It can’t have been very exciting.
When I said so, Dante suddenly suggested he add some reality to an unconvincing performance and kissed me.
It would not have been in character to struggle, but when I could speak again my mouth said: ‘Call that a convincing performance?’ without asking my brain’s permission first. I knew drinking in Dante’s company was a bad idea.
He was already breathing a trifle heavily for a ghost, but this put him on his mettle, and things might then have got a trifle out of hand had not the scrunch of gravel alerted us to the fact that one or more of the visitors were creeping up on us.
Hand in hand we fled down the rose garden, crept along the far side of the overgrown yew hedge and into the side door of the west wing, which Dante locked behind us before we collapsed in a breathless heap.
22
Family Party
After reading Cass Leigh’s last novel, Grave Concerns, I swore I’d never read another. Why, then, did I buy her latest one, Nocturnally Yours, then spend the week after reading it too afraid to put the lights out at night?
The Fiction Review
‘You can let go of my hand now, there’s no one here to see us,’ I said firmly, for once we were back in the brightly lit west wing sanity had returned.
At least, I thought it was sanity. Certainly I’d suddenly recalled that Dante was probably still a bit piqued with me, as men can be for no particular reason that a sensible woman can see, and that seducing me might be his way of punishing me.
Not exactly my idea of a fate worse than death, but still, I’d been seduced once before and look where that got me. I’d no intention of making a mess of my life again.
No ties, and a nice dog, that’s what I needed, not another quick fling with something darkly Byronic.
Dante released me, looking at me in the sad, hungry way that made me think of big dark jungle cats sizing up dinner, and suggested we have a drink in his room. But I’d been there, done that, and we all know what happened last time … or we would if we’d been sober enough to remember it all. Anyway, duty called.
‘No thanks, I’m going to go back to my room to do some work,’ I said with resolution. ‘If you don’t need me any more tonight, that is?’
‘Not in your slave capacity,’ he agreed. ‘But I thought we could get to know each other a bit better?’
‘And I thought you’d already discovered everything there was to know about my subconscious from my books, and didn’t find it very attractive?’
‘Haven’t I made it clear that I find the rest of you attractive? Maybe your psyche will grow on me, and mine on you. I never meant to frighten you,’ he added unexpectedly.
‘Oh, I’m not scared of you any more,’ I assured him. But actually, even now there are moments … Or then again, perhaps it was me I was so scared of? ‘I mean, I never was really: you just looked so big and sort of grim-looking the first time we met, and then there was all that guilt.’
‘I meant frightening you when I grabbed you and dragged you into the secret chamber tonight, actually.’
‘Oh, that. It was just a bit too cupboard-like, but I was all right when I knew it was a passage and stairs, and you were in there, and not … not something nightmarish.’
‘You’re such a weird mixture of impervious chronicler of the undead, and frightened child in the dark,’ he said softly. ‘But tonight, just to confuse me even more, you look more angel than vampire in that dress.’
‘Angels are golden-haired,’ I said coldly, edging away.
‘I don’t see why.’
‘“Light good, dark bad” is a basic tenet of life.’
‘Not mine. Whatever I’ve done, or not done – whatever I’m accused of – I don’t really think I’m a bad man. I hope I’m not a bad man, even though I can’t have been any great shakes as a husband,’ he added moodily, ‘or Emma wouldn’t have had an affair with someone else.’
I thought she must have been madder than her mother, but that was just a personal opinion. How did she dare? And why on earth would she want to?
‘I don’t see why anything that happened is your fault,’ I said. ‘You’re not responsible for your friend’s death, and if you hadn’t been taken hostage you would have been home with Emma when she was taken ill, so that isn’t your fault either.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said bleakly. ‘It’s a chain reaction, one thing leading to another all along the line, like I’m the kiss of death to anyone close to me.’
