The Lake House

by Kate Morton

  Victoria station was chaos, with people moving every which way, a sea of top hats and walking canes and long swishing skirts. Eleanor alighted from the tram and slipped through the crowd as quickly as she could, emerging onto the street where horse-drawn carriages and coaches jostled this way and that on their way to teatime appointments. She could have jumped for joy not to be on board one of them.

  She took a moment to gather her bearings and then set off along Grosvenor Place. She was moving quickly and her breaths were short. London had a distinctive smell, the unpleasant mingling of manure with exhaust fumes, of old and new, and she was glad when she turned into Hyde Park and caught the scent of roses. Nannies in starched uniforms paraded large prams along the red dirt of Rotten Row, and the expanse of lawn was covered with green sixpenny deckchairs. Rowing-boats speckled the Serpentine like ducks.

  “Get your mementoes, here,” shouted a street vendor, his stall stocked with coronation flags and pictures of the enormous new peace statue that stood before Buckingham Palace. (“Peace?” her uncle was fond of snorting each time their carriage passed by the enormous statue, its white marble glistening against the dirty black stonework of the palace. “We’ll be lucky to see out the decade without another war!” A smug look would settle on his dour face after the pronouncement—he liked nothing more than the anticipation of bad news—and, “Don’t be such a killjoy, Daddy,” Beatrice would scold, before her attention was diverted by a passing coach. “Oh, look! Is that the Manners’ carriage? Did you hear the latest about Lady Diana? She dressed as a black swan to attend the all-white charity ball! Can you imagine Lady Sheffield’s fury!”)

  Eleanor was hurrying now. Towards Bayswater Road, under Marble Arch, through the edge of Mayfair and into Marylebone. The sign for Baker Street made her think again of Uncle Vernon, who rated himself something of a sleuth and enjoyed pitting his wits against Sherlock Holmes. Eleanor had borrowed some of the mystery books from her uncle’s study but wasn’t a convert. The arrogance of rationalism was at odds with her beloved fairy tales. Even now, Holmes’ cocksure assumption that there was nothing that couldn’t be explained by process of human deduction made her hot under the collar. So hot that as she approached Regent’s Park she forgot all about the mechanised river she had to cross. She stepped right out onto the road without looking and didn’t notice the omnibus until it was almost upon her. In that instant, as the enormous advertisement for lipton’s tea bore down on her, Eleanor knew she was going to die. Her thoughts came swiftly—she would be with her father again, she would no longer have to worry about losing Loeanneth, but, oh, what a shame not to have seen the tigers! She screwed her eyes shut, waiting for the pain and oblivion to hit.

  The shock when it came took her breath away, a force around her waist as she was thrown sideways, the wind knocked out of her as she fell hard to the ground. Death was not at all as she’d expected. Sound was swirling, her ears rang and her head swooned. When she opened her eyes, her vision filled with an image of the most beautiful face she’d ever seen. Eleanor would never confess the fact to anyone, but for years after she would smile to remember that in that moment she’d thought herself face to face with God.

  It wasn’t God. It was a boy, a man, young, not much older than she was, with sandy brown hair and skin she had a sudden urge to touch. He was on the ground beside her, one arm beneath her shoulders. His lips were moving, he was saying something that Eleanor couldn’t make out, and he was looking at her intensely, first into one eye and then into the other. Finally, as noise and movement whirled around them—they’d gathered quite a crowd—a smile came to his face, and she thought what a glorious mouth he had, and then she promptly fainted.

  * * *

  His name was Anthony Edevane and he was studying at Cambridge to become a doctor, a surgeon to be precise. Eleanor learned this at the refreshments counter of Baker Street station, where he took her after the altercation with the bus and bought her a lemonade. He was meeting a friend there, a boy with dark, curly hair and spectacles, the sort of boy whose clothing, Eleanor could tell just by looking at him, would always appear hastily arranged, whose hair would never sit quite as it was meant to. Eleanor could relate to that. She took a liking to him at once. “Howard Mann—” Anthony gestured towards the dishevelled boy—“this is Eleanor deShiel.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eleanor,” said Howard, taking her hand. “What a charming surprise. How do you know this old boy?”

  Eleanor heard herself say, “He just saved my life,” and thought what an unlikely scenario it presented.

