Lost in the memory, I have been standing in the bay window, my hand spread on the glass, but now I turn and look at the long gallery. It is very strange, this feeling of seeing the room as it is now overlaid with an image of how it was then. How is it possible that I can remember it so clearly?
Confabulation, Oliver Raine called it, a fantasy I am creating to account for the gaps in my memory. But these memories account for nothing. They make no sense at all. Instead, they confuse me even more. I shouldn’t be able to remember a club-footed maid, a friend with a sweet face and subtle reprimand behind her smile, but I do.
To check, I retrieve my stick and walk along the gallery to open another door. This is where Jennet brought the cakes. I remember the fireplace and the window overlooking the garden. The room is still hung with tapestries, although they are so faded now you can barely see the figures. When Judith admired them, they were cheerfully coloured. Now they seem tired and grey. This is how the present seems to me, I realize, while the past is bright and clear.
There is a panel by the fireplace. The Parlour, it says, and it talks about the tapestries and the furnishings. Clearly this is one of the rooms open to the public, but it isn’t one the Vavasours use. It has an empty, unlived-in feel to it. This is not how I remember it, with bright cushions on the chairs and carpets on the chests, with a jug of daisies on the windowsill, and Edmund’s dogs lying in front of the fire. It used to be a comfortable room, and I would sit here often with Edmund in the evening. The parlour was panelled by Edmund’s father just before he died, and I remember the resiny tang of new wood that still lurked in the air.
It is long gone. The glowing wood is dark now and overlaid with centuries of smoke, and the room smells fusty and old. It is a museum, not a place to warm your backside in front of the fire, or play cards by candlelight.
I turn. The carved stone mantelpiece is the same, and clear as day, I see Judith running her finger along it. She didn’t say anything, but a tiny crease appeared between her brows.
‘The maids are busy at this time of year,’ I said defensively.
‘Dear Isabel, I am not criticizing. You have much to do here, and now that you are with child . . . well, perhaps I can be of help to you.’
What had we done then? I frown in an effort of memory. I think I must have shown her the house. I had been looking forward so much to Judith’s arrival and I couldn’t help feeling deflated, but I seem to remember she was lavish in her praise, so I must have recovered my spirits. I know I showed her the great chamber where I slept in the bed with Edmund. I remember how she gasped at her first sight of it.
I had never paid much attention to the chamber before. To me, it was a place of pleasure, a place where Edmund and I rode the beast of desire, a place of laughter and of love. I had barely noticed the intricately carved bedposts or the heavily embroidered curtains I insisted were tied back because I could not bear the thought of being shut in. I had eyes only for my husband.
But now I looked and saw it through Judith’s eyes: the rich colours, the sumptuous tapestries covering the wainscot, the carved chests where I kept the fine gowns I hardly ever wore, being so much happier in my old frizado kirtle. There was a chair with embroidered cushions by the fire, and more cushions at the window where I sometimes sat and pouted at the rain when it was too wet to ride. And in the middle of the room, the great bed, hung with red silk, and covered with an embroidered coverlet.
Judith put a hand on it and pushed, testing the softness of the feather bed beneath. She fingered the curtains, rubbing the silk between her fingers, tracing the pattern of gold threads. ‘Oh, Isabel,’ she said, and there was a yearning in her voice I had never heard before. ‘To think that this is all yours!’
‘I am fortunate, I know,’ I said.
‘Fortunate indeed!’ Judith laughed and bounced up on the bed and her eyes sparkled. It was as if we were girls again, and the momentary unease dissolved as I laughed with her. ‘And I am fortunate to have you for a friend,’ she said with a happy sigh. ‘I can see I am going to be so comfortable here. I vow, if I could find a way to take your place I would,’ she jested.
I laughed. ‘You would not feel so envious if you had to spend the morning heaving over a chamber pot! Joan says the sickness will pass once the babe settles, but it has not happened yet.’
‘Who is Joan?’
‘She was Edmund’s nurse, and lives at Askerby still. She is a wise woman with all manner of remedies,’ I told Judith. Joan was a fat, motherly woman who treated Edmund as if he was barely breeched, and who liked to tell me tales of his childhood. For all her garrulous stories I had found her to be kind and wise indeed when anyone in the household fell sick of a rheum or a cough, and when Edmund had toothache, only Joan could help.
