‘Where is Barker with the drinks tray?’ Jon asked, moving towards Charlie while doing up his top button. His eyes, as they rested on her, made her weak with desire. She would have liked to be one of those sophisticated women who could tie a man’s bow tie, and he seemed to read her mind.
‘Can you help?’
She crossed the room until she stood in front of him. He was making a habit of not shaving, and the dark stubble, combined with formal evening attire, made him look elegantly dangerous. It would rasp and bring tender nerve endings leaping to life. Charlie dragged in a deep shuddering breath, then looked up to see Jon watching her in amusement. She took the ends of the tie and started to cross them over, then stopped as he put his hands over hers and guided her in finishing the intricate knot.
‘You look stunning,’ he murmured, loud enough for only her to hear.
Barker entered, bringing in the drinks tray. He nodded at her in approval and crossed to the other side of the room. It was going to be all right. Charlie swayed a little in time to the music and felt Jon move with her in a small private dance.
‘Where did you get that?’
The voice, sharp as an ice shard, sliced through the music and the room fell silent. Charlie glanced over Jon’s shoulder and saw a reflection in the huge gilded mirror hanging over the fireplace. Vera sat upright in the wingback chair, patches of brilliant colour in her usually pallid complexion. She struggled forward in the chair then rose to her feet, eyes blazing. Finally she gained her balance and pointed her walking stick directly at Charlie.
Charlie swung around. What had she done? Vera hadn’t taken her eyes off her, although the cane had dropped from her hand and lay like an arrow across the carpet, pointing directly at Charlie.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Where did you get that … that … tattoo?’ Vera shuddered a little over the last word as though regretting having to use it.
Charlie’s hand lifted reflexively to the nape of her neck. She knew she shouldn’t have worn her hair up. She shot a reproachful look at Barker. Still, it was just a tiny tattoo and it was part of her, so there was no need for anyone to get upset by it.
‘I’ve had it for years,’ Charlie replied. ‘I got it in King’s Cross. Bloody painful.’
Jon laughed and Diana shot him a frigid look. An uncomfortable silence fell on the room.
‘King’s Cross, Sydney,’ Charlie amended helpfully.
‘Yes, yes,’ Vera snapped. ‘But where did you get the design?’
This was a new Vera. The sweet old lady Charlie had grown to like had gone, replaced by a ferocious interrogator.
‘My father designed it. We got tattoos together.’ It sounded kind of tawdry in this refined drawing room halfway around the world. But it hadn’t been like that at all. It had been about the two of them, and grieving. And —
‘That is my family crest, young lady. You have no right to wear it on your body as a cheap ornamentation.’
Cole Porter was singing about love, an annoyingly bouncy tune. Otherwise the room was silent. Jon passed an arm around her waist.
Her family crest? Charlie’s heart sank. Vera’s eyesight obviously wasn’t that good. The tattoo wasn’t a crest. It was a simple design her father had drawn on the back of a beer coaster. They’d been sitting in a pub in Sydney after Maddie’s funeral and they’d had a few. And then Cliff had started to draw, just like he always did when he needed to express himself.
It was a pretty design. An unclosed circle in a C shape. Two long, fluid, serpentine shapes spooned together and cut through the circle from top to bottom. A crosshair joined them like an X. It looked Celtic, Charlie remembered saying to Cliff. He hadn’t answered, just continued to draw with an abstracted look on his face.
‘Well, I’m sorry, but it’s just a design my dad made up. He was a little.drunk at the time.’
This time Jon laughed out loud and she saw Barker bite his lip, but no one else was smiling.
‘I’m glad someone finds this amusing,’ Vera said then turned back to Charlie. Her lips were stretched tight, the red slash of lipstick suddenly ugly across her face. ‘Carry on, girl.’
‘Actually, my father had the same tattoo. Although his was a lot larger.’ She felt Jon exert a slight pressure on her waist. Was that a warning to stop? Or was he supporting her? It didn’t matter, because they were talking about her father now.
‘His was tattooed on his backside,’ she continued. ‘Probably about this big.’ She made a shape with her hands, moving them in and out until she reached the approximate size.
