She and David were a childless couple. That had long since ceased to bother him but it bothered her. She knew this was why she had taken Poppy Frost under her wing, especially now that Poppy was in mourning for her great-grandmother. Netta may have been a battle-axe but her passing was bound to affect the girl, who was such a sensitive sort. She wanted so desperately to be a writer, to make a mark on the world, and they spent hours together discussing authors, particularly women authors like the Brontës and Woolf and Austen and du Maurier and Colette, Marina’s particular favorite.
She was of an age, Poppy, that she could have been her own child, if the fates had been kinder.
Chapter 7
THE LOVERS
The next day Poppy Frost and Stanley Zither sat under a tree in Prior’s Wood with a breakfast picnic of coffee and home-baked bread and butter and jam. Poppy had made the bread and preserves herself, as well as the coffee. She knew her way very well around the kitchen at home.
Their topics were the usual ones for people their age: the state of the world, the latest music, and the tiresome adults that surrounded them, Poppy’s stepmother in particular. Of course with Poppy’s great-grandmother dying, there was one less adult to complain about. Stanley was already noticing a softening in Poppy’s attitude to the old lady, which was only natural. He could barely remember the quarrels with his own mother anymore. He just missed her terribly.
“How are things at home?” he asked. He was lying stretched out on a blanket under an enormous old tree in Prior’s Wood. He liked to gaze up through the branches, his eyes half-closed against the sun’s feeble autumn warmth. The air around them was filled with dust motes that swirled and danced. His mother used to say they were fairies too small for humans to see. Stanley knew that was daft but she really had seemed to believe it so he tried to, as well.
“Much the same as always,” replied Poppy, stretched beside him with her hands behind her head. “Except that now we have all these people ringing and leaving food and writing and dropping by. Wanting to know about the funeral, you know. Wanting to talk about her ‘last hours.’”
“That must be rough.”
Poppy shrugged.
“I’m not home much—I make a point of it; I’d rather hang about the priory, talk with Lady Duxter and stuff. Marina. It’s quiet and no one bothers me there. There’s always a nook or a cranny where I can scribble in my notebook, undisturbed.”
“But you will miss her, I know.”
Poppy screwed up her face in the expression of confusion and worry that always made him want to kiss her. “I always thought she was all right,” she admitted grudgingly, at last. “Others had their problems with her. She could be a bit of an autocrat.” Seeing his puzzled look, she explained: “That means tyrant.” “Autocrat” was a word Poppy had just come across in her reading. She had made a New Year’s vow to use a new word in a sentence three times a day to be sure she’d learnt it off by heart. She wanted to be a writer one day—actually, if the dozens of notebooks she’d filled since childhood were any indication, she was already a writer. What she wanted to be was a published writer, a very different thing.
First she would go to Oxford and study the greats and later take the publishing world by storm. All before the age of twenty-five, her target goal. She wanted to be one of the wunderkinds the university was famous for producing, the sort reviewed fawningly in the newspaper book columns, and photographed looking dark and quirky and quite interesting, oftentimes with weird clothing and haircuts and lots of eye makeup behind retro eyeglasses. Sometimes they were photographed standing in the sea, as if they were contemplating suicide by drowning or perhaps just thinking of swimming to France. Whatever. She had already decided she would be photographed standing in the sea for her first jacket cover. She thought being photographed in the nude would make for a particularly arresting cover that would sell lots of books but she had the idea publishers might resist the (very good) idea.
She hadn’t decided yet if the best way to achieve all this instant acclaim requiring photographers would be to read the classics or to go straight for the moderns. But for now she collected words the way other girls collected shoes and dresses. Or boys.
Luckily, Stanley supported this vast, sprawling dream, even though he had no interest in writing and only barely understood the allure of scribbling in a notebook or staring at a computer screen all day. He wanted to read theoretical cosmology, and for that he would be going to the University of Cambridge. His own dream was to take lectures from Stephen Hawking, and his only prayer was that Hawking, having already beaten the odds many times, would live long enough to oblige him. In the meantime, Stanley played guitar in a band called the Godsforsakens, and was wise enough to realize that while the band was popular at local dances, it was unlikely this success would translate onto a larger stage, and would at best amount to a garage hobby in midlife.
