‘Miss Buss seems very efficient.’
Again, there was no response.
‘Well … Goodbye then.’
Once more, no response. This, her implacably shielded gaze informed me, was the end of my servitude, but not an end I was to be allowed to relish. I walked slowly out of the conservatory and stepped free of the power by which she had held me, but the moment of my release was tinged with doubt. I was free, but no nearer understanding why.
Later, I began to think that Olivia might not have been as charitable as I’d supposed. By saying nothing, she had sown a secret between Tony and me. Perhaps she realized at the outset that its revelation would not prevent our marriage. Or perhaps she sensed that a secret between us would grow more threatening, not less, with the passage of time. Either way, I had been as prepared as I could be to tell Tony everything that had happened but, thanks to Olivia, had not needed to. I would never be as prepared again.
FOUR
RONALD’S BIRTH IN 1948 set the seal on our marriage and gave Tony the son he so greatly desired. Jimmy Dare’s father offered him a partnership to celebrate the event. For my own part, your birth in 1952 somehow meant more, simply because you were a daughter to whom I could be the kind of mother I had lacked myself. It was then, I suppose, that I finally if unconsciously decided to discard my past, not merely to forget it but to consign it to non-existence. In the world that Tony had made for me, doing so seemed not just possible but inevitable.
Olivia remained at Meongate. I did not visit her, nor she me. Periodically, Tony would go down to check that the house was in reasonable order. That was our only contact – and that was how I wanted it.
Early in January 1953, Miss Buss reported that Olivia’s health was failing, a month later that she was not expected to live more than a few days. It was Miss Buss who suggested Tony should go down rather than me: she thought I might upset her patient. I didn’t contest the point: I was grateful to be spared a final meeting. So it was Tony who was sitting at Olivia’s bedside when she died. I stayed at home in Wells and played with my children.
I remember thinking, while he was away, of what Olivia’s death would mean: the final sundering of my links with the past, the final proof that it no longer existed. I had succeeded in forgetting not merely the misery I’d endured at Meongate, but the hopes for some kind of vindication I’d vested in its many secrets. Now I wanted none of it. I’d manufactured a new life, embodied in you and Ronald, and had no use for reminders of the old.
As for Meongate itself, I wish now I’d scoured its rooms for relics of my family, reminders of my parents, tokens of my past, but all I felt at the time was an overwhelming sense of relief that a line could at last be drawn under that desolate phase of my life. I think I might not even have attended Olivia’s funeral had Tony not insisted that I ought. He assumed I would inherit the house under the will and wanted to be on hand to arrange its disposal.
Old Mayhew had come out of retirement to act as Olivia’s executor. She’d requested cremation, like her third husband, whose son was the only other mourner. I hadn’t seen Walter Payne for nineteen years and was taken aback by the eerie, unwholesome replica of his father that he’d become. For all his efforts at ingratiation, I could scarcely disguise my revulsion.
Afterwards, we drove to Meongate, arriving before either Mayhew or Payne. Mentally, I was already prepared for this last visit to the house, for such I was determined it would be, but it was not enough to prevent my hand shaking as I opened the door and walked in. In the hall, a row of tea chests and packing cases stood, stacked to overflowing with the portable contents of the house. Miss Buss emerged from the passage and greeted us with cold civility.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ said Tony, gesturing at the chests.
‘Mr Mayhew’s instructions. I was to have everything ready for removal.’
‘It seems indecently hasty.’
‘I didn’t feel it was for me to comment.’
‘Mr and Mrs Galloway.’ Mayhew came in behind us. ‘I hoped to be here to receive you myself. Would you care for some tea? Perhaps you’d make some, Miss Buss. Shall we go into the drawing room?’
I meekly followed, shocked into silence by the echoes and associations that Meongate had preserved for me, my mind drawn towards a similar occasion more than twenty years before, when I’d learnt that Lord Powerstock had disinherited me. But Tony’s mind was very much on the present – and he spoke for me. ‘Miss Buss said you’d told her to commence packing everything up.’
