Princess

by Alison Fraser

  His attitude was what Adam had expected, but he was confident that he had read the solicitor accurately.

  ‘What do you suggest I do about the girl?’

  ‘Perhaps you could stay a few days and get to know Serena?’ Mr Alexander proposed.

  Again Adam picked up the old man’s thoughts; clearly Mr Alexander wanted him to make more than a legal commitment to the girl but would doubt he was the sort of man to take an interest in one of life’s waifs and strays. And Adam had no grounds on which to protest, since his life, dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure and only occasionally interrupted by a few months of concentrated work on a novel, had no room for lost causes. ‘Perhaps.’ The terse response gave no promises.

  ‘Well, I’d better be going,’ Mr Alexander was beginning to view the possibility of Adam taking a personal interest in the girl as a lost cause also. Shoving documents into his briefcase with less than his usual meticulousness, he added, ‘I would be grateful if you could dispose of your aunt’s private papers, as you think fit.’

  ‘Of course,’ Adam nodded.

  Escorting Mr Alexander to his car, as much to get some fresh air as out of courtesy, he delayed in the forecourt in spite of the steady rain. Without conscious intention, he raised his eyes to the upper storey.

  A small blonde head was pressed against one of the windows, features blurred by the water streaming down the pane. She seemed to be staring down at him, and he returned her interest for a full minute. He tried a smile; the distorted face neither moved nor changed, disturbing in its immobility.

  He discovered the lounge opposite the library, and poured himself a large whisky, pulling loose his black tie. Sitting in an armchair close to the lit fire, he stretched his long legs and stared broodingly into the flames, alternately wishing himself three hundred miles from the mausoleum of a house and condemning his mother for embroiling him in this situation. Even allowing for her aversion to any form of unpleasantness, she might at least have outlined the circumstances for him before he had been burdened with the responsibility for that lifeless child—who undoubtedly was oblivious to the problem she presented. Oblivious to about everything, he finally judged.

  In fact Adam’s keen perception had, for once, let him down: for the girl in question, while sitting with perfect stillness before that upstairs window on which her stare was frozen, was transmitting a message. To the woman who meant to keep a hold on her, even in death.

  ‘I’ve seen him now,’ she said silently, ‘standing tall and erect in the courtyard. Your dark emissary who stands there in the rain staring up at his property—at me. But I know what he is...’ and she smiled in her bitterness.

  Adam rose at seven, irritable and unrefreshed. A fastidious dresser, he disliked having to re-wear the same shirt and was relieved to find a collection of worn but clean shirts in the base of the walnut wardrobe. The cotton stripe was hardly his usual style and was tight across his broad shoulders.

  The clothes and toiletries in the adjoining bathroom had to be Templeton’s, and Adam was critical of the sentimental preservation of the personal effects of the deal. Within days of his own father’s fatal heart attack, his mother had neatly packed his numerous business suits, shirts and ties, and sent them to the nearest Oxfam shop. He had walked in on her doing so and stayed just long enough to see her tears staining a silk dinner shirt that was being folded and unfolded in her abstracted grief.

  Profoundly moved, perhaps for the last time in his life, he had wanted to comfort, but in his own confusion and overwhelming sense of loss, the right words had not come, and his father’s family, large and close-knit, had rallied round and provided the support his mother had needed at the time.

  Adam, at barely twenty, found himself to be a very rich young man; public school training and the reserved, self-contained nature of an only child had inhibited any outward display of his very real grief for a father he had regarded as infallible, and he had been too young to see the event in anything but an intensely personal way.

  He had never returned to the economics course he had been following at Cambridge, and for a time it had seemed to the Carmichael family, initially shocked and then frankly disapproving, that the young man they had seen as quiet and studious was intent on going through the money his highly industrious father had amassed, as fast as he possibly could.

  Adam brushed down the crisp black hair that just touched the collar of the borrowed shirt and smiled mockingly at his good-looking reflection in the bathroom mirror. It had been a crazy time, changing fast cars and women the moment the latest model had lost its sheen of newness, and recklessly courting danger in the company of other young socialites of the ‘sixties with more money than sense.

