The Winter Secret

by Lulu Taylor

  ‘I know. I’ve heard,’ Buttercup said pleasantly. She gestured at the mobile phone. ‘You’ve been marshalling your forces to track me down before Charles goes off his rocker, I expect. What kind of state is he in?’

  ‘He’s terribly upset,’ Elaine said, her expression cooler. ‘He’s been concerned about your safety.’

  ‘Concerned about my whereabouts, you mean. In case I’ve done a runner, like his first wife. What would that look like for Charles? One, misfortune, two, carelessness, and all that. And we all know what disloyalty does to Charles. It makes him angry.’ Buttercup took a step towards Elaine, who stood stock-still. ‘Have you ever been on the receiving end of his anger, Elaine? Has he ever turned those cold eyes on you, judged you and found you wanting?’

  Elaine cleared her throat. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No.’

  ‘I bet you’ve seen it though. You saw the boiling hatred that spewed out of him when Ingrid dared to rebel against being controlled and coerced and forbidden from making her own choices. Right? You saw what he did to her.’ Buttercup’s voice grew icy. ‘But you didn’t just watch him, did you? No – you helped him do it!’ Buttercup’s eyes flashed with indignation. ‘How could you do that, Elaine? How could you help him try and destroy her?’

  ‘She behaved outrageously. She cheated on him.’ Elaine’s voice rose defensively. ‘She deserved some comeback for that. What was he supposed to do, smile and pat her on the back?’

  ‘No, of course not. But he didn’t need to torment her and punish her. Where are her things, Elaine? The belongings he won’t give back to her?’

  An angry shadow passed over Elaine’s face and her eyes turned cold. ‘I’m not in the dock, Mrs Redmain. If you have issues with your husband, I suggest you take it up with him.’

  ‘Oh, I will. Don’t worry about that.’

  Just then a voice on the landing made them both look up.

  ‘Darling? Is that you?’ Charles’s voice, raspier than ever, called down to her.

  She looked up. He was there on the landing, his face gaunt and drawn, his sandy hair standing on end as if he’d been constantly running his hand through it. ‘Hello. I was just coming to see you.’

  He was smiling but his expression was bewildered, teetering on the edge of angry. ‘Where have you been? Why the hell haven’t you returned my calls, darling?’

  ‘I needed to get away. I needed to think. I turned off my phone.’

  Charles started to come down the stairs towards her but she stopped him, holding up her hand and saying, ‘Stop!’ He paused on the step, looking down at her and frowning. Buttercup did not usually issue orders. She was the one who obeyed. That was how it worked. ‘I’m coming up,’ she said. ‘We need to talk privately. Let’s go to the bedroom.’

  He laughed awkwardly. ‘All right,’ he said after a moment. ‘Elaine, would you wait for us down here, please. And let everyone know that Mrs Redmain is back.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Elaine said, and she walked off towards the drawing room, already tapping into her phone.

  ‘Well then,’ said Charles. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, turning his mouth into a thin curved line. The dark shadows around the eyes made his face resemble a skull. ‘Come on, then. I’m eager to hear exactly what you’ve got to say for yourself.’

  Buttercup began to walk slowly up the stairs towards him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Xenia tied a jaunty red bow around the present she had just wrapped and put it with the others. The gifts looked wonderful, exactly like the best presents: enticing, mysterious and full of promise. She was sure Agnieska’s little boys would love them, the woman in the toyshop had assured her that all the children were mad for these things. It had been fun hiding the bag from Agnieska on the way back home; Xenia had enjoyed the sensation of a lovely secret that would bring so much happiness.

  She went to the window and pulled the curtain back to look at the road outside. Her porch light illuminated the white motes spinning through the air.

  ‘Snow before Christmas,’ she muttered. ‘Unusual.’

  The sight of it made her shudder. The snow settling on the backs of the greyhounds on the gate pillars and over the parkland reminded her too much of the terrible winter when Mama had her operation. She preferred to think of the house as it had been in summer, when life had been easier to bear.