‘Well, Rosetta’s absolutely flourishing, and you’re fond of her,’ I pointed out. ‘And the person who was there when Emma was ill and didn’t take her to hospital is her mother, so she’s projecting her own guilt on to you; but of course, if mediums really can contact the spirits of the dead, which is something I’m not entirely convinced of, the presence of someone like yourself who is extremely antagonistic to the whole idea would probably throw a spanner in the works, don’t you think? So Madame Duval might have a point there.’
‘So – what? I ought to brainwash myself into believing in the afterlife and let her hold her seance? Because I’ll tell you something else: I took Emma back, but I didn’t love her any more after finding out she’d been unfaithful. I think I’d known we were wrong for each other soon after we married, when she started trying to get me to change my job.’
I sighed. ‘Like my love affair with Max: I knew that was a mistake right from the start too, once I found he was married. I did resist him, you know. I even got a job and moved here without telling him, only he found me again and persuaded me into our affair.’
‘But he was the married one, you must have been very young, and you did try and make the break, so where is your blame?’
‘Well, it’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘For both of us. I really have finished with Max for ever, even if he’s refusing to accept it. The final straw was that this Kyra got pregnant when I desperately wanted children and he wouldn’t hear of it. And now it’s probably too late,’ I said sadly.
‘Why should it be?’
‘I’m forty-four, probably past it.’
‘You’re wearing very well,’ he said, with that twitch of the mouth. ‘And I don’t think I’d give up yet if that’s what you really want. Only not with Jason: why not try me again?’
‘I didn’t try you in the first place!’ I said hotly. ‘I mean, I wasn’t trying to – I wasn’t even thinking about getting pregnant!’
‘So you wanted me for myself alone? I’m flattered.’ It was a full-fledged smile, this time, unnervingly.
‘Well, don’t be, because it was mostly the brandy … and a sort of affinity, I think,’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘Don’t you think we’re alike in some ways?’
‘Dark and guilty?’
‘Something like that. And both with personal demons to slay.’
‘Yes, you through your books – and maybe now me through mine. And I suppose I must let our Mrs Bangs – as she apparently now is! – make her distasteful final attempt tomorrow, and close the door on that one for ever,’ he said slowly.
‘And I may have no choice about facing my father again, if he follows me up here. Which he will do if Francis doesn’t manage to head him off.’ I shivered.
‘He’s not that scary, is he?’ Dante asked mildly. ‘You stood up to my mother-in-law in my defence, after all.’
I just looked at him pityingly. ‘She’s not even in the same league!’
‘Then if he comes, I’ll be there to defend you,’ he promised, which was strangely reassuring.
We’d reached the door of his study by now (so clearly I was mistaken about his earlier intentions) and he paused, a hand on the latch and raised an eyebrow: ‘A nightcap?’
‘No, thanks, this is the time of night when I generally work,’ I explained, backing away.
‘Is it? Well, it’s the time of night I generally don’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you to it then, but my door is two down from yours if you should
want me in the night … for anything. Breakfast in the kitchen tomorrow? You don’t want me to wake you up?’
‘No, thank you. I like to wake naturally, mid-morning, and since I did your haunting bit in the night you can’t expect me to be on duty at the crack of dawn. But I’ll help Rosetta with her guests if she needs me when I get up. Am I haunting tomorrow night?’
‘Yes, same old haunts,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll be working in here during the day, but feel free to disturb me. More than you do already, I mean.’
It was an effort to get the old legs to turn round and march me out of there, but it had to be done. There seemed to be too many unresolved issues hanging like a dark miasma in the air.
Actually even my room seemed to be imbued with a dark and powerful force, but whatever it was, it was very conducive to writing, and once I was working I forgot everything.
The house was quiet when I emerged late the following morning. I peeped in the open door of Dante’s study, but he was hammering away at the keys of his laptop, so absorbed he didn’t notice me.
I could probably have sheared off all that floppy raven hair without him knowing I was doing it, but I resisted the temptation and stole away.