‘That is correct.’
‘On whose authority?’
Reaching the drawing room, Mayhew ushered us in and closed the door. Retirement had not diminished the inscrutability of his thin-lipped, professional smile. ‘Regrettably, Mr Payne is unable to join us. I thought we might therefore dispense with a formal reading of the will.’
Tony was growing angry. ‘Do you mind answering my question?’
‘I was merely passing on Mr Payne’s instructions, Mr Galloway. He is co-executor – and sole beneficiary.’
‘What?’
‘Lady Powerstock left her entire estate to Mr Walter Payne, her step-son and closest relative. The bequest amounts to this house and its contents, most of the capital being either exhausted or spoken for. I might add that the grounds have been considerably diminished by sales of land to neighbouring farmers.’
I was sitting on the sofa by now, letting my gaze flit around the furnishings of the room – left intact for our visit, I surmised – letting my mind recall the fire that had blazed in the now bare grate on the night of Olivia’s engagement party. I could almost hear the deafening tones of the jazz they’d been playing on the gramophone, could almost taste the champagne I’d been forced to drink.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ Tony was saying, ‘that my wife – Lady Powerstock’s granddaughter—’
‘The phrasing of the will refers to the doubts surrounding your wife’s parentage, Mr Galloway. That is why I thought we might leave it unread.’
My eyes stung again, as they had that night, as if once more the room was full of cigarette smoke, as if once more I could see Olivia watching me, watching her future husband … I rose from the sofa, determined to break the spell of Meongate for ever.
‘I’m grateful for your tactful handling of the matter, Mr Mayhew.’
Tony looked at me in astonishment. ‘Leonora!’
‘I’ve no intention of contesting the will, Tony. Walter is welcome to everything. Has he signified his intentions for the house, Mr Mayhew?’
‘The contents are to be auctioned. As for the house itself, I believe Mr Payne intends to refurbish and modernize it. He has spoken of opening some form of country club, of turning the grounds into a golf course.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be a great success.’
‘There is one thing, however.’ Mayhew cleared his throat. ‘To describe Mr Payne as sole beneficiary was a slight exaggeration on my part. There was a minor bequest to you.’
‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ snapped Tony.
‘I do beg your pardon. It is extremely minor. Are you quite well, Mrs Galloway?’ Mayhew had noticed me shiver and shot a piercing glance in my direction.
‘It’s rather cold in here, that’s all.’ I drew up the collar of my coat, but not to ward off the chill. I had shivered at the thought of what bequest Olivia could have devised for me. Suddenly, for the first time in years, I thought of the bloodstained book she’d taken from me the night of Payne’s death. Had she destroyed it, as I’d hoped? And how much did Mayhew know? What had he gleaned from Olivia through the long years of their professional association? There was no way of telling from his blank, pinched, expressionless face.
A silence fell, as if he were judging whether I would ever summon the resolution to ask him what gift Olivia had left me. Nor did I. It was Tony who spoke. ‘Damn it all, man, what is the bequest?’
‘Lady Powerstock expressed the wish that Mrs Galloway should hav
e something by which to remember her former guardian. It takes the form of … two paintings.’
‘Paintings?’ I spoke more from relief than surprise.
‘Yes. I have them here.’ He crossed to the far corner of the room, where a large rectangular shape stood against the wall, covered with a dust sheet. ‘I gather they have no commercial value. They were painted by Lady Powerstock’s first husband, a Mr Bartholomew. His work, I fear, is not in vogue.’
Tony walked across, tugged the dust sheet aside and levered the two paintings apart to examine them. There was no need for me to see them, however. I knew which paintings they were, where they had previously hung and whose face we might find staring out of them.
‘Were these typical of Bartholomew’s work?’ Tony asked.
‘I cannot say,’ Mayhew replied. ‘I am not a connoisseur.’
‘I don’t want them,’ I heard myself say. ‘They can be auctioned with everything else.’
‘If you’re certain.’