‘Isabel!’ On the bed, Judith’s look of girlish mischief evaporated and she sounded shocked. ‘You are not taking advice from a wise woman?’ Her voice dropped to a horrified hush. ‘What if she is a witch?’
‘Joan is no witch,’ I said scornfully.
‘How do you know? These women conceal their true natures. Has she given you anything for the babe?’
I rolled my eyes in a way that would have had my aunt rapping my knuckles. ‘A decoction to stay the vomiting, that is all.’
Judith jumped off the bed, all briskness. ‘You must stop taking it at once. I will make you a remedy of my own. At least that way you can be sure that no harm is intended to the babe.’
‘But I feel well,’ I protested as she bustled over to me and put her arm around my waist.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ she said. ‘I see it is as well I came,’ she added with a smile. ‘You do not need to concern yourself with anything, Isabel. I am here to look after you now.’
I have lunch on a tray in my room, and Fiona offers to send another up for supper, but I have had enough rest. I’m tired of thinking about Isabel and Judith and what those memories mean, tired of remembering how Pippin growled at me. I need distraction, company, some semblance of normality.
‘I’d like to eat with you, if I may,’ I say.
‘Of course,’ Fiona says pleasantly. ‘I’ll ask George to come and help you down the stairs. We usually gather for a drink in the yellow drawing room at six-thirty and eat a bit later.’
I don’t like the idea of being escorted, but I got hopelessly lost this morning while I was looking for the kitchen. One of the guides found me in the end and made me sit down while she went to find Fiona, who promptly brought me back to my room and told me I should rest. I would have liked to see Felix again, but Fiona thinks he is still too upset after yesterday, and I feel duly chastened.
The yellow drawing room sounds very posh. ‘Will I be okay as I am?’
Fiona’s eyes rest for a crushing moment on my hoodie and jeans. ‘We usually change, but you mustn’t think you need to be formal.’
Oh. Clearly I won’t be okay as I am.
I find another long skirt patterned in grey and purple and brown, the colours of the heather but washed out and mothy pale, and a short crocheted jumper. I don’t have anything more formal in my wardrobe, anyway. If I’ve ever attended a hunt ball or any of the charity receptions Angie seems to organize, I must have borrowed a dress.
There are some cosmetics on the dressing table, so I am clearly not that minimalist. My face in the mirror is wan, and I pick up the blusher, but the brush feels awkward in my hand. I end up looking like one of those Russian dolls, with blobs of bright colour high on my cheeks which only exacerbate my pallor and the shadows under my eyes. It is not a good look and I rub them off with a tissue, settling in the end for just ruffling my short hair. It is growing back into a pixie cut. ‘Very chic,’ Angie assured me in hospital, although she was clearly being kind. I don’t look chic, I look haunted.
My mind trips over the word, just as it did over ghost, and I swivel round on the dressing-table stool, unable to look at my reflection any longer. I have decided: for reasons best understood by Oliver Raine, no
doubt, my mind has created an alter ego, but I am more determined than ever to keep those memories to myself. Sooner or later I must remember something of my real life, and then, presumably, I won’t need Isabel’s any longer. So when George asks me if I have remembered anything at all since my return to Askerby, I shake my head.
‘Not yet.’
He offers me his arm, but I insist on walking myself. ‘I’m supposed to be using my leg,’ I tell him, but the truth is that I don’t want to lean on him. I’m not sure why. He is a good-looking guy, and although his intellect clearly isn’t sparkling, he seems nice enough, and he is very attentive to me, irritatingly so, in fact. He hovers around, ready to grab me at the slightest hesitation, until I want to snap at him to stop fussing.
Pippin trails us along the corridor. She was waiting outside again when George knocked, but this time I ignored her as she backed away, growling. ‘I don’t know what’s got into her,’ George says. ‘She never used to be like this.’
‘It’s the stick,’ I say firmly. ‘I think it’s confusing her. I’ll leave her alone until she gets used to it.’
George tells me that the yellow drawing room is one of the rooms open to the public, but the Vavasours make a point of using it every day. ‘One of the appeals of Askerby Hall is that it’s a house that is still lived in,’ he says. ‘Of course we have private quarters, but we do use most of the rooms in the house, apart from those that we’ve tried to preserve with the original furniture, like the parlour and the great chamber.’
