A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  ‘Stop in here,’ Lucy said, and Will pulled the car to a halt.

  She flung open her door and hurried over to the gates. They were locked and the padlock smudged with rust. She shook them in frustration then gazed through the bars, trying to see a glimpse of the house, but a mass of trees swallowed the view.

  Will said, ‘Too bad. Get in. Let’s go,’ and revved the engine, but Lucy had noticed where some stones from the long wall had spilled onto the lane, some way further down.

  She reached for her camera bag in the passenger well, swung it on her shoulder and set off at a run, saying, ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  ‘Lucy!’ Will called.

  She waved without looking back.

  A hundred yards down from the gates she came to the section of the wall that was crumbling. She scrambled up, leapt down into the undergrowth on the other side and pushed her way through a thick belt of trees. There she stopped and stared. Set out before her was Carlyon Manor.

  In the photographs she’d found in Granny’s box, Carlyon was a long, graceful Elizabethan stone house set amongst elegant trees, its rolled lawns stippled by sunlight. This building was derelict and blackened by fire, its ragged skeleton outlined against the sky, the one remaining chimney reaching up, pitifully, like the wing of a crushed bird. Instinctively, she took out her camera and started to take some shots, wondering all the while when this could have happened. Nobody had ever mentioned a fire.

  She scurried across the shaggy grass and the weed-infested gravel. Several steps led up to the front entrance, but some flakes of wood on rusted hinges were all that remained of the double doors. She hovered on the threshold, considering the possible danger, then curiosity got the better of her and she stepped inside.

  She was in a ruined hallway that was open, in part, to the sky. She wandered carefully from room to room, stepping over rubble, past twisted shapes of what had once been metal, trying to imagine what it might have been like once, before. It was, she saw, possible to glean the layout of the ground-floor rooms and something of their former purpose. There might once have been a central staircase, she thought, and a gallery, but perhaps that was her imagination.

  She stared round at it all in dismay, wondering when the fire had happened and how. From a large room at the back of the house, the rusted vestiges of french windows looked out onto a flagstoned terrace and beyond, a wild garden. They were right on the clifftop here, and between the fluttering leaves of poplar trees glittered the sea.

  She turned back to the room. It was the drawing room once, she supposed. The corroded metal innards of an armchair crouched by the fireplace. On the wall above hung the charred shape of what was once a great mirror. She crossed the rotted floor, rubbish crunching beneath her feet, and examined the ruined mantelpiece. It still featured a carved design. She moved her fingers over the lumps and bumps of the burned wood, wondering about the pattern of fruit and flowers. It would have been a stunning piece of craftsmanship. The ghostly remnants of the mirror and the armchair fascinated her, and she reached again for her camera.

  Round the rooms she moved in a reverie, taking pictures of anything that caught her eye, trying to imagine the people who had lived here. Sometimes she thought she heard children’s voices. God forbid there had been children in the house when this happened. They were gentle voices, though, not sounds of terror, and she came to realize it was just the wind calling through the ruins.

  Half an hour later, she became aware that there really was someone calling. Will. She’d forgotten about Will. She picked her way back to the front entrance and looked out across the park. He was standing over by the belt of trees, legs apart, hands on hips. She waved and he began to jog towards her.

  ‘Lucy, what the hell . . .? I didn’t know where you were going. You just vanished.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I forgot the time. Isn’t this wonderful?’

  He looked past her at the ruin. ‘It looks like a dump to me. What did you call it?’

  ‘Carlyon Manor. Where Granny lived when she was young.’

  ‘Very nice,’ he said, ‘but it must be dangerous. Come on now. We must go.’

  She didn’t like his hectoring tone, but came reluctantly down the steps. ‘I still need to see Saint Florian,’ she said and bit her lip, seeing his outraged face.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lucy, but it’s just not on. We need to get home.’

  He really was furious, and though she resented it she supposed it was understandable. She started to follow him back to the car, but her footsteps dragged; she couldn’t dispel the silly notion that the house was calling her back.

