The Soprano

by England, Sarah

  “Did you not hear me?” Marion said.

  Rosa took a deep breath, about to ask him the same question, when suddenly he decided to speak. “Alas, my sister is poorly with the flu, hence why neither she nor I could attend our dear aunt’s funeral today.”

  “Miraculously well enough for the Will-reading though, aren’t you?” said Marion.

  Snow started to hum and Vic glowered from under his brows.

  “Come on then, Caruthers,” said Marion. “Spit it out. You’re keeping us waiting with your master’s bidding and I’ve got things to do.”

  Rosa scrutinised her sister’s profile. Since when had Marion become so confident and domineering? She looked around the room, almost expecting the real Marion to appear any moment now. The only other time Marion had ever come out and fought like an alley cat was when the Danby family tried to persuade her to have Lana cared for in a home for mentally handicapped children.

  Vic knocked back the dregs of his sherry and smiled. The smile was that of a higgledy-piggledy graveyard crammed with too many headstones and went nowhere near his eyes. “Well ladies, we seem to have dispensed with manners and formalities so perhaps Mr Caruthers would indeed prefer to get on with it? Seth?”

  “The reason for your haste being?” Rosa said to the side of his face.

  He ignored her. “Seth, we may as well proceed.”

  Mr Caruthers stared first at Marion and then Rosa, long and hard over the top of his glasses, before retrieving a collection of papers from his briefcase. Pulling up a chair, he then sat down, crossed his legs and took a sip of sherry. He swallowed noisily - the Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his turkey neck - then sipped and swallowed again.

  Marion’s stare bored into him. Making us wait.

  Finally, the solicitor put down his glass and cleared his throat. “Good evening everyone and thank you for coming on such short notice. Now, many years ago as you may or may not be aware, I was instructed to issue the late Mr Aaron Danby’s Will only on the death of his wife, the late Mrs Ellen Danby, who was informed of the situation at the time of her husband’s death in 1912.”

  Snow’s humming was becoming more noticeable, the rocking a repetitive clunk on the floorboards. A few heads turned but mostly everyone remained focused on Mr Caruthers, forced as he now was to raise his voice. He eyed Snow over the top of his glasses, glanced down at his papers again, audibly sighed, then looked again at Snow. Her humming had escalated and was getting louder by the second. “Could someone take that woman out? Would it be possible?”

  About to protest, Marion’s voice was instantly quashed by Vic, who shouted for Nell. She appeared in an instant, her face pinched and pale. “Yes?”

  “Cake or biscuits for the girl? Glass of milk? Use your initiative, Woman.”

  Nell looked stricken. She glanced over at Snow, who was busy working herself up into a fit - drool oozing from the corners of her mouth, eyes rolling back in her head.

  Quite suddenly, Marion said, “Actually, I will take Lana out - don’t worry about it, Nell.” She turned to face Rosa. “Let me know exactly what he says. I can’t stand to look at him for another second, anyway.”

  “Of course.”

  Marion rushed over to Snow and pulled her to her feet, “Come on now, Lana, we’re going.”

  “He saw them. He saw them. He saw them—”

  “Shush, now…We’re going home.”

  “He saw them…”

  “Shush, it’s okay. Hold onto me… Quiet now!” With an arm around Lana’s waist, Marion was virtually pulling the girl from the room, and Rosa stared after her. Such an about turn. The temptation to go with them was immense but she told herself she ought to hear what Caruthers had to say first. Besides, Vivien was still here. It was okay.

  Night had descended almost without her noticing and shadows licked the walls. It was odd, Rosa thought, looking around, that they called this the library when there were no books, just the heads of dead animals and a cabinet full of guns.

  “Right, as I was saying,” the solicitor continued. “Mrs Vivien Whistler. Ms Rosa Danby. Your mother was aware of this in full at the time of her husband’s most untimely death, for which you have my full commiserations.”

  Rosa sighed. Oh, shut up and get on with it, you odious little creep.