Vera sucked in a deep breath, shock making her white. All of a sudden Charlie hated her. Hated her aristocratic bearing and her sense of privilege. She pushed on. ‘It was huge. And the whole time he got it, he was singing at the top of his lungs.’
She hummed a little, trying to remember the tune, and finally capturing it. She remembered because in the end everyone in the tattoo parlour had joined in, singing it over and over.
‘He sang it at the top of his lungs.’ She knew she was digging a deeper hole, making it sound worse than it was. But she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t hold back who she was.
How could these people know what it was like? Cliff had been mad with grief, and together they’d drunk to Maddie’s memory. They’d drunk poor Maddie to rest. Surely it was rest, because it couldn’t be the hell that had consumed her in life.
When Charlie had the melody she started to sing, not caring that Diana’s mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish’s or that Sarah’s smirk had deepened. She started slowly; then, gripped by the memory of that sad but raucous night, she broke into full song. Her voice echoed around the room, tangling with and finally drowning out the Cole Porter.
Jon burst out laughing. ‘That’s the Eton boating song.’
‘The what?’
‘The unofficial Eton school song,’ he explained. ‘Full of references to fags and buggery. You sing very well, by the way.’
Vera scowled at Jon. ‘Give me my stick, Jon, and stop being stupid.’
Jon reached down and handed Vera her stick. She covered the silver knob with a gnarled, arthritic hand then took a step forward.
‘And what is your father’s name?’ she demanded, imperious to the end.
Charlie was totally at sea now. What could it possibly mean to Vera?
‘Cliff.’
Vera’s eyebrows rose. ‘Go on. Cliff what?’
‘Same as me. Hughes.’ She raised her chin proudly. ‘His name was Cliff Hughes.’
Vera rolled her eyes. ‘He’d never have made a spy, that’s for sure. Good God, that’s the best name he could come up with?’
On the sofa, Diana exchanged a quick look with Sarah. Barker stood, holding the drinks tray, a satisfied smile on his face. Charlie caught it all as she looked wildly around the room, seeking an explanation – and sensing that everyone was a couple of pages ahead of her.
She turned back to Vera. ‘Excuse me?’
The hooded eyes looked back at her. ‘Your father, I believe, is the Honourable Hugh Clyfford. He is my second son; he disappeared thirty-five years ago.’ Tears welled in the old lady’s eyes and she stumbled a little.
Diana jumped up and swiftly crossed the room, putting her arm around Vera. ‘Now, darling, are you —’
‘I am certain, Diana.’
The room seemed to be overly hot, the walls wavering and the lamplight full of sinister shadows. Charlie glanced at Jon. He was staring at her, incredulous.
‘But I thought you were Lady Rushton?’ she said turning back to Vera.
‘That is her title,’ Sarah said. ‘Her family name is Clyfford. You’d know that if you’d been raised here.’
‘Shut up, Sarah,’ Jeremy warned. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’
Charlie stared at Vera, shock coursing through her. Vera was her grandmother? ‘There must be some other explanation,’ she began. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Vera s
tabbed her walking stick on the floor, then closed her hand over the one holding the stick. She leaned heavily on it but seemed prepared to wait until Charlie answered. ‘Then tell me about your paternal grandparents.’
The silence stretched as Charlie stood, casting back into the past. Beyond Cliff there was a brick wall. Nothing. Could it be true?
She shook her head. ‘I … I … didn’t know them.’
‘Didn’t know them or didn’t know who they were?’ Vera pressed.
‘Who they were,’ Charlie whispered.
Another long silence descended. Finally Vera took a deep breath. ‘And Hugh?’
There was so much hope in the old lady’s eyes that Charlie’s heart broke all over again, just as it had broken that horrible day in Bindundilly when Cliff had died. Because Vera expected that Cliff was still alive. Charlie hesitated and glanced at Diana, who nodded and tightened her supporting arm.
‘I’m sorry, Vera, so sorry,’ Charlie whispered. ‘But he’s dead.’