  In retrospect, he realised he had been overreacting to his father’s premature death, but he didn’t consider that episode of his life entirely wasted. From the experiences, he had written his first book, partially tongue in cheek, and it had been hailed as an accurate representation of the mores of a lost spoilt generation.

  The critical acclaim had pleased rather than excited Adam, but it had gone a long way to redeeming him in his mother’s eyes, for she saw the writing as a sign of his preparing to settle down. That had been wishful thinking. For although Adam had matured out of his taste for bedding every attractive girl who came his way and the feverish lifestyle, he had become cynical in the process, and much of that hard core of cynicism was directed at himself. Charming when he chose to be, he could also be one of the most selfish bastards he knew.

  And with that damning self-analysis, he descended the stairs to the study and telephoned Leeds for the times of the infrequent trains that stopped at Rippondale, the nearest village. There was one at noon he could easily make.

  After a leisurely breakfast, however, he was not so lucky in contacting Mr Alexander. Disgruntled to find the solicitor was attending another funeral, Adam wondered how many clients the old man had left, considering the rate at which he seemed to be reading wills. Nevertheless he was reluctant to communicate his decision second-hand and arranged with the clerk that the solicitor should come to the house as soon as possible.

  Several phone calls later, he finally located a car hire firm in Leeds willing to deliver a car to the Hall so that he was no longer at the mercy of public transport.

  And then he was left, with time and silence and his thoughts, and insidiously they returned to an image of his young step-cousin, slumped and inert in the library chair. The housekeeper had pushed her cup of tea almost to the edge of the table, but if the movement had been in Serena’s line of vision, it had made no impression on the girl. Throughout the reading of the will, the tea had remained untouched.

  Her stepmother had described her condition as retardation. To Adam that term suggested slowness rather than the apparent... nothingness he had witnessed yesterday—as though the spirit had flown and left behind an empty shell. The uncharacteristically lyrical thought lingered to disturb before Adam became irritated with himself for playing amateur psychiatrist.

  Damn Alexander for not being available, he cursed as he strode out into the hallway and shrugging into his suit jacket, slammed out of the house and into what he assumed must be normal Yorkshire weather, blustery even at the approach of summer.

  He was unconscious of jade green eyes that followed his progress across the front yard to the outbuildings some two hundred yards from the house—eyes that saw but did not recognise, for Serena Jane Templeton had already pushed yesterday to the back of her mind, and now used the tall, striding figure to initiate one of her daydreams.

  Her father was going to the stables. Perhaps he would take her riding today. They both liked it when the wind was high, fresh on their faces and streaming through their hair. He’d give her a head start because her horse was smaller, and they’d race to the top of the hill and stay there for hours, likea couple of truants talking over past adventures.

  And he would hold her close and promise that better times were coming... soon, very so
on.

  The stables were divided into four stalls, unoccupied now of course, but Adam noticed that the tackle was spotlessly clean. As he fingered the quality leather of a saddle, it brought back pleasant memories of long summer days riding over the Downs with his cousins.

  ‘No horses now, you know,’ a gruff male voice stated the obvious.

  Adam wheeled round to observe the man who had silently crept up on him. ‘You’re...?’

  ‘Brocklehurst, the gardener.’ The reply was brusque.

  Adam guessed him to be an age past retirement, as he took in an untidy thatch of white hair above a weather-beaten, deeply-lined face.

  ‘I’m...’

  ‘I know who you be, Mr Carmichael.’ For his age the man was exceptionally fit: in one easy movement he removed the saddle from Adam’s reach and placed it in the tack room. The action could have been construed as rude.

  ‘Someone keeps all this stuff in good condition,’ Adam declared with a measure of curiosity, indicating the tackle.

  ‘I do. Was groom once for the Hall. Never know when t’ll be needed again,’ Brocklehurst responded, and this time there was no mistaking the man’s truculence. ‘Never know when t’young miss will want to come out riding again.’

