The Triumph of Katie Byrne

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Katie shook her head. ‘Thanks, but not really. But you can tell me what a toasted pikelet is.’

  Lavinia laughed, and explained, ‘It’s a round flat type of bread with little holes punched in the top, and when it’s toasted and buttered it’s delicious.’

  ‘Some people call it a crumpet,’ Jarvis volunteered as he arrived at the table with Katie’s plate of food.

  ‘Thanks,’ Katie said.

  ‘I understand Lavinia’s going to show you her paintings after breakfast, Miss Byrne. She’s very talented,’ Jarvis murmured, sounding proud.

  Lavinia beamed at him from the sideboard, where she was filling her plate.

  ‘I’m sure she is, Jarvis,’ Katie responded, glancing at the lovely young girl. To Katie, she looked as if she had just stepped out of the sixties this morning, wearing a red plaid shirt, blue jeans, white socks and loafers. She had tied a white silk kerchief around her neck and wore gold hoop earrings.

  Before she could stop herself, Katie said, ‘You look very Audrey Hepburn-ish this morning, Lavinia.’

  Lavinia smiled with obvious pleasure, preening slightly.

  Jarvis said, ‘Oh please, Miss Byrne, don’t tell her that. It always goes to her head when the resemblance is remarked upon, which seems to be rather frequently these days.’

  ‘Morning, Jarvis,’ Xenia said from the doorway and walked into the room. She had changed into a yellow twin set and beige trousers, looked scrubbed and freshfaced, with her hair tied back in a black silk bow.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Xenia,’ Jarvis said. ‘What would you like to have?’

  ‘Just a slice of toast, please, Jarvis. Oh, and you can add a sausage. And tea, of course. Thanks.’

  Turning to Katie, Xenia went on, ‘I have to rush. Verity’s already in the office, and the accountant’s arriving within minutes. I’ll be busy with them all morning, apparently. So I do hope you’ll be all right…’

  ‘Of course I will. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Lavinia will look after you, won’t you, ducks?’

  ‘I’m going to show Katie my paintings in the studio, Xenia. And we can go for a walk, there’s lots to do.’ Lavinia gazed across at Katie and asked, ‘Do you ride?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Katie answered. ‘I’m a bit timid around horses.’

  ‘We have a lovely old mare called Jess, you could try her. She’s very friendly and docile,’ Lavinia murmured.

  Katie merely smiled.

  Xenia said, ‘Now, Lavinia, don’t press Katie, she obviously doesn’t want to go riding.’

  Jarvis interrupted. ‘Lavinia, will you do the honours? Help Miss Byrne to anything else she wants.’ He turned to Xenia, and added, ‘I’m afraid I have to go over to the packing barn. I’ve got a crew coming from the village in a few minutes. Four lads are going to help wrap packages. So if you’ll excuse me, Miss Xenia…’

  ‘No problem, Jarvis. And I have to leave myself in a moment.’ As she spoke she gulped down the last of her tea, and rose. ‘See you later,’ she said, squeezing Katie’s shoulder before she hurried to the door.

  Katie nodded.

  Jarvis departed also, and Lavinia refilled Katie’s cup with coffee, and then, a moment later, the swing door opened and Anya came into the garden room.

  ‘Oh Katie, you haven’t officially met my mother!’ Lavinia exclaimed, jumping up.

  ‘Mam, this is Miss Byrne from New York.’

  Anya came forward, her hand outstretched, a smile spreading across her face. ‘Good morning, Miss Byrne. I hope you enjoyed your breakfast.’

  ‘Good morning, Anya, and yes, I did, it was delicious,’ Katie answered, standing, shaking her hand.

  Anya went over to the sideboard and began to look in all of the dishes. ‘Such a lot of food left over,’ she muttered, clucking to herself. ‘Oh well, never mind. Pell and Jamie are always ready for a snack, such big appetites they have, and Pomeroy just came up to the kitchen for his morning sandwich. Plenty here for them, and some left over. Oh dear, I made too much again.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mam, Jarvis told us there’s a crew coming up from the village to wrap packages,’ Lavinia said. ‘They’ll make inroads on the rest of the breakfast, given half a chance.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a good idea, I’ll make sandwiches for them.’ Anya swung around, murmured, ‘I do hate to waste food when half the world’s starving.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Katie nodded in agreement.