  Will, she saw, had already turned the car round so that it pointed resolutely in the direction of home. They got in, and when he started the engine she suddenly imagined herself sitting beside him all the way to London, listening to the clangy music, discussing the wretched documentary he was editing, with the town of St Florian, still unvisited, receding further and further away.

  They were passing the pines with the rooks’ nests now, and Will was signalling left, away from St Florian. A mad idea occurred to her. It wasn’t as though she had to get home yet.

  ‘Will,’ she said. ‘Stop and let me out.’

  He hesitated. ‘Lucy, please. I’d like to get home sometime today if possible.’

  ‘I’m not coming.’

  ‘What?’ His face was a mask of disbelief.

  ‘Look – I’ve got a week,’ she told him. ‘I was just going to play about with photographs, maybe get some framed, but I can do that anytime. So I’ve decided I’m staying here. I want to take a proper look at Saint Florian, see if there’s anyone to ask about Carlyon and my family.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Where will you stay? You can’t just decide things like that.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll find somewhere.’ She reached for her handbag and camera. ‘Thanks, Will. For everything. It’s been fab.’ She leant across and gave him a quick kiss, then opened the door. He sat there, wooden, not looking at her. ‘Would you unlock the boot, please? I want my suitcase.’

  He gazed at her, his expression anxious and unhappy, saying, ‘This is just stupid. Look, I’ll tell you what, I’ll drive you down to Saint Florian if you’re that serious. Then you’re coming back with me.’

  It wasn’t only the tone of voice that maddened her, but the fact that he had no interest in this adventure.

  ‘You don’t have to, really. I can walk down. Please open the boot.’

  ‘Lucy—’

  ‘I want to do this on my own.’ She knew that now.

  A moment later she was standing at the roadside with her suitcase, watching his car speed away.

  ‘Bye, Will,’ she whispered.

  Trundling her case behind her, with the spring sun warming her back, she set off down the hill towards the town.

  Chapter 2

  Three months earlier

  Lucy’s journey to St Florian was one her father, Tom, should have made when he was alive. But he chose not to, and so she was making it for him.

  Her quest began one afternoon in mid-January when she visited her stepmother, Helena, in Suffolk. Helena had asked her down from London because she’d been clearing out Tom’s possessions and wanted to give her some things.

  As Lucy drove her hired car through the stark East Anglian countryside she studied her feelings. It was odd, really, that her long resentment of Helena hadn’t eased since her father’s death in a car crash the previous June. If anything, it had intensified. She felt sorry for her stepmother, certainly. Anyone seeing Helena’s worn expression, her unconscious habit of wringing her hands, would know that she’d loved Tom very much and grieved for him. But Lucy couldn’t forgive Helena for taking her father away. She’d hated, too, the fact that Helena, the second wife, the latecomer in Tom Cardwell’s life, had assumed the central role in the formalities following his death. As Tom’s legal spouse, it was Helena, not Lucy or Lucy’s mother Gabriella, who was called to the hospital after the ca
r wreck was found, Helena who took charge of the funeral arrangements, Helena who, in the absence of any will, had presided over the division of Tom’s estate, although she’d made no difficulty about Lucy receiving her legal entitlement.

  In addition to her own muddled feelings, Lucy had been moved by her mother’s intense anguish. By dying, it was for Gabriella Cardwell as though Tom had abandoned her all over again, and she found no comfort in the fact that this time the Other Woman had lost him, too. The two widows were quite unable to meet and share their grief; Lucy gauged that each saw only too clearly in the other what they themselves lacked in relation to Tom, and she was fed up with being the bridge between them.

  When Lucy left the car in the quiet lane outside Walnut Tree Cottage, she saw Helena waiting for her at the front door, a willowy figure in a twinset of pigeon grey. ‘You’re awfully late,’ Helena called, her light voice quivery. ‘I was getting worried.’

  ‘Sorry, Helena,’ Lucy said, feeling guilty. ‘I didn’t start off till one, then it took ages to get through London.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Helena said. ‘It’s just, ever since your father . . . I can’t help being anxious.’ Her cheek, when Lucy kissed her, felt dry, and Lucy saw that her matt-brown hair was now tinged with grey, like a coating of ash.

