by Lulu Taylor
The only imperfect thing in them was me.
The thought broke in on her with the force of a revelation.
I’ve always been afraid that I wasn’t good enough for him. I was the odd thing out in his collection of beauty, and his pursuit of perfection. That’s why I can believe that something in him wanted Sara, with her beauty and class. I was crazy about him. But what did he get from me?
Even when he’d proposed, going down on one knee in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, she’d accepted rapturously and then said, ‘Are you sure, Patrick? Do you really want me?’
‘Yes,’ he’d said, kissing her lazily. ‘I really do.’
‘Why?’
‘I love you, you silly sausage.’
‘Good. I love you too.’
He’ll keep me safe, she had thought then. And he knows exactly what to do in life. He’ll steer us in the right direction.
Perhaps Patrick had thought she was malleable enough to be made into his creation. Maybe he witnessed the way she submitted to Sara and he guessed that she would submit to him too. And she did. She let him mould her and form her. The power of his vision of how life should be was so powerful there was no resisting it, and she found his certainty comforting. He knew what was right, and she relaxed in the knowledge that he would lead the way, from the decoration of their house to the kind of glassware on their dinner table. From where they went on holiday to the sort of Christmas cards they sent. Every decision was Patrick’s, and he chose always with the skill and taste of the connoisseur.
I worked so hard to be what he wanted! Caitlyn remembered the hours she had devoted to keeping herself fit and slim, to maintaining her looks. Patrick had chosen most of her clothes; he saw the subtle variations in style that crossed the line between acceptable and too flashy or try-hard. He disliked both the ostentatious newness of the way some of her friends looked, and the striving for a kind of vintage dream of how things once were. He could be trusted to get it just right, and some of their happiest times were when he took her out to dress her, spoil her and style her.
But there was the other side to Patrick, she mustn’t forget that. He liked games. He was mischievous, and a tease. He liked to fool her, or lead her on silly errands or treasure hunts. His Christmas treasure hunts were his favourite thing of all. Her gift would be hidden somewhere and she’d have to interpret the clues in order to find it. He’d follow her about as she deciphered them, gleeful when she worked one out, unbending when she didn’t.
‘You need to find your own way there, Caitlyn,’ he’d say firmly. ‘It’s only worth having that way.’
The clues could lead her anywhere – once even to the church down the road where she was astonished to discover that he had clasped a necklace around the neck of a statue of the Virgin Mary and a pearl bracelet around the wrist of a funerary angel.
‘Thank you, you nutter, but anyone might have taken them!’ she’d laughed, delighted.
‘Sometimes people don’t see what’s in plain sight. Or they can’t distinguish the really precious from the simply flashy,’ Patrick had said, helping fasten the necklace on her. He’d bent down to kiss her softly. ‘Don’t forget that you’re the precious one,’ he’d murmured. ‘Remember that, Caitlyn. Now we’d better get going, they’ll be arriving for the big service any minute now.’
She remembered it now as she stared into space. Maybe he was unable to resist Sara’s allure, and the thrill of playing the game. Of hiding the affair from me.
But that’s between Patrick and me. I need to get Sara out of my life. But how?
Chapter Thirty
The prolonged cold had created a strange atmosphere of half-wakefulness in the house, perhaps because of the almost constant darkness. Outside, there was no sign of the sun, just a paling of the darkness to a weak, foggy grey that lingered a few hours and dissolved back into night. The candles about the house glowed, casting out their small golden aureoles and making the shadows around them even blacker.
The children were muted, and had lost much of their urge to go out and play in the snow. The novelty had worn thin and now they were tired of the grey-white world outside and the constant, unrelenting cold. They craved warmth like little cats, and now were most often to be found in their grandmother’s sitting room, toasting themselves by the stove while they played cards and board games and read books. There were plenty of logs, thanks to Thornton’s efforts before the snow, and the coal was now saved only for the boiler and the range, for there was no knowing when the thaw would come.
