The Winter Folly

by Taylor, Lulu

  Susie had replied eagerly to her invitation to visit. She was always on the lookout for new treasures for her auction house, and as she specialised in vintage couture, she was the perfect person, Delilah felt, to help her take a look through the clothes in the attic and see what was up there.

  ‘This is the tin trunk I mentioned in my email.’ Delilah lifted it open a good deal more easily than she had the first time. Inside lay the drawer of gloves, stockings and ties and all the other wrapped oddments.

  ‘Oh,’ Susie said happily. ‘Look at these! How gorgeous! I must get my hands on them.’

  ‘You’re like a child in a sweet shop.’ Delilah smiled.

  ‘I can’t wait to get stuck in.’

  ‘There are some more cases and trunks that I haven’t looked inside yet. I’m hopeful of some really good finds. But I don’t want to open them up here in the dust and dirt.’ She closed the steamer trunk and pushed the catches back into place. ‘Shall we take one or two downstairs and open them there?’

  ‘Good idea. Let’s.’

  They enlisted Erryl’s help to get three trunks of clothes down from the attic and into the old guest room at the front of the house, a room that must once have been very grand with its white and gold curtains and gold carpet but was now bedraggled. The curtains were falling to pieces in places, their embroidery hanging out in dull straggles, and the carpet was stained and threadbare. The twin beds looked grubby and as though they had not been slept in for decades.

  ‘Golly, look at this place!’ Susie said, gazing about. ‘It’s like a room that time forgot.’

  ‘Oh, time’s remembered it all right,’ Delilah said ruefully, looking at the thick dust on the plaster mouldings and the ceiling rose. ‘It’s people that forgot it. I’ll ask Janey why no one’s been keeping this room clean.’

  ‘Must be hell doing the housework in a place like this,’ Susie remarked, then she grinned at Delilah. ‘Although not so bad if you’ve got servants.’

  ‘Staff!’ said Delilah in a mock scandalised tone. ‘We don’t say servants.’

  ‘Staff then. Still sounds pretty bloody grand if you ask me.’

  ‘Point taken. But this place would be impossible to look after alone. I’m not sure this room is much better than the attic, but come on, let’s take a look.’

  They knelt down on the dusty carpet and opened one of the cases that Delilah had not yet looked into. A strong smell of camphor and fusty clothes came out. Inside they discovered some antique furs, slightly moth-eaten despite the camphor balls, but otherwise in fine condition.

  ‘These would be worth a lot if you wanted to sell,’ Susie said, stroking a russet fox fur admiringly, her fingers sinking into the lush pelt. ‘I have lots of clients who’d adore this. They wouldn’t touch new fur but don’t feel so bad about wearing vintage.’

  Delilah shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think John would allow it. But I’ll talk to him. There’s not much point in it all rotting upstairs. But I wondered about setting up some kind of exhibition – you know, the clothes of Fort Stirling. With outfits next to old photos, if I can find enough matches. Or else a kind of imagined country house weekend tableaux.’

  ‘I like it!’ Susie’s eyes glinted with enthusiasm. ‘And then I could sell the clothes.’

  Delilah laughed. ‘Maybe. Let’s see what else we’ve got.’

  They spent a few very happy hours going through the trunks, finding treasures that included a hand-beaded twenties flapper dress from a prestigious Paris fashion house, and a couple of original Chanel pieces from the thirties. There were skirts, cashmere cardigans, silk and rayon blouses, little strapped shoes and felt hats, and tweed suits. Some of the knits and silks had suffered damage but the mothballs had been effective on the whole.

  ‘Damn moths, how I hate them!’ exclaimed Susie, rubbing at some of the grainy strands left by moth cocoons. ‘I have to treat everything before it comes on the premises – I don’t dare infect the stock. Come on, let’s look in the other trunk.’