  Howard, however, didn’t skip a beat: “Did he now? Not surprising. That’s the sort of thing he does. If he weren’t my best friend I think I’d have to hate him.”

  It might have been awkward, this bantering conversation in an Underground station cafe with two male strangers, but, as Eleanor discovered, being saved from certain death had a way of freeing a person from the usual strictures of what to say and how. They talked easily and freely, and the more she heard the more she liked them both. Anthony and Howard joked around with one another a lot, but their manner was easy and therefore somehow inclusive. She found herself voicing opinions in a way she hadn’t done in a very long time, laughing and nodding and disagreeing at times with a vehemence that would have horrified her mother.

  The three of them spoke fiercely about science and nature, politics and honour, family and friendship. Eleanor gleaned that Anthony wanted to be a surgeon more than anything in the world, and had done since he was a little boy and his favourite housemaid died of appendicitis for lack of a qualified doctor. That Howard was the only son of an extremely wealthy earl who spent his days on the French Riviera with his fourth wife, and sent money for his son’s care to a trust administered by a bank manager at Lloyds of London. That the two boys had met on the first day of school when Anthony lent Howard his spare uniform hat so he wouldn’t be given a caning by the housemaster and that they’d been inseparable ever since. “More like brothers,” Anthony said, giving Howard a warm smile.

  Time flew and when, during a rare break in conversation, Howard frowned lightly and said to Eleanor, “Not to break up the party, but it occurs to me someone must be missing you,” she was shocked to glance at her father’s watch (she’d worn it since he died, much to her mother’s annoyance) and realise that three hours had passed since she’d lost her family in the maze. She experienced a sudden vision of her mother in a state of emotional apoplexy.

  “Yes,” she agreed grimly. “It’s a distinct possibility.”

  “Well then,” said Howard, “we should get you home. Shouldn’t we, Anthony?”

  “Yes,” said Anthony, frowning at his own watch, tapping the glass as if the time it told were somehow wrong. “Yes, of course.” Eleanor wondered whether she imagined the note of reluctance in his voice. “Terribly selfish of us to keep you here talking when you really ought to be resting your head.”

  Suddenly, Eleanor was filled with a desperate desire not to part company from them. From him. She started to demur. The day had turned out to be a glorious one; she felt absolutely fine; home was the last place she planned on going. She’d come all this way, she was so near the zoo, she hadn’t even seen the tigers yet! Anthony was saying something about her head and the impact of her fall, which was kind of him, but really, she insisted, she felt fine. A little dizzy, now that she tried to stand up, but that was only to be expected; it was very warm inside the cafe, and she hadn’t eaten lunch, and—oh! Perhaps if she just sat for a moment longer, caught her breath, waited for her vision to clear.

  He was insistent; she was stubborn; Howard was the decider. With a small smile of apology he took her other arm as Anthony went to pay the bill.

  Eleanor watched him go. He was clever, and kind, and possessed an obvious fascination with the world and all it had to offer. He was also very handsome. Thick dark-blond hair and sun-browned skin, a gaze that was electr
ic with curiosity and a passion for learning. She couldn’t be absolutely certain that it wasn’t her near-death experience playing tricks with her eyes, but he seemed to shine. He was so filled with enthusiasm and energy and confidence that he was somehow more alive than everybody else in the room.

  “He’s something, isn’t he?” said Howard.

  Eleanor’s skin flared. She hadn’t meant to be so obvious.

  “He’s the smartest boy in class, he won most of the academic prizes at our school graduation. Not that he’d ever tell you himself, he’s modest to a fault.”

  “Is he?” She pretended only a mild, polite interest.

  “When he qualifies, he plans to establish a surgery for those who can least afford it. The number of children who go without vital operations for want of the money to pay a surgeon is shameful.”

  They drove her back to Mayfair in Howard’s Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. Vera’s butler opened the door, but Beatrice, who’d been watching from her bedroom window, came flying down the stairs, hot on his heels. “Oh my goodness, Eleanor,” she breathed, “your mother is livid!” Then, noticing Anthony and Howard, she regathered herself and fluttered her eyelashes. “How do you do?”

