Dosia’s photos are like my memories. They are just moments preserved in time, captured because somebody happened to have a camera. But why this moment and not the next, or the one before? They lie jumbled on the table just as the memories jumble in my head, apparently unconnected. I want to gather them up, find the missing pictures, and put them all in a clear order. Then, I think, I will be able to make sense of everything. But perhaps I want the impossible? Perhaps no one can ever make sense of it all? All we can do is work with what we have, and fill in the gaps as best we can. I will never remember absolutely everything of my life, I realize. If I did, my head would simply explode. So I will have to carry on picking my way between the memories that belong to me, and those that seem to belong to Isabel.
‘Dosia, may I take some of these photos to copy?’ I ask, remembering my task. ‘I will take great care and bring them back. I’d like to include some in an exhibition so that people can see what life at Askerby was like after the war. This one, for instance,’ I say, pulling out a photo of children on bicycles in front of the Hall. ‘Or this one.’ It is one of Peter when he was the gamekeeper, a job that kept him out of the way of gasps and pointing fingers.
‘You want to put up a photo of Peter?’ There is an odd note in Dosia’s voice.
‘He belonged to Askerby, too.’
Dosia looks out of the window, to the place where Ralph Vavasour once made her stand to have her photo taken. ‘Yes, you’re right, he did.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
I think about Dosia and Ralph as I walk back up the avenue. I am sure that I am right about them having an affair. It explains the unacknowledged tension between the Hall and the Lodge, and that feeling I have that behind the polished facade presented to the public lies something out of true.
Did Margaret know? Is that why she is so bitter? She talks about Ralph all the time, but she wouldn’t be the first woman to turn her husband into a saint after he has died, to sweep all the hurt and humiliation under the carpet and pretend that her marriage was everything she had wanted it to be.
We know our history. Wasn’t that what Joanna said? But the Vavasours only know what they want to know. For them, all that matters is the Hall and that it is safely passed from father to son. For the Vavasours, it’s not about feelings, it’s about show. They’re not interested in the unmarried daughter pasting snippets from the outside world they will never experience into a scrapbook or a heartbroken mother writing news of a son’s death.
Or a man in love with his best friend’s wife.
Did Adam know? Was it betrayal that wiped that blazing grin from his face, not the anticlimax of peace? I wonder what it was like for Dosia when Peter was born, and whether his terrible disfigurement had seemed like a punishment for adultery. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t his fault. Did she feel guilty, or did she love him all the more because of whose son he was?
I imagine her playing with him, the way I used to play with Kit.
No, wait . . . My steps slow. That’s wrong. I should be thinking about playing with Felix. But I can’t help it, it is Kit I remember.
My Kit. I used to play with him in the nursery while Meg looked on jealously. She would much rather I stuck to my business of being the lady of the house, so that she could keep Kit all to herself, and we had an unspoken rivalry for his attention. He was such a dear child, plump and gurgly and giggly, with Edmund’s blue eyes. I loved to be there when Meg unswaddled him to wash him and change his soiled clouts. He had little rolls of fat around his wrists, and at his neck, and when I blew kisses on his stomach he would squeal with laughter and kick his legs in delight. He liked me to carry him around the nursery making clip-clop noises and jolting him as if we were trotting.
‘Look how he loves to ride, Meg!’ I would cry gaily. ‘Your pappa will buy you a pony and we will take you up onto the moors with us, sweeting.’
Meg would shake her head and tut and tuck in the corners of her mouth disapprovingly, but many times I saw her tickle him and give him a kiss when she thought no one was looking. I think she loved Kit nearly as much as I did.
Kit. My son. I ache for him and for Edmund with a savage, bone-deep need, and my steps falter as loneliness and longing sweep over me like a great, rolling wave and I actually stagger under the force of it. The tears are burning in my throat. I have to stop and press the back of my hand against my mouth while I struggle free of Isabel’s grief and yearning and remind myself that I am Kate, that my son is playing happily at school in the village. I know where he is, that he is safe.