  With sighs of delight, they found some ballgowns: chiffon, silk, organdie and heavy satin thickly embroidered with seed pearls. A black velvet gown with a long train seemed particularly grand and designed to go with diamonds. Tucked away in the corner of the trunk was a smart leather box with a handle on the top for easy carrying. Delilah opened it and found that inside was a tarnished coronet, a circle of silver gilt with sixteen grubby silver balls around a puff of dark crimson velvet topped by a round golden ornament, and with a tiny strip of threadbare ermine around the bottom rim.

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ Susie laughed. ‘An actual coronet! What’s it doing there?’

  Delilah examined it with interest. ‘I wonder if this is the same as the one in some of the portraits downstairs. Some of the viscountesses were painted in full robes with their little crowns on.’

  ‘Put it on!’

  Delilah flushed. It seemed rather presumptuous to put on something she was not entitled to. ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Come on, what does it matter? We’re just dressing up. Go on,’ urged Susie, flapping her hand at Delilah as though trying to float the coronet up onto her head.

  Delilah lifted the little coronet almost tentatively. It was lighter than she’d expected.

  ‘Go on,’ Susie said. ‘You might have to wear it for real one of these days. If there’s a coronation, you might be summoned to the Abbey in your finery.’

  Delilah thought instantly of a large black-and-white photograph of John’s grandparents in their ceremonial robes, dressed for the coronation of George VI. They stood side by side on a covered dais, their heads held stiffly under their coronets. John’s grandmother wore a stiff gown of white satin. Over the top she wore her stately red-velvet robes edged with gold thread and ermine, worn like an overdress with little cap sleeves and fastened at the front over her bodice. An ermine-edged cloak hung from her shoulders and fell into a long train at her feet, and she wore a many-stranded pearl choker with a large cameo pinned to it. She looked magnificent if rather frightening. This must be the coronet from that photograph, thought Delilah. Another link to the women of Fort Stirling, although Alex probably never wore it. She’d have been too young for the last coronation.

  Delilah perched it on her head. ‘There,’ she said, flushing.

  Susie did a mock curtsey, which looked rather odd in her sitting position. ‘Oh, your ladyship!’

  ‘Don’t.’ She whisked it off and put it on the floor. ‘The robes must be somewhere. I’ll show you the picture of them downstairs.’

  ‘If they’re in the attic, I bet the moths have got the velvet,’ Susie said mournfully. ‘That’s exactly the kind of thing they do, the evil critters. The more valuable the fabric, the more they like it.’

  ‘Let’s look at the other trunk. I want to show you the clothes I discovered.’ As she reached for the other trunk, she felt a strange buzzing sensation and the thought floated into her head: But these are her clothes. When Delilah had first seen them, she hadn’t known what she did now. She hadn’t seen so many images of Alex, or known that she’d killed herself, or looked for her body. She hadn’t dreamed of her on the top of the folly, ready to leap to her death . . .

  ‘Love the trunk – a real vintage steamer,’ Susie was saying, but Delilah barely heard her. Instead she was only aware of the rushing in her head and the curious buzzing in her ears. She stared as Susie reached across her to lift out the top drawer and reveal the clothes beneath. Folded just below were the black dress and matching coat she had tried on in the attic and she watched, almost frozen, as Susie lifted them out, exclaiming at the quality and shaking them out to examine more closely.

  ‘Don’t,’ Delilah said, snapping back to herself. She put her hand out towards the dress.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leave it. Not that. Put it back.’

  Susie looked at the dress. ‘What’s special about it? I mean, it’s a beautifully made dress and coat set but—’

  ‘I don’t
know. I tried it on and it made me feel . . . strange. Unpleasant.’ She remembered it now – the horrible sensation she’d felt as she’d pulled that dried flower from the coat pocket.

  Susie looked at her, eyebrows raised quizzically. ‘Are you getting sensitive to the spooky in a place like this? I’m not surprised with so many dead people’s possessions around you. Come on, it’s just a dress like all the rest of the stuff. You didn’t mind about that.’

  ‘I can’t explain it. I don’t like it being touched. We should put it back.’

  Susie climbed to her feet, lifting the dress with her, leaving the coat on the floor. ‘Okay, I’ll put it back – let me just look at it.’ She held the dress up against herself, admiring the way it fell to just above her knee. ‘It’s gorgeous! If you don’t like it, can I try it on?’

