The House of Hopes and Dreams

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The House of Hopes and Dreams Page 4

by Trisha Ashley


  I was a party-pooper, immediately retiring to my cabin where, with the help of airline ear plugs, I went out like a light for several hours.

  When I finally woke up, I discovered that in the rush to get off I’d left my phone behind – not that it would have done me much good out at sea, but I could probably have talked to Julian when I was on Anguilla. I could still have got round that and contacted him, of course – but he’d been so insistent I didn’t keep checking up on him. Willow and Nat would have left by the time we set sail back, but Molly would resume visiting him the moment they’d gone. It was only a few days …

  Anguilla was beautiful and for a jam-packed forty-eight hours we piled into local taxis and explored, swam and ate wonderful local food. It was a world away from home and I have to say I was totally chilled and relaxed by the time we sailed for Antigua again. Everyone else finally seemed pooped out and retired to cabins and sun loungers to recover, but I’d caught up with my sleep and felt fine.

  In fact, my Pollyanna gene kicked in and I was filled with a rush of sudden optimism for the future. I’d been letting things get too much on top of me and this break would do both me and Julian good. We’d get things in perspective and be able to move on into a different, but more relaxed, future.

  Though of course, that wouldn’t stop me ringing Julian the very moment I got back to the villa and perhaps by then he wouldn’t be cross, but instead tell me how much he was missing me, the way he used to.

  Later I attended some classes at one of the art schools that had opened their doors to young ladies, in order to broaden my skills in painting, drawing and design. I felt sorry for some of the other girls, for they would never know the joy of painting with light as I did, not just with flat pigment.

  Many of them, like my great friend Lily Stavely, hoped to learn skills that would enable them to earn a respectable living. Lily, the fifth child of a poor parson, had a flair for embroidery that she hoped would release her from the obligation to take a post as a governess or companion.

  Not all our time was spent working or studying, and London offered many opportunities for entertainment. Together with some of Lily’s brothers and sisters and, often with my cousin Michael, whom Father was training up into the business, we spent many happy Sundays on excursions to the parks, and there were boating expeditions in summer and skating in winter. My girlhood was a very happy one.

  4

  Lost Voices

  But when I finally tracked my iPhone down behind a sofa cushion, I discovered that Julian had been incapable of telling me anything since the Sunday we sailed for Anguilla, when he’d suffered a final, catastrophic stroke.

  I knew there must be bad news the moment I plugged the phone into the charger and a million missed calls and text messages from Molly popped up, even before I listened to her voicemail gently breaking the news.

  I called her straight away, cold and shivering with the shock, and she picked up as quickly as if she’d been standing by the phone waiting. Perhaps she had.

  ‘Molly – it’s me, Angel. I’ve only just heard your voicemail …’ I swallowed, unable to continue.

  Her voice sounded thick and husky, as if she’d been crying. ‘Oh, Angel, I’m so sorry you had to get the news this way. I was afraid your phone might be broken and I couldn’t find another number to try.’

  ‘Jim suddenly decided we were sailing to Anguilla and in the scramble my phone got left behind … but Julian told me on Saturday not to keep checking up on him, so I decided to take him at his word,’ I said, only half aware of what I was saying.

  ‘Of course you did. He seemed fine, so there was no reason to think this would happen,’ she said comfortingly.

  ‘It takes around twelve hours to sail to Anguilla but the contact details for Jim’s yacht are in the big address book for emergencies, though I don’t suppose you knew that … and you didn’t know I was on it, anyway.’ I broke off, realizing I was gabbling inanely.

  Then I took a deep, shaky breath and said, ‘I can’t believe it’s true. Please tell me what happened, Molly. Julian – didn’t suffer, did he?’

  ‘No, not at all. The doctor said it must have been instantaneous,’ she assured me quickly. ‘It seems he’d gone down to the workshop very early on Sunday morning, but it never occurred to Nat and Willow that he wasn’t still asleep in his room until he hadn’t appeared by lunchtime. Then Nat rang us up to see if we knew where he was and Grant and I went over there and suggested we look in the workshop … And there he was, in the studio. He must have been sitting in his chair at the desk and just slipped down on to the floor. He’d been gone for hours by then, there was nothing that could be done.’

