All that went through my mind as I lost my balance and toppled forwards down the stairs. I flailed my arms, trying to catch hold of the banister, anything to help me regain my balance, but one foot landed on a step and skidded away from me, and before I could help myself I was falling, falling down, and then there was only blackness.
I look down the stairs to where I landed and I grimace, almost expecting to see myself lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom. I remember that sickening sensation of losing control, of knowing that there was no stopping what was about to happen. That feeling of falling, as if in slow motion, so that I had time to wish I could rewind time, to reverse my movements and stop at the point at which I could have swept the gown up, at which I could have changed everything.
But I did not. I fell, tumbling slowly in an ungainly cartwheel, and the only mercy is that I do not remember what happened after that.
Behind me comes a low growl, a warning vibration in the throat, and I turn. Pippin has followed me down the corridor as she usually does, and now she is backed against the wall, ears down and hackles up, her eyes bright with fear.
Under Mary’s narrow-eyed supervision, I am allowed outside at last. My first walk is up and down the terrace above the knot garden, and I gulp at the fresh air. It is cool and clean and laced with the wildness of the moors. I look up at them, rolling tantalizingly up and away beyond the estate wall in the distance, and my longing to be there must be written on my face as Mary shakes her curly head at me.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ she says with a mock glare. ‘You’ll get there, Kate, I promise, but not yet. You must be patient. Stay on the terrace for now, then you can walk along paths, but we need to be sure that you’re completely steady before you can try walking on more uneven ground.’
So every day I make myself walk a little further, and I hate the fact that the smallest trip exhausts me. I spend a lot of time resting. I see Felix every day, too. That’s another thing I hate: that I can’t run around with him. I have to watch him running around with Angie and the dogs, or kicking a ball with George or Jasper. All I can do for now is read him a story.
Sometimes, though, he accompanies me on my walks. I am too slow for him, and he runs ahead with the Labradors while Pippin trails us at a wary distance. Felix loves the dogs, and teaches me how to distinguish one excitable black Labrador from another. Sheba has a grey muzzle, Felix shows me, and a barrelly waddle. Toto is all gleaming black coat and excitable muscle, and Molly, the golden retriever, is clumsy and willing.
The third Labrador is called Jago, according to Felix, and is George’s dog. The other three are apparently happy to go with anyone who will take them for a walk.
‘An’ that’s Pippin,’ Felix tells me, pointing at her. ‘She’s a clever dog. She can do tricks.’
‘Really? What does she do?’
‘She can shake hands.’
‘Do you think she’d shake hands with me?’
‘No.’ His small face closes, a door slammed, as he remembers. ‘She only shakes hands for Mummy.’
We have never again discussed the fact that Felix doesn’t believe I am his real mother, but he never calls me Mummy. I notice that. I am only ever ‘you’ or ‘she’, however hard Fiona tries to correct him. ‘She is the cat’s mother, Felix,’ she says irritably. ‘Call Mummy Mummy.’
‘Leave him,’ I say. ‘Felix and I have an agreement.’
‘What agreement?’
‘That’s between Felix and me.’
I have breakfast and lunch with Felix as well, much to Fiona and Margaret’s disapproval. I don’t think Angie likes it much either. Although nothing is ever said, she prefers to have him to herself.
I submit to eating with the rest of the Vavasours in the evening. Meals in the ornate dining room are always ridiculously formal, and the Vavasours are rigidly polite to each other, except for Margaret who is rude to everyone. The Vavasours seem to think that this is a sign of her great character. (‘Isn’t she marvellous?’) Margaret herself evidently believes that her great age, title or famous beauty, or possibly all three, entitle her to say whatever she wants, but I am appalled by the stream of spite that comes out of that still-beautiful face.
The extraordinary green eyes zoom in on the slightest blemish. Every meal is an ordeal as Margaret inspects her family critically, pointing out a spot on Philippa’s chin, a rash on George’s neck. Jasper is vilified if he has cut himself shaving, Fiona if she makes a crass mistake like wearing pearls instead of plain gold. Margaret spots instantly if you haven’t washed your hair or ironed a T-shirt, and God help you if you put on an extra pound or two. Me, she despises. As she frequently informs me, I have no breeding. I think this means that I didn’t go to public school. She loathes my short hair, deciding it is ‘common’, and my wardrobe disgusts her.
