A Midwinter Promise

by Lulu Taylor

  Julia slapped her hand lightly on the banister as they went up. ‘No. She’s actually got a house nearby but I suppose she as good as lives here now my mother’s dead. She made Mummy’s life a misery, that’s all I know, and she’s always treated me like shit.’ Julia grinned at him. ‘She never liked my mother. Something about not trusting second wives. As though someone might want to get their claws into her horrible old husband. Goodness knows what’s happened to him, he’s not been seen for years.’

  ‘He’s not in the portrait.’

  Julia shrugged. ‘Too out of it on whisky by eleven a.m., I think.’

  David looked around as they reached the upper landing and the long red carpeted corridor that stretched away, lined with family portraits. ‘This is a big place to grow up all alone.’

  Julia smiled at him, taking his hand. ‘Most people say how lucky I am. But I was lonely. I longed for nothing so much as a parcel of brothers and sisters to share it with.’

  ‘But none came along?’

  Julia shook her head sharply and opened the door in front of them. ‘Here you are. The Acorn Room. All yours.’

  ‘Won’t I be with you at all?’ he said wistfully.

  ‘Darling, this place was made for corridor creeping. No point in having a corridor like this and not using it. I fully expect you to come tiptoeing down as soon as you can.’ She hugged him quickly and they kissed softly. ‘Now, get changed, I want to show you the outdoors, it’s really the best.’

  David was awestruck by the beauty of Tawray’s surroundings. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said as she led him through the walled gardens. ‘It’s exquisite.’

  Julia skipped with pleasure, delighted at his praise and bursting with pride. ‘I have to admit that Aunt Victoria is rather good at gardening. She’s the one who’s the force behind all this, and she’s trained Daddy well.’

  ‘But you’ve got everything!’ David turned to look at the vista spreading out before him, the wind ruffling his black hair. ‘These gardens, the view, the lake, the sea . . . It’s amazing.’

  ‘You must be used to Cornwall, you live here too!’

  ‘Not quite like this. On a much smaller scale and without the sea to lend it magnificence.’ He turned to look at Julia, his expression amused. ‘You don’t seem to realise what this place is, sweetheart. It’s not like most people’s houses, you know! And certainly not like the small place I grew up in – a perfectly nice cottage but nothing like this.’

  ‘No.’ She felt sheepish. ‘I do know that. Really I do.’ She shoved her hands into her coat pockets against the chill wind. ‘I’m spoiled.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You can’t help growing up in a place like this. Of course it’s normal to you.’

  ‘I want to see where you live,’ she said quickly. ‘And meet your parents. And get to know all about you.’

  ‘I know you do. I love you for it.’ He dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world, Julia. That’s the marvellous thing. We’ve found each other and we’ve got the rest of our lives to enjoy together.’

  ‘Yes.’ She was filled with excited warmth by his words and threw her arms around him to hug him. Then she pulled away, worried. ‘But, darling, you know, I won’t get this house. It’s going to go to my cousin Quentin. We won’t be able to live here.’

  ‘Do you think I mind about that?’ He laughed and squeezed her tightly. ‘I didn’t even really know what this place was like until today. Besides, my work will keep us in London a while longer.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She pressed in close to him, pushing her cheek against the coolness of his coat. She had already discovered that his work required him to be away for long hours, and there was a foreign tour coming up that he had to prepare for, and go along on. But if he weren’t working at the palace, he’d be back in the navy, assigned to a submarine and gone for months at a time. ‘What a shame we’re not rich, then you wouldn’t have to work.’

  ‘I need to work, darling. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiled at her and there was perfect serenity between them again.

  She pulled at his arm, happy once more. ‘Come on now, I want to show you the lake. I wonder if my platform is still there.’

  It was, though covered in moss and lichen, and the rope looked a little slimy. Julia grabbed it and heaved herself up onto it. ‘Yuck, it’s a bit grotty. It needs a scrub.’

  David found it easier to get up with his long legs and strength. ‘You used to sit on this?’

  ‘For hours. When the weather was good, that’s what makes the difference.’