  And how strange it is that the little boy I remember from those years came back to see me, a grown man.

  It had been impossible to resist the lure of the memories Gawain had set tumbling into her mind. And why should she? What harm did it do to remember? The pain was almost negligible now, so why not allow them back and take what pleasure she could from them?

  That summer, Mama had been calm. Her mind was fixed on flowers. All day she would be out, tending to flowers, picking them, arranging them, drifting about with armfuls of blooms. There had been a stretch of warm, golden days, and many of the younger students had gone away on their travels. The house was quiet, the chill inside it welcome for once when the sun burned hard and the day was at its hottest. The little boy, Gawain, was occupied in building a fort with offcuts from his father’s carpentry, and his sister drifted about, learning Tennyson off by heart and making pre-Raphaelite gowns from old kaftans.

  Xenia watched Mama kneeling by the old flowerbeds, as she had years before, and patted the soil around the flowers, carefully pulling out weeds and removing pests. Despite everything, she retained enough of her old self to know what to do.

  This is my life now, Xenia told herself. It was something she had learned to accept: that she would care for Mama until Mama no longer needed her. Her expectations for her own life had been closed down; fantasies became a powerful means of escape, and she found meaning for her existence in the memories of the past: her own and her family’s. She was Princess Xenia Arkadyoff, and that counted for something. She had a beautiful house, even while it crumbled around her and she struggled to find money for heat and light. Her mother had once been a famous film star and a gifted actress, even if she was only a shadow of that woman now. Most of their furniture and possessions had been sold off one by one to keep them in food and clothes, to keep the car running and debt collectors at bay, but Xenia had not parted with the things that mattered most: mementoes of the family, relics from the Arkadyoff past. The residual payments for Mama’s films provided an occasional boost that covered the cost of winter coats or essential repairs.

  But even while she suffered, and sometimes wondered how she would survive the loneliness, Xenia would stand straight, set her shoulders and tell herself that she was the descendant of emperors and would take her misfortune with dignity.

  It was just easier when the meadows were full of wild grasses and bright flowers, humming with insects, and the air was warm and fragrant.

  ‘Xenia, are you there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, a little stiffly. She got used to Luke’s casual use of her name, and didn’t mind it from him, but it still irritated her a little. She was in the washroom at the back of the kitchen, taking wet towels out of the washing machine to hang up in the sunshine. She was in a faded summer dress, one of Mama’s old things, and open-toed flat sandals, her hair unbrushed, and she was about to say that she didn’t want to see him, when Luke came in with an open-faced, friendly looking man: not tall or well built, rather short and stocky, his brownish hair thin on top, and certainly not handsome, but with a kind look in his eyes.

  ‘Xenia, this is Harry. He’s come to stay with us for the summer and learn the noble craft of furniture making.’

  Xenia looked up, cross at being seen dealing with wet washing. ‘How do you do,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Hello.’ Harry nodded his head in a small bow and smiled. ‘We’ll leave you in peace while you’re busy and perhaps I can introduce myself properly later.’

  Xenia nodded in return, grateful for his sensitivity, and they left her to her chores. She’d seen him later at dinner, one of Gwen
’s stews of beans and rice with exotic spices and unusual additions, in this case blobs of goat’s curd on top, and she had listened with a distant kind of interest while he explained more about himself to Luke and Gwen.

  Harry was a lawyer, and he’d taken a whole summer away from his job in London to learn a new skill. ‘I’ve been slaving away since I was twenty-one and I was on the brink of burning out, so I negotiated a sabbatical from the company and I’m going to decide this summer if I’ll go back at all. That all depends.’

  ‘You’ll never go back!’ Gwen declared, spooning out more of her stew over the mound of brown rice she’d put on Harry’s plate. ‘You mustn’t. Once you’ve discovered a place like this and a life like ours, you’ll not be able to.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s true.’ Harry accepted the plate from her. ‘Thank you, Gwen, it looks delicious. We’ll see.’