  “Beatrice,” said Eleanor with a smile, “allow me to introduce Howard Mann and Anthony Edevane. Mr Edevane just saved my life.”

  “Well then,” said Beatrice, without skipping a beat, “I expect you’d better come in for tea.”

  The story was told again over tea and lemon cake. Constance, her brows arched and her lips tight, was simmering with unasked questions as to why Eleanor had been in Marylebone in the first place, but she held firmly to her composure as she thanked Anthony. “Edevane?” she asked hopefully. “Not Lord Edevane’s son?”

  “That’s right,” said Anthony cheerfully, taking a second piece of cake. “The youngest of his three.”

  Constance’s smile evaporated. (“Third son?” she was later heard barking at Vera. “Third son?! A third son has no business walking the streets rescuing impressionable young girls. He’s supposed to join the ministry, for goodness’ sake!”)

  To Eleanor, though, it explained everything. His easy, unassuming nature, the inexplicable, almost regal air he carried with him, the way they’d met. He was the third son. “You were born to be the hero of a story,” she said.

  Anthony laughed. “I don’t know about that, but I do count myself lucky to be the third.”

  “Oh?” Constance’s chill tone lowered the room’s temperature by degrees. “And why, pray tell, is that?”

  “My father already has an heir and a spare, which leaves me free to do as I please.”

  “And what exactly is that, Mr Edevane?”

  “I’m going to be a doctor.”

  Eleanor started to explain that Anthony was, in fact, studying to be a surgeon, that he’d committed his life to helping people less fortunate, that he’d won all sorts of important academic prizes, but such details were lost on Constance, who promptly interrupted her daughter. “Surely a man of your class needn’t work for a living. I wouldn’t have thought your father would approve of that.”

  Anthony looked at her and the strength of his gaze was such that all remaining warmth was sucked from the room. The air was charged. Eleanor had never seen anyone stand up to her mother and she held her breath, waiting to see what he would say.

  “My father, Mrs deShiel, has seen, as have I, what becomes of bored, privileged men who’ve been spared the effort of wage-earning. I don’t plan to spend my days sitting around looking for ways to fill the stretch of time. I want to help people. I intend to be useful.” And then he turned to Eleanor, as if they were the only people in the room, and said, “What about you, Miss deShiel? What do you want from life?”

  Something changed in that moment. It was a small shift but a decisive one. He was dazzling, and it became clear to Eleanor that their meeting that morning had been fated. The tie between them was so strong she could almost see it. There was so much to tell him, and yet at the same time, she knew with a strange but clarifying certainty that she didn’t have to tell him anything at all. She could see it in his eyes, the way he looked at her. He already knew what she wanted from life. That she had no intention of becoming one of those women who sat around playing bridge and gossiping and waiting for their drivers to take them out in carriages; that she wanted so much else and more, far too much to put into words now. And so she said only, “I want to see those tigers.”

  He laughed and a beatific smile spread across his face as he held his palms outstretched. “Well, that’s not difficult to arrange. Rest your head this afternoon and I’ll take you tomorrow.” He turned to Eleanor’s mother and added, “If you have no objections, Mrs deShiel.”

  It was clear to all who knew her that Constance was brimming with objections, itching to say no, to forbid this overconfident youth—this third son!—from taking her daughter anywhere. Eleanor wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her mother dislike anyone so much, but there was very little Constance could do. He came from a good family, he had saved her daughter’s life, he was offering to take her to the very place she’d just professed a deep desire to visit. It would have been bad form to say no. Constance planted a sour smile on her face and managed a small noise of assent. It was merely a formality. Everyone in the room could feel that the power balance had tilted, and from that moment on Constance was to play very little part in her daughter’s courtship.

  Eleanor walked the two boys to the door after tea. Howard said warmly, “I hope to see you again soon, Miss deShiel,” before glancing at Anthony with a knowing smile. “I might just go and get the Ghost warmed up.”

  Anthony and Eleanor, left alone, were both suddenly lost for words.

  “So,” he said.

  “So.”

  “The zoo. Tomorrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise me you won’t step in front of a bus before then?”

  She laughed. “I promise.”

  A light frown settled on his brow.

  “What is it?” she said, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. Only, I like your hair.”

  “This?” Her hand went to touch the mop, at its wildest after the day’s unexpected excitement.

