by Lulu Taylor
‘You don’t like Charles Redmain?’
‘No. From the moment I met him, I disliked him. If he hadn’t offered me so much money for the house, I would have refused to sell it to him. But I liked his wife. She was different. It was no wonder that she finally left him.’
Gawain raised his eyebrows. ‘So you mean the ex-wife? I assume you’re not referring to the very nice lady up at the house?’
‘No, no, she is the second wife. The first one lives over the road.’ She turned to gesture in the direction of Fitzroy House.
‘That’s an unusual arrangement,’ Gawain said with a laugh. ‘They must all get on well.’
‘Not at all. I don’t believe they have ever met. And the husband sneaks in to see the ex-wife without the present lady knowing – or he used to.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ Gawain said, glancing over at her.
Xenia felt a faint flush rise to her cheeks. ‘Well, one finds out a lot without meaning to, given that we all live so close to one another. If he parks his car in the lane and I see it, I can hardly help it. But . . .’ She hesitated and took another sip of her tea.
‘What?’ asked Gawain.
‘I feel somewhat guilty about my part in things.’
‘What things?’
‘The break-up of the marriage. You see, I knew that Mrs Redmain had fallen in love with another man. I saw them walking in the park, thinking they were out of sight, and they were kissing and carrying on. It was clear as day she was having an affair with him. And you see . . .’ The flush deepened. Lately she had lost that overriding sense of anger and frustration that used to make her feel she was going insane, but she still remembered clearly how it had felt. When the fever gripped her, she would feel not only the rocket fuel of rage push her out of herself into behaviour she could not control, but she would also feel fear – that this was a sign she was like Mama and would end up the same way. That potent mixture of fear and anger had made her do things she regretted.
‘What happened, Princess?’
‘For the first few years after they first moved in, every summer they would hold these frightful events in the park. They set up lists – real jousting lists! There were tents, a kind of medieval fairground and during the day, they held jousts with huge horses thundering up and down, the crashing of lances . . .’
‘Goodness,’ Gawain said, ‘it sounds brilliant. And they don’t do this any more?’
Xenia felt a spark of anger. ‘It was not brilliant, it was torture. I complained very strongly. Eventually the Redmain man came to see me, with his haughty airs and his conviction that he can make everyone do what he wants. He’s a jumped-up little bully, I know his type, I tell you!’ She drew herself up tall, straightening her shoulders and assuming her most regal air. ‘He thought he could tell me, a descendant of emperors, what to do. He said it was an important historical event. I told him what I thought of that. He must stop it. And when he said that he wouldn’t, I . . . I told him what I knew.’
Gawain frowned, his cup of tea held halfway to his mouth. ‘You mean, you told him about seeing his wife and the other man together?’
Xenia nodded and said quickly, ‘I was so angry, I didn’t know what I was saying. I’ve regretted it ever since.’
‘Oh dear.’ Gawain put his cup down, his expression grave. ‘Oh dear me.’
‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’ She looked away, ashamed. ‘I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right – it was a terrible thing to do.’
‘And so – no more tournaments. No more fairs. No more cars and people.’
‘That’s right.’ Xenia lifted her chin obstinately. ‘No more noise. Just peace and quiet, like it’s supposed to be.’
‘And they divorced.’
‘Yes. They did.’
Gawain shook his head. ‘Well, well. The stories of misery and misfortune go on. The house is beautiful, so beautiful. Why is it so sad?’
Xenia felt mournful. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘But that was not the house. It was my fault.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. You can’t possibly know.’ Gawain’s gaze went to the fireplace, where a stiff white card sat propped up on the chimney piece. ‘And yet, you’ve still been invited to their Christmas party.’
Xenia looked over at the invitation. ‘That’s only politeness. In any case, the second wife probably knows nothing of the past. I shan’t go, though.’
‘I’ve been invited myself,’ Gawain said casually.
‘You have?’
‘Yes. My invitation arrived at the pub. It was nice of Mrs Redmain to ask me.’
‘You liked her?’
‘I did. She was charming. I’m hoping to meet the husband you despise so much at the party tonight.’
‘I’ll be surprised if you like him.’
Gawain drained his teacup and put it down. ‘Funny you should say that. I’m planning to go up early to the party tonight and I wondered if you’d like to come with me. I think you’ll find it interesting.’
Xenia stood in front of her mirror doing something she had never dreamed she would do again: she was getting ready for a party. She clipped earrings to her lobes, brushed out her silver hair into smooth curls around her pink scalp, and put on a small smear of red lipstick. She blinked at her reflection.
You silly old woman. Fancy trying to make yourself look presentable, as if anyone would care what you look like.
All her life, she had wanted to look like Mama – as ravishing and elegant as she had been. And now, ironically, she did look like her, as she had at the end, with her silver hair and softly wrinkled face.
She felt afraid of returning to Charcombe, but Gawain had persuaded her, and promised to be at her side throughout. Going back to the house in the snow was the stuff of Xenia’s nightmares, but she knew it was simply fanciful. The bad times were over. There were a few good years left to her, and she intended to enjoy them. The house had lost its power over her, she was certain of it. I’ve done my suffering. It’s finished with me.