  He hadn’t addressed Xenia directly, and seemed to know instinctively how protective she was about herself, as though he sensed that it was the wound in her pride caused by her circumstances that made her so prickly and quick to anger. He understood she wanted her privacy and never invaded her territory, and she was grateful for that. She learned to accept his peaceful, unobtrusive presence in the house, mainly keeping to his workshop in the stables where Luke was teaching him how to cut, chisel and plane, how to make dovetailed joints and how to use a dowel, sand smooth and polish.

  The day that Gawain hurt himself and Harry brought him to be bandaged up was the first time they had properly spoken and after that, Harry took to saying hello each morning, and coming into the kitchen at coffee time to see if she wanted anything. Her general coolness didn’t seem to put him off, as if he could see beyond the stiff shoulders, haughty chin and the tendency to snap. He stayed unflappable, patient and cheerful. He said little and listened a lot, when Xenia railed at him for infractions of her house rules, or for the noise of his saw, or the wood dust fluttering round the courtyard.

  ‘And look at the mess the boy is making!’ she cried, waving her arms at the haphazard collection of planks and poles that Gawain called his fort.

  ‘He’s doing no harm,’ Harry said, smiling. ‘It keeps him out of the house. And your mother likes to watch him play.’

  Xenia was silent. He was right. When she wasn’t collecting flowers, Mama spent many happy hours sitting in the sun at the back of the house, watching the boy building his construction. As Xenia grew used to Harry, he started to ask her questions about herself, and how she had come to this house, and why she had stayed.

  ‘I’d have sold it years ago,’ he said quietly, shaving long strips of wooden curls from a plank, smoothing it down. ‘It’s got a strange atmosphere. Did you know it was under siege in the civil war?’

  Xenia shook her head. ‘I never heard of that.’

  ‘There was a very terrible incident. The Roundheads killed the lady of the house while her husband was away and she was trying to defend the place on her own. And they killed at least one of the children too.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘I know. Barbaric.’ Harry shaved another long golden ringlet of wood from the plank. ‘Maybe that’s the reason I don’t think it’s a very happy place.’

  Xenia had stared, speechless. The house was simply itself. The happiness came from the people within it, surely. How could unhappiness live on in stones and wood? But then, they themselves had never been really happy in the house. From the time Papa had bought it, things had gone wrong and got worse. ‘There may be something in what you say. But it would be impossible to sell the place. It’s my father’s house. He has asked me to maintain it for him until he returns.’

  Harry looked about. He didn’t need to say anything, as his gaze landed on the crumbling stables, the moss-covered roofs missing their slates, the loose bricks, the drainpipes hanging from the walls. Eventually he said, ‘And where is your father? Does he know about this?’

  Xenia pulled herself up tall and lifted her chin. I am Princess Xenia Arkadyoff and it doesn’t matter that my house is falling apart. ‘That is none of your business,’ she said haughtily. ‘But when he does return, we will be here waiting for him.’

  After that, she noticed that Harry was spending less time on his carpentry and more time on little repairs around the house and the outbuildings. Slowly but surely, the slates were replaced, the roof cleaned. Weak timbers were bolstered or replaced. The hanging drainpipe was bolted back in place. His generosity, silently offered, touched her. The kindness in his eyes, the strength in his capable hands, the solidity of his body began to draw her to him. Her stiff carapace softened and melted away, almost without her noticing. As summer came on, she would go to him every morning with fresh coffee and small things she had baked for him, and spend hours watching him work, talking to him and telling him about her life. He was fascinated by Mama’s time in Hollywood, but he wanted to know it from Xenia’s perspective and what it had meant to her. No one had ever wanted to know that before.

  They were sitting together in the garden, drinking some of Xenia’s homemade lemonade, sheltered by the old sycamore tree. Harry had only been at the house for six weeks, but it seemed longer, as though he had always been there. He was, Xenia realised, her friend. The first proper friend she had had for many years.

  Harry said, ‘You’ve given your life to your mother, haven’t you?’