She hadn’t cried back then – there’d been too much to do and besides, Cliff had a way of seeing the world that taught acceptance of what you couldn’t change. But now her tears fell, hot and unstoppable, cascading down her cheeks and onto the front of the dress.
Jon pulled her into his arms and held her as her body shook. She cried for Maddie and Cliff, for herself and, finally, for the old lady in front of her who had known the briefest moment of soaring hope before Charlie had had to smash it.
Vera faltered, and Jeremy rushed forward to slide the wingback chair in behind her. Her head dropped back as a deep, shuddering breath racked her body.
Diana looked at Jeremy in alarm. ‘Maybe we should send —’
‘No! I’m all right.’ The old eyes remained closed. ‘Just leave me a moment.’
They waited. Charlie glanced at Barker and saw that he was smiling.
When Vera coughed and opened her red-rimmed eyes, she ignored everyone, focusing on Charlie. ‘So be it. I have lived without him these thirty-five years, not knowing whether he was dead or alive. Now I know for sure.
‘That makes you the Honourable Charlotte Clyfford.’ She seemed to rally, sitting forward and narrowing her eyes. ‘I presume your name is Charlotte, and not just Charlie. Australians can be so casual about these things.’
Charlie took a step back and held up a hand. ‘Wait a minute. I’m just Charlie. Charlie Hughes.’
For a long moment Vera looked at her. Finally she nodded. ‘I don’t care what we call you. You are my granddaughter.’ A tear slid down her immaculately made-up cheek. ‘You’ve come home at last.’
Charlie glanced around in panic. Home?
‘Just a minute, my home isn’t here. Earls or Honourables or whatever you people are called don’t run outback pubs. I do. They don’t live on the smell of an oily rag,’ – she heard Barker guffaw –’or a paint rag, for that matter. My parents, Cliff and Maddie, struggled all their lives. They didn’t live like this.’ She let her arm sweep around the room, taking in the richly coloured rugs, the silk-covered sofas, the chandeliers and gilt-framed paintings.
‘Our walls were white, or barely painted,’ she recalled. ‘Sometimes the paint was peeling.’
‘Like our own,’ put in Jeremy gently, and she smiled at him.
‘My father was an artist; there was colour and laughter, wonderful food and wine and art.’ She felt the words tumble out, caught in the sheer pleasure of remembering how it had been in those days. ‘Everyone came to our home because of Cliff.’ She emphasised his name, daring Vera to correct her.
‘But most of all, there was love. That was my home.’ She threw it out as a challenge. This family had so many reasons to love, yet they were locked in an unhealthy preoccupation with history. But it seemed Vera wasn’t listening.
‘An artist? So he got his dream after all,’ she murmured. ‘That’s all he ever wanted.’
‘Pardon?’
‘He only ever wanted to paint, my dear. Tomorrow, we shall go to Shropshire and you’ll see.’
A prolonged silence fell on the room then Diana spoke. ‘Barker, for God’s sake, stop standing there and serve those drinks. And tonight just might be the night to open the 1943 Moët.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It had been an evening that was beyond strange. She’d walked into that drawing room as Charlie Hughes from Bindundilly, an outsider in a borrowed dress, and walked out with a nascent and unwelcome alter ego. The Honourable Charlotte Clyfford shadowed her like a mischievous twin.
Well, the Honourable Charlotte Clyfford could get lost. Besides, Charlie reminded herself, she was only half an aristocrat. She’d make sure that everyone knew about Maddie, that she never forgot her. Her mother was as much a part of who Charlie was as Cliff was, and one day, when the time came to have her own family, she wanted her children to know about both Cliff and Maddie.
Jon came to her in the night, careless of the sound of his footsteps as he walked down the corridor. He threw back the covers, slid in beside her and pulled her into his arms.
Charlie sank into his caresses, allowing the tension of the evening to drain away. But as she trailed kisses over his torso, as he nipped and licked, bringing her to release, she was aware that something had changed. The bittersweet, achingly temporary note that had underpinned their previous lovemaking had disappeared, and in its place was a new, burgeoning certainty, a misplaced sense that all the pegs had found their holes. Everything would be all right.
Except it wouldn’t.