The temptation to head back to the school, to burst into his classroom and hold him tight, is so strong that I am on the point of turning before I remember that Felix would push me away. As far as he is concerned, I am still a stranger masquerading as his mother. It probably wouldn’t go down very well with the teachers either. They can’t have parents interrupting classes to grab their children and reassure themselves that they are alive. I can just imagine the phone call to Fiona: Felix’s mother seems a little overwrought.
I cannot hold him yet, but at least I can be with him and know that he is safe. It is Isabel who is searching so desperately for her son. She needs to know what happened to him. I will have to look harder in the archive. He was Edmund’s son. If he survived infancy and grew to adulthood, he would have been Lord Vavasour.
I strain for a memory of Kit as a boy, or grown up, but all I have are images of him as a baby, grabbing at my cap with his fat little hands, bumping his head against mine as he learns how to kiss. A slow dread is stealing through me, trickling icily in my gut. What if Kit never grew up? There were so many ways a child could die then: the pox, a fever, a fall.
No, it cannot be! Not Kit, not my son.
I struggle to disentangle my thoughts from Isabel’s. I must think clearly. There must be something somewhere in the records about him. There must be.
I won’t let myself consider that there will be nothing to find because Isabel and Kit never existed. I don’t want to believe that, out of everything I could have remembered, all I retained was a memory of Edmund’s tomb and that I have created a whole world around it.
It is easier to believe that Isabel’s spirit is part of me, somehow. It should be more frightening, but instead it feels true.
‘Kate?’
Deep in thought, I have only vaguely registered that someone has been walking towards me down the avenue. Most visitors take the path that leads from the car park to the Hall and it’s rare to encounter anyone heading into the village on foot.
When I hear my name, my heart plunges. I’m wrapped up in my memories of Kit and Edmund; I don’t want to leave the past to deal with the present, but the man has stopped, and he knows my name. I can’t walk past the way I wish I could.
Biting my lip, I look up, but the face is blurred behind my tears. Desperately, I blink them away and look again. The man is dark and solid rather than tall. He has big features balanced by horn-rimmed glasses, and a humorous face. There is something familiar about him, and my breath stumbles.
‘Kate,’ he says again on a breath, and then stops as if unsure what to say next. ‘You don’t know who I am, right? Crap, this is awkward.’ He blows out a sigh and drags a hand through his hair, knocking his glasses askew. He straightens them. ‘I guess I should introduce myself? I’m Matt Chandler.’
He holds out a hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, I take it. A tiny tingle of recognition zips up my arm and vanishes.
Matt Chandler. I know who he is now. I have seen his face before.
‘I know,’ I say, moistening my lips. ‘I looked you up on Google when I read your email, but I’m sorry, I don’t remember you.’ I don’t, but there is a very faint buzz under my skin, as if my body does.
There is a tiny pause. ‘It must have been weird to get an email from a total stranger,’ Matt says at last, and I smile a little, thinking about my jumbled memories and the driving need I feel to find a child who was born over four hundred years ago.
‘Everything’s been weird lately,’ I tell him.
‘I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you, Kate. I just wish I’d known.’ He lifts his hands helplessly and lets them drop. ‘There’s so much I want to say to you, but the hell if I know where to start!’
I have been studying him furtively. He has a nice mouth, thin-lipped but mobile, and there are creases in his cheeks as if he smiles a lot. His handshake was warm and firm, and the thought that his hands have been on my flesh sets up a fine vibration deep inside me. He is a stranger who knows me intimately. He knows how I taste, how I feel. He knows me better than I know myself.
I clear my throat. ‘I didn’t know what to say when I wrote to you. I wasn’t sure if you would come or not.’