  Adam estimated that five years must have passed since the young miss had been on a horse, making the old man’s assertion totally ridiculous. Was the whole household bewitched by the girl? Last night after dinner the housekeeper had come to the lounge to plead on Serena’s behalf, and Adam had listened with barely concealed impatience while the kindly matron made the girl sound like the sleeping princess of fairytales. And now Brocklehurst’s hostility told him he had been ringed as the heartless villain who presented some sort of threat to her.

  Were they all deaf, dumb and blind to the girl’s state? Well, he wasn’t. The girl needed professional care and attention which she couldn’t get surrounded by old family retainers who pretended everything was normal.

  Exasperated, he swung on his heel and left the old Yorkshireman, who was now painstakingly bringing a shine to a metal stirrup. He circled the house, and branched off as he caught sight of another outbuilding set lower than the house where the grass slope at the back gave way to woodland. It was square and more modern than the other buildings—and its largely glass roof marked it as Graham Templeton’s studio specially built for the short time he had lived here.

  He tried both doors. Unbelievably the side door was open—unbelievably, because there was a stack of canvasses leaning against the far wall. Didn’t these people realise the potential value of the paintings left so casually?

  Slowly he perused the paintings. They were good—very good. Added to the four examples of the man’s work he had already seen, they confirmed his opinion that Graham Templeton had been a man of considerable talent.

  The portrait of his second wife, concealed at the back, was especially arresting, for it caught the general impression of a proud, striking woman who was very much in control of her life, but the mouth subtly hinted at something else. With a few strokes of red, the artist had captured a latent weakness—or was it cruelty? Both, Adam decided. Impossible to tell if it represented a distorted view of the artist’s or an accurate portrayal of his aunt, he surmised. Whichever, he felt no stirring to add it to his collection—its effect was powerful and unsettling.

  When he returned to the house, he sought out Mrs Baker.

  ‘I’d like to see Serena,’ he ordered coolly, betraying none of the impulsiveness that had prompted the idea.

  Mrs Baker’s head shot up and her hands stilled in their task. Her jaw literally dropped. ‘But, sir...’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Baker?’ Adam lifted an enquiring brow.

  ‘W-well, sir,’ the housekeeper stammered in her surprise, rubbing nervous hands up and down the front of her large flowered apron, ‘I can take you up to her room, but I don’t think she’ll speak to you. Nothing personal, you understand. She’s just very... shy,’ she finished lamely.

  Adam’s rigid unwavering stare told Alice Baker the choice was not hers to make. Her late mistress had had the same dark eyes that would fix on one, and communicate impatience, disapproval or dislike without having to say a word. Hurriedly she washed her hands and hung up her apron on the pantry door, briskly instructing Lizzie, the maid, standing with mouth gaping, to get on with the lunch.

  Wordlessly Adam followed her plump figure upstairs, and Mrs Baker would have been even more surprised if she had known their thoughts ran parallel as they trod the corridor to the girl’s bedroom. What did he, an unsympathetic stranger, hope to achieve?

  Mrs Baker knocked on the door, but any hopes of monitoring the meeting were dashed as Adam inclined his head in a gesture of polite dismissal.

  The room was dark and gloomy, rain now beating a regular tattoo on the windows. At first he thought it empty, as it was filled with an unnatural silence, but then he saw the girl sitting at the far end, motionless and staring out over the yard. He coughed lightly to announce his presence, but her back gave no sign of recognising it.

  His eyes shifted round the room, austere and cheerless as the rest of the house, bare of possessions or ornaments except for two gilt-edged photograph frames on a chest of drawers.

  The man he identified as Graham Templeton, a colour supplement having run an article about his work some years earlier. A quiet, unassuming man, his hair greyed by the time the photograph had been taken and a suggestion of humour about the mouth and eyes.

  The faceofthewoman,however,wasarevelation,forit was the model for the painting he himself owned, the one titled simply ‘Serenity’; it had not occurred to him that he possessed the portrait of the man’s first wife.