The only member of the family exempt from Margaret’s special brand of invective is Felix, whom she adores uncritically. Felix, she claims, is the spitting image of his great-grandfather, the dashing Ralph Vavasour. He was a Spitfire pilot during the war, and I have heard many times already about his heroism. He was an extraordinarily handsome man. I have seen this for myself in the wedding photo that has pride of place on the piano in the yellow drawing room. Ralph and Margaret were married in 1949, and in spite of the fact that the photo is in black and white, Ralph seems to glow golden with heroic vigour, while Margaret clings to his arm looking like a fairy-tale princess, her arms full of orchids.
According to Margaret, Felix has the Vavasour golden hair, the Vavasour blue eyes, the perfect Vavasour features. My own contribution to his genetic make-up is passed over. Margaret doesn’t care that Felix is quick to learn, or that his giggle is infectious. It doesn’t matter to her that he is growing up to be open and loving and kind, that he loves dogs and books and trains and diggers. For her, it matters only that he looks the part of the next Lord Vavasour.
I wonder where it comes from, this need for physical perfection. It is as if anything less than beauty is revolting to her. She seems to have a morbid fear of the plain, or even the merely ordinary, which is why I am such an affront to her. I don’t care about Margaret’s opinion, though. I am waiting only to get stronger and to recover my memory, and then I will have to take Felix away from this place.
He needs to recognize me, too, I understand that, but I am certain that his memory of me is bound up with my memory of him: remembering will change everything. Then, I think, there will be no room in my head for Isabel, whose memories, real or invented, trouble me with an increasing urgency. I didn’t mind so much when her life was happy, but her mood is darkening. The baby was lost, I know, although I cannot tell what happened in detail. The bone-deep sadness pressing against the back of my mind tells me everything I need to know.
There is something wrong with the house, I have decided. Something disquieting about the way the past seems to crowd up behind me. I am constantly turning, expecting to see someone behind me, only to find myself staring at an empty doorway or a smirking portrait. Walking along the long corridors, I have the unpleasant sensation that someone is waiting, breathing, behind each closed door.
At night, I lie awake, listening to sounds that might or might not be soft footfalls. I find myself straining to listen at the far edges of my hearing. Is that a whisper, or the breeze stirring a curtain? The wind keening around the chimneys or a scream echoing through the ages? It is as if the house is imprinted with heat from bodies long gone, bodies that have left a warp in the air, a tiny kink that throws every room very slightly out of kilter.
Isabel or no Isabel, this is not a good place for Felix to grow up, of that I am sure. I am frustrated that I haven’t remembered more of my own life, but in the meantime, I push myself physically as far as I dare. There is nothing I can point to and say: There is the danger, but a sense of foreboding is hunkered down in the pit of my stomach and I can’t shake the conviction that I need to be able to take Felix by the hand and run if necessary.
&nbs
p; Just when it seems that this June is going to be the dreariest on record, the sun comes out. I never pull the curtains in my bedroom – I feel suffocated when they are closed – and I wake early to a golden light pouring in through the window and a swelling sense of possibility. Today, I decide, I am going to walk as far as the stables. It is further than I have been before but it will be worth the effort to be with horses again.
The dew is still deep when I let myself out of the house. Tiny diamond drops bead a cobweb that stretches between two bay trees. It trembles and glitters in the light, as fragile and exquisite as my memories of a life I should not be able to remember at all.
A life that I am not remembering any more, I tell myself sternly. It is several days since I recalled tumbling down the stairs and I am beginning to let myself believe that the whole episode, whatever it was, is over.
Outside, it is cooler than I thought, and I zip up my hoodie, pulling it closer around me as I take deep breaths of the clear, silvery air. It smells deliciously clean, of the new growth budding and unfurling all around me, green upon green. It feels good to be outside, away from the house with its sad, sly shadows and secretive sounds, where time seems to waver and voices trail off into a silence seething with words unsaid. I take a firmer grip of my stick and head for the stables.
