The Winter Folly

by Taylor, Lulu

  ‘Hello, Emily, how are you?’ she said merrily. Emily had worked at the house for as long as she could remember and was like a friend to her. ‘Is my father ready for me? Shall I go to the study? Can you bring us some tea?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Emily’s brown eyes looked even more pained and she glanced over her shoulder in consternation before turning back to Alexandra. ‘He can’t—’

  ‘Is he busy? I’ll come in and wait.’ She stepped forward to make her way inside but Emily kept the door half closed and barred her way.

  ‘You don’t understand, miss. I can’t let you in . . . He’s forbidden it.’ A pleading look crossed her face and she whispered, ‘I’m so sorry, miss, he won’t have it any other way and I daren’t disobey.’

  There was a horrible pause, then Alexandra said brightly, ‘Of course not.’ She was surprised she sounded so calm considering the torrent of horrible emotions she was battling inside.

  ‘He said you would call and I wasn’t to let you in under any circumstances.’ Tears filled the maid’s eyes. ‘It’s a terrible thing, miss, terrible . . .’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Emily, I’m sure he has his reasons and of course you must obey your instructions.’ She smiled bravely even though tears were pricking her own eyes. She blinked hard. ‘It’s so nice to see you, though. Are you well?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ whispered Emily, her mouth turning down at the corners and one hand clutching her apron.

  ‘Good. I’ll come back soon and we’ll be able to have a good gossip, won’t we? I want to hear all the news. I’m sure there’s been lots going on while I’ve been away.’

  Emily’s gaze slid away from hers. ‘Oh, miss,’ she said sadly, ‘you’re all the news at the moment. What you’ve done. Where you are.’

  Alexandra stared at her, a clammy sickness crawling over her. ‘I see. Well . . . you know how people talk, Emily. But I wouldn’t want you to think badly of me.’

  Emily stared at the stone doorstep and whispered, ‘No, miss, I couldn’t do that, no matter what they all say.’ She jerked up, evidently hearing something from inside that Alexandra could not. ‘I must go.’

  ‘Yes. Goodbye, Emily. Goodbye.’ Alexandra turned and hurried down the path, not wanting to see the front door of her old home closed in her face.

  The walk home was very different: difficult and drenched with misery. She knew, when Mrs Hobson the post mistress saw her and crossed the road to avoid her, keeping her eyes firmly in front, that Emily had not been mistaken. The news of her scandalous return must have been keeping them all occupied for days. No doubt it had begun to spread as soon as she had arrived back and the servants had carried the delicious gossip into the village. She had been a fool to think otherwise. They must be saying horrible things, dreadful, unkind things . . . But she could live with that if she had to – being with Nicky was worth the price of being discussed over cups of tea in houses all over the county. It was the rejection by her father that was making her heart ache and she couldn’t stop herself sobbing as she walked blindly back along the lane.

  In the house, all was quiet, but as she went in her eye was drawn at once to a letter that sat in the silver tray on the console table. She recognised her father’s handwriting. He had addressed his letter to Mrs Laurence Sykes, care of Fort Stirling. She plucked it up, her hands trembling as she opened it and took out the letter inside.

  Alexandra

  You have disappointed me more than I can express and disgraced yourself as well as our family. Until you come to your senses and return to your husband, I cannot regard you as my daughter. I prayed that you had not inherited your mother’s wanton spirit but I can see now that was a forlorn hope. I have had no option but to tell your husband exactly what I know of your whereabouts and I intend to assist him in every way possible. I can only be grateful that there are as yet no children to be hurt by your immense and destructive selfishness. If you think I am to be mollified by the fact that you are the concubine of Lord Northmoor, you are quite mistaken. I am deeply mortified and ashamed, as you should be.

  Gerald Crewe

  She read it over several times, the paper shaking in her unsteady fingers, her heart pounding in her chest. A horrible whirring in her head made her think suddenly that she was going to faint and she reached out to the marble-topped console for support. She gasped for air to loosen her constricted chest.