  The white carnations Lucy had bought when she’d stopped for petrol were bruised and parched. She passed them across with a muttered apology.

  ‘How thoughtful of you, dear. And I’m so glad you’ve come.’

  ‘I should have visited before.’

  ‘You’re so busy, I know. You’ve been away, haven’t you?’ Helena tidied Lucy’s coat into a cupboard and led her into the sterile white kitchen. ‘Did you say Romania on the phone?’

  ‘Bulgaria,’ Lucy replied, watching as Helena arranged the horrible blooms in a cream china vase. ‘We were filming a costume drama. I was there for three weeks, on and off.’

  In the hall, Helena set the vase on a shelf between two faceless dancing figurines. ‘Now, we should start in here, I think.’ She pushed open the door to the dining room and her voice trailed to a halt. Lucy saw why. Four ugly cardboard boxes were lined up on the table, spoiling the neat lines of Helena’s life.

  ‘They’re all bits and bobs of your father’s,’ Helena said, going over. ‘One of the charity shops took his clothes.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Lucy said quickly. She couldn’t bear to think of strangers’ bodies filling out her father’s suits and shoes.

  Helena glanced at her. ‘As you know, all his financial affairs are sorted out. There are these and a few things in his study – the books, of course.’

  One box was too full to shut properly. On top of a pile of rugby programmes lay a photograph in a silver frame. Helena picked it up and said, ‘This was in the bottom drawer of his desk. Wasn’t she your grandmother?’

  Lucy took it with a tender jolt of recognition. It was of Granny on the beach when she was young – the picture her father had used on the Order of Service at her funeral. It had stood on a bookshelf at home all through Lucy’s childhood. But here, it seemed, her father had kept it hidden away, as though he couldn’t bear to look at it. Why was that?

  ‘Anyway,’ Helena said, ‘I’d be much obliged if you’d take all this.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Lucy said. She didn’t add that it was hardly Helena’s to give her.

  As if reading her mind, Helena fixed Lucy with her steady grey eyes and said in her pale voice, ‘There never was any question but that you should have it.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Lucy said. She was still staring at the photograph. Her grandmother had been so lovely and Lucy’s professional interest was piqued by the knowing sideways look she gave the camera. She’d have been an easy subject for a photographer; it really was true that there were people the camera loved.

  ‘Quite a charmer, wasn’t she?’ Helena remarked, as though she disapproved. ‘Oh, I know it can’t be easy for you, Lucy, this situation. I do hope that you and I . . . that we’ll continue to be friends.’

  ‘Of course we will.’ It would have been cruel to say otherwise, but Lucy sincerely wondered whether friendship would be possible. Not only was Helena nearly thirty years older than herself, but what on earth did they have in common?

  ‘Your father was very dear to me. He seemed so lost and unhappy when I got to know him. He needed me.’

  Why? Lucy wanted to ask, but was too proud. A picture came into her mind of her mother’s wild weeping after Lucy’s father had departed, the blotchy face, the hair frizzier than ever. Helena, apart from the hand-wringing, was always composed, self-controlled. Why had her father come to need this calm, colourless woman?

  Key to it all somewhere was why Tom had changed so much after Lucy’s grandmother’s death, when he’d started to explore the boxes of papers and mementos that she’d left behind. Was it the ordinary processes of grief, or had he found something amongst her possessions that bothered him? Even now, Lucy didn’t quite understand. Her father had been an intensely private man with a strong sense of pride and tradition, and rarely talked about feelings. He had always been warm and loving, though, and Lucy couldn’t make sense of why he’d cut his ties and set out to remake his life.

  After Helena helped her move the boxes out to the car, they drank tea from fragile mugs in the beige sitting room before Helena said, ‘Shall we go and look upstairs?’

  At the top of the cottage was an airy loftspace that Tom had converted into a study soon after they’d bought the house six or seven years before. As Helena turned on lights and fiddled with the sticking window blind, Lucy surveyed the room. It was the only place in the house where she still sensed her father’s presence. His faded navy sweatshirt hung on the back of the door, presumably missed in the charity-shop sweep. There he was, too, in the ordered rows of books, the old mahogany desk in front of the window that looked out onto darkening wintry fields.