  ‘It’s a lovely spot. What a pretty lake.’

  ‘Yes.’ Julia looked out over the water. Aunt Victoria’s influence didn’t seem to extend down here; it looked neglected and overgrown at the sides. The murky water was thick with algae and the fleshy saucers of water lily pads. She could see their stems snaking away into the depths like pale coils of rope. What on earth had drawn her here so much? It really wasn’t very nice at all.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, grabbing the rope to descend. ‘Let’s go down to the cove. Much more interesting.’

  Dinner with Julia’s father passed off perfectly well, and David’s excellent manners and conversation were shown to their best advantage. Daddy was impressed to hear that David was a naval officer, and Aunt Victoria quite excited to hear that he worked at the palace.

  ‘But how thrilling,’ she said, leaning towards him over the polished mahogany of the dinner table. ‘You must know all the inside gossip. Is it true about the Waleses? My friend Monica knows someone who’s a good friend of his, and apparently they’re having a frightful time.’

  David smiled blandly. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  ‘Of course not. Discretion is the thing, isn’t it? But you can trust us. We wouldn’t breathe a word, would we, Harry?’

  ‘No, no . . .’ said Julia’s father, looking flustered, and he took a quick sip of his wine.

  ‘She’s very difficult, we hear. Quite hysterical most of the time!’ Aunt Victoria shook her head. ‘Poor man. What he must be going through.’

  Julia said loudly, ‘David’s going on tour next year, to Saudi Arabia. Isn’t that interesting?’

  ‘Goodness!’ Aunt Victoria blinked with surprise, evidently impressed that David was important enough to accompany royal personages to the Middle East.

  David quickly picked up the conversational baton. ‘That’s right. I’m going over to do a recce quite soon, as it happens. It will be fascinating; I’ve always wanted to visit the East.’ He set off chatting happily about his knowledge of the desert and oil-rich countries, and Aunt Victoria was successfully diverted. After dinner, he and Daddy went off to the library to smoke cigars and have their talk.

  ‘I thought we were the ones who were supposed to retire,’ Aunt Victoria said acidly, watching them go.

  Julia picked up a decanter and helped herself to a good measure of dark red wine. She gulped half of it back in one go, then pulled out her packet of cigarettes and tapped one out onto the table.

  ‘Oh Julia, no.’

  ‘Why not? You wouldn’t mind if it was David.’

  ‘Well, it’s not.’

  ‘Hard cheese.’ Julia put one in her mouth and lit it from one of the candles.

  ‘David seems very nice,’ Aunt Victoria said pointedly. ‘You’ll have to behave once you’re married, you know. Once you move in royal circles.’

  Julia snorted. ‘I won’t move in them! It’s David’s job, you know. He’s not their friend.’

  ‘Still.’ Aunt Victoria sniffed. ‘No doubt you’ll have to go to the odd function. It won’t do to knock back the wine and smoke at the table.’

  ‘Then I’ll pop outside and have a fag with Fergie, won’t I?’ Julia grinned. ‘If you think marriage is going to make me respectable . . . well, you’ll just have to think again.’

  It wasn’t quite true, though.
She did think marriage would make her respectable, because she was sure that with David, she would be so happy it would be impossible to be anything else. They would be everything to one another. He would give her the love she wanted so desperately and fill the black hole of need she’d felt for so long. He’d quieten the voices that terrified her, the ones that warned her of pain and loss and despair, and agonies of suffering.

  She lay in bed that evening, longing for him, and when she finally heard her bedroom door open and felt him climb in beside her, warm and infinitely comforting with his strong embrace and eager kiss, she found that she was weeping.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, when his lips encountered the salty wetness on her cheeks. ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘I missed you so much,’ she said, sniffing. ‘I was so afraid that you’d not come, and I’d be alone here in the dark.’

  ‘But, darling, this is your home. Nothing can hurt you here.’

  You’re wrong, she thought, as she kissed him back. It’s my home, and I love it. But it’s here that I hurt worst of all.

