‘My darling P,
It came upon me today a thought - how marvellous it was that you remembered so clearly and with such detail, events of our childhood. You have reminded me on more than one occasion, of things we had said to each other, or games that we played together, paths that we walked, flowers that we picked - and my befuddled brain has struggled to recall these events. Then at odd moments, and with a remarkable clarity, I will think to myself, Oh yes, my Poppy is right! I will be sitting at my breakfast, or walking across to Westminster, and a notion will strike me. Yes, we walked alongside the lake and threw breadcrumbs to the swans, yes, we picked bluebells along the path and scattered them from the bridge! All sorts of things we did at Addleston when we were away from adults’ disapproving eyes. How could I have forgotten such sweet memories? But I have a head full of dullness and dry incident - and you, my darling, have leisure to think about such things, to remember our happier times. We spent a great deal of time laughing together, didn’t we, P? How wonderful that we did so, when we had the chance. Silly, foolish things, my love. Remember when we stole sweet, ripe raspberries from the basket in the kitchen? Remember the day when your hair was still wet with rain and we toasted crumpets by the fire? Remember how we burnt them to a crisp, on purpose, and the quantities of smoke we created? How I wish for more of those moments with you again, my darling.’
‘He talks about evocative things, doesn’t he?’ Astrid said. ‘Smells and tastes.’
‘Of course he does,’ he replied. ‘It’s a way of making him feel physically close to her. And if they were childhood playmates, it means they’d known each other all their lives. Their love didn’t happen overnight, it had been growing for years.’
‘Listen to this,’ said Astrid, reading from the next letter:
‘My dearest
You often remark how funny it is that I remember so clearly events from our childhood. The reason I recall them so vividly is because it is the one time in my life when I was happiest. The time, dear Harry, when I had you all to myself. I like to remember our games of cards in the library when it was too wet to play outdoors, and our galloping like horses across the fields towards the lake, and our time in the bluebells in the woods. Can you picture them, in dense pockets of blue, scruffy and wayward and jostling each other? Can you see them spreading around us? Following us wherever we go, wherever we tread? I love to recall those times, and take comfort from them, now that you are absent from me. Take care my love wherever you are, P’
Astrid swept her arm in an arc. ‘You can’t see them now, but in spring this place is chockfull of bluebells.’
But she was wrong. Charlie could see them. Quite clearly. They were everywhere. Spilling forth from the long spongy grass at the edge of the meadow, and through the gaps in the iron railing fence, the mass of bright blue flowers spread far and wide.
Somewhere nearby a small boy was wailing at the top of his voice. He’d dropped his juice carton on the path and a cascade of dark fluid sank into the dust. The adults with him – his grandparents at a guess – tried to draw him away from the scene of the accident. Grandma in particular was amused by the huge amount of fuss he made. ‘It’s only a bit of orange squash. It’s not the end of the world!’
‘Let’s get off the path,’ said Charlie. ‘Isn’t there a way through the bushes?’
‘There is,’ said Astrid. ‘Follow me.’ They beat a way through the undergrowth, negotiating dense pockets of nettles before breaking through into a clearing where fragments of wood snapped and crackled beneath their feet. It was an artificial covering, she explained, to encourage the growth of vulnerable plants. An uninterrupted view of the west front of the house could be seen beyond the railings and over the meadow. The pedimented door in the distance opened onto a pair of elegantly curving stairs, each of which appeared to sink into the gravelled path below. Perhaps the lovers had scampered down them, one on each side, and run across the meadow. Charlie could feel they were ready to approach. Not long now.
Astrid opened her next letter.
‘Harry,’ she read, ‘Pray I see you again before the autumn passes and the distance between us grows longer. Forgive me, I am despondent today. I cannot think of good or happy things any more... I will keep writing letters to you, even if you never open them, if you never reply. You are like a confessor, someone I can pour my heart to, and yet you make no comment.’