  “I’m afraid it is my sorry duty to inform you that the house – Lake View Villa, that is – and all its land, some forty-six acres including the lake, was legally signed over prior to the time of Mr Aaron Danby’s death, to a Mr Sam Holland in 1912. However, it was agreed by Mr and Mrs Holland that Mrs Danby and her children could continue to reside in the house until the event of Mrs Danby’s death, after which it must be vacated forthwith.”

  Rosa barely registered the information. “But my father owned the mine, Coronation Mill, a row of houses, land—”

  Mr Caruthers shook his head. “No, I’m afraid you are incorrect. His father before him, Edward Danby, owned those particular assets, Ms Danby. But your father, Aaron, merely ran them while ever his father was alive. When he married your mother, you see, Edward’s Will was changed. It seemed there was a particular issue with your mother’s family. Not with your mother herself, which is why provision was made for her, but with her family and in this regard I must keep the late Mr Edward Danby’s confidence. Aaron had, however, already been allocated the land on which to build the house, but the rest…” He shook his head. “Well, with your father being such a gambler it seems it was in the best interests of the Danby family that the mills, the mine, the farming land and the various other concerns, all be bequeathed to his nephew instead – a Mr Thomas Danby. Aaron had an older sister, you see. She died in childbirth but the baby, Thomas, survived.”

  “Yes, Thomas Danby died last year, didn’t he? I saw it in The Chronicle, but I thought–”

  “Indeed. And his daughter inherited.”

  Rosa frowned, trying to digest the information. “But my father wasn’t a gambler… and how has my mother lived all these years? She had an income from somewhere, I know she did.”

  “As I said – provision was made…”

  “And what do you mean, my father was a gambler? Surely not the house–”

  Mr Caruthers sighed and took off his spectacles. “Mrs Holland has graciously allowed you and your sister twenty-eight days to stay in Lake View Villa in order to give you time to find alternative accommodation. You must understand that Mrs Agnes Holland has owned Lake View Villa for a very long time now.”

  Rosa shook her head. So her mother had known this? Yet there had been money for schooling and help in the house. They had never wanted for anything. Certainly they’d had to watch the pennies and there was nothing left over but…

  As if reading her mind, Mr Caruthers added. “A small income was bestowed on your mother by your father shortly before he died. Edward and Clara agreed it and I should know because I drew up the papers.”

  “How shortly before?”

  The solicitor hesitated. “Is it—”

  “Relevant? Yes.”

  “Two months… about that.”

  “I see. How very fortuitous.”

  “In view of his gambling, indeed.”

  “He was not a gambler, Mr Caruthers. How many more times?”

  “Actually the evidence is quite to the contrary, Ms Danby. Poker. He squandered everything his father ever gave him - the land, the house, the money - lost it all to Sam Holland, a miner who consistently beat him at Poker.”

  Agnes’ husband.

  The room swam around her. Pinpricks of light reflected in Vivien’s horn-rimmed glasses. Her sister’s mouth seemed slashed in a red-lipstick grimace, her head bobbing and nodding. The room was way too hot and airless. She stumbled out into the hall as if drugged, and lurched towards the front door.

  Outside the night air was cool and damp. She hurried down the steps.

  Marion, she had to find Marion.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

&nbs
p; Lake View Villa

  Rosa

  Lake View Villa stood in darkness. Rosa stepped into the unlit hallway and closed the front door behind her. Already the house exuded an air of abandonment, clattering with hollow sadness, the bulky oak furniture and oil paintings cast into the gloom of a bygone age. She hurried from room to room, flinging open every door, but each was empty, the only occupants its whispering ghosts.

  Marion was not here and neither was Snow.

  The kitchen range stood cold, the grate choked with ash. All these years and her mother’s presence had been so ethereal and fragile, but she had always been here… part of the landscape. And now that person, the living breathing soul who had loved her unconditionally, wrapped her arms around her when she’d been upset, gazed on her so fondly with those soft, honey-coloured eyes…breathed no more.