  Xenia nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Not everybody would have done such a thing.’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  Harry looked perplexed. ‘But why? Your own life – would she really have wanted you to sacrifice it like this?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  He looked at her intently. ‘But I want to understand, Xenia. I want to understand how someone like you – intelligent, cultured, beautiful – and yes, you are, don’t look at me like that – how you ended up living like this.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘Xenia, where is your father? What happened here?’

  She stared down at his hand on hers, feeling the warmth of his touch like a healing light on her skin, as though his life force was crackling, travelling through his fingertips and into her. It set pulses thudding all over her and a whirling motion through her core. No one had touched her in years, not counting Mama. Not one friendly, sympathetic hand on hers in decades. She had given up on such things for herself and here, suddenly, unexpectedly, a man’s hand on her skin, a voice telling her she was beautiful, asking her what had become of her.

  Someone can see me! Someone wants to know me.

  It was like being shut in a cupboard for an age and the door being opened to allow in the light. But it carried with it fear. Would the light be too blinding? Would stepping out be more dangerous than staying in? What now?

  ‘Xenia? Are you all right?’

  Not handsome but so kind. Not noble or vital, like Papa, but honest and steady. That voice, with its tenderness and compassion . . . I could listen to it forever.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with difficulty. ‘I’m all right. It’s so hard to talk about – what happened to us.’

  Harry said gently, ‘If it’s too hard, please, don’t—’

  ‘No. I want to. I’ve never talked to anyone about it but you’ve seen Mama, you know what’s she’s like.’

  ‘What is her condition?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Mania. Manic depression. She drank and took pills to escape it, but it only grew worse, then suffered at the hands of doctors for years afterwards. She had various treatments – she had many applications of electric convulsive therapy. Nothing cured her.’

  ‘Your poor mother. An awful thing to happen to such a great lady, with so much to live for.’

  ‘She suffered very much, mostly from the indignity her illness forced upon her. Somehow it was worse because in her real self, she was beautiful, elegant and refined. She was gentle and kind, but the condition made her coarse, slatternly and vicious. It broke my heart,’ Xenia said, her voice trembling. ‘My greatest wi
sh was to make her better and stop her suffering. Papa wanted the same as well. The winter that I was twenty-one, my mother had an operation on her brain to cure her severe manic depression. Papa arranged it, he promised it would be the answer to Mama’s illness, but it was a disastrous failure. It destroyed her personality completely, robbing her of any chance of living any kind of normal life. She became what you see today. Before it, we had periods at least when she was herself. After it – nothing.’

  ‘That’s appalling.’ Harry shook his head, his expression grave. ‘I’m so sorry, what a tragedy for you all. And your father left you here alone?’

  Xenia felt an urge to defend Papa and to make excuses for what he’d done. But she had to tell the truth as well. He had gone. Deserted them forever. ‘I believe Papa was eaten up by guilt about what he’d done to my mother. He was determined to do what he could to make amends.’

  Harry looked dubious. ‘I think a lobotomy is irreversible, even today.’

  ‘Of course. But he had to hope. Or else, he was pretending. Simply lying to make his escape.’ Xenia looked out over the garden, watching cabbage whites fluttering around the purple pom-pom heads of the alliums in the flowerbeds. ‘She repulsed him, you see. After the operation, Mama was a shell of her former self, her beauty gone and only her bodily functions intact. He couldn’t bear to look at her. The gorgeous Natalie Rowe was gone forever, we all knew it. Even so, he said that he was going to America to find some famous surgeons who would make Mama better. He needed money to pay them to come here and operate. So I gave him something precious I owned.’

  The empress’s jewel in its little velvet box. I pressed it into Papa’s hand and he smiled. ‘I’ll come back, Xenia,’ he said. ‘As soon as I have the doctors’ agreement to treat Mama. You must look after her and the house until I return.’ And I said I would. I promised I would.

  Harry thought for a while. At last he said, ‘Have you ever heard from him?’