‘I am.’ As Olivia must have been that I would not keep them. It was her parting gesture – defiant, distasteful, detestable.
Tony replaced the dust sheet and turned back to me. ‘Hold on, darling. Never look a gift horse—’
‘My mind’s made up.’
Something in my expression must have told Tony I wouldn’t be swayed. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well, you heard, Mr Mayhew. They go under the hammer with the rest.’
So the deed was done. All the way back to Wells in the car, Tony vented the resentment he thought I should feel at Payne for the profit he would make from Meongate, for the fact that he who had never lived there should become its owner and I who was born there should receive only two unpleasant, unwanted paintings. I did not care. Payne was welcome to all of it. I had endured the final torment that Meongate held for me and would happily have paid any price to be able to turn my back on it for ever – as I believed I had done.
Three months passed, three months in which I cast off all shreds of the anxiety Olivia’s bequest had momentarily inspired in me. It wasn’t difficult. There was much to occupy my mind. The Queen’s coronation had been fixed for the second of June and I found myself in the thick of planning for a street party to celebrate the event. I’d taken on more than my share of baking for the occasion and, by the Sunday before, had fallen badly behind. Noting my testy mood over lunch, Tony made a magnanimous offer.
‘Would it help if I took the little ’uns down to Stoberry Park for the afternoon? With us out of your hair, you could make some headway in the kitchen.’
So I was left alone, which was, as a matter of fact, unusual, what with a husband, two children and Mrs Jeffries coming in every other day. It was the last day of May, soft, grey and windless, with the garden looking moist and somnolent through the kitchen window. I thought of Tony, puffing after a ball in the park when he would rather have been dozing at home over a newspaper, smiled and set to with the mixing bowl.
About half an hour later, there was a knock at the back door. A tall, sombre, rather shabbily dressed man was standing there. He apologized for coming to the back; there’d been no answer at the front. At first, I took him for a salesman: encyclopaedias, or sewing machines. I said I was busy.
Then he said: ‘It’s about your father.’
I looked at him and saw only a slightly down-at-heel stranger on a Sunday afternoon. But his words had sufficed to resurrect a buried life. I remember the thoughts that flashed through my mind as I confronted his impassive, imploring gaze. All the years through which I’d prayed in vain for some knowledge of my vanished father – and now, when at long last I’d learned to live without it, learned that it was better to abandon an impossible dream, now, when what would once have been so precious seemed merely untimely, now, whether I would or no, I was to hear of him.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘My father died many years ago.’
When he replied, it was as if he were reading an entry in a register, the same register you and I scanned at Thiepval. ‘Captain the Honourable John Hallows. Missing, presumed killed in action, Mametz, 30th April 1916.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Willis. I’m an old friend of your father. I saw the notice of Lady Powerstock’s death. It prompted me to look you up.’
‘I placed no notice.’
‘No. A Mr Payne did so. He gave me your address.’
‘What do you want?’
‘A few minutes of your time – if you can spare it.’
‘I told you: I’m busy.’
‘Too busy – for just a few minutes?’
There was no threat or insistence in his tone. His manner was almost apologetic. Yet, welling within me, I could feel the contending forces of caution and curiosity, the reluctance of my new-found, mature, stable life struggling to suppress the child’s lifetime quest for truths so long denied her. We stood in silence, whilst my mind raced around opposing notions: Olivia is dead, your father dead, Meongate lost, its contents sold and you are free: close the door on this visitor from your past. And yet, and yet, now may be the only chance you’ll ever have, the only chance to know: hear his story.
‘Come in, Mr Willis.’
He followed me into the lounge, declined an offer of tea and looked around awkwardly before taking a seat.
‘My husband will be back shortly,’ I said. ‘He’s taken the children to the park.’
‘You have children?’
‘A boy and a girl.’
He nodded. ‘Well, I’ll be gone by the time they get back.’ He said it as if he intended to make sure he was. He glanced around again. This time, his gaze alighted on our wedding photograph, which I kept on top of the wireless. He stared at it for several moments. ‘Your wedding, Mrs Galloway?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t see Lady Powerstock in the group.’