… Dr Bone sized him up: he was so very nearly perfect. Just a few, slight adjustments, an enhancement of the gifts Nature had bestowed upon him, and he would be truly her own creation …
I’d have to watch that Dr Bone, because far from starting out as a wimp like Keturah she seemed to be a bossy-boots who always thought she knew best – hence her desire to improve on nature.
And I didn’t mind what she did to the Max figure, but she wasn’t getting her knife into anyone remotely resembling Dante: he’d been through enough.
The only sign of life in the main part of the house was Rosetta, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, looking limp and wan. The dishwasher was chock-full of greasy breakfast dishes and the room smelled so strongly of bacon that every breath loaded my system with cholesterol.
That was probably what sent Eddie away, because he finds the smell of any animal cooking repugnant.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, concerned, and she looked up and gave me a weak smile.
‘Oh yes, just exhausted! Not just by all the cooking and clearing, but by the most spectacular scene. After breakfast Madame – Madame Duval, as we have to call her – spotted Dante in here, and threw a major wobbler. She says she saw Emma last night in the Long Gallery, and it was a clear sign that she was coming for Dante’s soul if he didn’t let her mother contact her, and stuff like that.’
‘I’m sorry I missed it,’ I said sincerely, scouting around for bread and peanut butter, but settling for marmalade. ‘Was everyone there?’
‘Oh yes, they all managed to get down for a full cooked English breakfast!’ Rosetta said bitterly. ‘Poor Eddie had to go out – he went quite pale when I put the sausages and bacon on. He’s gardening, I think. Otherwise she had a full audience, and she even staged a heart attack, only her colour stayed perfectly normal so I knew it wasn’t real.’
‘What did Dante say?’
‘He said she could save the histrionics, because he’d already decided to let her hold a seance early this evening, on the understanding that she left the house tomorrow and never contacted him again, no matter what happened at the seance. I was surprised, because he’s so against that sort of thing!’
‘We were talking about it last night a bit,’ I said. ‘And he feels it would sort of end the chapter if he let her do this one last time. And if anything nasty happens I’ll get Charles – the vicar – to sort it out, don’t worry.’
‘I don’t really believe in that medium stuff, do you?’ she asked. ‘But I do wish I’d never had this idea in the first place! What could I have been thinking of, when I knew how Dante felt about that sort of thing? Although at least by coming here I met Eddie!’ she added on a brighter note. ‘So some good has come of it all.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘and I think you will be very happy together. You haven’t told Dante what you intend doing yet?’
‘No, we thought – after the guests have gone, you know? How was the haunting? Leo Bream and Frank Shakespeare are setting a camera up tonight in the hope of catching Betsy on film, and Mrs Bream is going to operate a tape recorder, because they said there was a terrible faint scream just as the figure vanished.’
‘I’ll have to remember that,’ I said.
‘And they saw the figures of two lovers in the rose garden too,’ she added. ‘But not near enough to be clear. Was that you and Dante?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
Rosetta brightened. ‘I knew he really liked you! When I’m gone you and—’
‘Rosetta, your brother is years younger than me, and he doesn’t like me that much!’
‘He’s thirty-eight, old enough to know what he wants,’ she said. ‘And he’s so different since he met you: you’re good for him. I was afraid for him when he got home from Colombia, he was so desperately unhappy and seemed to blame himself for everything. I blame a lot of it on Madame Duval.’
‘Mrs Bangs!’
We both grinned.
‘Reg is a nice little man,’ she said. ‘He helped me clear the tables after breakfast.’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier to help, but I worked for a few hours after the haunting, then slept in.’
‘Yes, Dante said, and that it was clear any lifestyle adjustments were all going to be on his side.’
I looked at her: ‘You mean, while I’m staying here?’
She shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘Well, what can I do to help you now? And where is everyone? It’s as quiet as the grave.’
Unfortunate turn of phrase! And they were none of them very quiet in any of my books.