  ‘I must be getting along,’ Anya announced. ‘I’m in the middle of preparing the vegetables for lunch.’ As she spoke she picked up two of the chafing dishes and carried them out.

  When they were alone, Katie said, ‘Your mother must have lived here a very long time. In England, I mean.’

  ‘She has. But why do you say that, Katie?’

  ‘Her English is perfect.’

  ‘Oh, but she came here as a child. To London. She was born in Paris. You see, my grandparents were Russian but lived in France, because of the Revolution. Then they came to England. My mother married a Yorkshireman, David Keene, from Burton Leyburn. He brought her back to live in the village twenty-five years ago. I was born here, you know. My father died when he was only thirty, of a heart attack. I was just three.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Katie responded. ‘He was very young, wasn’t he? How awful for you and your mother.’

  ‘It was, but Mam’s strong. A survivor, that’s what she calls herself. She’s been working here at the hall for nineteen years. And she loves it, loves to cook. She believes that’s the secret of her success, loving what she does, wanting to make delicious food for people to eat. It’s important to love your work, don’t you think?’

  Katie nodded. ‘Yes, it is, Lavinia. I love acting, always have, and I know Xenia loves running Celebrations, creating those wonderful parties of hers.’

  ‘Yes, I know she does. She’s asked me to draw some interiors for her this weekend, of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg at the turn of the century. They’re for a party in New York at the end of the year. I’ll enjoy doing the drawings.’

  ‘Do you know what the Winter Palace looked like at the time of the Tsars?’

  ‘Oh, yes, we’ve got some really fantastic picture books in the library. They belong to Xenia, her father gave them to her.’ She smiled, and stood up. ‘It’s good research material. Anyway, shall we go, Katie? I’ve got the old landrover outside in the stable yard.’

  Katie also stood up, and glanced down at her oatmeal wood trousers and fisherman’s sweater. ‘I’m sure I don’t need a coat, I didn’t earlier.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s warming up even more. Even though Pell said there was going to be a cold snap, he’s sometimes wrong.’

  The landrover turned out to be the English equivalent of a station wagon, and it was somewhat old and dilapidated. But with Lavinia at the wheel it shot up the dirt road at full speed, behaving just like a modern sports car.

  ‘The barn’s not far, just beyond the woods,’ Lavinia explained, handling the car expertly as she went up the rutted track. ‘It’s near the Home Farm. That’s where we live. Dad runs it, well, he’s my stepfather, but he’s always treated me like his own. And he’s looked after Mam and me very well. He sent me to Leeds College of Art.’

  ‘Oh, so you studied up here in Yorkshire, not in London.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s a good college, and anyway, I didn’t want to go and live in London. I love it here.’

  ‘That’s not surprising, Lavinia. Yorkshire’s beautiful, and the hall is something else, out of this world.’

  ‘Thanks to Verity!’ Lavinia exclaimed. ‘She’s the one who keeps everything running smoothly. Dad says she’s a really good administrator.’

  ‘And she’s obviously very enterprising.’

  ‘Oh yes, and a clever businesswoman.’ Lavinia looked at Katie quickly, then brought her eyes back to the dirt track she was driving along. ‘The Earl sort of…gave up when Tim and Justin were killed. His son and heir, and
his grandson and heir, both of them gone just like that…in the blink of an eye. It was a terrible shock. Mam says he’s never really recovered, and that’s why he finds it hard to live here now.’

  ‘I understand,’ Katie murmured quietly, imagining the Earl’s overwhelming grief. ‘And who will inherit the title and the estate?’ she then wondered out loud.

  ‘Verity’s son, Stephen. When his grandfather dies, Stephen will become the Earl of Burton Leyburn. Right now he’s studying at Cambridge.’

  ‘I see.’ Katie leaned back against the worn leather seat, thinking about the family’s sorrow. It was so hard to come to grips with sudden and unexpected death, especially when it was touched with violence. She knew that only too well. It struck her now that Xenia had made a wonderful recovery. She functioned very well, and if, at times, she appeared sad and morose it was understandable. But for the most part, Xenia was fully in control of herself. Five years was not very long to come to grips with the loss of a husband and a child.

