some other Mrs Tennant of no relation.
‘Right… We do have a group of exceptional painters and decorators you can use… I understand… Yes… Obviously, with all due respect, Mrs Tennant, that will be a decision she will have to make for herself… All right… Yes, I’ll talk to her now… Do send my best wishes to Mr Tennant. Good bye.’
‘Who was that?’ I asked.
‘Your mother-in-law.’ He chuckled. ‘She’s been a regular customer of mine for years.’
He was moving his smartphone back and forth from one gnarled old hand to the other. I waited for him to elaborate. He placed his phone on his desk.
‘She would like to steal you from the shop for a couple of weeks.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I assume you know that Ralph Tennant’s house needs renovating because they’re selling it—?’
‘No, I didn’t know,’ I replied, gathering myself, trying to hide my indignation about not knowing.
‘He’s going to a care home, apparently.’
‘I knew his health was deteriorating.’
Archie nodded. ‘Yes. And Mrs Tennant would like you, personally, to choose the colour scheme and repaint his house.’
‘Why didn’t she call me directly?’ I asked, holding up my smile to cover the rage that was ping-ponging around inside me.
‘She’s going to call you about it later.’
‘She knew I’d say no,’ I grumbled, instantly regretting how petulant and unprofessional I must have sounded.
‘She’d pay you the going rate, obviously.’
‘Can I ask why she didn’t want one of your painter and decorators to do it?’
‘Because of the sensitive nature of Ralph’s health.’
‘She’s worried people will talk?’
The wrinkles around Archie’s kind brown eyes deepened as he formed an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m not sure he likes strangers.’
He doesn’t like family much either, I thought.
‘But what about you and the shop?’
‘Ralph Tennant’s house will need a lot of paint. And, judging by these accounts, we need a bit of a boost.’
Too consumed by my own fury, I had not thought of it from Archie’s point of view.
‘I understand. Of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that.’
Archie patted my back, as though he understood. ‘Thank you, Francesca.’
He shuffled off into the front of the shop.
This job had been something that I had found for myself, to retain some modicum of autonomy. In fact, I had enjoyed the fact that Camilla had sneered at my decision to work here. And it was galling that she was now muscling in on it: calling Archie before she called me, manipulating me out of the job for a few weeks or more. What Camilla wanted, she got. I was the conduit for her needs; the puppet to do as she wished, for the sake of her bloodline.
As I drove to school to fetch Alice, I felt the claustrophobia of the small village, and the Tennants’ eyes on me. When chatting to a few of the mothers I had met in the playground, I wondered if everything I said would somehow worm its way through the grapevine back to Byworth End.
By the time Camilla did eventually call, later that evening, I had realised I had no choice about the job on Ralph’s house. I was powerless, and I hated her for it. Knowing I was beaten, I managed to sound sufficiently enthusiastic about the project.
‘It sounds like a great opportunity, thank you,’ I said. Had I actually thanked her?
‘It’s a pleasure, darling. I’m glad you’re on board. It’s going to be a proper family affair.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘John’s going to clear the rooms for you, and Dilys is going to market it for us.’
I stiffened, pressing the phone so close to my ear I could feel it burn.
‘I can clear the rooms by myself.’
Camilla laughed. ‘Ha! You’ve seen the house, Francesca.’
‘But I thought John was busy finishing up his series?’
‘He has already delivered it. Anyway, you’ll need the help with Uncle Ralph.’ Her laugh was unnervingly high-pitched.
But Uncle Ralph’s temper was the least of my worries. The thought of seeing John in this context overwhelmed me. We were going to be spending hours and hours, and possibly days and days, rattling around in that house together.
‘I’ve arranged a conflab with John and Dilys at Ralph’s on Saturday morning. Can you make it?’ Camilla added.
‘Yes, sure,’ I murmured.
Following Camilla’s edict, we were coming together as a family to renovate the house that had held Robert’s darkest secrets and fed his addiction. It seemed to me that we were colluding in a plot to paint over the cracks of their misdemeanours, complicit in Camilla’s cover-up on behalf of the family name. Ralph was to be packed off to a nursing home, possibly officially labelled a crazy man, whose medication would be carefully managed by professionals from behind glass windows. And Robert’s thieving, and his addiction, would be laid to rest for ever.
Perhaps we were all going to get away with it.
The black and white image of the document that lay flat in the corner of my wardrobe burned into my eyelids when I blinked.
Perhaps I hoped we would.
Chapter Thirty-Nin
e
John
John stood between Francesca and Dilys, with Camilla to her right, staring up at Ralph’s house. To his left, John noticed the slight tremor in Francesca’s fingers. She was wearing more make-up than usual. War paint, as his mother would say.
‘It’s such a beautiful house,’ Francesca said, gazing upwards at its faded splendour.
The four of them stared for a moment at their project.
He had to fight the entrancing draw of Francesca. He wanted to touch her, to know what she was thinking; he wanted to know whether she had been replaying their day together, as he had, over and over in his mind. All week he had resisted calling her, knowing that if he had spoken to her he would not have been able to resist going over to see her again. He wondered if he might be able to snatch a moment to talk to her alone today, to explain; to mention the paperweight.
John refocused on the house, on the broken guttering, the peeling paint on the windows, the pulled ivy and dying red roses.
Camilla said, ‘Your father has carted Uncle Ralph off for a jaunt, so we’ve got the house to ourselves.’
John was more than a little relieved. He had spent three fraught days this week with Ralph, as he sorted through the chaos. More than once Ralph had torn open the black bin bags that John had filled, and put half of their contents back on a shelf or in a cupboard.
The respite from his fussing came in his down periods, which were too heartbreakingly sad to enjoy. It was harrowing to witness his lack of energy and the bleakness in his eyes. John would want to cry for him.
‘It needs a lot of work,’ Dilys said, whistling at the magnitude of the project.
Her mother-in-law sniffed. ‘That’s why we’re here, Dilys.’
On the way in, Dilys sidled close to John, and actually held his hand. His palms sweated in her grip. He noted Francesca’s eyes glimpsing their joined hands, and felt disloyal to her in holding his wife’s hand. Surely Francesca knew that it was she who he held in his heart? He remembered tracing his fingers down her naked skin and he slipped his hand out from Dilys’ grasp. The contact, the possession felt wrong; her touch interfered with his imaginary journey across Francesca’s body, where he had experienced such bliss.