This weather could go on until March. Perhaps even till April, Tommy thought. It seemed impossible, but it wasn’t. The wireless was quiet most of the day now. Even if there had been electricity, there were no broadcasts. When it was on, it was to report more of the calamitous effects of the weather: there were shortages of everything, not just food now. More stringent regulations were imposed, along with harsher penalties for breaking them.
‘Would they really put us in prison for using electricity?’ Harry asked, looking worried.
‘I suppose only if we kept doing it when we were told not to,’ Tommy told him. ‘But we don’t do that, so it’s perfectly all right.’
Tommy spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Ada, going through the food in the cupboards, the meat safe and the game larder. It helped divert her from the deep sense of depression that threatened to engulf her. She was fairly certain that they could manage, though she hadn’t been able to summon up the strength to get to the village lately, and she suspected there would be no milk if she did. They had milk powder, though, and that would see them through a little longer. There was a little butter left, and quite a big stock of margarine as Ada used her large store of cooking fat accumulated over the last year, most of it from the last pig that was killed, and from the goose they’d been given for Christmas by their farmer neighbour. But the only eggs they had left were the ones stored in the big crock in the larder, covered with water that had isinglass dissolved in it.
‘We must all eat a little less, that’s all,’ Tommy said. ‘I don’t need so much. The children must have what there is, then the men, then the rest of us.’ Her great fear was that lack of food and nourishment would mean the children wouldn’t grow properly and it would be her fault. But so far there seemed to be no ill effects, and their appetites appeared to be satisfied. What they really longed for was sweets and chocolate and limitless cake. Those, she supposed, would not contribute so much to their growth, while the good rabbit stew, boiled up with carrots and oatmeal to bulk it out, and served with their own cauliflower mashed to be a little like potato, would fill their stomachs and provide goodness.
Fred now refused to have the fire lit in the library, but he still painted for a few hours in the morning when the light was at its best. He came to find Tommy, who was reading with the children in the morning room.
‘Hello, everyone. This reminds me of our Latin lessons. We ought to start them up again.’
‘I think we’d all enjoy that,’ Tommy said politely.
‘Yes.’ Fred went to the window. ‘It’s going to snow again, I think. There really is no end to it.’ He looked back to Tommy. ‘I wanted to tell you, the painting is almost finished.’
‘Well, it hardly matters as we’re not going to do anything with the copy. You must take it with you when you go.’
‘I will. It will be rather amusing to hang it in whatever little place I end up in. But I’ve thought of something else I’d like to try my hand at.’
‘Yes?’ She looked at him, feeling a sudden longing to jump up and ask him to put his arms around her again, and give her that solid, silent support that had helped her for that brief moment in the store cupboard.
‘I couldn’t help noticing the bare patch in your plaster upstairs, on the landing near my bedroom.’
‘Yes, it’s been like that for ages. There was a fire decades ago and they hacked away the bits that were damaged but never mended it.’
‘Well, I might have
a go at patching it. Would that be all right with you? I’ve always wanted to try plasterwork.’
‘Of course. Please do.’
Harry looked up from the book and said, ‘What will you put on the wall?’
Fred smiled at him. ‘I don’t know. What do you suggest?’
‘The circus,’ Antonia said eagerly. ‘Do the circus!’
‘Now that’s a good idea. The circus it will be.’
Fred began work at once on the design for the plaster on the landing, first making his drawings on paper and then working out ways to turn them into little moulds for plaster. He began whittling away at pieces of wood, but nothing came out quite to his satisfaction.
They had eaten a frugal lunch of soup and a kind of oatmeal cake invented by Ada, topped with slivers of cheese for flavour, and Tommy was planning to make the children do their reading, when Roger asked if he could talk to her privately.
‘Of course. Let’s go to the library.’ She led the way down the passage, pulling her fur coat tightly around her. Weeks of little heating had made parts of the house feel as cold as the outside.