Poppy, perhaps fortunately for her and for their relationship, was tone deaf. But this difference as to tastes and the physical distance between the two renowned centers of learning troubled Poppy at times. The universities were not light-years away but her interests and Stanley’s certainly were. Sometimes she wondered if they would survive the three to five years during which they would be separated, apart from the holidays. No train ran directly between the universities—one had to take the train to London and switch over, a journey that involved Paddington and King’s Cross, and which was so convoluted an excursion as to seem a deliberate ploy by both the railroads and the universities to keep their students separate, to not encourage cross-pollination of ideas or of any other sort.
“When is the funeral again?” Stanley asked.
“That hasn’t been decided. My dad is headed home to handle the details. She called him last night and I could hear them talking about it.”
Who “she” was required no explanation. “She” in a tone that dripped acid, and that was said with a particular curl of the lip, was always Poppy’s stepmother, Jane. Poppy seldom used her actual name. Personally, Stanley thought Jane was all right, but he understood that relations with a stepmother, even a good stepmother, could be fraught with opportunities for misunderstanding. Poppy’s mother had been killed by a drunk driver when she was only ten. Three years later, her father, Colin, had married Jane. Not too much later Poppy had ended up living in Hawthorne Cottage with her grandmother, Netta. That was a lot of change packed into a few short years.
Nearly everyone in the village thought she and Jane got along swimmingly, a fiction Poppy said Jane liked to encourage. Stanley thought the truth was that all stepchildren disliked their stepparents, especially when their biological parent had been taken so violently from them.
Poppy had had an extra large burden, losing her mother in that way. And her father had remarried within minutes, from Poppy’s perspective. And then he became unemployed. And then he was shipped off to a place Poppy didn’t even want to visit, let alone live. All her views of Saudi Arabia had been formed by her reading in school, and there was no question she agreed with her stepmother on this score: it was no place for a British woman used to the normal freedoms.
“Once she stopped trying to be my friend we got along all right,” Poppy once had explained to Stanley. “Better, anyway. What I couldn’t abide was her wanting to swap makeup and hairstyling tips with me like we were at some never-ending sleepover and completely ignoring the fact that her idea of makeup, what little she wears, is about a thousand years out of date. And besides, I’m not a girlie girl at all. I’m more like Jo March, if I’m like anyone. Jane keeps trying to turn me into, oh, I don’t know. Her idea of a ‘young lady.’ I am seriously tempted to cut all my hair off and sell it, like Jo did. At least then Jane would shut the fuck up about the color.”
Stanley had no idea who Jo March was, but he nodded, looking up through the tree branches at the sky with its scudding clouds, trying to imagine them into the shapes of galloping animals. It was a perfect autumn day, warm and close and blue, and
he had eaten more of the bread and butter and preserves than was good for him. It was all making him groggy. Sometimes of an afternoon Poppy would bring wine she had managed to smuggle out of the house, and then he really did have trouble staying awake. What he wanted even now was to doze off into a half sleep. Poppy had other ideas. Seeing his eyes close, she shook him awake. This conversation was important and she wanted Stanley’s input.
“I am hoping,” she said, “that once my father comes home, he’ll figure out a way he can stay. I think Jane wants that, too. You should hear her on the phone with him, all lovey dovey about how much she misses him. She’s even been learning how to cook all his favorite meals. Really, it would make a cat sick to hear her. It makes me wonder what she’s really up to.”
“Maybe she’s going to deliver an ultimatum. Tell him he must get a job in the UK. Or else.”
Poppy said, “Who, her? My stepmother? Won’t ever happen. But she has her ways. If she wants him back he’ll stay.”
Chapter 8
THE STAR
That same morning, as Poppy and Stanley were having their breakfast in Prior’s Wood, Awena was setting out for Wooton Priory, packing her knapsack with everything she would need for the day. Owen was already in the care of Tara at Goddessspell, where he would play quite happily until Max came to collect him around noontime. The shop was filled with sparkly trinkets to capture the infant eye.