  So that’s it, she thought. He hates me. I’ve lost my father forever.

  Everything seemed to be pressing down on her and darkness descended. She fell to her knees.

  ‘Miss, are you all right?’ One of the maids had come running and now put a hand on her shoulder. ‘What’s wrong? I’ll fetch his lordship.’

  Alexandra was dimly aware through her panic of the girl rushing away and returning with Nicky, and then she was being carried into the drawing room and laid down on the sofa there, as hands undid her coat and took it from her. A glass of water was brought and they tried to make her drink it but she was in the grip of something she didn’t understand: a breathless agonised darkness from which she could not escape.

  She heard Nicky tell Thomas to help him, and they carried her upstairs to bed. Nicky sent them all away and sat beside her, holding her hand and soothing her until gradually the panic began to lessen and she could breathe again. The tears began to fall then but after a while the crying passed, leaving her strangely calm.

  ‘I read that beastly letter,’ Nicky said, stroking the back of her hand. His voice was grim with suppressed fury. ‘What kind of a man is your father?’

  ‘He doesn’t mean to be cruel,’ she said weakly. ‘He only wants what’s best for me, I suppose.’

  ‘How can you say that, Alex? Look at the way he’s written to you! He’s a monster of selfishness – he forced you into that marriage and now he’s going to punish you because you couldn’t stand it!’ Nicky’s eyes flashed with anger on her behalf.

  ‘He wasn’t always like this,’ Alexandra protested. ‘It was only after my mother died. I think the grief of losing her made him that way. He didn’t seem to be happy after that. I never understood why, though.’

  Nicky hunched over her hand, holding it harder in the gloom of the bedroom, avoiding her gaze.

  ‘What?’ she asked, suddenly alert to his mood. ‘What is it?’

  He looked up, his eyes sorrowful. ‘What did they tell you about your mother?’

  ‘Well . . .’ She was puzzled. She made an effort to remember. It was so long since she’d thought about it. Most of the time, she’d tried to forget. ‘There was a terrible atmosphere in the house for weeks beforehand, and I knew that she wasn’t herself. Then my father woke me early one morning and told me that Mother had died in the night. He said she’d fallen ill very suddenly and died before the doctor could come. He told me to stay in my room while everything was dealt with.’

  ‘Did you see her?’ Nicky asked softly. His thumb stroked the back of her hand.

  Alexandra shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied in a small voice. ‘I wanted to, but I didn’t dare ask.’

  ‘Did you go to the funeral?’

  ‘Father said I was too young and that it would upset me. My aunt came and took me away to the seaside for a long time. Perhaps it was only a week or two but it seemed a very long time to me then. When I got home, everything was difficult and horrible. It wasn’t long after that Father stopped me seeing my old friends. That was when we were forbidden from seeing each other, don’t you remember?’

  Nicky carried on rubbing his thumb over her hand and said nothing.

  ‘Do you know something?’ she asked apprehensively. When he glanced up, the expression in his eyes frightened her. ‘Tell me, Nicky!’

  ‘Darling, what did they say she died of?’

  ‘Aunt Felicity said it was a brain fever that came on very suddenly in the night.’ She blinked at him, fear growing inside her.

  ‘Well . . . ’ Pity crossed his face. ‘Alex, I’m so sorry . . . I must tell you what I heard
. Perhaps it was only rumour but they said she killed herself. They said she threw herself from the folly in the woods. That was why we weren’t allowed to play there anymore. I always thought our families kept apart afterwards because my parents thought it was all very shameful. Perhaps your father felt the same.’

  The silence in the room became freighted with something awful: horror and grief combined. Alexandra’s limbs were numb, her skin cold. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ she said through stiff lips.

  Nicky looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry. I guessed you didn’t know when we talked about the past and I didn’t want to hurt you.’ Anger seemed to reinvigorate him. ‘But if it’s true, my guess is that your father drove her to it! He’s nothing less than a monster.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ she cried. ‘Can’t you see he was all I had for all those years after my mother died?’ She fell back on the pillows and turned her face to the wall, struggling to understand what he had said. It made a macabre and awful sense. There had been no grave to visit, no love around her mother’s memory, no shared stories of her. Alexandra could only remember anger and coldness, and a sense of everyone being punished for whatever had happened. Life had shut down, and never been the same again.

