by Unknown
‘Is it true, Spurs?’ Ellen repeated.
He sucked in one cheek. ‘That was the plan.’
‘My son,’ Hell’s Bells told Ellen, fixing her with the steeliest of gazes, ‘is indeed to marry a lovely local girl later this summer. Such a shame that you won’t be in the village to witness the celebrations – I gather you’ll be leaving us soon?’
Ellen stared at her in disbelief. ‘And Godspell’s agreed to this?’ She looked from Hell’s Bells to Spurs.
He nodded.
‘They make a delightful couple,’ Hell’s Bells said, with great force if little conviction. ‘Of course, you probably won’t understand the way we do things around here, Miss Jamieson, but one must put duty to the family first, and that is what Jasper is doing.’
Ellen gaped at them both. ‘It’s medieval. It’s crazy. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve—’
‘How dare you come into this house uninvited and start questioning our lives?’ Hell’s Bells raged.
‘No!’ Spurs turned to his mother. ‘She’s right. It is medieval.’
Hell’s Bells was purple with indignation. ‘I hardly think that you should listen to the opinion of some tramp you’ve been—’
‘Shut up, Mother,’ he snapped. ‘I love her.’
She didn’t miss a beat. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I . . . love . . . her,’ he repeated.
‘Very well.’ She unfolded several chins, undefeated. ‘I accept that you think you are in love with this . . . person,’ she cast a beady silver eye over Ellen, ‘but that does not and cannot alter your duty to this family.’
Spurs shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. It alters everything.’
‘Explain.’ She tapped the toe of her court shoe.
He walked to the far end of the kitchen and leaned against the Aga, as though desperate for its heat despite the sweltering day.
‘When you suggested this idea, Mother, I no longer believed that I deserved any sort of happiness.’ He spoke quickly and quietly, forcing them to listen. ‘All I knew was that here was a chance to make amends at last, that even though I’ve given you and Father so much bloody suffering with my actions, you were willing to entrust me with a legacy. I ruined Father’s career, I made this family a laughing-stock, I practically bankrupted you, I turned you into an alcoholic, which is probably why you’re now—’
‘We don’t talk about that,’ Hell’s Bells reminded him, glancing uncomfortably at the large bottle of gin poking out from behind the toaster.
He stared at his feet for a moment, his cheeks hollow. ‘I’d got to a point where I no longer cared what I did with my life,’ he went on. ‘I’d been running away for so long that I’d forgotten what I was running from – I was just following the white lines on the roads. When I came back, I was willing to sign on whatever dotted line you wanted me to. I am a professional prodigal son.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘My first proper job.’
‘You are a good son,’ Hell’s Bells’ voice cracked with emotion, but she stood firm, her chin still aloft as she reminded him, ‘a dutiful son.’
‘I felt no sense of duty, honour or responsibility to the family, the house or our history when I was younger.’ He turned to Ellen, silver eyes tortured. ‘It seemed archaic – those draconian schools, being told who and what I was all the time, as though breeding and heritage superseded any individuality. It’s a job, you see – even today. With bugger-all left of the estate and no farms to manage, being a Constantine is still a vocation.’
‘But you’re a Belling,’ she muttered.
‘This family is Constantine!’ Hell’s Bells boomed. ‘The Constantines have lived in Oddlode manor for three hundred years.’
Spurs watched her wearily. ‘I’m sorry, Mother, but I’ve never wanted it – the house, the history, the lifestyle. I came home to save it because I felt that was the only way to make sense of my life . . . and then what you asked me to do seemed to make sense of your death.’
Her eyes bulged. ‘My what?’
He looked away. ‘There’s no point in hiding the truth. I know.’
‘Know what exactly?’
Ellen had to admit that Hell’s Bells was doing a good job of bluffing. She looked utterly stupefied.
Spurs walked to his mother’s shoulder. ‘I have the letter . . . “It is with great regret that I must inform you that there is very little that we can do for the terminal condition you describe, especially at this advanced stage”.’ He quoted from memory. ‘I’ve read that bloody letter a hundred times or more, I read it every night before I sleep, wondering why you can’t bring yourself to tell Father and I.’