“This week,” Awena was saying, wrapping a sandwich in a cloth napkin, “the only writers at the priory are me and Carville Rasmussen. He’s a crime writer. You may have heard of him? No? Oh, but he’d be crushed to hear that. He seems to thrive on publicity. It’s the very air he breathes.”
“A bit like our Frank, then,” said Max. Frank Cuthbert was a local historian who had risen to prominence with his largely fictionalized depiction of Nether Monkslip and surrounding areas, Wherefore Nether Monkslip. The book had grown from a self-published, photocopied-and-stapled pamphlet to reach the heights of the bestseller lists in London and the U.S., despite being hailed by critics as “pointless.” It continued to be available on shop bookshelves, a perennial favorite. That Frank was a relentless self-promoter had cost him more than a few friendships, a fact of which he remained blithely unaware, or perhaps, uncaring. Every villager owned a copy of the book, purchased in the desperate, futile belief that they were only required to buy the one copy and were never required actually to read it. It was rather, some said, like owning a copy of the Bible or War and Peace. But this proved a fruitless hope when Christmas rolled round and Frank besieged the villagers with suggestions that the book would make a great gift for even their most distant relatives.
“Exactly like Frank, now you come to mention it,” said Awena. “I was wondering the other day who he reminded me of. One can’t go near Carville without being offered a glossy bookmark advertising his latest book, which is always hailed as a bestselling masterpiece. I can’t imagine it, personally, but the books do seem to be everywhere you look. He writes these very modern, present tense stories: ‘She stabs him; he bleeds; she cries.’ You know the kind of thing. I think he fancies himself a sort of Hemingway figure and I’m sorry to say there is a resemblance. He’s sort of barrel-chested and has masses of wavy white hair and a beard. He likes to wear rollneck jumpers, too, like in that famous “Papa” photo, and he always carries a pipe he doesn’t seem actually to smoke, thank heaven. I don’t think he drinks a lot, either, which rather ends the comparisons.”
Max was taking an inventory of the contents of the kitchen cupboards with an eye to doing a shop that afternoon at the village general store. “We can’t be out of courgettes already; no one ever runs out of courgettes—wait, there one is. So, it’s just him at the manor house this week?”
“That’s right. Of the writers who will come up to stay at Wooton Priory for an extended period, he’s the first to arrive. It’s strange, though.”
“What?”
“Well, he’s there to write, but I’ve yet to see him writing anything. He does carry a notebook in his pocket, and what looks like a very expensive pen, but he’s always just … I don’t know. Sort of lurking about.” Awena hunched her shoulders and did a rather amusing Count Dracula imitation. Max laughed. “If he notices anyone noticing him, he goes into this sort of rapture—a thinker’s pose, as if he’s been struck dumb by some profound idea. That sounds unkind of me to say, doesn’t it? I suppose it’s just that I don’t really much care for him. But I do try.”
“Ah,” said Max. Awena was the least unkind of people, so Carville must be a real pain. “Well, you must avoid him as much as possible. I suppose with its being just him at the priory, that’s a bit tricky. He’s always around.”
She nodded. “Unlike me—I’m a day-tripper, just there for a bit of focus and to potter among the library shelves with no distractions, and relieved to come home to you and Owen in the evenings. I’ll light a candle for Carville tonight when I pray, and wish him well. It’s quite the best way to deal with people who are … well, tiresome.” She snapped shut the fastenings of the knapsack and hefted it, testing its weight. “Umph,” she said. “You’d think I’d be used to the extra weight by now, after hauling Owen about.”
“Ah,” said Max again, his mind on picking up a bottle of white wine from Mme Cuthbert’s shop. “Quite right you are, about praying for Carville. So, the following week…?”