  Katie looked at the passing landscape. The long fields gave way to woods filled with great old trees, and beyond were more fields cut into a patchwork design by the low, drystone walls. As she peered ahead Katie soon saw the beginning of a huge stretch of farmland, and a farmhouse and out-buildings were just visible in the distance. Wide pastures surrounded the farmhouse, and in one of them a herd of Guernsey cows grazed lazily in the bright October sunlight. A white horse and its foal were gambolling together in another pasture, and helped to complete what was a truly pastoral scene, Katie thought.

  Ten minutes later, Lavinia was turning onto a wide road that ran behind the farmhouse up towards the moors etched against the pale-blue sky. Straight ahead of them, at the foot of the moorland, was a barn.

  ‘That’s it, my studio!’

  Katie walked with Lavinia towards the barn, and she couldn’t help thinking of that other barn, far away in Connecticut. She felt a sudden, involuntary shiver pass through her. Troubling memories, forever fresh, flashed before her eyes, and she quickly pushed them to one side. But thankfully that other barn no longer existed; after Denise’s murder Ted Matthews had torn it down and flattened the ground where it stood. However, it still existed in Katie’s mind, and she knew it always would.

  Lavinia pushed open the door, and cried, ‘Voilà! Here it is, Katie. Isn’t it great?’

  Katie had to agree. The barn was of medium size, with a cathedral ceiling; at the opposite end, the wall had been removed and replaced with a sheet of glass. This allowed bright daylight to flood into the barn so that it became the perfect place to paint.

  ‘Dad put the big picture window in, but it’s really a French window. It slides open,’ Lavinia explained. ‘I have easy access to the outside. Come on, Katie, I want to show you my paintings.’

  The paintings hung on two walls of the barn, and they were very well illuminated by pin-spots that shone down from beams in the cathedral ceiling. Katie knew at once that they were not merely good, but quite extraordinary. Jarvis is right to sound so proud, Katie thought; this girl is talented beyond belief.

  The first painting that Katie lingered in front of was of a young girl sitting on a bale of hay in front of a haystack. It reeked of a hot summer’s day. Lavinia had brilliantly captured all of the inherent elements of high summer: a cerulean-blue sky, white puff-ball clouds, and golden hay. And sunshine spilled forth from the large-sized canvas. The laughing, dimpled girl with gypsy-black curls and cheeky black eyes was simply enchanting. The sleeves of her red shirt were rolled up to show her plump arms, which were as tanned as her merry face, while her luscious ripe mouth echoed the red of her shirt. Katie was captivated.

  Lavinia painted in the Impressionist style, and she had obviously mastered it well. It happened to be the school of painting Katie had always preferred, especially the great French Impressionists, such as Renoir, Monet and Degas, and so she understood how talented Lavinia was.

  ‘They’re all fantastic!’ Katie exclaimed, when she had finally viewed the entire collection. ‘I think your art show at the gallery in Harrogate is going to be a smash hit, Lavinia.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so, and I’m glad you like my paintings, Katie. Rex Bellamy thinks some of them are like those from the Newlyn School. That was a group of painters who worked in the 1930s, and they were tremendously popular. He keeps talking about those painters, and he actually thinks some of my work is a little bit like that of Dame Laura Knight…Well, I don’t know about that. I’m flattered he thinks so of course, but I just paint what I love, the images I want to get on canvas, because they touch my…soul.’

  Katie nodded her understanding, and pointed to another. ‘I like this as well,’ she murmured, hovering in front of a painting of two children sitting under a willow tree, next to a large body of water. ‘Who are these children? They’re beautiful. Did you have real models? Or are they from your imagination?’

  ‘They’re the grandchildren of Jarvis and Dodie.’

  ‘Oh.’ Katie stared at her, speechless for a moment, and then she asked, ‘Are you saying that Jarvis is married to Dodie?’

  ‘Yes. They have a daughter, Alicia, and she’s married to Alex Johnson, and these are their children, Poppy and Mark. They’re adorable, aren’t they? And I’ll tell you something, Katie, they were such good kids when I was painting them. They sat really still, and behaved like little angels.’