Hell’s Bells pressed her gold-encrusted ring finger to her lips and watched him with troubled eyes. ‘I read it a hundred times too,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I kept it in my handbag and read it in the car, trying to believe it. I thought I must have dropped it. I turned the dratted car upside down.’
‘I found it by accident.’ His eyes shot to Ellen’s face for a moment.
‘You should never have read it.’
‘“I am sure this comes as a very great disappointment,”’ Spurs carried on quoting in little more than a whisper, ‘“but it would be unprofessional of me to advise otherwise. We do have treatments which will greatly ease the discomfort and pain during the later stages of the disease, and I am happy to talk these through with you at greater length should you wish to pursue the matter. But as regards curative treatment, then I am afraid the outcome is unavoidable.” I think I deserved to know that my own mother is dying.’
Hell’s Bells stifled a throaty sob and blinked. She looked guilt-striken. ‘You mustn’t tell your father about this.’
‘Was it from your consultant?’ he asked.
She shook her head, rattling her rings against her teeth, her eyes racing around the room. Revealing her secret seemed to be tormenting her. Ellen’s heart ached for them both.
‘It was some quack Hilary Winston-Black mentioned – I thought he might be able to help.’
‘Hilary the dog breeder?’
‘One is willing to try anything at times like this,’ she mumbled, her fighting spirit draining fast. ‘It was my last hope.’
‘Can’t the doctors do anything?’
She turned away. ‘It seems not.’
She paced the flagstones before stopping to seek sanctuary in the chunky, seal-soft necks of her Labradors as they lay anxiously in their baskets. She pressed her forehead to the greying muzzle of the senior dog and muttered something under her breath. Ellen couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like ‘Forgive me.’
‘“I hope that these last few months do bring some joy and understanding amongst the inevitable heartache”,’ Spurs finished bitterly, a shaking hand raking his hair from his face. ‘I guess I’m still working on the understanding part, but it was pretty obvious that my marrying Godspell would bring you great joy. And at the time I agreed to it, that was something I wasn’t capable of feeling so it was easy to give away. That night, I read the letter and thought that if all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put my mother back together again, then at least my horse and carriage could make it up the aisle before the funeral procession.’
‘It means so much to me,’ Hell’s Bells breathed into a domed Labrador head. She cleared her throat, suddenly sounding more like her old self. ‘It is my dying wish.’
‘Even if it makes me the most miserable man on earth?’ Spurs asked gently.
Her eyes narrowed as she straightened up, turning her gaze to Ellen. ‘This . . . creature . . . cannot be allowed to compromise our family.’
‘She already has,’ he laughed. ‘She was there the night I agreed to do this – sitting a few tables away, dripping water everywhere as though she’d just walked out of the sea.’ He shook his head at the memory, as though it still astonished him. ‘I was watching her while you and Ely banged on about grand unions and family ties. She couldn’t see me looking, but I wanted to walk out of
my own body and join her, leaving just the name and the heirlooms for Godspell to marry because she sure as hell will never get my spirit.’
Ellen remembered that tortuous date with Lloyd. She had no idea Spurs had been watching her. He had barely seemed to notice her. She remembered witnessing his argument with his mother, and recalled how ill Hell’s Bells had looked when she’d thought Spurs was refusing to bend to her will. Had she known what his mother was asking of him then, Ellen would have thrown over tables in protest. There was something else about that night lurking in the shadows of her mind, another champagne-muddled memory, but she couldn’t pin it down.
‘You have no idea how close I came to walking out that night, Mother – to leaving Oddlode and your life and death wishes far behind,’ Spurs was saying. ‘But I stayed and I listened to the whole, ridiculous marriage idea because I know how much I owe you and Father.’ As his eyes found Ellen’s, a smile lifted his face and he walked towards her. ‘Then I read that letter and felt a thousand thorns in my side. But I only agreed to do it because I was drunk and tired and I’d just seen the girl I’d fallen madly in love with making eyes at another man.’
‘Don’t be fatuous!’ Hell’s Bells raged.