‘They’ve all walked into the village together to explore, and then have lunch at the pub, thank goodness. Clara Williams is bringing the birthday cake later that Mrs Bream ordered for her husband’s surprise party – tea, cake and fizz in the sitting room at five. I’ve told Dante he’s got to be there, as Lord of the Manor. Will you come, too?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world: Orla’s turning up to do a singing telegram.’
‘Yes, Mrs Bream asked if anyone did them locally, and I told her about Orla. Oh, and your Jason phoned up and said he’d be here about four, he’s closing his shop up early today. He’s nice, isn’t he?’
‘Yes he is, but he’s not my Jason – or not any more, I hope!’ I said, and she looked puzzled. However, she often looked puzzled, which was probably what made her a perfect match for Eddie, who understood nothing he couldn’t smoke or fix with his hands and did not care in the least. ‘It was always Orla he really fancied, I just side-tracked him with my kinky vampire gear.’
So I helped Rosetta for a while, and then she went off laden with a basket of vegetarian goodies for Eddie’s lunch, like Little Denim Riding Hood, and I thought I’d go and have a look at the rose garden in daylight to work up an appetite before I raided her supplies for lunch.
The rose garden, a formal affair of gravelled paths and trees like so many green pompoms on sticks, happened to be overlooked by Dante’s study window.
Unfortunately it was also overlooked by one of the wider loops of the drive up which Pa, with a reluctant entourage of Ma and Francis, was proceeding in search of one of his two twin ewe lambs.
He halted abruptly when he spotted me, then veered off into the shrubbery, which swayed wildly as at the approach of some large wild beast.
I cravenly contemplated bolting – but where to? He clearly wouldn’t be leaving until he’d satisfied himself that Jane wasn’t here. Might as well get it done with.
So I stood my ground, staring at him as he grew closer, noting the grey in his fair hair and the increased stockiness of his build. His impressive head, a demented John the Baptist set on a body not quite magnificent enough, was ruddy with rage, the eyes blazing a mad light blue.
Despite
the full daylight and there being no cupboards anywhere in the near vicinity, my knees began to shake and I was filled with a sensation of intense panic.
‘Perverter of the Innocent! Spawn of Satan, sent to lead the Pure Lamb to eternal damnation!’ Pa ranted, the volume increasing as he strode closer.
Francis and Ma made no attempt to hinder or remonstrate with him, of course – it was always pointless, even when he was sober. Ma looked smaller. Frailer. Her curly hair was quite silver now.
She didn’t look at me directly, but hovered nearby, hands folded and eyes meekly downbent, even when I said beseechingly: ‘Ma!’
Pa came to a halt in front of me and pointed an accusing finger. Bolts of lightning didn’t shoot out of it, but I flinched anyway.
‘You have stolen her away with your foul wiles! What have you done with your sister, Jane?’ he demanded.
Whatever did happen to Baby Jane?
‘Hello, Pa,’ I said, reasonably steadily. ‘I haven’t done anything with Jane – she’s in London staying with George and Phily. How are you? And Ma?’ I added politely, as though we were acquaintances rather than twenty-years-estranged family members.
Francis, looking resigned, cast his eyes up to heaven. ‘I did tell you, Pa! She’s gone to London to keep Phily company, and Gerald is there now, too. You can speak to her on the phone later.’
‘You’re all in a conspiracy to hide her from me!’ he declared, rounding on him. ‘Has she fooled you too, this fiend disguised as your sister?’ Froth was beginning to fly and he advanced on me, fingers twitching and face working.
Shocked by the unbalanced rage I took an involuntary step backwards, for clearly Pa had tipped right over the edge. Sober or drunk, he’d never been quite this ranting and unreasonable before, even over the phone.
‘I knew the moment I set eyes on the infant – Seed of Satan, planted in your womb, Sarah!’ He swivelled and pointed at my unfortunate mother, who cowered. ‘To remind you of your evil desires all your days!’
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