  The folly. That awful, broken tower. She shivered. Pictures began to form in her mind, terrible images of her mother falling from its jagged top and lying broken on the ground at the bottom. It can’t be true. But somehow she knew that it was, and all these years she had been the only one not to know the truth.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nicky whispered. He inspected her carefully as if looking for signs of grief but her eyes were dry.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice blank. It was too much to take in all at once.

  ‘Can I get you something?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you something so awful but I thought you should know if it would help you cope with what that man has done to you. Can’t you see you’re better off without him?’

  She nodded but stayed silent, staring at the wall and the pattern of the paper, trying and trying to understand.

  Alexandra stayed in bed all day, staring dumbly at the wall as she attempted to make sense of what Nicky had told her. In a few short hours, she’d lost her father and everything she had believed about her mother had changed. She struggled to absorb it and was unable to find the energy for anything else, even when Nicky came and sat with her and tried to distract her.

  By evening, a strange calm and sense of determination descended on her. She got out of bed and went downstairs to the dining room where Nicky was having supper.

  ‘Darling!’ He got up and rushed over to her, concern on his face. ‘Are you recovered? Should you be down here? You’ve had a nervous shock.’

  ‘I’m quite well,’ she said. ‘Really.’

  He eyed her with anxiety. ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘I don’t want you to be,’ Alexandra said urgently. ‘I don’t want anything to change for us. I can’t alter the past. I did my crying over losing my mother a long time ago, and I can’t bring her back. My father has made it plain how he feels about me. I’ve lost enough of my life to him and I don’t want to lose any more.’ She went over to him and clutched his arm. ‘I mean it, Nicky. You’re my world now. You’re all that’s real and true. I don’t want to think about the terrible things that happened – just about how we can be happy.’

  He looked at her with uncertainty mixed with relief. ‘I’m glad to hear that. I really am. But . . . are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ she said fervently. ‘I want us to be happy. The past is the past. The future is what I want to think about now.’

  ‘Good,’ said Nicky. He smiled. ‘I’m very glad, darling.’

  She sat down at her place and reached for her napkin, outwardly as calm and serene as if the last two days had never happened.

  Alexandra heard the noise of the van long before she saw it. She’d been reading in the drawing room – at least, she’d been staring at a page for an hour while her mind took her to the dark places she couldn’t help visiting ever since Nicky had told her the truth about her mother. She’d wanted to shut it all away but instead visions of the tower were haunting her, floating into her head when she least expected it, or coming to her dreams and filling her with cold terror. She was on the point of getting up to leave the chilly drawing room and find Nicky when she heard the roar of an engine. She got up and went to the window at the front and saw the van bowling down the hill towards the house. Was it a tradesman or a worker come to deliver or fix something?

  As the van came to a halt in front of the house, she heard the shouts from inside and then people spilled out onto the gravel, a gaggle of young men and women. Just then Nicky came past, drawn by the noise.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asked, frowning, puzzled by the sudden invasion.

  ‘Don’t you recognise them?’ Nicky’s face had lit up with happy excitement. ‘It’s Sandy and the gang from the club! He’s got at least half a dozen of them – Patsy, Alfie, David . . . Look!’

  As Nicky opened the front door and hurried out to them, Alexandra stared again through the window. Now he had said that, she did recognise one or two faces from smoky, drink-soaked evenings in the Notting Hill club, where they went to spend their evenings talking and dancing when they weren’t closeted away in the mews house. And there was Sandy himself, the de facto leader, his hair thinning prematurely and his cheeks flushed, coming over to give Nicky a hug and a slap on the shoulder. Patsy, the sex kitten in her pencil skirt and tight jumper, followed, wrapping her arms around Nicky’s neck with a shriek of delight. Alexandra had never felt at ease around Patsy, with her hedonistic eagerness to take anything she was offered, whether to swallow, smoke or snort, and then be as wild as possible. She’d always looked at Nicky through half-closed smoky eyelids in a way that made Alexandra’s heart sink.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you!’ Nicky was saying with a laugh as they all milled round him.