  With the frame still in his hands, he approached the slight figure, yet even when he was within a foot of her chair she did not seem to be aware of him. He felt invisible, an unpleasant sensation.

  He searched for an opening and asked with a deliberate slowness, ‘Is this a picture of your mother?’

  Apparently he had spoken the magic word, for the girl wheeled round and violently snatched the picture from his grasp. The wild look in the large vivid green eyes shook him, but he was more startled when he took in her full face. In feature it was a replica of his ‘Serenity’, with the same breathtaking bone-structure. The very fact that her face was so familiar made her savage expression and bone-thinness all the more remarkable. It was not a natural slimness, he appraised, but nearly a state of emaciation. Her hair, long and very fair, was tangled wildly, and looked as though it was never combed. But despite the fierceness, Adam was momentarily transfixed by a sense of beauty.

  The transition from vibrant awareness to total blankness was almost instantaneous, like a light had shone too brightly and then snapped out. She shielded her precious photograph, arms locked tightly around it. The reasoning eluded him, but he knew she had expected him to take it forcibly from her; the fingers curling round her upper arms must have been inflicting pain, for long uncut nails were digging into her flesh.

  Adam looked long and hard at the top of her head, and felt a wave of pity wash over him, so strong he had to swallow the constriction in his throat. In slow motion, as though he was dealing with a frightened cornered animal, he drew up a twin to her hard wooden chair and placed it next to hers.

  ‘Please look at me.’ Nothing. He extended his hand and she did not resist the light pressure of his index finger tilting her head upwards, but the blankness persisted.

  ‘My name’s Adam. I’m your mother’s... stepmother’s nephew.’ As an attempt at reassurance it failed miserably, for it had her gripping the frame even closer to her chest. ‘I’m not going to take your mother’s picture away. She was very beautiful.’

  Adam detected the merest flicker of an eyelid.

  ‘I want to help you,’ he vowed quietly, and was surprised at how true his simple statement was, no matter what cold rationality had decided earlier. He sifted through what the housekeeper had said about the girl. Hadn’t
there been something about her only interest being in sketching? ‘If you come downstairs with me and have lunch, we can talk about your future. Perhaps you’d like to show me your drawing. I like looking at drawings.’

  Her shocking reply was a whisper but clear and precise for all that. ‘Don’t patronise me!’

  Green eyes were suddenly alive with defiance as he registered her words with cold alarm. It was exactly what he had been doing, talking to her as though she was mentally deficient, and her cool incisive tone belied this. He began to feel very much out of his depth.

  ‘I’m sorry. I meant to be...’

  ‘Kind to the poor retarded girl. Don’t bother. Just leave me alone,’ she clipped out each word, mimicking his slow deliberate speech. ‘I know about you, understand?’

  He didn’t, but he had the oddest impression that she had really meant ‘I know you’ rather than ‘I know about you’. Either way, it didn’t make much sense.

  ‘Did my aunt mention me? You must miss her a lot now...’

  Laughter, cutting and humourless, stopped him dead. It was a far from pleasant sound—a sacrilege coming from so angelic a face.

  ‘Oh, I miss her...just as she knew I would. That’s why my beloved stepmother left you to me in her will.’

  Again she pronounced this with a definite lucidity, but still it made no sense.

  ‘I’m not with you, Serena.’

  His tone, uneven and rattled, urged her for an explanation, but she confined herself to, ‘No, you’re not.’ Then she laughed a second time, only the laughter cracked and splintered, and for a second it seemed it would turn to tears, but she shut her eyes very tightly and when they flickered open once more, the blankness had returned.

  Adam desperately wanted her to explain her apparently meaningless statements, but she was gone from him, her face turned back to the window, indifferent to his presence. It was a trick, but real all the same. He wanted to shake her so that she would return to him, complete the absurd conversation she had left hanging in mid-air, but wherever her mind was, it was not in this room with him. And, scarcely conscious of it, he felt some of the compassion for her change to a fine formless resentment that began to govern his attitude towards her.