It was an anguish he could feel; a growing, frantic bewilderment. Charlie took over, reading Harry’s words to Amelia.
‘Poppy, my angel, remember our walks, remember our times together? I have never known such happiness as when we could talk, just talk. Serious matters, frivolous matters. We talked for hours, did we not?’
As the bluebell colour painted the background, he could sense that Amelia and Harry had come to join them. In the trees, in the undergrowth, he could hear their laughter. He could hear them running back and forth along the Perimeter walk, chasing each other, calling out to one another. But the images were confused. He could see them as children; he could see them as adults. A flash of white dress in the leaves, a gold button on the cuff of a navy-blue coat...
‘They came here,’ he whispered. ‘They met in secret, on this spot.’
Astrid hadn’t spoken for a while. She was simply listening to him, watching what he was doing.
He stepped around the area of the clearing, the wood chips snapping underneath his feet – and as though the present overwhelmed the past with its immediacy and prior claim - the images dissolved. The blue flowers were gone, and he and Astrid were alone again.
He needed to concentrate... He started to beat a way back through the undergrowth. The wailing child had disappeared and he followed the rest of the path, as it curved around to the north and brought him within sight of the formal gardens and the summer house. And there they were again, in plain view this time, hand in hand, taking the same route. Amelia’s shoes kicked up the hem of her pale dress. Harry, long limbed, ambled along next to her. They were happy, they were talking, a trill of laughter escaped Amelia’s lips.
Charlie followed them, watching, listening, all the way around the corner, until quietly, with mutual regret, the lovers loosened their grip; their hands dropped to their sides; the distance between them widening the nearer they got to the house. Amelia’s shoulders drooped, her happy gait lost its energy, she turned her eyes wistfully towards Harry’s averted face.
Astrid caught up. ‘What did you see?’
They’d disappeared. The path was empty, the gardens peaceful.
He appealed to her for help. ‘This was Richard Tunney’s family home, is that right?’
‘Quite right, yes.’
‘And yet Amelia and Harry were here as children. Why was that?’
‘Their parents must have been friends or acquaintances.’
‘But if they were childhood sweethearts, why didn’t they marry when they were adults?’ He knew the answer before he spoke.
‘Familial duty, I suppose,’ Astrid said. ‘Parental pressure brought to bear. Arrangements made without her say so. Richard Tunney considered more of a suitable match? It wasn’t an unusual state of affairs.’
He pondered poor Amelia having her future decided for her, having no power or influence. Advantageous marriages joined land and property together, and as many apparently mismatched couples often found out, love and warmth might grow in the most barren of circumstances. But not this time. Not this woman, not this marriage. Richard and Amelia were a bad combination, a volatile mixture, like combustible elements placed together in a crucible.
They walked through the formal gardens, passing underneath the boughs of an enormous cedar tree and on towards the walled garden.
‘I wonder where everyone is?’ said Astrid. ‘They must have knocked off early, gone down the pub.’
They sat on a wooden bench next to a recreated vegetable patch and the restored marrow frames, and opened the next two letters.
Harry’s tone now change
d abruptly. His light hearted reminiscences had given way to acute frustration. Charlie sensed the urgency in his voice.
‘My darling P, I have been the most foolish of all men. To have abandoned the best and most loyal friend a man could ever have. To have allowed these fond memories of our times together - such happy, free times - to languish, is quite unforgivable. I don’t deserve it, but I long for you to absolve me of my guilt. I wish with all my heart that I had taken you with me then, that I had been brave enough to do it. How often do I regret not acting upon my true honest impulses? How often do I regret pretending that they did not really exist? Well, I am paying for it now.’
‘I wonder what he was going to do?’ Astrid said. ‘Had they been planning to elope? Perhaps when the engagement to Tunney was first announced?’
Charlie picked at the flakes of varnish on the wooden seat. ‘It’s a romantic notion.’
‘You don’t buy it?’