I am almost there before I realize that nobody has told me the way.
The stables are large and well kept and I count four horses and an old pony in one, three hunters in the other. They are all subtly different from Blanche, but their blowy sighs, their huffs and whickers, are familiar. I greet them one by one, running my hand over their glossy necks, scratching under their forelocks and whispering foolishness in their twitchy ears as they dip their heads to find the treats in my palm. It is amazingly comforting to lean against their massive shoulders, to breathe in the smell of horse and leather, to feel the flex of powerful muscles as they shift their hooves in the straw, and my thoughts settle slowly, just as they always did when the stable was my first refuge.
When George finds me in there, my first instinct is to hide. I don’t really want to talk to anyone and George is always a bit of an effort. He is nice enough, but a bit ponderous, and he makes heavy weather of conversations. I am surprised he hasn’t married already. He is so traditional that I would have thought marriage to a nice girl who rode and liked Labradors would be the obvious next step, but now I come to think of it, George never mentions women. I wonder if he even notices Angie, sometimes. He is always faintly awkward with me. I can’t decide if he is shy, if the whole situation around my accident and memory loss is too uncomfortable for him to deal with, or if he just disapproves of me.
But I don’t want him to catch me skulking behind a horse, so I step out. ‘Hello, George.’
‘Kate!’ George’s blue eyes bulge in astonishment. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see the stables. I thought the horses might help me remember.’ I reach up to pat the neck of the hunter which has been nibbling at my hoodie. ‘It hasn’t worked, has it? But it’s lovely to see you again, anyway,’ I tell it.
‘But . . .’ George is still goggling at me. ‘But you’re terrified of horses!’
‘No, I’m not,’ I start to protest, only to stop when I remember Philippa’s incredulous face. You? Riding?
‘You’d never have come in here before!’
I caress the hunter’s handsome nose and feel his long lips questing hopefully for another treat. I can’t imagine being frightened of him.
‘Well, falling from the tower seems to have cured my phobia,’ I say, ducking to step under the horse’s head and out of the loose box. I’m not going to try to explain how much I remember of riding up on the moors. ‘A bit drastic, but hey, if it works . . .’
George hates it when I mention my accident. Philippa is the only one who will acknowledge what happened. The rest of them would prefer to forget all about it. Ironic, really. They should try losing their memory and see how lost and lonely it makes them feel. They wouldn’t be so keen to forget then.
Chapter Eighteen
Uncertain how to respond, George colours and his eyes bounce around the stable, avoiding mine, until I take pity on him and change the subject. ‘Are you going for a ride?’
George goes positively pink with relief. ‘I haven’t got time today. I just stopped in to say hello to my girl here.’ He runs an affectionate hand over the bay. ‘This is Jinty.’
I can’t help warming to him as the horse nuzzles his shoulder. It’s hard to think badly of a man whose horse loves him. ‘She’s lovely,’ I say with a smile.
George’s flush deepens. ‘Kate,’ he begins, only to swing round as Angie’s voice calls from the stable yard. ‘George? Helloooo . . .’
A moment later, she appears in the stable. ‘I thought I’d find you in here – oh!’ Just for a second, her expression freezes at the sight of me, and then she smiles. ‘Kate! Hello! Goodness, I never expected to see you in a stable.’
I’m getting a bit fed up of being told how much I dislike horses. I just can’t imagine being scared of them.
‘I thought I’d walk a bit further today, that’s all.’
‘You must be getting better if you’ve walked this far,’ Angie says. ‘Felix will be happy about that.’ She sounds so delighted at the prospect that I decide I must have imagined her expression earlier. ‘But you mustn’t push yourself too far too soon, Kate. Felix is with Jo, by the way,’ she adds with a little laugh. ‘I haven’t abandoned him!’
‘I didn’t think that you had,’ I say, unable to keep the dryness from my voice. Sometimes Angie’s devotion to Felix can be a bit cloying.