  He smiled, and deep inside her something quivered. “That. I like it. A lot.”

  And then he said goodbye and she watched him go, and when she went inside and closed the door behind her, Eleanor knew, quite simply and clearly, that everything had changed.

  * * *

  It would be wrong to say they fell in love over the next couple of weeks, for they were already in love that first day. And over the following fortnight, with cousin Beatrice proving a benevolently lax chaperone, they were hardly apart. They went to the zoo, where Eleanor finally saw the tigers, they lost entire days in Hampstead, discovering hidden green pockets of the heath and learning each other’s secrets, they explored the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Natural History Museum, and saw the visiting Imperial Ballet perform eight times. Eleanor attended no more balls unless Anthony was going to be there, too. Instead, they walked along the Thames, talking and laughing as if they’d known one another forever.

  At the end of his holidays, on the morning he was due to return to Cambridge, he made a detour to see her. He didn’t wait until they went inside but said to her, there on the doorstep, “I came with the idea of asking you to wait for me.”

  Eleanor’s heart had begun to pound beneath her dress but her breath caught when he added, “And then I realised it wasn’t right.”

  “You did? It isn’t?”

  “No, I could hardly think of asking you to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”

  “I can wait—”

  “Well, I can’t, not for another day. I can’t live without you, Eleanor. I have to ask—do you think—will you marry me?”
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br />   Eleanor grinned. She didn’t need to think twice. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, a thousand times! Of course I will!”

  Anthony swept her off her feet and spun her around, kissing her as he set her back to right. “I will never love anyone but you,” he said, smoothing her hair back from her face. He said it with a certainty that made something inside her shiver. The sky was blue, north opposed south, and he, Anthony Edevane, would love only her.

  She promised him the same and he smiled, pleased, but not surprised, as if he’d already known it was true.

  “You know, I’m not a wealthy man,” he said. “I’ll never be rich.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I can’t give you a home like this one.” He gestured at Aunt Vera’s grand house.

  Indignant. “You know I don’t care about those things.”

  “Or a home like the one you grew up in, Loeanneth.”

  “I don’t need that,” she said, and for the first time she believed it. “You’re my home now.”

  * * *

  They were happy in Cambridge. Anthony’s digs were small but clean, and Eleanor made them homely. Anthony was in the final years of his degree and sat hunched over his texts most nights after dinner; Eleanor drew and wrote. His intelligence, his goodness, were apparent even in the way he frowned at the books, his hands moving sometimes as he read about the best way to perform a certain operation. They were clever hands, gentle and deft. “He was always able to build and make and fix things,” his mother had told Eleanor the first time they met. “As a little boy, he liked nothing better than to take apart my husband’s heirloom clock. Lucky for us—and him!—he was always able to put it back to rights.”

  Their life together was not elaborate; they didn’t attend big society parties, but entertained their nearest and dearest in small, intimate gatherings. Howard came often to share a meal, staying long into the night to talk and laugh and argue over a bottle of wine; Anthony’s parents paid occasional visits, perplexed but too polite to comment on the straitened circumstances in which their youngest and his new wife chose to live; and Mr Llewellyn was a regular guest. With his wisdom and good humour, and his evident fatherly love for Eleanor, he soon became a treasured friend to Anthony, too; the bond was further strengthened when Anthony learned that long before his gift for storytelling made him an accidental literary star, the older man had also trained in medicine (though as a physician and not a surgeon). “Did you never long to go back and practise?” Anthony asked more than once, unable to fathom what could possibly keep a man from his calling. But Mr Llewellyn always smiled and shook his head. “I found something to which I was more suited. Better that I leave such matters to able men like you whose blood burns with the need to help and heal.” When Anthony graduated from his pre-clinical training with first-class honours and a university medal, it was Mr Llewellyn he invited to sit beside Eleanor and his parents to watch him receive his degree. When the vice chancellor delivered his rousing speech about manhood and duty—“If a man cannot be useful to his country, he is better dead”—Mr Llewellyn leaned to whisper wryly in Eleanor’s ear, “What a jolly fellow—he reminds me rather of your mother,” and she had to stifle a laugh. But the older man’s eyes glistened with pride as he watched his young friend graduate.