His emotions were as churned up as Harry’s; blown about like a flurry of dead leaves in the wind. ‘Real life hurts. It gets nasty.’
He nodded at her to continue and Astrid read on:
‘Darling H,
‘I have been walking in the rose garden today, the beautifully heady perfume supports me like your arm through mine. I close my eyes and think of you, even as the sun beats down upon my face, and the silken petals nudge at my fingers and flutter to the ground.’ Charlie beckoned her to rise, and still reading, she followed him out of the walled garden and into the flower garden.
‘I have been sitting in the summer house today, and with the door wide open the breeze wafts the scent of flowers around me like a heavenly cloud...’
Opening the summer house door he ushered her inside its warm interior. It smelt of fresh paint and window polish. He sat down next to her on the stone bench as Amelia’s words continued.
‘How I love this place. I do not need grand apartments, silver salvers, fine bone china, silk hangings, damask wallpaper; all I need is a tiny room like this one, with you in it, my darling... My roses are the only things I am allowed to nurture. It seems so long ago that I planned this garden, and now the plants are heavy in bloom -’
Charlie could see them. ‘Over there,’ he pointed. ‘A great spray of colour radiating out from the building.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ Astrid murmured. ‘There won’t be any planting visible till the spring.’
But right in front of them Amelia was walking the paths, pausing to lower her face to the roses and sniff their perfume. The leaves and thorns snagged at her dress as she brushed past, her hands trailed through the bells of the fox gloves, she crouched down amongst the snap dragons, squeezing their delicate faces until they ‘roared’.
She went to sit at her easel in the shade of the cedar tree and picked up her paints. And there was Tunney standing behind her, unable to disguise his contempt.
Physically aching with the constant wish for something better, Charlie could feel Amelia’s torment as if it was his own.
‘You should replant it,’ Charlie blurted. ‘Recreate it for her! Talk to Matthew. Tell him how it should be.’
‘I can’t see it,’ Astrid said. ‘There’s nothing there.’ His leg was touching hers, he could feel the heat from her flesh. Aware of her breathing, steady, regular, his own had increased to match it. Positioned at such an angle from the main building as to be obscured from plain sight, the summerhouse was the perfect place for a secret meeting. Amelia and Harry had been here, together, alone. When Harry took Amelia’s hand, caressed her fingers, kissed her neck, placed a kiss on her lips, no one had seen him do it.
‘We’ve nearly reached the end,’ said Astrid.
He was distracted, only half listening.
‘We’ll soon be finished,’ she repeated. ‘We’re nearly done.’
Finally his eyes met hers. ‘Yes? Oh, yes, not long now.’
He felt suddenly despondent. It was always unsettling when the visions were interrupted.
‘How do you do it?’ she asked. ‘How do you send yourself back there?’
‘I don’t know. It happens. If the circumstances allow...,’
‘Is it tiring?’
‘Sometimes, it depends how close I get to the subject. Or allow myself to get.’ He was acutely aware he sounded distinctly flaky whenever he tried to explain.
‘When Andy first told me...,’
‘I know,’ he said quickly, ‘you thought he was winding you up?’
She didn’t disagree. ‘But now that I’ve seen you do it...,’
‘You think I’m mad?’
‘No, not at all, I’m intrigued. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘How do you know I’m not pretending? How do you know I haven’t read the guidebook, or ‘googled’ Addleston?’
‘Because you and I are the only two people who are aware of Harry’s existence.’ She gave him the next letter in the sequence. ‘Shall we continue? Or have you had enough?’
‘No, let’s keep going. Whatever it is we’re doing, it’s working.’