  ‘Déjà vu,’ I said, because it had been Grant who’d found him early one morning the first time, when he’d arrived to open up. Julian had been worrying about whether the kiln was firing properly and we thought he’d probably gone down in the early hours to check it.

  ‘He said he felt fine and could manage perfectly well without me. And all that medication he was on should have stopped him having any more strokes.’

  ‘It would help, but don’t forget they told you the outcome after the initial stroke would have been better if he’d been found quickly enough for him to have that special treatment,’ she reminded me. ‘It has to be administered within a short time after the stroke.’

  ‘Yes, I was just fooling myself recently that there was still some improvement, but I’m sure he knew it and that’s why his frustration was making him angrier every day. I knew I shouldn’t have left him,’ I added, anguished.

  I felt transfixed with guilt. I hadn’t been there the first time he’d needed me, because I’d been in London, having won a competition to design a glass screen for a museum. And now I’d failed him again.

  ‘If I’d been home, I’d have known where he was,’ I said, though of course I’d have assumed he’d gone down there to get away from me again, and perhaps waited a while before following him. ‘I might have been in time to save him.’

  ‘Angel, they said even if someone had been there with him when it happened, he couldn’t have been saved,’ Molly said gently.

  ‘And think of poor Nat, finding his father like that,’ I said, suddenly. ‘I wonder if I should ring him. I mean, I know he’s always resented me, but at a time like this …’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I gave him your phone number and email, so I’d leave it up to him to contact you, but I’ll tell him I’ve broken the news.’

  ‘Do, and if you could say that I – I’m so devastated by Julian’s loss and understand how he must be feeling, too. I’ll be home as soon as possible. I suppose he’s still there, organizing everything, till I get back?’

  I suddenly realized that it was already Thursday morning, so he’d had to cope alone since Sunday.

  ‘He’s here, but Willow had to return to London.’ She hesitated, then added slowly, ‘Angel …’

  But I’d heard the villa door slam and the sound of Jim’s voice calling to Mum. ‘Look, Molly, Jim’s just come in so I’d better go and get him to book me a seat on the first flight home. I’ll let you know when he’s done that.’

  ‘Yes, do, and I’ll meet you off the plane,’ she offered.

  ‘Bless you,’ I said gratefully.

  But it was Friday before Jim could get me on a flight, by which time I was almost beside myself with desperation to get home … even if that home would now be an empty shell.

  Somehow, though, I felt as if Julian would be there waiting for me, and perhaps he would, his presence in the workshop and cottage, where we’d been so happy together for over ten years, lingering to comfort me.

  By the time the plane landed at Manchester airport, I’d slept little and eaten almost nothing for over two days, though I hadn’t really cried. I think that was because I couldn’t accept Julian had gone until I was home and saw for myself.

  As I came out into the bright arrivals lounge, it seemed like a shaky stage set that might tum
ble down at any moment, until I spotted Molly’s familiar, stocky figure, clad in jeans and a loose quilted lumberjack shirt, her round rosy face under its mop of greying curls unwontedly serious. She was solid enough to anchor me back to reality.

  We hugged and then she grabbed the handle of my larger case, leaving me with just my small carry-on one. ‘Come on, the car’s in the short-stay car park. We can talk when we’re on our way.’

  Everyone seemed to be leaving the airport at the same time and in a hurry, but once Molly had negotiated her way out and we’d joined the motorway, she said, ‘Did Nat finally get in contact with you to update you on what’s happening?’

  ‘No, not a word. Has he gone back to London, or is he still at the cottage?’ He might not have previously wanted to spend a night under the same roof as me, but I assumed our mutual grief and loss would change that.

  ‘He got leave from his job and now Willow’s come back again, too,’ she said. ‘I rang him to say what time I was collecting you from the airport and he told me he’d organized the funeral for next Tuesday.’