The yellow drawing room is not what you would call cosy. Three great chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Two sets of ornate sofas upholstered in a pale yellow face each other, divided by a large lacquered table. Various chairs with spindly gilt legs are dotted around, and framed family photographs are artfully posed on the highly polished side tables. The walls are papered with yellow chintz, and swagged and tasselled curtains frame the great windows. I can see that it’s a beautiful room, but it’s not one where you can loll around and put your feet up. I am hopelessly out of place in my vaguely boho outfit.
I am not the only one who thinks so. Margaret Vavasour is sitting on one of the sofas, and she looks me up and down with distaste when I come in with George. I remember seeing the photograph of her that Angie showed me, but it didn’t convey the force of her presence. Her eyes may be sunken now, but their green is undimmed, and her back is as straight and her expression as imperious as when she was deb of the year. Like the room in which she sits, Margaret is beautiful but cold, and she makes no effort to disguise the contemptuous sideways twist of her mouth as she registers my skirt and crocheted jumper.
Like Fiona, Margaret is immaculately groomed. It might be June, but inside the house it is cool and Margaret is wearing a fawn cashmere twinset and a soft tweed skirt. A twist of pearls gleams at her throat and there are more pearls in her ears, and great jewels on fingers swollen and twisted with arthritis, the only part of her that concedes her age.
‘Ah, here’s Kate,’ Jasper booms as George and I appear in the doorway. ‘Come on in and I’ll get you a drink.’
‘Come and sit next to Granny,’ George says, steering me over.
Granny. It’s a cosy word that doesn’t fit Margaret Vavasour. There’s certainly nothing warm about the way she inclines her head. The other Vavasours are all watching anxiously. I wonder if I am usually as intimidated by her as the others seem to be.
I can’t be sure, but I feel that I am not. So I ignore the chilliness of her greeting and make no apology for my appearance but bend instead to pat the dogs who push forward, oblivious to the glacial atmosphere. There are three black Labradors, one grey-muzzled and wheezing, and a golden retriever, all wagging their hindquarters and shoving wet noses into my hand. Only Pippin hangs back. She has followed us into the room and out of the corner of my eye I see that she is crouched by the door, ready to run if she has to, her ears flattened and her eyes fixed on me.
Jasper gives me a gin and tonic with a tired sliver of lemon floating in it. Is this what I like to drink? When I take a cautious sip I discover that the tonic is flat and warm.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks me, when it is clear his mother is not going to acknowledge that I’ve been in hospital, but I notice that he glances at her first as if seeking permission to speak.
I would like to say that I feel overwhelmed and confused and very tired, but with Margaret’s challenging gaze on me, I put up my chin and say that I am fine.
Chapter Fourteen
‘They tell me you’ve lost your memory,’ Margaret says in a cut-glass accent that belongs back in the forties.
Her dislike is a tangible thing. I can feel it poking and prodding at my clothes, my face, my accent.
I am determined not to let her discompose me, so I keep my voice level as I sip my tepid gin. ‘Yes. I don’t remember anything before I woke up in hospital.’
‘Convenient.’
‘Mother . . .’ Joanna says in a low voice, and I glance at her.
George’s mother came to visit me a couple of times in hospital, I remember, but she didn’t make a great impression. She looks very like her brother, Jasper, with the same slightly frayed good looks, the same indecisive air. She has none of her mother’s beauty or presence. There is discontent in the lines bracketed around her mouth, in the sullen downturn of her lips, that are so like Philippa’s.
Margaret glares at her daughter. ‘Why should we all dance around Kate and pretend that she hasn’t put us all to a great deal of trouble?’
‘She’s been in hospital,’ says Jasper uncomfortably.
‘Yes, and whose fault is that? If Kate chooses to jump off the roof, she should accept the consequences.’ Margaret transfers her implacable gaze to me. ‘I’ve got no patience with all this “understanding” we’re supposed to do nowadays,’ she says, her mouth twisting into a sneer at the word. ‘We all grieve for Michael, but where would we be if we all tried to kill ourselves the moment we were sad? Do you think that we didn’t lose people we loved in the war? That I don’t still miss Ralph?’ For the first time her voice quavers and I can hear that she is an old lady after all. ‘He was my husband for twenty-two years, but I didn’t jump off a roof to get some sympathy.’