  Delilah felt a rush of panic, as though she had to protect Alex in some way. ‘No, Susie, please – put it back!’

  The door opened and John put his head round it, saying, ‘Hello. Erryl told me he’d carted a ton of stuff for you two— oh.’ He had seen the dress that Susie was holding and he stopped abruptly, staring at it. ‘What’s that?’ he said in a changed voice.

  ‘Just a dress we found in a trunk,’ Susie said. ‘What do you think? Does it suit me?’

  Delilah stared, agonised. Of all the terrible luck, that they should be looking at his dead mother’s things as he appeared. He would probably not have seen these clothes since he was a boy, since his mother had worn them.

  His smile vanished and he came slowly into the room, his gaze fixed on the dress. He’d gone pale. ‘No,’ he said in an odd, almost robotic voice. ‘No, it doesn’t suit you.’ He walked past Susie, who stood there still holding up the dress, her expression surprised, and reached the trunk. He looked down into it: lying on the top were folded jumpers with distinctive patterns, skirts and a striped pussy-cat-bow blouse. He turned his gaze to Delilah, who was kneeling by the trunk and staring up at him, horrified. He seemed to have been slowed by what he was seeing, as though reduced to half speed. ‘Were these upstairs with the rest?’

  She nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  He stared back at the clothes, whiter than ever, his mouth set in a hard line. He seemed to be seeing them not as they were now, folded on beds of tissue paper, but as they once had been, worn by a living, breathing woman. He turned back to Delilah and said in a curt voice: ‘Burn them.’

  ‘What?’ she replied, taken aback.

  ‘You heard me. Burn the lot.’

  ‘There’s no need for that, John!’ Susie interjected, smiling. ‘If you don’t want the clothes, I’d be delighted to take them off your hands and sell them. My commission is thirty-five per cent and—’

  ‘I said burn them.’ His eyes were frozen granite and his voice harsh. ‘I don’t want to see these things in the house again.’

  He turned and strode out without another word, leaving Delilah and Susie staring at one another in shocked silence.

  It was much later that night. Delilah lay in bed, pressed up against John, her front to his back so that her body nestled into his and her arms wrapped tightly around his middle. He wasn’t moving but she knew he wasn’t asleep. From the faint flutter she could feel as he breathed in and out, she knew that he was agitated. She was trying to transmit warmth and comfort through her body, to calm him down and reassure him that he was safe and loved.

  He’s afraid of something, she thought. All she could imagine was that his boyhood trauma, the loss of his mother, had been awakened by the sight of her clothing. It had been appallingly insensitive of her. She should have waited until she knew John was out of the house before bringing his mother’s things downstairs. She was furious with Susie for displaying that particular dress as John walked in. If she had only put it down when Delilah had told her to, he might not have seen what they had been looking at and all this might have been avoided. As it was, she had to explain to Susie that it was best if they put a stop to the clothes show for now, and returned to it another day. Susie had stayed for lunch as they’d planned but the sparkle had gone out of the day. Delilah was distracted and unable to do much more than think about John and where he was, and what mood he was in. It wasn’t long before Susie made her excuses.

  ‘I’ll come back before too long,’ she said, kissing Delilah goodbye at the front door. ‘I might come by train next time – it’s a hell of a drive. But it’s been lovely to see you. I wouldn’t have missed that coronet for anything. Let me know if you find the robes.’

  ‘I will. Have a safe journey back.’ Delilah kissed her friend’s cheeks, hoping Susie did not realise how relieved she was to see her go.

  Susie pulled back to look Delilah right in the eye. ‘Now, promise me,’ she said sternly, ‘that you’re not going to go burning that stuff. John will calm down, I guarantee it, and he’ll see the sense of selling it off. It would be a crime to destroy those lovely things. Some of those gloves were real kid as well. I’d love to know what else is there. Do say I can come back and have a rootle.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ Delilah said. ‘Whenever you want. Well – perhaps give it a few weeks at least to let things die down.’

  ‘All right. Bye, sweetie.’

