“But not for twelve hours yet.” Eleanor reaches up to him. Her voice is clear and steady but her heart beats like a drum. “We have one entire night to spend together.”
“Are you sure, Eleanor?” Felix holds her at arm’s length. “Are you absolutely, one hundred per cent, rock-solid sure?”
“Yes, Felix, I am.”
They walk the rest of The Digey in silence, only their fingertips touching, moving slowly in step.
Driftwood feels quiet and private. Felix closes the front door. At last he gathers Eleanor into his arms, his lips on her face, in her hair, on her mouth. Then he pulls her up the stairs. They stop outside the bedroom door.
“Wait here,” he says. “I want to bring something to our bed.”
Eleanor’s hardly able to bear his absence. She looks across at a painting on the wall. It’s a portrait of Moira she’s never noticed before: sad, stern, but hauntingly beautiful, signed by her father. It’s a face Eleanor will remember to her dying day.
She murmurs, “Give us your blessing.”
Felix emerges from the kitchen, carrying a pair of candles. In his bedroom, he draws the curtains, places the candles on the bedside table and lights each of the wicks. They leap into life. The smell of sulphur rises into the air.
Felix turns towards Eleanor.
He touches her cheek, smoothes her hair, reaches out to unbutton her coat.
Candlelit shadows dance along the walls, flicker across his face.
Slowly, Felix and Eleanor peel off their clothes until they are naked.
“Come to me, my dearest girl, my darling Eleanor.”
Felix holds out his arms.
And like a moth to a flame, Eleanor walks into them.
Letters
St Ives, Cornwall, 1936
Eleanor never remembers how she got from Driftwood to the bottom of The Digey.
But she does remember coming to her senses, realising she’s walking alone in a cool, crisp dawn.
She feels exhausted and exhilarated. On every inch of her body she feels Felix’s hands and mouth. His kisses flutter in her hair, sprinkle her face, open her lips and scald her skin. Her thighs burn as she walks. When she blinks, she can see beneath her eyelids the flickers of candle flame, the lights and shadows of Felix’s arms and legs, his face, his hands. She hears his voice – and his words of love.
Half-way through the night Felix had turned to her.
“Eleanor! Come closer… You’ll never leave me, will you? Promise?”
“I promise,” Eleanor murmured. “I’ll be waiting for you in Woodstock. Travel to see me soon… Don’t fret, my darling. Sleep in my arms.”
She knows that if she doesn’t slip into her clothes and walk swiftly away from her lover before he wakes, she’ll never leave. So with only one backward glance, her heart pounding with pain, she leaves Felix sleeping, his profile defined against the pillow, one arm flung out across the sheet, the candles burned to their waxy base.
***
Eleanor opens the front door of The Hideaway and leans against it, trembling. The silence that greets her is soft, comfortable, beckoning. She knows Felix loves her. Meeting him has changed her life.
She patters down to the kitchen to make a cup of sweet black tea. She takes it upstairs, drinking it on the balcony, saying a silent goodbye to the early-morning sea and sky. Then she closes the French windows, draws a deep breath and makes herself think about the journey home. Mummy, Vera… She must face them. And Jonny. Him too… What on earth will she tell him about Felix? A little? Nothing? Everything? Will Jonny notice how Eleanor has changed? Will anyone?
She stands in front of the paintings of Moira. “Thank you for giving me Felix, letting him fall in love with me, giving me time to love him.” She looks into the cornflower-blue eyes. “I wish I’d found out whether you’re still alive. I’ve only seen your image. It’s not enough for me – and it’s certainly not enough for Felix. He misses you. If I were ever to find you, he’d be beside himself with joy.”
Eleanor’s at the front door with her suitcase when she remembers something Jonny had told her about antique bureaux: that some were made with secret drawers. She’d struggled with the one in Giffen Antiques for hours until she finally discovered its cleverly crafted bible well.
She looks at Moira’s desk. Could it possibly contain a secret drawer that nobody had discovered? Is there something inside it that might tell her what happened, that fatal day in the storm?
She walks towards the desk, opens its flap. She pulls a small table towards her feet and sits on a low stool. Trying not to shake with impatience, she removes the paperwork from the desk, laying it in neat piles on the table. Then she runs her hands over the flat inner surface of the bureau, feeling the grain of the wood beneath her fingers. Yes, there’s no mistaking it: in the centre, flat and discrete, is the oblong shape of the section of wood sheltering the bible well. She opens the top drawer of the desk, pushing at the wood above it. With a faint splintering sound, the piece of wood rises into her hand. Beneath it she can feel a small bundle of papers, collected into a cluster by a narrow strip of ribbon.
Her heart thumping, Eleanor pulls out the bundle and stares down at it.
Letters, half a dozen of them, lie in their envelopes, all addressed in a firm, black-inked hand: the first four to Moira at Walton Crescent, Oxford, then two sent care of Lizzie Farrell to 6 Westward Road, St Ives.