There is an awkward silence. Oddly, I don’t feel hurt by Margaret’s attack. At least she is telling me how she feels rather than letting me grope around for a sense of who I am.
‘Is that why I jumped?’ I ask. ‘Because I was distraught about Michael’s death?’ It just doesn’t feel right to me, but what do I know? I don’t remember Michael or how I felt. I don’t remember standing on that roof and deciding that I couldn’t go on. I only remember tumbling and terror and the ground opening up like a great maw to seize me.
‘I can’t think what else you had to be unhappy about.’ Margaret lifts her glass to her lips and the huge emerald on her finger flashes. It reminds me of the way the house seemed to be sending me a message, and I look away. ‘You have a healthy son, who will inherit the title and the estate when Jasper dies. You have the support of the family and a beautiful home in which to live. You have no need to work. But no, that wasn’t enough for you! You have to have a breakdown, and start gibbering about those bones that were dug up.’
‘What bones?’ I look at Fiona. ‘What breakdown?’
But Margaret hasn’t finished. ‘Everybody falls over themselves because you’re the grieving widow. Pah! There was a time when people had courage,’ she says. ‘We put up with what we couldn’t change. We didn’t fall apart the moment things didn’t go our way. God knows what everything thinks of the Vavasours now,’ she says. ‘We used to be a family who knew how to behave!’
‘What breakdown?’ I ask again.
‘I knew the moment Michael first brought you to Askerby that you were going to be trouble,’ Margaret says. ‘Sometimes I think it’s just as well he died when he did.’
Fiona flinches.
‘Mother!’ Jasper protests into the shocked sil
ence.
‘Well, can you really see Kate as Lady Vavasour?’ Margaret demands, waving her glass at me. ‘She’s got no idea of how to dress and no idea of how to behave, and we don’t know anything about her family. She could be anybody. And now she’s brought weakness of character into the Vavasour line, if not outright madness.’
‘Madness?’ This time the sharpness of my tone gets through to her. ‘What was I doing?’
‘I don’t think this is a suitable topic of conversation,’ Fiona starts, but I ignore her. I meet Margaret’s cold green eyes.
‘I want to know,’ I say.
‘You were gibbering about ghosts and all sorts of rubbish.’
‘Ghosts?’ It is like a breath on the back of my neck and my skin twitches in an instinctive shiver that I try to disguise by moving my shoulders restlessly. I look at the others. ‘Nobody told me anything about this.’
‘It’s true, you were behaving a little erratically in the few weeks before you . . . fell,’ says Fiona, ‘but we hoped the accident would have cured you of all that. There seemed little point in dragging it up when you didn’t remember it anyway. Losing your memory must be very difficult, but it does allow you to make a fresh start.’
‘You had a bee in your bonnet about the body that was found under the Visitor Centre. We might as well tell her,’ Philippa says when Jasper tries to shush her. ‘She’ll only ask someone else otherwise.’ She turns back to me. ‘When they dug the foundations for the Visitor Centre last year, they unearthed a load of old bones. There’d been a seventeenth-century building there before, a dairy or something, so we knew it wasn’t a modern body and we called in the archaeologists.’
Something is stirring in the back of my mind. I frown, trying to fix the images that are wavering: an excavator, its massive treads glutinous with mud; its bucket, lowered almost reverently; bones, stained brown with age; and a wave of horror enveloping me. Am I remembering, or imagining? It is so hard to tell.
Philippa waits for a moment, but when I say nothing, she goes on. ‘It turns out the bones had been buried in a peaty hollow that had preserved them. They’ve been taken away for forensic analysis now, but the archaeologists reckon they were at least four hundred years old. Of course, that tied in with the legend of Askerby’s ghost, who’s supposed to be a Tudor serving girl who got pregnant by some rapacious Lord Vavasour and committed suicide, and you latched onto that and decided that proved the ghost was a real person. You got a bit obsessed, to be honest, and kept insisting that the ghost wasn’t a servant at all but an early Lady Vavasour.’
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