  Her attention was caught by a photograph that had fallen under the desk. She picked it up. It was of her father’s school’s first fifteen rugby team, his eighteen-year-old face sweet and eager in the front row. She studied it for signs of the more sombre, introverted man he would eventually become, but saw none. She placed it on the desk next to the computer, by yet another cardboard box.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Helena said, ‘you should take that one, too. It’s mostly stuff of your grandmother’s.’

  Lucy pulled up the flaps and looked inside. A yellow ring-bound file lay on the top, and when she opened it she saw notes in her father’s small neat handwriting – lists of dates, diagrams with arrows, and a reference to a book about the D-Day landings. Military history then, that was all. Disappointed, she took the file out. Underneath was a big square tin, once used for cake or biscuits, with a picture of a garden on it. She lifted the lid and smelt the scent of roses. The tin contained a jumble of mementos. She closed it again. She wouldn’t look at it in front of Helena.

  ‘What should I do with the books?’ Helena was at the shelves, straightening a row of old school stories with decorated spines. She looked out of place up here. Tom’s study had been his private world. Here he’d spent many hours reading in the big armchair, or at the desk writing, or surfing websites of second-hand booksellers.

  ‘I’d only want them because they’d been Dad’s,’ she said, ‘and I just haven’t room in my flat.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘No. Can’t you try that shop in the high street?’

  ‘That would probably be best.’ Helena was looking round the room now, wondering what else should be given its marching orders. Her eyes came to rest on the computer. ‘There’s something else I need to give you, Lucy. Your father was doing some research into family history. It might interest you. I tried to print the document off this morning, but the wretched thing wouldn’t work.’

  ‘I’ll have a go, if you like,’ Lucy offered, curious. She sat down and switched on the computer.

  ‘I guessed
his password straight away,’ Helena said. ‘It’s “wasps”. ‘ Tom’s favourite rugby team.

  Lucy typed it in, smiling, and watched as a series of icons appeared on a black and yellow desktop. Helena pointed her to a file labelled Cardwell. A page of text yawned open. Lucy stared at the heading. It was a man’s name.

  ‘Who’s Rafe Ashton?’ she asked.

  ‘You haven’t heard of him?’ Helena replied, frowning.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your father said he was his uncle. You must have heard of him.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Lucy insisted. Great-Uncle Rafe? The name meant nothing.

  ‘I gather he was your Grandfather Gerald’s younger brother.’

  ‘I’d no idea he had one. Why wasn’t he Rafe Cardwell then?’

  ‘He must have been a half-brother. Anyway, he went missing in the war or something. It’s all a bit confusing.’

  ‘I’ll take it away and have a look.’ Lucy was annoyed that Helena appeared to know more about the family than she did. The printer clattered into life and several typed pages slipped softly into the tray. She tucked them into the cardboard box and, with the box in her arms, gazed around her father’s room for what was perhaps the last time.

  ‘I ought to go,’ she told Helena. ‘I’m due at a friend’s house in London at eight.’

  ‘Of course,’ Helena replied, but she looked disappointed.

  Once on the road again, Lucy quickly forgot about Helena. Her mind was already on the mystery of Great-Uncle Rafe.

  Lucy lived in a tiny apartment that her father had helped her buy, not far from the canal at Little Venice in North London. She loved to walk the towpath and watch the barges come and go, sorry that she’d missed the days when they’d been pulled by horses. Nowadays, they mostly carried tourists. The previous year, a series of photographs she’d taken of the area had sold well in an exhibition at a Camden gallery.

  So far as work was concerned, Lucy felt at a bit of a crossroads. Photography was her hobby, but she might let it become more. She liked the small TV production company where she worked, but wanted more responsibility. Her boss, Delilah, had been encouraging. ‘We’re always being asked for short documentaries,’ she said. ‘Serious themes, women’s lives, that sort of thing. Bring me some ideas.’ Lucy had tried one or two on her, but nothing that had worked yet.