In the library, Fred’s copy of the Gainsborough stood almost complete upon the easel. Roger saw it as he went in. ‘Well, I must say, that’s rather good, isn’t it?’ He pointed at some of the more finished work. The loveliness of Venetia, particularly the sadness in her eyes, had been captured wonderfully well in the fluid, feathery strokes so like the original. ‘Excellent likeness, not easy to tell it apart from the real thing at a glance. Very good indeed. Fred is so talented, isn’t he?’
‘He is indeed,’ Tommy answered casually.
‘I’m very lucky to have him as my friend. He was quite brilliant at Cambridge. Everyone looked up to him. He was a leading light in our debating group, rather dazzling in fact. I’m sure he’s destined to go far, once he’s recovered and this frightful winter is over.’ Roger gazed longer at the painting. ‘Though he’s got to put this painting lark behind him and knuckle down.’
Tommy was surprised to hear Roger talk like this. ‘I thought you were rather keen on painting,’ she said.
‘Well, in a way. But really I need to concentrate on what needs doing here. On the house and the estate. I need to get on with managing my inheritance.’
‘I see.’ Tommy tried not to sound as astonished as she felt. Roger had never shown the slightest interest in managing anything. ‘Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘Yes. I know you had to be in charge while the war was on – that was only right. A lot of women did a fine job while we men were fighting. You are certainly one of them. But the place is in a bad state, Tommy. You said so yourself. So it’s time I took over.’
Tommy sank down into one of the chairs by the fireplace, now cold but full of ashes from the last fire. It looked dirty and depressing. ‘You’re going to sort everything out?’ she asked in a neutral tone.
‘Yes. It’s incumbent on me. This place is mine, after all.’
‘Of course. But we – Gerry and I – we think of it as our home as well,’ Tommy said carefully. She didn’t want Roger to say anything regrettable that he might feel obliged to carry through.
‘Of course. There will always be a place for you here.’
‘That’s . . . kind.’ Tommy fought a rising panic within her: a few minutes ago, it had never occurred to her that she and the children had anything other than a permanent home at Kings Harcourt. Now, just by confirming it, Roger had raised a doubt in her mind that what she believed was so. He’s telling me that our presence here is in his gift.
Roger went on: ‘Perhaps I didn’t see it before, but now I do. I must secure my birthright. So from now on, Tommy, you don’t have to worry. I shall take up the reins and sort it all out. Just point me in the right direction, and off I’ll go.’
Tommy ran upstairs and knocked on Fred’s door, hardly waiting for a reply before bursting in. He was sitting at his desk, drawing by the light of a candle, muffled up in his coat and soft woollen hat with a bobble on the top of it, wearing a pair of fingerless gloves. He turned as she came in and smiled.
‘Ah, I’m glad you’ve come to see me, Tommy, I wanted to show you my sketches of the circus figures.’ He held out a piece of paper just long enough for her to notice some roughly drawn seals and ballerinas but she wasn’t interested in them now.
‘What have you been saying to Roger?’ she demanded angrily. She put her hands on her hips. ‘What nonsense have you put in his head?’
‘I really have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Fred said, evidently bemused by her reaction.
‘You spend half the day with Roger, talking, talking, talking,’ Tommy went on, ‘and he’s just come to me to tell me that he needs to take on the running of his inheritance. He was practically on the brink of telling me that my job was done and I could now move out! As though this isn’t my home as much as it is his!’ She shook her head furiously. ‘And I’m the one who’s kept it running until now! I’ve looked after it, managed it, made it into a successful food-producing enterprise during the war. I’ve fed us all, and anyone who came here. I know it’s Roger’s house by the terms of my father’s will but he’s done nothing to deserve it except be born a man. It’s as though everything I’ve done is invisible and has to be invisible to save Roger’s face, and now that he wants to play squire for a while, I have to retreat into the shadows, or take my children and make myself scarce – though goodness only knows where on earth we would go!’