  Katie smiled, but there was a perplexed look in her eyes. ‘I just can’t connect Jarvis and Dodie, somehow…’

  ‘I know what you mean, they don’t seem to work together, do they? But they’ve been married for donkey’s years. And they both grew up on the estate here. Jarvis’s father was the butler before him, and Dodie’s mother was the cook for a while. So in a way I suppose they’re like family to Verity in one sense. Certainly they’re really part of this place.’

  ‘And tell me, Lavinia, do you think Dodie’s psychic?’

  Lavinia burst out laughing. ‘I don’t know what to think. I’m not really into hocus-pocus, that kind of thing, if you know what I mean. But for what it’s worth, my mother is absolutely certain she is, and so is Dad.’

  ‘I see. You know, I have a feeling that Verity is a believer, too.’

  ‘Oh yes, I agree. Course she is.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It was the juvenile writings of the Brontës which Katie found fascinating. After a full tour of Haworth Parsonage, where they had grown up, she lingered in the parlour. Xenia was with her, and the two of them stood looking down at manuscripts penned by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and their brother, Branwell.

  Known as the Juvenilia, these particular manuscripts were housed in glass cases, and to Katie one of the most remarkable things about them was their size. None of them was any bigger than a standard matchbox; the tiny pages, handstitched together by the Brontës, were about three inches in size, and the handwriting on the pages was minuscule. In fact, it wasn’t really handwriting at all, but tiny print-writing, which the Brontë children had adopted in order to make their manuscripts look more like real printed books.

  ‘How extraordinary they are,’ Katie murmured, leaning closer to the glass case in order to see them better.

  ‘Listen, when Mrs Gaskell, Charlotte’s friend and biographer, first held them in her hand, she was astonished, truly startled that the children’s imagination had been the source for the material in them. Later she wrote that they gave one the idea of creative power carried to the verge of insanity,’ Xenia said. ‘And from what I’ve read about the Brontës, the imaginary world of Angria did become the centre of interest for Charlotte and her siblings for a long time. She was the driving force behind all of them and their writing, by the way.’

  ‘What about Gondal? Wasn’t that important to them?’

  ‘To Emily and Anne, absolutely. You see, first came the stories of the Glasstown Confederacy, by Branwell and Charlotte. Later, all four children shared that imaginative world,’ Xenia explained. ‘Eventually it was spli
t into two separate entities…one they called the kingdom of Angria, the other the kingdom of Gondal. Emily and Anne took Gondal for themselves, and many of Emily’s great poems, written later, are Gondal poetry.’

  ‘I see. But for the most part, I’ve noticed only Angrian material here in the museum. Weren’t there many Gondal stories, or more of the little books?’

  ‘I believe there were, but they were penned in later years by Emily and Anne, although Anne began to lose interest before Emily did. The story goes that Charlotte destroyed the manuscripts after Emily’s death.’

  ‘But why?’ Katie exclaimed, sounding puzzled. ‘Was Charlotte jealous of her sister’s greatness as a writer, do you think?’

  Xenia shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. On the other hand, how will we ever really know the truth? The theory put forward by scholars and experts on the Brontës is that Charlotte was only following Emily’s wishes, her overriding desire for privacy. Charlotte believed Emily wrote only for herself, and didn’t want anything read by others, especially strangers, i.e. the public.’

  Katie murmured, ‘What you’re saying is that she wrote because she had to, in order to be fulfilled as a human being.’

  ‘Exactly. She remains a tantalizing figure, mysterious and mystical. Emily was driven by her own demons…She’s one helluva part for you to play, Katie.’

  Straightening up, turning to face Xenia, Katie smiled, and nodded. ‘Oh, I know that. And the more I see of Haworth, the more I’m intrigued.’ Glancing around the parlour, she walked over to the window, stood there for a moment, her eyes resting on the graveyard. Then she sighed to herself. ‘Not much of a playground for children, was it?’

  Xenia joined her at the window, also looked out at the bleak scene, the gravestones. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But there is a little garden in the back, and Emily apparently used to take her lap desk out there, and sit and write under the shade of a tree. It seems she didn’t like to stray far from Haworth…this house, the garden, and the moors. I suppose she felt safe here…secure and unafraid.’