  As soon as Susie had closed the door of her car and started up the engine, Delilah raced to find John but he had not been in the estate office or watching the afternoon sport on the telly in the small sitting room, or in their bedroom. She’d wandered all over the house calling for him, when, in a sudden moment of inspiration, she climbed the dusty attic stairs and found the hatch to the roof open. Putting her head out, she saw him sitting on the gently sloping eaves a little way along, his feet on the broad lead ledge that edged the guttering. The Victorian faux battlements that had been added to the east wing bordered the outside of the gutter and made it perfectly safe to sit there. She pulled herself up and scrambled out.

  ‘John?’

  Stepping carefully to avoid dislodging any slates, she went towards him, walking at an angle. He turned to look at her and then gazed back out at the view.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said a little breathlessly as she reached him.

  There was a long silence. She could hear the summer breeze whistling around the chimney tops. It was windier up here than she’d expected and her fair hair was lifted up to flick around her face and into her mouth. She pulled it away and tried to tuck it behind one ear but the wind wouldn’t leave it alone. She stared at her husband, at his thin angular face with the dusting of dark stubble that showed he hadn’t shaved today. His grey eyes were stormy and distant as he stared out over the stretch of green parkland below, the dark mass of the woods and the edge of the distant village just glimpsed behind the curve of the hill.

  ‘Those were your mother’s things, weren’t they?’ she said.

  He nodded, still not looking at her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling. I wish that hadn’t happened. I wish you hadn’t seen those clothes.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said shortly. ‘They’re just things.’

  ‘They connect you to the past.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The past that hurt you.’ She pulled her errant hair out of her mouth again, where the wind insisted on driving it. She felt that here was a moment when she could ask simply, ‘What happened?’ and he would answer her. She was desperate to know and yet something wouldn’t let her speak. It felt wrong to demand that he open his private grief to satisfy her curiosity. He would offer it when he was ready. If he didn’t wish to tell her, was it really her right to pry and demand answers?

  ‘Will you come down?’ she asked.

  After a minute he said, ‘Soon. Not just yet.’ He turned to look at her, and his gaze softened. He put his hand out to hers and said, ‘You go in. I’ll join you.’

  She had left him there, climbing back down into the almost unbearable stuffiness of the attics, while he sat in the buffeting wind staring out over the grea
t expanse beyond.

  Much later, when he came to bed, he lay with his back to her, and she moved to hug him tightly and kiss the back of his neck.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered, and rubbed her cheek against him.

  He murmured something and she hugged him more tightly, wanting to let some of her loving energy flow into him through a kind of osmosis. She could almost feel his sadness and longed to make it better if she could. Her hand caressed his skin, travelling over his hip and stomach.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ he asked, turning towards her.

  ‘No. What did you say?’

  ‘I said – you won’t forget that I want those things burnt, will you?’

  Her hand stopped on his chest. Then she exhaled softly into the darkness, stroked her fingers over him again and said, ‘I won’t forget.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  1965

  Alexandra set out for the village but was only halfway there before she wished she’d brought one of the old bicycles she’d seen propped against the wall in the garage. The walk from the house to the gate was at least a mile and then there was the hill to climb and the descent into the village. As she approached its outskirts, she felt a flutter of nerves. She was bound to meet someone she knew and what was her story? How did Miss Crewe – or rather, Mrs Sykes now – come to be walking down the street alone when she was last seen being whisked away on honeymoon by her new husband?

  But she saw almost no one, just a boy in long shorts loping along on an errand of some kind. As she reached the Old Grange, she was glad that no one had spoiled her quiet approach. She would once have gone to let herself in the back, where Emily would have been bustling about in the kitchen, but now she walked up to the white front door where dark red roses were still blooming against the mellow stone, and rapped the brass knocker smartly.

  She waited but there was no answer so she knocked again more loudly. Just as she was considering whether to take the side path to the back, the door opened. Emily stood there, her expression agonised.

  ‘Oh, miss!’ she exclaimed in a whisper. ‘Miss Alexandra, it’s lovely to see you—’