‘She didn’t attend. So, you knew my grandmother.’
‘Yes.’
‘And my father?’
‘I served with him in the Army. Through him, I met your mother and stayed at Meongate: There I met Lord and Lady Powerstock.’
So he knew them all. The names of people and places who clustered in my earliest recollections, spoken casually by a stranger: it was unnerving.
‘I’ve had no contact with your family since 1916,’ he continued.
‘Why now?’
‘Because, with Lady Powerstock dead, I’m free to tell you what I think you ought to know: the truth about your parents and your grandparents, the truth about Meongate and what happened there thirty-seven years ago. Above all, the truth about your father.’
Who was the pretty lady, Fergus? Where is my mother’s grave? What murder? The answers might tumble like a stone down a slope. Once released, its progress could only be watched, not attested. Once the truth had been set in motion, we could no longer intervene. This was the choice laid before me by my quietly spoken, uninvited guest.
‘What is the truth, Mr Willis? What have you come to tell me?’
‘It’s a long story. But one you should hear: one you’re entitled to hear. Could you spare me an hour or so … some time soon?’
‘Why wait?’
‘Because your husband will be back shortly. You said so yourself. If I’m to tell you this, we mustn’t be interrupted.’
‘You’ve chosen a bad time.’
‘The time chose itself. I’m staying at the Red Lion in the High Street. Could we meet there?’
‘I’m very busy at the moment. The coronation, you see …’
‘I can stay till Wednesday.’
Even as he put a term on his availability, I knew I would see him again. I couldn’t walk away from what he had to tell me. ‘Wednesday then. Not the Red Lion, though: I know the proprietor. The gateway leading from the Market Place to the Bishop’s Palace. It’s called the Bishop’s Eye. Ten o’clock, Wednesday morning.’
So it was agreed. After he’d gone, I began to doubt my own word. He wouldn’t turn up, or I woul
dn’t. Somehow, our next encounter couldn’t really happen. When Tony brought you two back from the park, tumbling and clamouring for tea, I began to think I might have imagined Willis’s visit altogether, might have fashioned his very existence from my desire to know the truth.
Yet I knew it was not so. I knew pretending I wouldn’t see him was only an excuse for telling Tony nothing. Not that Tony would have forbidden me to meet Willis. It was not fear of his reaction that made me keep it from him – it was fear of my own. To want something so badly, so hopelessly, for so long, to convince yourself at last that not only can it never be yours but that you no longer truly desire it anyway, then to have it offered you, unlooked-for, unheralded, unsought: I could only cope with the prospect if I kept it secret.
I went through the street party on Coronation Day in a trance, a trance that did not end until ten o’clock the following morning. I’d arranged for Mrs Jeffries to come in all day so I could be free. I walked down Milton Lane through the warmth and sunshine of a placidly ordinary day in June. The neighbours I nodded to had no idea of the appointment I was about to keep. In the Market Place, workmen were up ladders taking down bunting from the day before, stallholders were setting out their wares. And, in the turreted shadow of the Bishop’s Eye, Willis was waiting for me.
‘I’m glad you came,’ he said. He looked gaunter still, and more sombre, in the bleached morning air.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’
‘No. I knew you would.’
We walked through to the Bishop’s Palace and began to follow the footpath round the moat.
‘To begin with,’ he said after we’d gone a few yards, ‘I should tell you that Willis was not always my name. My real name is Franklin. I don’t suppose it means anything to you. The reason I no longer use it lies at the heart of my story. And what I’m about to tell you I’ve never told anyone else, nor ever will.’
We walked round the moat, then up Tor Hill and back, then round to the cathedral. We walked and talked for hours. His story was, as he’d warned me, a long one. But I didn’t mind listening, didn’t even notice how tired I was becoming. He had come to me from the padlocked past and now I would follow wherever his words took me.
In Pale Battalions - Retail Page 6