  ‘Already? And without discussing it with me?’ I exclaimed, shocked.

  ‘I know it seems a bit fast, but actually it’s been six days now since Julian died, Angel,’ Molly said gently.

  ‘I suppose it has,’ I said numbly, ‘and I expect he felt he had to start making the arrangements, though he could have consulted me about them! But perhaps he’s waiting till I get back to finalize things.’

  ‘Um …’ said Molly, and lapsed into silence until we left the motorway and headed into a maze of increasingly narrow country lanes.

  ‘Not far to go now,’ Molly said, and I realized the warmth of the car had almost sent me to sleep. I roused myself and asked what was happening with the workshop. ‘I suppose it’s been shut all week?’

  ‘No, Nat told Grant to open up as usual last Wednesday. He’s trying to take charge and throw his weight about already.’

  ‘I suppose someone had to run things till I got back.’

  And Nat probably assumed that the workshop would be his and he had a right to do so.

  ‘Julian would want the work on hand to be finished on schedule. We’d only factored in the usual break from Christmas Eve till just after New Year,’ I said.

  ‘There’s running things, and there’s taking over – and the way Nat’s started lording it about, I’ve been expecting to find your bags outside the cottage door any time!’ Molly said indignantly.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything like that, Molly, even if he could. Julian told me before I went to Antigua that he was making a will to leave things divided between us, even though I tried to persuade him out of it, and Nat must surely have been in touch with the solicitor by now.’

  ‘You have to be the least materialistic person I know!’ She turned her head and gave me a brief, affectionate smile. ‘Nat hasn’t mentioned a will, even if he knows about it. But then, he wouldn’t be likely to discuss anything with those he thinks of as employees! I’m glad Julian thought of making a will, though, because things can be tricky without one.’

  I wondered if perhaps Nat hadn’t mentioned the will because Julian had changed his mind and left the lion’s share to him after all. I hoped so, for Nat’s sake, but I was sure in any case we would be united by the depth of our loss and able to work things out fairly. It didn’t seem important at that moment.

  ‘Whatever happens, you’ve always got me and Grant to fall back on,’ Molly assured me rather ominously.

  Despite the warmth from the car heater, I gave a sudden shiver.

  I’m certain that in taking Michael into the business, Father hoped that he and I would make a match of it one day. However, from the first moment Michael set eyes on Lily, who is as tall and fair as her name, my father’s hopes were doomed.

  As for myself, I had at that time no interest in beaux and was still much the same thin, sallow, brown-haired little thing that I’d been at eleven. If I occasionally sighed over stories of knights in shining armour and beautiful damsels, it was not in the hope of such a man sweeping into my life and carrying me off. In fact, had this happened, I suspected that in no time at all I’d have been rendered witless with boredom away from the workshop and begging to be returned thence.

  In retrospect, my life up to the point where this journal begins seems like an idyll and I was ill prepared for the events that were to follow.

  But I will let the voice of a younger self I barely now recognize take up the tale.

  Jessie Kaye Revell

  5

  Cold Front

  By the time we turned into the drive, the short December day had already descended into cold darkness, but there were no welcoming lights switched on in the porch to greet us, as there would have been if Julian had been at home.

  I felt the first unsettling intimation of catastrophic change, and suddenly I didn’t want to go in.

  ‘They’ll probably be in the kitchen,’ Molly said encouragingly as I got out and hesitated, shivering in the cold air. ‘I’ll come in with you.’

  I’m sure she guessed how I felt and realized how hard this first meeting with Nat – and his unknown wife – would be, yet I was still convinced that this tragedy would finally bring us together, because surely he would be feeling as devastated as I was?

  We dumped my bags in the hall and she’d been right about where they were, because we could hear voices from the kitchen – Nat’s low, even tones and a high-pitched female twittering that must be his wife, Willow. They suddenly ceased talking as Molly pushed the door fully open, letting light and warmth flood out into the hall.