‘When you told me you’d been in an accident, I couldn’t not come,’ Matt says. ‘I’ve rented a cottage in the village, and got here last night.’ He jerks his head in the direction of the Hall behind him. ‘I went straight up to try to see you this morning, but you’d gone out. I got Lady Vavasour instead, who told me that it would be “unhelpful” if I contacted you again.’ He mimics Fiona’s voice with uncanny accuracy, and the corner of his mouth quirks in a smile that for one jolting moment looks so like Edmund’s that I suck in a sharp breath. ‘I’ve had warmer welcomes digging a pizza out of the freezer.’
I bite my lip. ‘I’m sorry.’
I’m not sure how I feel about being confronted with Matt Chandler in the flesh, but I didn’t tell him not to come. ‘We should probably talk,’ I say, ‘but not at the Hall. Why don’t we meet later, when Felix is in bed?’
We agree to meet at the pub in the village that night. It does not go down well with the Vavasours when I tell them over dinner what I’m doing.
‘That bloody American! Why does he want to come around stirring things up again?’ Jasper demands, and Fiona’s lips thin.
‘I do think it would be most unwise if you got involved with that man again, Kate,’ she says.
‘It was stupid to get involved with him in the first place,’ Margaret snaps.
‘I’m not a prisoner here, am I?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m not asking permission,’ I say coldly. ‘I’m doing you the courtesy of telling you that I’m going out and may not be back until later.’
Outside, it is raining, a thin, seeping rain. I’m not looking forward to the walk down to the village. I’ll be soaked. I can’t wait to be able to drive again, but Mary keeps telling me I need to be patient a little while longer, so for now I’m still dependent on others.
I turn to George. If nothing else, here is an opportunity to convince him that I’m just not available. ‘George, would you give me a lift to the pub?’
But he won’t meet my eyes. ‘I’m not going to encourage you to make a fool of yourself again, Kate,’ he says.
So much for being in love with me. He doesn’t love me enough to help me.
In the end, Philippa pushes her chair back. ‘I’ll take her,’ she says roughly.
‘How do you stand it?’ I ask her in the car.
She shrugs. ‘They love Felix. They don’t want you to meet someone else and take him away from Askerby.’
‘I can’t live like this forever, Philippa. You need to help them understand that. Of course, Felix will always be their grandson and I’ll bring him for visits, but we need to have a normal life, too.’
‘Normal?’ Philippa makes that barking sound that I now realize is a laugh. ‘What’s that?’
Matt jumps to his feet when he sees me hesitate just inside the pub door, and his face blazes with an expression that both startles and warms me. For a moment I think he is going to rush over and sweep me into a hug, but he just beckons cheerfully. ‘Come on over, I’ve got us the best table.’
He gestures ironically to the table wedged in the corner of the bar by the fireplace. The Vavasour Arms has yet to be bought up and transformed into a gastropub. People come for the beer, not the food. It serves chicken and chips, scampi and chips or steak pie and chips, and a vegetarian lasagne. That’s it. The décor is basic, too, with tired old hunting prints and a worn floral carpet. A wooden bench runs around the walls, with square, scarred tables ranged at various intervals, and a selection of round stools if you fancy some company, although most of the locals are happy to sit side by side with a pint on the table in front of them.
It’s Monday, so it’s quiet. There are three men leaning at the bar. They nod politely as I pass. I’m sure they know who I am, and that news of my visit to the pub will flash around the village, but I refuse to feel guilty. I am allowed to have a drink.
Even so, I hesitate when I get to Matt. There’s an awkward moment when I wonder how to greet him. Do we kiss, or shake hands, or what? Matt solves the problem by waving me to the wooden bench. ‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’
Evidently he knows what I like better than I do, because he returns with half a Guinness, opaque and dark beneath its head of creamy foam. I look at the glass he sets before me in surprise. ‘Is this what I drink?’
‘You used to.’ Matt rubs his head ruefully. ‘Sorry, I should have asked. I think I know you, but I don’t. Do you want something else, Kate?’
I take a sip and lick the foam off my lip. The mellow, malty taste is instantly familiar. Clearly I do like it. ‘This is fine,’ I say.