Eleanor feels once again like an intruder – even a thief. She’s about to steal something of Moira’s that’s so private not even her own family had seen it. She knows if she reads the letters now, she’ll have to show them to Felix. And if she takes them to Driftwood she’ll never be able to leave. So she replaces the strip of wood in the bureau, returns its papery contents, closes the flap. She unzips her suitcase, lays the letters on top of the red taffeta frock.
She’ll drive as far as she can, stop at a guest-house, read the letters after supper. And then decide whether to tell Felix. They might contain information she’d prefer him never to know. They might harbour no clues whatsoever to Moira’s whereabouts. There’ll be little point in raising his hopes, only to dash them again.
But suppose the letters contain information that could lead Eleanor to Moira, maybe even allow her to reunite Felix’s long-lost mother with her son? That faint possibility is enough to set Eleanor resolutely on her way.
That promise she made to her father… Is it becoming an obsession? Would he have asked her to make it unless he too had believed Moira was still alive?
Eleanor drives to Bath, her head buzzing with memories of the past fortnight, her body remembering every moment of the previous night. She finds a small hotel, eats supper, bathes, and settles into bed with the letters. She unties the narrow blue-velvet ribbon with a beating heart.
The first letter, dated June 1911, had been sent from The Randolph Hotel in Oxford.
My darling Moira
It was wonderful to see you again – you and now also my enchanting little boy. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet me. It has taken me months to summon up the courage to contact you, and my heart, it is full of sorrows and regrets and apologies. I have behaved like a drunken pig. Can you forgive me? I hope you already have. You could easily have told me you never wanted to see me again.
That is exactly what I deserved.
But the moment we met again, I knew the old magic between us had returned – how you say? – with a vengeance. You are more beautiful than ever, chérie, and our adorable little boy, he has your smile and my eyes.
My darling girl, will you meet me again, tomorrow, here at my hotel? Without our enchanting Felix this time? Let me show you how much I love you. Let me for a few short hours take you in my arms. You have decided not to marry Walter Drummond. He cannot love you as I do. I know without you telling me that in so many i
mportant ways you are still mine.
And me, I am certainly, surely, without a single shadow of doubt.
Your Pierre for ever
Eleanor longs to read Moira’s reply, but the bundle only includes letters from Pierre. Frustrating, but better than nothing. There are two more from The Randolph in Oxford in the same vein, and then one from Paris dated August 1911.
I cannot believe you are planning to leave Oxford for Cornwall for a long holiday and – what is even worse – you say you do not wish to see me again.
That my coming to Cornwall will be too difficult, that we shall not be able to keep our meetings a secret. I do not want to keep them secret. I want to blaze our love loud and clear to the world.
Please, my darling, think carefully about your move. I feel it will trap you all too firmly into your life with Walter. The last time we met, you told me you had many doubts about it. What has happened to make you resolve them? Please, I beg you my darling girl, open your heart to me.
I want you to know that if at any time you change your mind, I am here, ready to welcome you and Felix back into my life.
Between that letter and the next, there is more than a year. By then, the tone of Pierre’s letters is very different and they come from Brown’s Hotel in London.
I am a changed man. I have left Paris and the dissolute life entirely. My friends and family think I have died of drink. I have done nothing to correct their assumption. I was indeed very close to death. I do not want them to find me, to coax me back into my disreputable habits. My family have long since despaired of me and I have cut off all communications with them too.
I have moved to the Côte d’Azur, to Juan-les-Pins, where the air is clean and refreshing, the sea a sparkling blue and the surrounding hills, with their olive trees and magnificent cypresses, a peaceful paradise. I am building a villa for you and Felix. It will have a special studio – a room full of windows and wonderful light – where you can paint to your heart’s content.
I live for the day when you will visit me, when we can spend more than a few snatched hours together and lead a proper loving family life.
And then, very close to Moira’s disappearance in 1914, comes another letter from Brown’s Hotel.
You say Walter will not allow you to visit me with Felix. I tell you, that is grossly unfair. He has no right to keep you and our child captive. You have become prisoners in Cornwall. I only asked you both to come to the Côte d’Azur for a brief holiday. Already I am in London waiting for your arrival. Surely it is within my rights to insist you join me?
You must know, my darling girl, there is a war coming. Some say it will be terrible, it will last for years. If that happens, we may never meet again. I have to spell it out, in case Walter is burying his head in the Cornish sand and you with it.
I am tempted to ask my solicitor to handle the matter. I long to come to St Ives and gather you in my arms. But I shall not do so. I respect your life and privacy too much. Also, I do not want to do battle with Walter. We have never met, and that is the way I wish to keep it.
If you cannot come to see me with Felix, then do so on your own. The villa is finished and ready for you. I have a chef, a housekeeper and a gardener. Your every need will be catered for. The only person missing is you. I can no longer live without you. I beg you: come to me.
Please, my darling girl. Without you, I have nothing. No sunlight, no health, no joy in anything. There is only you.
Eleanor puts the letters on her pillow, her eyes burning with tears, her head floundering with bewildered thoughts.
The picture Pierre has painted of Moira’s relationship with Walter is nothing like the one Felix had given Eleanor. But then, as he admitted, he had been only a child.