  Aunt Victoria declared their wedding date to be the most inauspicious she had ever heard. She came up to town to take Julia for lunch in Kensington to find out all about the arrangements and was aghast when she heard. ‘It could only be worse if it was Friday the thirteenth, not Saturday the thirteenth.’

  ‘If you believe all that nonsense,’ Julia said as calmly as possible.

  ‘Why not postpone until the spring? It’s virtually the middle of winter! Getting married in December, how ghastly. Dark and dank and horrible.’

  ‘Or sparkly and festive and lovely,’ Julia countered. ‘We want to get married as soon as we can; this works around David’s commitments. He doesn’t have to go away.’

  Aunt Victoria wasn’t really listening. ‘The thirteenth of December – that’s ringing a bell. Goodness, I think it’s St Lucy’s Day.’

  Julia stared at her, bemused. ‘So?’

  ‘There’s a poem by John Donne, set on St Lucy’s day. He calls it the year’s midnight. Isn’t that a rather chilling thing? Who would want to get married at midnight?’

  ‘Is the thirteenth of December the year’s midnight?’ wondered Julia. ‘Isn’t that the thirty-first?’

  ‘I think he means the shortest day, like the solstice. On the old calendar it was probably the equivalent of the winter solstice on the twenty-first.’

  Julia shrugged. ‘I haven’t read it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s awful, all about death. I am every dead thing.’ Her aunt shuddered. ‘What a horrible date to choose, Julia. Can’t you find another one?’

  ‘Because of a spooky poem? I don’t think so. And it’s too late, I’m afraid. We’ve booked Chelsea town hall.’

  ‘Not a church?’ Her aunt was even more scandalised.

  ‘No. We don’t want a big fuss. Just a few friends and family at the register office is fine.’ She took a gulp of her wine, and pushed her salmon mousse around her plate. ‘Lala has said we can have her flat in Paris for a honeymoon.’

  ‘Well.’ Aunt Victoria’s mouth had tightened into a straight line, her eyes flinty. ‘You must do what you want, of course, but your father will be disappointed. We imagined you’d be married at Tawray in May or June.’

  ‘David’s in Canada and Japan in the spring. And he’s terribly busy all summer, he wouldn’t be able to get the time off.’

  ‘The year after then.’

  ‘We can’t wait till then. We don’t want to.’

  ‘We thought a lovely marquee on the lawn. The village church. That’s where I got married and it couldn’t have been prettier.’

  All the more reason to avoid it then. But she said nothing.

  ‘A midwinter wedding,’ Aunt Victoria said mournfully. ‘I just can’t help thinking it’s bad luck, that’s all.’

  It was indeed dank and dark on the thirteenth of December. It rained all day in endless grey sheets of icy water, and it seemed as though the sun never bothered coming up at all.

  ‘What a shame!’ Lala said as she and Julia took a taxi from their hotel to the register office. ‘It’s a miserable day.’

  ‘I’m happy, though,’ Julia said firmly. ‘I don’t mind the weather at all.’

  Lala smiled at her. ‘You look radiant. Such a beautiful outfit.’

  ‘Thanks to you.’ Julia looked down at the exquisite Paris suit in a cream tweed shot with silver which Lala had brought over, wrapped in tissue, ready for the big day. Her mother’s diamond earrings sparkled in her ears. ‘I feel like a million pounds, I really do.’

  ‘You look very chic. Not at all like a big choux bun. I like things simple and elegant, not all fussy. It’s how we like to do things in Paris, but the English much prefer the old style – flounces and frills.’

  Julia thought back to the royal wedding they had watched together only a few years ago, and how back then she had dreamed of sailing down a magnificent aisle in acres of silk and veil, sparkling with diamonds. She had remembered it only last night, when David unwrapped the wedding present he had received from the royal household – a signed photograph of his employers in a beautiful silver frame. ‘So they can keep their beady eyes on me,’ he had joked. But Julia had stared at it: the image of togetherness, the glossy, glamorous outside that concealed a less palatable truth. Not that David would ever speak of it – he was famously discreet. It was only something she picked up from his occasional throwaway remarks, his evident tension, the telephone calls he had to take, the miserable exhaustion that possessed him at the end of a long day.