She seemed to have instantly solved Jon’s problem. He needed a wife with aristocratic breeding and here she was, conveniently in his bed. There could be no impediment to them being together now. Even Diana had warmed a little over the course of the evening. Who better to marry Jon than Vera’s granddaughter?
But Charlie couldn’t help wondering, as Jon reared above her, his face taut with passion as he murmured her name: would he still have wanted her forever if Vera hadn’t seen her tattoo?
Vera stopped the Daimler on a rise. She’d driven at a stately fifty all the way from Wiltshire, keeping to the middle lane on the motorways oblivious to the ire of passing trucks and vehicles.
Charlie sat in front beside her while Jon lounged on the roomy back seat with Bertie by his side on a rug.
‘Here we are,’ Vera said, turning to Charlie with a tired smile. ‘Home.’
‘Oh. My. God.’ Charlie clamped her mouth shut. A kilometre ahead, at the end of an arrow-straight drive, an immense house dominated the landscape. A circular pond, edged in stone and with a magnificent fountain at the centre, glittered even at this distance. For a moment, the clouds parted and the sun came out, illuminating the landscape and kissing the old stones, hinting that this was a blessed place. A good place.
Except that this family had needlessly lost one of its sons. Cliff had left this golden place for a new life. Why? Vera had been silent, saying only that she’d show Charlie when they arrived.
‘That’s where Cliff grew up?’ Charlie knew she sounded incredulous but it just didn’t fit with the way Cliff had lived and his outlook on life.
‘Yes, we always married well, and luckily bred very few gamblers,’ Vera said. ‘The Hartley-Huntleys were a disaster, of course. It got into the blood, and only some fairly radical breeding could interrupt the pattern.’ She turned a speculative gaze on Charlie.
‘I’d forgotten how amazing Rushton House is,’ Jon said. ‘Just how did you get tied up with impoverished reprobates like us, Vera?’
‘Your grandmother was my best friend, your mother is my goddaughter, and in time you might grow on me,’ Vera replied drily.
Jon gave a grunt of laughter.
‘We’ll go up to the house later,’ she said. ‘There’s something you need to see first. Something I have to explain.’
‘Are you sure?’ Charlie was worried about the pallor of Vera’s skin. She looked old and very tired.
‘I’m sure. This must be done now.’ Vera stra
ightened her back and put the car into gear again.
They followed the drive until they reached a small side road and Vera turned the Daimler. They entered a copse of trees and splashed through some puddles before the road broke into the open again. Ahead, a stone chapel surrounded by a graveyard stood in brooding isolation, overhung with trees. A light mist hovered in the clearing and Charlie shivered despite herself as Vera steered the car up to the chapel doors.
The honey-coloured stone was rimed with moss and crumbling with age. A huge corbelled doorway with a massive lintel stone framed a pair of ancient timber doors that were weathered and hinged with elaborately worked iron straps. The massive padlock looked as though it hadn’t been unlocked in years.
Jon helped Vera out while Bertie headed towards the copse. Charlie wanted to stay in the car, huddled in the warmth. Whatever was in that chapel, whatever it was that Vera wanted her to see, it was going to be painful.
But Vera was waiting, and finally Charlie pulled on her coat and stepped out. The air was so achingly cold that her ribcage hurt, and she pulled her scarf up around her face.
Vera handed Jon a key and he inserted it into the lock, wrestling with it briefly before the padlock clicked open, letting the heavy chain slide through. It made an unearthly grating sound, then pooled on the stone step with a clank. He glanced at Vera before pulling the door open.
Inside, a litter of dead leaves crunched underfoot where they lay near the doors. More had blown down the nave and clustered around the bottoms of the pews. It was as though no one used the chapel any more. The dead were entombed, unloved, forgotten, their place in the family consigned to history.
As if reading her thoughts, Vera said, ‘The last time we used this chapel officially was for the funeral and burial of my husband.’ She flashed Charlie a slight smile. ‘Sorry: your grandfather, two years ago. He’s over there.’ She gave a brief jerk of her head towards the left of the chapel. ‘But this is what I wanted you to see.’
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