  ‘I said we’d drop by some time, didn’t I?’ demanded Sandy. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. ‘And today’s your lucky day, mate. Me and the kids are going to make the place sing. We brought the record player. Are you in the mood for a party?’

  Nicky turned to look for Alex, and she waved to him from the window, smiling. She could tell he wanted her approval. Perhaps it was good for them to have visitors. The house had been too gloomy recently, the atmosphere of bereavement lying heavy on it – Nicky’s and her own.

  They all crowded into the hall and she was suddenly surrounded by life and noise. It was startling but not unpleasant. She felt even more sure that they needed this injection of vivacity.

  ‘Hello, Sandy,’ she said as he came up to kiss her.

  ‘Hi, Alex, said Sandy in his soft drawling voice. He’d added an American intonation to his Scottish accent for sophistication, and the effect was rather odd. ‘How’s tricks, baby?’

  ‘Very good, thank you.’

  Nicky was beaming. ‘Isn’t it great to see everyone? Let’s get the party started! Patsy says she can make us whisky sours!’

  ‘That sounds fun,’ Alexandra said with a smile. She could see that Nicky was excited. He obviously needed to live a little.

  Perhaps I do too. Perhaps we’ve been alone, just the two of us, for a little too long.

  They were young, she reminded herself. Parties and drinking would help her to forget all those dark troubles, and concentrate on youth and love and everything she and Nicky had at their disposal to enjoy themselves.

  Nicky led the way into the library, animated and excited to be with his London crowd again, and she followed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Present day

  The summer would be a hot one if it continued like this. They woke to bright blue mornings that deepened to blazing warmth and then melted slowly into long, soft evenings rich with scents from the garden. Outside the kitchen, the lavender border bu
zzed with bees and sent its sweet fragrance into the air. By the fruit canes, white cabbage butterflies fluttered crazily about as if intoxicated by the treasure of dropping berries. The bricks of the walled garden baked in the heat and radiated an earthy warmth, and everywhere lush greenery crept and crawled and grew.

  Delilah could see summer in her own reflection: her skin had tanned despite her efforts to shield herself from the sun, and there was a pinky-gold glow to her face along with the freckles across her nose. These days her hair was longer, and she pulled it back into a loose ponytail which, with her summer dresses and sandshoes, made her look younger.

  A new kind of quiet had descended on the house. She hadn’t seen Ben for a few days as he was busy designing an irrigation system that would run at first off the mains but later from a reservoir of stored rain water – like a giant water butt, he described it – and he spent hours in the workshop with lengths of rubber hose and widgets and hundreds of scraps of paper with scribbled drawings on them. Erryl grumbled that he was having to handle the garden almost singlehanded with Ben so occupied, but it was John who climbed on the mower and rode up and down the lawns and along the borders of the parkland, keeping everything neat. Sheep, cows and horses kept everything else in check, razoring down the grass in the surrounding fields and paddocks. John became a familiar sight, in his shabby cargo shorts and hiking boots, naked from the waist up, his skin burnished by the sun and an old straw hat on his head, as he steered the ride-on mower up and down. Mungo would lie nearby in the shade of a tree, too hot to do anything but let his tongue loll out and watch his master playing his odd game of driving back and forth on the grass. On the compost heap, the collection of grass clippings grew into a mountain, dry and straw-like on top but with a scent of fermenting vegetation and fertile decay within.

  Delilah preferred to be outside now, surrounded by all the life and light and vigour of the garden, and she took her laptop out to the summer house, away from the chilly depths of the house where the silence hung ever more heavily. She was beginning to dread being there, especially alone. The house seemed to hunger for life inside it so badly that it felt as though it wanted to drain hers out of her and absorb it into its walls.