I glance between her and George. Whether I imagined her hesitation or not, it would be tactful to take myself out of the way. ‘You were looking for George,’ I prompt her.
‘I just need a quick word.’ She flashes me a grateful smile. ‘The forestry contractors have been trying to track you down,’ she tells him. ‘They finally got hold of Lord Vavasour at the house, and I said I’d run down and pass on the message. They need a date for thinning the West Woods. When do you want them to start? If you’re busy this morning I can ring them back,’ she adds.
‘You go on,’ I say as George hesitates. ‘I’m going to head back to the house now anyway.’
He frowns. ‘I was going to offer you a lift. I’ve got my car here.’
My leg is aching and I’m wondering if I may have pushed myself too far already, so a lift would save me the walk back, but I find myself glancing at Angie. She doesn’t say anything and she’s still smiling brightly, but I’m sure she wants George to herself.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘I’ll leave you two to it.’
We’ve been heading out into the stable yard, and I pause in the doorway, blinking at the brightness after the dimness of the stable, just as Philippa rides in. Dismounting, she greets George and Angie in her usual brusque manner, and her eyebrows shoot up at the sight of me.
‘Look who’s here,’ Angie says unnecessarily.
‘It’s amazing what falling off a tower can do for you,’ I say before Philippa can exclaim at my fear of horses, and she grins.
‘So it seems.’
‘Perhaps Philippa could give Kate a lift back to the house?’ Angie suggests.
She gets us all organized. I am to sit on a feed bin and rest my leg until Philippa is ready, while Angie and George head off to the estate office. ‘You don’t mind waiting, do you, Kate?’
I hate being so dependent on everyone, but what can I say? ‘Of course not. If that’s okay with Philippa?’
Philippa is unfastening the girth. ‘Fine by me,’ she says with a careless hunch of one shoulder.
‘You know, I really can walk,’ I say to her when Angie and George have gone and she has stabled her horse. ‘You must have lots to do.’ I’m not entirely sure what Philippa does, but she seems to spend a lot of time at the stables.
‘Nothing that can’t wait,’ sh
e grunts. ‘I’ve had my orders from Angie, so I’d better do as I’m told.’
There is no mistaking the edge to her voice. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you took orders from anyone,’ I say, carefully neutral. Philippa is the first Vavasour not to automatically describe Angie as ‘marvellous’.
‘Angie’s done a great job of making herself indispensable,’ Philippa says, digging around in her pockets for her car key. ‘Beneath that helpful, super-super-nice exterior, Angie knows exactly what she’s doing, if you ask me. And now we’re all so used to Angie stepping in and sorting out any little problems that we’ve forgotten how to do anything ourselves. She’s always down at the estate office. George might be estate manager in principle, but I reckon it’s Angie who runs things down there.’
‘I wondered if they might be . . .’ I trail off suggestively. ‘You know.’
‘George and Angie?’ Philippa gives a harsh bark of laughter. ‘I don’t think so!’
‘Why not? I’d have thought they would have made a great couple.’
‘I’m sure Angie would agree with you, but it’s a very long way from the Lodge to the Hall.’
I wince at the dismissive note in Philippa’s voice. I can’t help thinking about Angie dressing up in her grandmother’s shoes and pretending to be Lady Vavasour. Thank you so much for coming.
‘Besides,’ Philippa goes on, ‘there’s the little matter of George being in love with someone else.’
‘Really?’ It’s news to me. I’ve never heard George mention another woman. I limp over to the Land Rover. ‘Who?’
Philippa rolls her eyes as she opens the door for me. ‘You, of course.’
‘Me?’ My jaw drops and I stare at her. ‘No!’
‘I thought you knew,’ she says. ‘You were always pretty good at picking up on signals.’
‘It never crossed my mind!’ I bite my lip. I wish I didn’t know now. ‘Why on earth would George be interested in me?’ I ask when Philippa has helped me into the seat and jumped in herself. I’m a widow with a small son who doesn’t belong in the country, and while I’m not plain, I’m not nearly as pretty as Angie, for instance.
House of Shadows Page 17