‘It’s the truth,’ he didn’t take his eyes from Ellen’s as he stood in front of her. ‘When I saw you for the first time and fell straight through that big hole in your heart, I thought you’d been sent to punish me. There you were, eyeing up the family silver for a pot to piss in, like a fallen angel at an auction room. And I just fell in love.’
Ignoring Hell’s Bells’ outraged turkey gobbles, Ellen laughed. ‘I thought you were the fallen angel.’
‘We were falling too fast to think straight, weren’t we?’ He took her face in his hands. ‘I spent years looking for you, and just as I stopped believing you existed, along with God and Father Christmas, there you were. I never imagined you could love me back. I agreed to this bloody marriage as the ultimate sacrifice, but I couldn’t leave you alone, even when I thought you still loved Richard.’
‘I fell in love with you the moment we met,’ she admitted.
Unselfconsciously, he drew her towards him and slid his thumbs into her hair, his eyes moving between hers. Then he dropped his mouth to her ear and whispered, ‘We fit inside each other’s heads and bodies and minds. It’s as though you’ve always been there, and losing you would be dying. I want to die with you at my side – whether now or at a hundred and ten doesn’t matter.’
If Ellen’s heart could have burst out of her chest, it would have done. She gripped his hands to stop herself breaking down. ‘I want to live my life with you, not die. I want to start living.’
A low rumble across the kitchen provided only the briefest warning of the outburst to follow. ‘I cannot and will not condone this childish nonsense! You are getting married to the Gates child, Jasper. This – this – creature is about to leave the village and mercifully never return. And I am the one about to die.’
‘I can’t go through with it.’ He cupped Ellen’s face again and looked at it. ‘This is the face I can’t live without.’
‘You gave me your word, Jasper!’ Hell’s Bells raged. ‘A Constantine never breaks a promise. Remember the family motto!’
‘“To break a promise is to break one’s sword,”’ he recited flatly, and his hands fell to his sides.
‘Only a coward goes back on his word.’ Her voice shook as she marched to his shoulder. ‘Only a coward lets his mother die upon a thousand broken swords, knowing that the son she has never stopped believing in has failed her in her final wish. Only a coward follows the selfish, dilettante route to earthly pleasure knowing that the souls of his forefathers will never rest. If you break your promise, Jasper, you will break this family. You will show yourself to be the same pathetic coward you always have been.’
‘I am not a coward!’
‘Prove it,’ she hissed, into his ear. ‘Do the first noble thing in your Godforsaken life and let me die in peace.’
Watching Spurs’ face, Ellen’s heart ruptured. Hell’s Bells had him in her clutches again.
He bowed his head. ‘Don’t make me do this.’
‘You – gave – me – your – word!’ his mother intoned.
‘I was prepared to die then.’
The once-beautiful face fell. ‘I’m preparing to die now,’ she said hoarsely.
They stared at one another, absurd replicas, sharing the same features set in different clays.
‘I love her,’ he murmured.
‘Are you saying you don’t love me?’
He stared at the ceiling. ‘You’re my mother. Of course I love you. But I love Ellen too, and I can’t lose her. I can’t lose both of you. I think I’d lose my mind.’
She twisted her mouth angrily. ‘Very well. If the girl agrees to be discreet, we may be able to accommodate her in the arrangement. It’s far from ideal, but time is not on our side, and I can see that you are infatuated to the point of lunacy. When Ely arrives, we will discuss the possibility of a rented cottage in which the girl can live for the time being. Somewhere tucked away and inconspicuous. His nephew should be able to rustle something up.’
‘The “girl” won’t agree to that,’ Ellen gasped. ‘The “girl” can’t stand back and watch this crazy, loveless marriage take place.’
‘Oh, do dry up! Love has nothing to do with this union. I’ve never loved Spurs’ father, and we have a very good marriage.’
‘I don’t want a good marriage,’ Spurs snapped, taking Ellen’s hand. ‘I want Ellen.’