A flash of memory came into her mind: a loving couple walking through the parkland, hand in hand, stopping to kiss tenderly before walking on. But it wasn’t her and Harry. No. It was Ingrid Redmain and her handsome jouster. The sight of them had made her so bitter, so sad and angry that she not been able to control it.
It should have been me. Harry and me. But I couldn’t take my one chance of freedom. That was my real inheritance: when happiness finally came to me, I couldn’t accept it. And that was why, when I saw those two in their idyll, wandering in the summer meadow together, I wanted to destroy it.
She went to the window of her upstairs hall and looked out at the house across the lane. A light was burning downstairs. Mrs Redmain was back. Perhaps, all this time, she had been in some warm land, where the knight in his shining armour was waiting for her.
I hope so. I don’t want to live possessed by anger any more. It can destroy lives so easily and nothing can put back what was ruined.
Chapter Forty-Two
The beautiful summer was ripening to autumn when Harry told her he was leaving Charcombe Park.
‘I have to go back to my law work,’ he said. ‘But as soon as I get back, I’m going to hand in my notice and give it all up. This summer has made me realise that life’s too short to waste doing something you hate, even if it makes money. I want to start living. I have a cottage in Cornwall, halfway up a hill overlooking the sea. I’ve learned everything that Luke and Gwen can teach me, so I’m going to live there and start my carpentry business.’
She was in the kitchen making soup for Mama, who was sick with a chill, and she’d stirred it slowly without saying anything. She’d closed her mind to the possibility of Harry leaving. She’d hoped he might simply decide to stay indefinitely.
‘Xenia?’
She turned around to look at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tears in her eyes, but his expression was too much for her, and two hot rivulets ran down her
face. She sniffed hard and wiped them away. ‘I don’t want you to go. You’re my friend. My only real friend.’
‘You’re my friend too.’ He smiled at her and took her hand, his roughened by woodwork and sawdust. ‘You know that. I want us to be closer.’ He stared into her eyes intently. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something for some time. I know that nothing has really happened between us, not romantically, but I feel something and I think you do too. I just don’t think it can ever happen here, in this place. So I want you to come with me to Cornwall.’
‘What? Cornwall?’ She gazed back, taking in his words, a flower of happiness unfurling within her.
He nodded. ‘My cottage is big enough for two. I want to get you away from here, so you see what life might be like without the mighty burdens you’ve got. They’re crushing you but you can’t see it.’
Xenia felt as though someone had switched on a light and banished darkness. What a wonderful, marvellous idea. A new life. Freedom. Companionship. Perhaps love . . . Her happiness wilted almost as soon as she imagined it. She said blankly, ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ Harry looked exasperated and miserable at the same time, but he wasn’t going to let it go. ‘This house . . . it’s no good, Xenia. I want to get away from it, and you should too. Come for a short while. Give me six months, just six months.’
‘Harry, I can’t leave, you know that, not for any length of time. What about Mama? She’d never go. She’d be so unhappy anywhere else.’
‘She’s ill, Xenia. You can’t look after her for the rest of your life, she wouldn’t want that from you. We’ll find a wonderful place for her to live nearby where she can be cared for properly, and you can begin to live for yourself.’
As he said it, she wanted it more than anything. But she knew that it wasn’t possible. She couldn’t rip Mama away from Charcombe, it would kill her. If Harry left, he would go without her.
‘We have to stay,’ she said, turning back to her soup. ‘That’s all there is to it.’
‘Xenia, please. I want to look after you.’
‘I don’t need looking after,’ she said haughtily, taking refuge from her pain in her pride. ‘We’re never leaving here. How would my father find us if we go?’
‘You can’t still believe that he’s coming back.’ Harry looked at her sadly. ‘You know he never will.’
She burst into tears and shouted, ‘How dare you talk to me like that! How can you say such awful things! Go away.’
So he had.
I knew he was right.
Xenia was ready for the party now, wrapped up in Mama’s fur coat. She went to her bedroom window with its view over the park towards the big house, a view she almost always blocked with a drawn blind, so that she didn’t have to see it. But now she stared at the squares of light that showed the windows of the house through the dark, frigid air.
I wonder what’s happening in the house. They’ll be getting ready for their party, making it beautiful with decorations and lights, trying to mask the truth about that place.
It had been the sadness that soaked into its stones that drove Harry away.
‘You’ll always know where I am,’ he said to her, pressing a paper with the cottage’s address on it. ‘If you’re ever free, come and find me.’
‘I will,’ she’d said, but she’d known then that she would never be free, not while there was still time for her, at least.
The spikes of rooftops and chimneys stood out against the night sky, the whole facade turned golden from the floodlights, ready to welcome people in.
It’s a terrible house and always has been. Why does it draw badness and corruption to it? Like the wicked surgeon who cut through the fibres of Mama’s brain and destroyed her forever.
Only a few years later, he had been implicated in a huge scandal of illegal operations and jailed for his activities. But it was too late for Mama, and for all the other poor souls he condemned to a living death.
Harry had written to her too, begging her to change her mind.
‘Please, Xenia – your mother would want you to live your life, not exist in the shadow of hers.’