Fred stood and put up a hand. ‘Wait, don’t be in a fury with me. I haven’t said anything of the sort to him. I’m not likely to either. Not so long ago, the thought of taking this on was depressing him so badly I was seriously worried for his health. He’s been more obsessed with selling the place and giving the money to the cause of international socialism than he has with putting on tweeds and opening the village fete.’
‘That’s what I don’t understand.’ Tommy began pacing about, her hands deep in her pockets. ‘He’s tried to avoid this place, if anything. And he hasn’t the slightest idea what it all entails.’
‘Sit down, Tommy, you’re making me nervous.’
She went over and perched on the side of his bed, and Fred sat back down at his desk, looking like the leader of a mysterious underground movement, with the candle glimmering behind him, and his bulky outdoor clothes making him appear as though he was about to go on the run at any moment.
‘I have no interest in Roger taking on this house. And I haven’t encouraged him to do so. The opposite, if anything. But someone in this house might have a very good reason for urging him to take up his inheritance.’
Tommy laughed bitterly. ‘It’s like a murder mystery. One of us had to have done it and there aren’t many suspects. Of course. It’s Barbara.’
Fred nodded. ‘Your friend Mrs Hastings has had plenty of time for him and, probably, quite a lot to say to him.’
Tommy knew he was right. ‘She’s been playing him. Swindling us. She as good as threatened me if I stood in her way. But what I don’t understand is what good it will do her if Roger chucks me out.’
‘You can’t be that dense, can you, dear Tom?’
‘You mean . . .’ She stared at him and then laughed again, now with disbelief. ‘Oh no. She hasn’t set her cap at Roger, has she?’ She thought of Barbara, so pretty and sophisticated, with her marriage and her life in India. She had imagined that, back in London in the spring, Barbara would reinvent herself somehow and find a rich husband, someone suave and well dressed with excellent taste. Perhaps she’d be the second wife of a successful widower, a businessman or a banker, and host charming weekend parties with bridge and croquet and quiet talk of deals over port and cigars. ‘She can’t want Roger! I thought she was after jewellery and gewgaws – not Roger!’
‘Why not? She’s desperate, anyone can see that.’
Tommy thought back over what Barbara had said to her that day when they’d skied to the village shop. ‘She told me tha
t, in so many words. That she and Molly are alone, and she has to make a life for the two of them. She obviously doesn’t have any money.’
‘I should say she doesn’t.’
‘But she can’t be in love with Roger!’ Tommy exclaimed. ‘I know he’s my brother, but I’m sure he has no sex appeal, not for someone like Barbara. She’s pretty and stylish and desirable. She can’t be attracted to Roger.’
‘She wouldn’t be the first pretty girl to marry a house.’
‘But this place is falling apart! There’s hardly any money. Why? I don’t understand, why would she waste herself here, if it’s money she wants?’
‘Perhaps what seems like a falling-down house to you is security to her. What looks like no money to you is actually diamond brooches and a Gainsborough to her.’
Tommy was abashed. ‘Of course, you’re right. I spend so much time thinking about what we don’t have, I forget what we do – how fortunate we are. But . . .’ She flushed slightly. ‘I never thought that Roger was . . . the marrying type. He’s never seemed very keen on women. He certainly has never fallen in love as far as I know. You’ve known him since Cambridge. Has he ever fallen in love with a woman?’
Fred said slowly, ‘Not with a woman, no.’
There was a pause and she said, ‘Oh. I see.’
‘He’s never said anything, not directly. Nevertheless, I’ve always felt his desires lie in a different direction. I believed it was one of the things that made him miserable. Not his desires in themselves – I met plenty like him at Cambridge, believe me – but the effect they would have on others. His family. This house.’
Tommy nodded. She was not surprised. She had always sensed that Roger had a deep romanticism but that it was not directed towards women. ‘Do you know if Roger found . . . like-minded company at Cambridge?’
‘I believe he did. But he never found love, at least not with someone who felt the same way he did.’