What if Moira had used the day of the storm as a cover to leave Felix and Walter? Had she somehow, perhaps on the spur of the moment, travelled to London – and decided never to return? Had Pierre prevented her from leaving? Had he arrived unexpectedly in St Ives, snatched her from her Cornish home and set her, loved and pampered, in his villa on the Côte d’Azur?
Eleanor switches off the light, staring into the darkness, listening to the sounds of the hotel: the muted voices, the lilts of laughter, the chinking of glasses, footsteps passing her door, water gurgling in the pipes.
Should she send the letters to Felix? The people writing and receiving them are his parents, not hers. He’ll want to devour them page by page, passionate word by word.
But what if Eleanor can manage to do something more with them, something that might surprise them both? Maybe somewhere in their contents lies a clue that could blaze a new trail of discovery?
She decides to take the letters to Woodstock. The bundle lies on the bedside table, posing more questions than it answers. And, as if Moira’s spirit is still very much alive, it gives her back the faintest fragrance of cloves.
Part Four
Coming Home
Woodstock, 1936
“Ah, Eleanor! At last! How good to see you!” Anne says frostily. “How was your journey?”
Late the following afternoon, Eleanor slumps into the hall. She’d spent a restless night worrying about the letters, and had made a late start from Bath. She’d driven badly: tired, unable to concentrate, almost overcome with memories of Felix. The sound of his voice sings in her ears. When she almost collides with a lorry, she knows she’s lucky to be alive, but wishes she felt more thankful.
“It was easier driving home… The weather was better and at least I knew the way.”
“Well, thank heavens you’re back in one piece.” Anne glances approvingly in the hall mirror. She removes her feathery hat with the veil, smoothes her gleaming hair. Eleanor hasn’t seen her wear that particular hat since her father’s funeral, nor the black suit with the tight jacket. And Anne’s perfume, that sickly Dior…
“Why are you wearing—”
“We buried Mrs Giffen this morning… Such a shame you couldn’t be at the funeral… Jonny missed you. There was no wake. Jonny said he couldn’t face it on his own. We stood around Mrs Giffen’s grave and then everyone drifted away. It was very sad.”
Eleanor flushes with guilt. “Oh, God, Mummy, I’m so sorry—”
“I had a delicious luncheon with Sylvia. We spent the afternoon playing bridge. Jonny asked me when you’d be back. I said I’d no idea. It was so humiliating, Eleanor. First you go missing from the hotel. Then you don’t even bother to keep in touch.” Anne runs a delicate white finger over her front teeth, removing their smudge of scarlet lipstick. “The shop’s still closed. Jonny’s lost interest in everything.”
“I should have been there for him.”
“Well, it’s too late now.” Anne turns to face her. “Let me take a good look at you… I must say, you’re shining with health. I’m longing to hear your news. Vera has the day off. Why don’t you make us a pot of tea and some sandwiches? Bring them into the drawing room.”
With a sinking heart, Eleanor walks into the kitchen. The house seems cold, alien, full of silent shadows. She can sense her father’s presence everywhere, smell the aroma of his tobacco, hear his voice.
“Isn’t The Hideaway charming, Ellie? Now you know why I chose to live there!”
As she carries the tea-tray into the hall, the phone rings. She plonks the tray on the floor, and snatches up the receiver, her heart fluttering like a wild bird.
“Felix?” Eleanor closes her eyes, praying for the sound of his Cornish burr.
“Hello, there! Is that Eleanor?”
“Yes.” She bites her lip. The voice is clipped and cheerful. It belongs to someone she hasn’t thought about in weeks.
“Robert Clark here… I expect you’ve forgotten all about me.”
“Bob… How nice of you to call.”
“A crowd of us are going to celebrate May Day tomorrow mor
ning. It would be simply spiffing if you could come along.”
Eleanor remembers standing on Magdalen Bridge with her father, being crushed in the throng, hearing him laugh with excitement. “I’m sorry, Bob, I can’t. I’ve just got home from Cornwall. I have to be at the antiques’ shop first thing tomorrow.”
“I say, that’s too bad… How was Cornwall?”
“I wish I were still there.” Eleanor’s voice chokes. “It was wonderful.”
“Glad to hear it… I must say, I miss you like crazy… I passed my exams, by the way. Had to work like a Trojan. Talk about burning the midnight oil! I thought my little head would burst beneath the strain.”
“Congratulations, Bob.” Eleanor tries to remember what Pass Moderations are all about. They seem to exist in some remote, irrelevant academic cloud – yet only a few months ago her determination to conquer them had filled every waking hour.
“Thanks a million… Oh, by the way, I must tell you… I bumped into a friend of yours in the Covered Market yesterday. Guess who.”
“I’ve no idea.” Eleanor remembers Felix’s first kiss, standing in the hallway of Driftwood, his arms around her, his hands in her hair, the scent of turpentine.
“That Perdita girl you were friends with. And guess what. She’s having a baby! She looks more ravishing than ever. And she’s not letting on about the father. She just blushed and looked a bit coy. Oh, and she’s really sorry to hear about your dad. She was off skiing when you had the funeral… Eleanor? Are you still there?”
The Choice Page 23