  ‘Here’s Angel – didn’t you hear the car?’ she said, in her best, brisk Nurse Molly manner. ‘I hope you’ve got the kettle on, because she’s freezing.’

  Two faces looked back at me, though my eyes were immediately drawn to Nat, sitting at the long oak table, because he was a smudged and pale imitation of his father, like the last lithograph in a too-long print run.

  ‘Oh, Nat, I’m so sorry about Julian!’ I exclaimed. ‘It seems so much worse that he … he should have gone when I wasn’t here, too …’

  I faltered to a stop, my initial impulsive move towards him to offer a comforting hug stifled at birth, for he made no move to rise to his feet and his expression remained cold and remote.

  ‘You’re finally back, then,’ he observed brusquely.

  ‘I told you she was getting the first flight back she could,’ Molly reminded him. ‘She’d have been here sooner, if she hadn’t been out of phone contact when it happened.’

  ‘Yes, and I feel so bad about that, but it’s a busy time of the year for the Caribbean, so I was lucky to get this cancellation,’ I gabbled, only half aware of what I was saying, for this was so not the scenario of my homecoming I’d envisaged. ‘Otherwise, I’d have had to wait till my original flight back on Monday.’

  ‘There was no rush anyway, Monday would have done,’ he told me, and I looked at him blankly. The feeling of being trapped in a nightmare that I’d had since Molly had first broken the news to me was increasing by the moment.

  ‘What a stupid thing to say!’ Molly told him forthrightly, putting her arm around me. ‘Of course she needed to get home as soon as she could.’

  He shrugged. ‘She chose to go on holiday and leave him on his own.’

  ‘But he insisted I go to Antigua even though I didn’t want to leave him,’ I said.

  I choked, looking at him for some sign of empathy that didn’t seem to exist. ‘Oh, Nat, it really does feel so much worse because I wasn’t with him when it happened.’

  Willow, a tall, slender creature with smooth margarine-yellow hair framing her long, beaky face, regarded me curiously out of pale-blue eyes. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference whether you were here or not, you know. The doctor said he just dropped like a stone and that was it.’

  ‘Oh, tactfully put,’ Molly snapped sarcastically, and Willow flushed.

  ‘Well, it
wouldn’t have made any difference, would it, Nat?’ she appealed to her husband.

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘But it would have made a difference to me,’ I told them. ‘Besides, I could have helped you to organize everything. Molly told me you’ve booked the funeral, but we’ll need to discuss the service and—’

  ‘It’s next Tuesday. It’s all fixed,’ Nat said flatly.

  ‘Oh … I suppose it’s at the village church? I know Julian wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but he did like to slip into evensong and—’

  ‘No, it’s at the crematorium, though the vicar’s doing the service,’ Nat interrupted. ‘We were lucky they could fit it in so quickly, this close to Christmas.’

  ‘But Julian and I discussed it once and he wanted to be buried here in the village churchyard – we both did.’

  Nat gave me a savage look, so clearly expressing his wish that he could inter me there immediately, that I was quite taken aback. It was blindingly clear that the tragedy, instead of healing old wounds and bringing us together, had instead made him even more inimical towards me, though I had no idea why that should be.

  In any case, right at that moment I was too jet-lagged, exhausted and emotionally drained to deal with it. In fact, I turned so dizzy that I might have fallen if Molly’s arm wasn’t still around me.

  ‘You look pale. You’d better sit down,’ suggested Willow, as if she was the hostess in my own kitchen, and even in my present state I was starting to be irritated by the way her fluting voice went up at the end of every sentence as if it was a question.

  I ignored her, for the first time taking in the alien signs of their occupation: the strange coats on the rack behind the door, a raspberry-pink Mulberry Bayswater handbag occupying the top of the dresser. Willow was drinking out of Julian’s mug, too, the one with the Chartres Cathedral window roundel on the side.

  Everything else in the room was so familiar and yet so subtly changed, as if I’d time-slipped into an alternative version of my life.

 

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