After a moment, he takes the stool opposite me. He is compact and dark, with an interesting, intelligent face. He is not good-looking, certainly not in comparison to the golden Vavasours, but there is something very attractive about him all the same, something to do with the acute eyes gleaming behind his glasses, I think, or with the humorous expression that means you don’t really notice the big nose or the way his hair is receding at his temples.
He has a pint of lager on the table. ‘English beer is an acquired taste,’ he says when he sees me looking at his glass. A faint smile touches his mouth. The mouth that has kissed mine, that has pressed hot against my skin. I shift on the wooden bench. ‘You used to give me a hard time about not drinking real beer.’
‘Oh, so I’m a beer snob?’ I say lightly. ‘Good to know.’
I wrench my eyes from his mouth, and look at the table instead, but then I’m looking at the fingers wrapped around his glass and that is just as bad. Flustered, I take another sip of my Guinness. I drink wine with Angie, gin and tonic with the Vavasours, but the Guinness tastes right here. It feels more like me.
‘How are you, Kate?’ Matt asks after a while. ‘I mean, really?’
I open my mouth to tell him that I’m fine, but something else comes out instead. ‘I’m struggling,’ I hear myself say.
He nods. ‘I’ve been trying to imagine what it must be like to lose your memory. How do you know who you are if you haven’t got a past?’
‘You don’t.’ It’s easier if I don’t look at him at all. ‘It’s scary,’ I say, turning my glass between my hands. ‘Like you’re naked and everyone else is wearing clothes. They all know things about me that I don’t.’ I’m vaguely surprised that I’m talking to him like this when to all intents and purposes I’ve just met him, but it feels comfortable. It feels as though I know him already. As, clearly, I do. ‘But I’ve started to remember some things, and every little memory that slots into place helps me to remember who I am.’
Comfortable as I am talking to Matt, I decide not to tell him about the memories that don’t belong to me at all. I’m not ready to trust him that far. Not yet.
‘But you don’t remember anything about me?’ He sounds disappointed.
‘No, when I got your email, I asked my friend about you. She told me we met when you were making a movie at the Hall last year.’
Matt nods. ‘I wrote the screenplay. If you’re looking for an upside to losing your memory, forgetting you’ve seen The Tower would be a good place to start,’ he adds drily. ‘But we’ve all gotta pay the bills, right? I can’t say it ended up the most artistic mov
ie ever made, and the critics duly slammed it, but it’s been one of the surprise hits of the year, so none of us are bitching and moaning too much about the reviews.’
I like listening to him. He has one of those American accents that make you think of swing seats on a porch or syrup falling slowly from a spoon: easy, warm, relaxed, with an undercurrent of laughter that buffs away your jagged edges and leaves you ready to smile.
I understand again why I might have been attracted to him.
I shift again on the bench. ‘So . . . we were friends?’
‘Yeah . . .’ He says it on a long breath that hums with things left unsaid. ‘We got on well. I can’t say why. We just did.’
Something shimmers between us. I think it might be a memory, of warmth, of connection, but the harder I try to haul it to the front of my mind, the faster the feeling evaporates. Whatever it is, it is tightening the air and shortening my breath, and I’m aware of my pulse thudding in my ears.
There’s another silence. I turn my glass on its mat, very carefully.
‘Matt,’ I say, lifting my eyes at last. ‘Will you do something for me?’
‘Anything,’ he says without hesitation, and I can’t help comparing him with George, sullenly refusing to meet my eyes.
‘Will you tell me what I’m like? Really like? Don’t be polite,’ I add when he hesitates. ‘If I’m a bitch or lazy or whiny, I want to know. I need the truth.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
Matt nods his head slowly as if he understands, and he takes his time answering. He turns one of the beer mats round and round on the table while he thinks. Tap, tap, turn. Tap, tap, turn. It ought to be annoying, but I find it strangely soothing.
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