  ‘Sometimes you wonder why people have to be so bloody-minded,’ he once said. ‘Why they can’t bring themselves to cooperate with each other, when life would be so much easier all round if they did.’

  ‘Is there trouble?’ she’d asked, and he’d gazed at her sadly.

  ‘I can’t tell you, but it’s tragic.’ He shook his head. ‘Just tragic all round.’

  Tragedy is everywhere, she thought now, looking out of the taxi window at people as they went slowly down the King’s Road towards the town hall. They were hurrying along, hunching under umbrellas, trying to keep out of the rain. The Christmas lights shone out valiantly against the darkness, their colours spinning out through the raindrops. Everyone I can see has a story with sadness in it. We are all here to suffer.

  She thought of the John Donne poem that Aunt Victoria had told her about. She had read it and afterwards had almost told David that they ought to change their wedding date. She would have, if it hadn’t sounded so silly even to her. But the lines, once read, kept floating through her mind like some kind of bad omen.

  I am re-begot

  Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

  She shook her head to banish the words. I mustn’t think about that now. It’s my wedding day. It’s a day of happiness and promise, not . . . not those other things.

  But her mother wasn’t there. She was absent, lost in the darkness of death.

  She pushed that thought away, and clutched her bouquet of cream roses and pale pink spikes of Cornish heath from the gardens at Tawray, nurtured in the greenhouse just for her.

  David would keep it all away, she was sure of that. He was her champion, her real-life knight, not just a stuffed suit of armour with a scrawled-on cardboard face. He would banish all the monsters.

  The taxi drew to a halt in front of the town hall. Her father was waiting outside, scanning the traffic for her from beneath his black umbrella. Julia noticed with amusement that he had put on morning dress, although no one else would be wearing it, and was holding the brolly high over his silk top hat.

  ‘Oh Daddy,’ she said, her heart softening towards him for the first time since her mother’s death. She had told him he wasn’t to walk her down the small aisle in the Rossetti Room, and he had agreed. But there he was, waiting in the pouring rain to escort her inside. That was something.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Lala asked, smiling. ‘Are you sure you want to do
this?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Julia said. ‘I will never be more sure of anything.’

  Lala grabbed her umbrella. ‘Then let’s go.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The honeymoon in Paris was sheer delight, a great deal of it spent in bed, or else in marvellous restaurants, sparkling cocktail bars or earthy little places with carafes of rich red wine and plates of gamey terrines and slippery confits. They ate and drank, slept and made love as though the most important thing was to experience their physical forms as elementally as possible.

  ‘We need to bath together as well,’ Julia said, as though that would complete some kind of important set. So they climbed into the small but very deep bath, splashed and laughed and slid over each other’s limbs until they were unable to resist making love again.

  ‘I love being married,’ she said to David, gazing into his eyes, touching his skin and inhaling his scent. ‘It’s everything I hoped it would be.’

  ‘This is our honeymoon,’ he said with a laugh, nuzzling into her neck. ‘It’s supposed to be bliss.’

  ‘Do you mean it won’t carry on like this?’

  ‘It’s generally supposed to wear off.’

  She stared into his dark blue eyes and thought how much she loved him. ‘Not for us.’

  He laughed again. ‘Maybe we’ll be the first to experience honeymoon rapture all our lives.’

  ‘Why not?’ she demanded, a little petulant but smiling through it. ‘Don’t spoil it! Why can’t it carry on like this?’

  ‘I don’t know. Life, I suppose. You’ll get tired of me.’

  ‘I’ll never get tired of you. Never.’ She pulled him in for another kiss, feeling as though he was her oxygen, her engine, her everything.

  They came out of their bubble of love to see Lala on Christmas Eve. She had moved into the flat of her boyfriend Denis, a craggy-faced, grey-haired professor who looked exactly like someone who wrote learned theses. Julia and David went round for dinner to the bright little flat opposite Saint-Sulpice. It was small and crammed full of books, paintings and oversized sculpture.