“The following week will be a full house—I find I’ve met most of them at conferences and whatnot: A poet or two, looking rather ghastly and lost, you know. A husband-and-wife team writing about personal finance, the Blannings—handsome couple, polished, immediately forgettable, I’m afraid. A children’s book author—this one I’ve always thought was a bit of a scary person, but children seem to love his tales of vampire bats and so on. Then there will be another crime writer but, I gather, a cozier, past-tense sort of crime writer: ‘She stabbed him, but gently and with great precision, like a woman doing needlepoint. No blood was spilt on the carpet, for which the servants would be grateful.’ There will also be a former nun writing a memoir about life in the cloister. The priory will no doubt provide inspiration. Who else? There was one more. Oh, yes, how could I forget? The Major will be staying there to work on that interminable military history book of his, or whatever it is he’s been writing for yonks. I’ll be glad if I miss that, actually, because he does so like to read aloud from his work in progress during the Writers’ Square meetings, so no one else gets a lot of work done. I do feel I’ve already heard several chapters before. They never seem to change. Lord Nelson always dies a hero’s death, killed by a French sharpshooter, but he never manages to leave the stage in a grammatical way.”
Max smiled, hoping to escape meeting the poets, in particular. “It does sound like a full house.”
“And a full church—so to speak. Formerly the Priory Church of St. George and now rechristened the St. George Studio. The star crime writer will have it to himself. I’m not sure if that is fitting or a travesty, but it’s how Lord Duxter wanted things to be organized. Anyway, apart from Lord and Lady Duxter, it’s just me and Carville rattling around that big old place. Oh, and Jane Frost, of course.”
“No book reviewers this time?”
“Good heavens, no.” Awena was aghast. “No more foxes in the henhouse; Lord Duxter has learned his lesson. Writers are too sensitive. Same with the editors. No, no. You can never put all sorts together under one roof.”
* * *
Jane Frost was already in the library of the old priory. She thought of it as her treasure trove. A place full of surprises and long-lost gems, moldering with age and only awaiting loving hands to wipe the dust off and bring them into the light. The gloomy events of recent days at Hawthorne Cottage hadn’t altered her schedule. The library was her sanctuary.
Jane was in many ways a romantic, with her head in the clouds. She loved books—adored them. The feel of the bindings, the rustle of the paper, the smell of the ink. She loved learning, and ever
ything worth knowing—well, everything in the world, really—was in books. Her own mother hadn’t known what to make of her, for her mother was a pragmatic woman, both feet on the ground, a hard-working businesswoman until the day she died—too soon, when Jane was just eight. Jane had been the third of three sisters, and both her elder sisters had been stunners—spoilt and beautiful. Wisely, she had watched them, learning from them rather than giving herself over to jealousy. When she’d met Colin he’d actually been dating her older sister—until Melanie had tired of him and dropped him. Colin had been so handsome, Jane couldn’t believe her luck.
But he had wanted her, and not just on the rebound, either. Perhaps she had learned a few things from her prettier sisters, after all, about how to offset shortcomings with charm. This was something every French woman seemed to be born knowing: how to use plainness as a way to disarm, to catch people unawares, until they saw past the surface to the woman beneath.
She and her sisters were mostly raised by an aunt and her husband who had three boys already. The sister cared only about her own children and didn’t give much thought to Jane and her sisters. Hand-me-down clothes, gifts for the boys but not for the girls at Christmas. No one believed her at school when she told that story so she’d stopped telling it. If anything, the aunt may have been jealous of her own sister—seriously, not giving the orphans in the household a Christmas gift? How mean-spirited can you get? How Dickensian! So Jane escaped into books—Dickens actually was a favorite—and reading became her refuge. Her sisters were boy-mad, and only into dreaming about the clothes and makeup they couldn’t afford. Fortunately for Jane, there was a lending library in her parish where she could read all she wanted for free. Auntie couldn’t put a stop to that one pleasure, although she did try.
So Colin had been the one ray of good luck in a melancholy landscape, and Jane had thanked the gods for sending him to her. It was too bad he came equipped—she couldn’t say saddled—with a young daughter. But it could have been worse. And Poppy would be away at school soon.
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