  From the hallway the grandfather clock chimed solidly. Six o’clock, and as dark now as the dead of night…. Click-clock…click-clock….Soon the swing of the brass pendulum would slow until finally it stopped altogether. She looked around. All this heavy wooden furniture – the cumbersome sideboard, the high-backed chairs, formal dining table - where had it come from? And upstairs, the four poster beds and mahogany wardrobes? Better days, her mother had said.

  Would Agnes and Vic be seizing all of her parents’ possessions, too? Her own wrought-iron bed slept on since childhood? The rose silk covered chaise-longue in the south-facing lounge – a wedding present from Edward and Clara Danby? The Persian rugs? The bone china dinner service decorated with hand-painted roses – a gift for the birth of their first child? But what was she to think about any of this now? Was she really to believe her father, who her mother had described so many times and in such detail, had not been a loving, hard-working Methodist after all, but a reckless, drunken betting-man who’d sold them all down the river?

  Who was to say what had really happened and what had not? Her mother, after all, had been on Valium, and Marion still was. Perhaps they had made up the whole thing about Aaron being a loving husband and father, a popular boss and a good man. And here she was, a fool to have believed it. Certainly something had made her father gamble away his fortune. Facts were facts, after all. Perhaps that was why he’d fallen from his horse? Had he, in fact, been drunk and on his way back from The Quarryman? How would she know when she’d been a toddler of less than two years old when he died?

  Marion knew something, though. Something which had her volcanic with rage as if years of frustration and tamped-down knowledge were about to explode; Marion, who never spoke out, never confronted anyone and was never, ever rude. Other people’s discomfort had her cringing with embarrassment, yet this afternoon she’d seemed to relish it, goading it to the brink of an out-and-out fight. They all knew something, didn’t they? Something kept secret for a long, long time…the whole, damn lot of them…

  Rosa gazed out of the kitchen window at the row of dark sentinels lining the forest edge. They’d be in there she supposed - Marion and Snow.

  But who now, for the love of God, could she trust? Which sister?

  Did she take Marion’s word? Marion, who took sedatives, had but the briefest memory of her late father, and refused to acknowledge her daughter needed proper care? Marion, who was vague and evasive, who talked to dead people and roamed the moors and the woods with a paintbrush in her hand?

  Or Vivien? Vivien was the sensible one who worked hard, had her ear to the ground and seemed convinced by the alternative view of her father. If the Danbys had so disapproved of Ellen’s family then maybe they had left the bulk of the estate to Aaron’s nephew, Thomas, as said? Perhaps Aaron did lose a poker game to Sam Holland and with it the house? And maybe Agnes had been kind enough not to claim what was hers until after her sister’s death?

  But would her father have staked the family home? Really? And was that why Vivien had been so harsh about this family all these years – because somehow she knew he’d left them all in poverty, and that’s why she’d married when she had the chance even though it had undoubtedly made her life harder? Rosa’s eyes widened. If Vivien had somehow known about that poker game, it would explain a lot. What if she was right?

  She put her fingers to her temples, her thoughts stuck in a quagmire.

  But if that was the case and Vivien was correct – how could she possibly approve so wholeheartedly of Vic inheriting everything? Vic who built Spite Hall a matter of yards in front of her parents’ beautiful lake house, even going so far as to have the malicious house name engraved on the gateposts? Vic, who sat there, satisfied and smug, while Marion, her own sister, battled with a fury so great it had rendered her bone-rigid, the muscles in her face so taut her nerves twitched. Why? Why did Vivien approve of that, no matter what the history? She and Marion had done nothing wrong.

  Oh, God, were they really left with nothing?

  And what about Snow? What on earth would happen to the girl now?

  Outside, the path to the fountain shone in a trail of pearly moonlight, the stone cherubs eerily blind in their bowl of ice. Marion would have taken Snow into the forest. It was their refuge, where they felt free and able to be themselves, but it was not a prospect she relished herself. In fact she hadn’t planned on going back in there ever again. At least not at night.