The court heels clicked away, and Hell’s Bells’ broad shoulders were pinned to her ears with tension as she gathered her fiercest force. ‘This marriage must and will go ahead, Jasper. If it doesn’t, I’ll die with my spirit and heart broken along with the family sword.’ Hell’s Bells crashed a firm hand on the table. ‘By God, I’ve forgiven you a great many things, but this would haunt us all beyond the grave. You cannot throw this away for a rebellious crush, boy! If you love her more than me, then go – go now and never come back. I hope you both die happy, because I certainly shan’t.’ Her eyes lit up as a thought struck her. ‘And I won’t be the first to depart this life cursing you, will I, Jasper? We both know that.’
Ellen waited for Spurs to retaliate, but it was as though he had been shot with a tranquilliser pellet – the sometimes fierce, sometimes playful, always dangerous big cat reduced to a subjugated, trapped victim with no fight left in him.
Sensing victory, Hell’s Bells rubbed her fingers together and drew several restorative breaths. ‘I want you to leave.’ She glowered triumphantly at Ellen. ‘Leave this house, leave my son and leave this village.’
Ellen looked at Spurs in a blind panic. His eyes were tortured, caged, and no longer told her his secrets. He had, she saw in horror, conceded defeat.
‘I think you know why I am not being as civil as protocol might dictate,’ Hell’s Bells was saying, as she indicated the door. ‘Alas, I have no time left for civility, pride or convention. My son is a wilful idiot, but I do love him and I have loved him a great deal longer than you have. You will cry for a short while, no doubt, but young hearts mend easily – especially those that are rather . . . easily won. But I’m afraid that your brief acquaintance with my son is at an end. Come along, now – I’ll see you out.’
One by one, Ellen released Spurs’ fingers. It was like pulling harpoons from her side. Each one ruptured another artery, dragging nerves and blood and fibre through her skin as she let him go.
‘I forbid you two to meet again,’ Hell’s Bells was saying, quite cheerfully, ‘I absolutely forbid it.’
‘Go to hell,’ Spurs muttered. ‘She leaves Oddlode in a fortnight.’ But his voice carried an echo of farewell.
‘She leaves your life this very minute, Jasper. You will not see one another again before she leaves.’
Again, Ellen waited for Spurs to protest, but he nodded curtly. Without warning, her welling anger and resentm
ent burst through in a great geyser of spit and passion.
‘I hope you realise that by making your son marry for Mummy and money you are wrecking his life!’ she screamed at Hell’s Bells. ‘You’ll be taking his soul to the grave with you. That will be your legacy – not this bloody house, which Ely will grab for himself the moment you’re dead and turn into a hotel or a convention centre.’
Having said nothing at the thought of her son’s life being wrecked, Hell’s Bells wailed at the prospect of her beloved manor suffering a similar fate, incensing Ellen more.
‘No wonder you’re called Hell’s Bells! I bet they’re ringing out a welcome for you down there already. And you,’ she turned to Spurs, ‘you’re a—’ She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t call him a coward. One look at his face told her that he was the opposite. He was the bravest man she had ever met.
‘Stay, Ellen,’ he entreated, his eyes alight. ‘Stay with me. We’ll find a way.’
But she was already backing away, knowing she would never be as brave as he was. ‘I’ll leave you to your duty. You leave me to my duty-free.’ She turned and ran.
‘Wait!’ Spurs came in pursuit, but Ellen was too fast for him. Sprinting out of the house, she was through the yard and over the old footpath gate before he’d jumped from the terrace.
With the devil at her heels, Ellen ran straight past Goose Cottage and on to Goose End, crossing the bridge and heading up into the hills.
It was only when she reached Broken Back Wood that she could cry, but by then she was too breathless to sob: she simply drew in great dry gulps of hot air and looked back across the valley, a simmering, corn-ripening crucible in which she had burnt her fingers and broken her heart.
Isabel Belling rang through to Ely Gates without delay. ‘Lunch is orf, I’m afraid, Elijah. We have a situation. I need your help.’
‘A situation?’
‘It’s the girl. Such an inconvenience. I shall be ordering Spurs to help his feckless cousin at the Springlode yard to keep him out of harm’s way. I have alerted my network and trust you will do the same, but I must warn you that this may require us to move on to Plan B.’