‘Darling,’ he read,
‘I have been so busy this week, my head is spinning. Picture me now, at my desk in my gloomy chambers, tucking into the first meal I have eaten all day. Excuse me if a crumb from the pastry might fall here and there on the paper. I am ravenously hungry, although food seems to have lost all flavour. My Poppy doesn’t mind, does she, if I eat and write at the same time? If it weren’t for such small pleasures and the view from my window across the park here, I would have been subsumed by the very blackest clouds of gloom. In my desperation I had written to your sister Grace, wondering if she might allay my fears. She has only just replied, my love, telling me that she has not seen you for some time, but believes you to be well. Alas, this news does not comfort me much; I shall only be content when I hear it from your own lips. I cannot get away, all I can do is write. The Queen’s trial is keeping me in London. Even though I am supposed to pursue ambition, and strive for success – without word from you, it means naught. Imagine my kiss, my darling, you shall have it again. One day, I promise. H’
Charlie finished with a rueful downturn of the lips. ‘Food and love, that’s all a man needs, isn’t that right?’
‘The Queen’s trial?’ Astrid queried. ‘Does he mean Caroline? George IV’s wife?’
‘I imagine so. The whole of London was abuzz.’
Amelia’s next letter was very long, covering both sides of the paper. Something in its shape and form was worrying; somehow they both knew it would not make comfortable reading. Astrid steeled herself for what was in it,
‘Harry, my love,
Something is not right. It is too long now, far too long. One letter lost or gone astray, I could understand, but there must be another reason why you have not written to me for so long and I think I have guessed it. The idea is too awful to bear, but the creeping idea in my mind, has now become a permanent presence: you have grown weary of me. We used to exchange such long letters, and it seems unlike you to stop, but I am forced to acknowledge that the simplest explanation is often the right one. You have ended our correspondence. I understand why. Nevertheless I am thinking of you, my love, each and every day. It is my only comfort to imagine that you are doing the same thing, perhaps even at this very moment. Remember that I love you. Have faith in me, your silly Tall Poppy. Excuse my untidy hand, my love, I am writing fast.’
It was no use, even as he was gazing into Astrid’s bright eyes, even as he was smiling encouragingly at her, willing her to go on, Charlie knew it was hopeless. The letter she’d written had no hope of reaching him. ‘Don’t forget me,’ he pleaded. ‘I’m still here. Don’t give up on me.’
‘Is it you, Charlie, or is it Harry?’
He hadn’t realized he’d been submerged so deeply. ‘Oh, what did I say?’
‘You looked like you were channeling, or something.’
‘No.’ He was emphatic, ‘I don’t do that.’
Astri
d looked at him more closely. ‘Are you all right?’
Suddenly the airless atmosphere of the summerhouse overwhelmed him, not to mention Astrid’s close proximity, and he stood up quickly and headed outside into the gardens. ‘I’ve never applied myself like this, before. It’s new to me as well.’
‘Harry might be busy in his chambers, and unaware of her ongoing torment,’ Astrid said, catching up, ‘but I’ll bet he’s hatching something. Biding his time. His day is full, her day is empty, but he’s going to find a way to get back to her.’
Charlie wasn’t convinced. ‘I wonder. Even if Amelia did work out what was happening and confronted Mary Ellen, the game would still have been up. I believe she eventually relinquished her love, and yes -’ he saw that she was about to interrupt her - ‘she was miserable about it, probably to the end of her days, but she accepted it. Because she had to.’
‘I disagree. Harry had something up his sleeve. I’m sure of it.’
The best part of the day was gone, and most of the visitors had gone home. The empty park was quiet save for the distant sound of vehicles from the road.
‘How many letters are left?’ he asked.
‘A couple,’ she said, ‘but we can read them later. We’ve had a good long crack.’
‘There’s one place we haven’t tried yet,’ he said.
‘Where?’
Amelia’s room. The Taffeta Silk bedroom.
Chapter Nine
It was evening when they entered the empty house. The ground floor windows were lit from below by security lights set deep in the flower beds and along the edge of the paths. The upper windows were black as ink against the pink and blue sky. Shadows on the ground were as cold as frozen drink.
Secrets of the Past Page 7