  But Marion had…

  Although she’d given the impression of being every bit as terrified as Rosa when they found the burial ground and discovered those macabre dolls in the trees, she had still gone back in there tonight, hadn’t she? But why? Why would it still feel like a place of refuge after what they’d seen? Hell’s teeth, why did she even have to think about bat-crazy stuff like this now when there were more serious issues at stake like being homeless in less than a month? Marion should be here with her so they could discuss this….

  Even so, there was a strong feeling of missing something. Everyone else was talking in riddles, possessing knowledge on other levels when she was cognisant of only one.

  It had certainly been one hell of a difficult day. And it wasn’t over yet. Placing her palm flat to her stomach and ignoring the empty churning, she closed her eyes. If she stuck to her own rationalisation about what had happened to them that night they got lost – that they had stumbled off the path because of the snow and the rest was Marion being a little off-the-wall – then she would never be any wiser. So what was an illusion and what was not? Marion said the dolls had been put there recently so perhaps the area, previously well concealed, was a place for those who indulged in the dark arts? Gossip rippled around this village from those reportedly having seen torches and fires in the forest, and those stories affected Marion pretty badly. Did she perhaps see them as encroaching on her territory? A blight on a forest she found beautiful and special? Did the very thought of it, the horror, the nastiness invoked, affect the state of her mind? And Snow’s?

  Ellen had refused to ever go into the woods again after their father had been killed, but that too was no doubt mired in confusion, with all the talk about Annie being a black witch and the knowledge that she’d hated Aaron and despised their marriage. Probably all good reasons why Ellen had stayed in the house and garden, except to help out at Chapel; kept away from her sister and her mother, from gossip and trouble, and subsequently refused to say boo to the proverbial goose lest something terrible should happen again. Rosa had always thought Marion was of the same ilk, or at least until this afternoon when she was confronted with Vic Holland. How angry she’d been, how very, very angry….even before they got there…And that was without knowing Agnes now owned this house and wanted them out. So then, there must be something else….

  Oh, where was she? They really needed to talk.

  She stared into the dark glass of her own reflection.

  Rosa Danby, are you real or part of a dream?

  A bloodless face faded in and out of focus in the moonlit window. She looked old - out of time and out of step - a sepia photograph caught in the flash of a pre-war camera. A wraith peering out of
the window, with her hair scraped back under a cloche hat, a brown tweed suit and brooch. She looked down at her sensible lace-up shoes and all at once life’s journey seemed to rush up and meet her head-on. This was the tipping point into old age, wasn’t it? The same clothes all her adult life because they still had plenty of wear left in them. And what had she done with it? With her life? A single tear swelled and tipped over the brim of her eye. She swiped it away with a gloved finger.

  “Come on, Rosa. Get a grip and less of this revolting self-pity.”

  Galvanising herself into action she flung on Ellen’s old coat from the hook by the back door, shoved her feet into wellingtons and grabbed a torch. Something told her Marion and Snow needed her and that it was suddenly very urgent. Just a feeling. She couldn’t say why.

  ***

  With thoughts ricocheting around her mind and the sound of her own breath hard and fast in her ears, it wasn’t until she’d tramped all the way up to the forest edge that she heard it: the sound of a baby crying. She stopped to listen. How strange. Hadn’t Marion said there was a baby crying on the night they got lost? She hadn’t heard anything herself, though.

  Her ears strained into the quiet darkness. No, nothing. Had it been a cat?

  The night was chilly and absolutely still. A light frost glistened on the boughs of the trees and sparkled on the leaves. There wouldn’t be any children out in this, so… For a few moments longer she stood and listened, but whatever she thought she’d heard had stopped. It was either her imagination then, or a small animal.

  Cautiously she stepped from the moonlit lawn into the woods and instantly its dark cloak wrapped around her. Hopefully she would not have to go too far into its depths. The milky orb from the torch bobbed around the tree trunks and every few minutes she called out, “Marion! Marion! Are you here? It’s Rosa.”

  Her voice echoed around the immediate vicinity, with the only other sound twigs snapping beneath her feet. “Marion, I’m on the main path about five minutes from the brook. Marion!”