She had not written back. He wouldn’t understand. Xenia had a debt to Mama that she could never repay. Mama had agreed to the procedure because Xenia and Papa had told her to. Papa had promised he would love her and stay with her, and he had failed her. She, Xenia, could not also fail. Not when she carried the burden of guilt that tormented her.
But perhaps it was the house that did it, after all. Perhaps it arranged all of it: the madness and the failed cures and the terrible operation. It brought me Harry and then sent him away. It punished Luke and Gwen with illness. It banished Papa.
Or had it? Had Papa chosen to inflict the final, awful blow of abandonment on them himself? Had he been, at heart, selfish and deceitful to the last?
She thought of her mother’s last days, before the pneumonia came and finally killed her. Natalie had appeared at the top of the staircase in a long white nightdress, her face bizarrely made up, her hair gathered into curls around old hair rollers and bits of twig. ‘You’ve all come here today to find out one thing,’ she said in that perfect American accent. Her voice was creaky now, but she still sounded like her most famous creation. ‘You want to know who killed Delilah.’ She walked down the stairs to Xenia and said, ‘Do you want to know who killed Delilah? It’s very simple. I killed her. And I’m glad I did. I’d do it again tomorrow – and so would you!’
That was the last thing her mother ever said to her.
The pain of loss hit Xenia with such force she thought she might fall down. Tears stung her eyes. Where did you go, Papa? Why did you leave us?
She turned to face the ancient old house.
If I had my way, every last stone of you would be torn down.
Chapter Forty-Three
So here we are. The final secret still unsaid. Perhaps it never will be. In a funny way, that makes it easier to go, knowing he’d let that happen.
Buttercup sat in front of her dressing table mirror, slipping the rods of her earrings through her lobes: glittering hoops that sparkled by her cheeks. Her fair hair was pulled up into a high coil, and her make-up was bold: dark smoky lids, spiked lashes enhanced with dozens of little false ones, and red lips. Her dress was red too, tight and slit at the side and worn with silver platform trainers.
So I don’t look too dressed up.
It was a Christmas party and a lavish one at that, but there were children there, and she’d no doubt be running around all over the place. Heels were out of the question.
Downstairs had been a bustle of activity all day as the staff, organised by Carol, got the party ready. Dozens of canapés were cooking in the kitchen, glasses were being polished and placed on tables next to jugs of soft drinks and tureens of mulled wine. Throughout the house fires were blazing and carols played from all the hidden speakers on the ground floor. There were decorations everywhere: holly wreaths, fronds of ivy, tartan bows and tinsel, with nativity scenes, lights, angels and snowflakes. Glass baubles hung from trees and garlands, and there was a tree in every room, besides the huge one in the hall hung with candy canes and hundreds of sparkling decorations. In the dining room, a model train chuffed around a snowy track through miniature Alpine villages, delivering a cargo of jellybeans and Smarties.
It couldn’t be any more Christmassy, Buttercup thought as she came downstairs. She knew that somewhere nearby Father Christmas was having his beard applied while he drank a mulled cider and practised his ho-ho-hos, and the real reindeer was in the empty stables eating hay.
‘Charles!’ she called up the stairs. ‘You’d better come down. The first guests will be here soon.’
His voice floated down from above. ‘Coming.’
She had wondered what the day would hold after their confrontation last night, and expected him to demand another interview so that he could try to change her mind, but he’d driven out early and been gone most of the day. Now that h
e was back, he was oddly distracted and distant, hardly seeming to notice that Buttercup had packed a small bag and begun to gather her things together from around the house, leaving everything in a neat pile in the guest room for her to take away the next day.
Charles’s relative calm had made her suspicious. What was going through his mind? Surely, after all this time monitoring her, watching and observing to make sure she wasn’t about to leave him, he wouldn’t simply give in, now that she had actually said that she would. Would he simply sit back and watch her go?
It doesn’t matter what he does. I’m going, and that’s that.
She’d stayed for the party only to make sure it went ahead. She knew it was a highlight for the village, particularly the children, and she didn’t want Charles to cancel it on account of her.
Carol came out of the kitchen, looking pink-cheeked but calm, her Christmas tree earrings dangling over her shoulders. ‘Can I have a wee word?’ she asked, coming up to Buttercup.
‘Of course.’ She gestured to the small morning room near the kitchen. ‘Let’s go in there, I think it’s empty.’
Inside, Carol looked serious. ‘I’ve made my decision. I’m on your team. I want you to know that I did write reports about you, because I had to. But I never gave them the really private stuff, I tried to protect you as much as I could. I know it’s cold comfort and you might not believe me, but it’s the truth. And I’m sorry for it. Honestly.’
Buttercup smiled. ‘I do believe you, Carol, and I’m glad. I always hoped we were friends.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Did you tell Charles that I’d emailed my old boss?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I never knew that. I didn’t snoop in your phone or computer, I refused to do that.’
‘I see. Then he was reading my emails, even my draft emails.’ She shook her head. ‘He really would do anything to know what I was up to. And I would have told him any of it, any time he asked me.’
Carol said, ‘I just want you to know that Steve and I are going to hand in our notice.’