A Place of Secrets

by Rachel Hore

  “Oh, I’m seeing plenty of Claire and Summer,” Jude replied. “Still, I must speak to Alexia and Robert. I feel I ought to find somewhere else to stay. It’s very wearing to have guests.”

  “Do speak to them, of course, but you’ll find they agree with me. You must not go, Jude.”

  Jude laughed. “Well, it’s very kind of you all.” Their lunches arrived and they began to eat hungrily.

  After a minute or two, Chantal asked, “How is the little girl? You said she was having some bad dreams.”

  “They’re still happening, I’m afraid,” Jude replied. She explained about the apparent coincidence of Summer knowing details of Esther’s story.

  “That is so strange. But you must have told her about it. There’ll be an ordinary explanation. Especially, if, as you say, the doctor thinks she is behaving normally. Children of that age, they do have night terrors. I remember a time when Robert used to cry out for me in the night, and I would sit with him. William did not like him to come into our bed. In the morning it would be me who was tired. Robert was completely fine.”

  “Perhaps that’s all it is. Night terrors,” Jude said, but she knew she hadn’t told Summer all about Esther, that was one thing. And the nature of the dream was another. “But why would they have started after Euan took her to the folly?”

  Chantal shrugged. “Coincidence,” she said briskly. “Or perhaps there is something about the place that affected her imagination. So much has happened there. I believe these things can give an atmosphere.” Then she said, “This young man you speak of, Euan, forgive me asking but you are becoming friendly with him?”

  Jude put down her knife and fork, at a loss about what to say.

  “No, I am intruding,” Chantal cried, waving her question away. “He is very charmant. I just thought … I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Jude said, taking a sip of wine. “He is lovely. But I think he is already taken. My sister got there first. And I can’t interfere.”

  “He likes her?”

  “I can’t tell,” Jude confessed. “It’s hardly something one can ask. I think it might be at that delicate stage, you know, before anything starts, and I can’t just march in and…”

  “Ah, so you do like him.” Chantal’s eyes sparkled wickedly.

  “I find him … very attractive. As they say, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.”

  Chantal gave a peal of delighted laughter, and several people turned to stare. She was very elegant and vivacious today, Jude thought.

  “You see the problem,” Jude said. “What do I do? What would you do? Woman to woman here, Chantal! Has anything like this happened to you?”

  “I never had a sister, so this could never have happened, but relationships with your family, now those are important. No, you are right, you can’t just march in and take … You will have to wait, my dear, wait and see what happens. Perhaps you should think of going away, forgetting about him. That would be the most honorable thing.”

  “Would it?” Jude said feebly, feeling her energy drain away. Should she just go back to London and leave Claire and Euan to it? That was one code of behavior. “All’s fair in love and war,” was another. But suppose she did get together with Euan, what would that do to her relationship with her sister, and with Summer?

  Euan was not some toy to be fought over. He had his own feelings and opinions. Surely the most important question in all this was what Euan himself felt.

  While she and Chantal finished their lunch, Chantal talking about her very formal upbringing in Paris and how different it was from the way the twins were being brought up, Jude turned the matter over in her mind.

  “Thank you for a lovely meal,” Chantal said when they got up to go.

  “And thank you for everything you’ve done to help me,” Jude said and kissed her.

  * * *

  Jude spent what remained of the afternoon making notes on some ideas for the article she was to write for Beecham’s magazine. She had characters for her story now, an idea of how to present the whole sale. It was incredibly exciting. The lonely stargazer and the tower he’d built, the little girl he found and trained to be his amanuensis, but who had her own mysterious tale to tell. What had happened to her and why hadn’t she inherited the house? It would be marvelous to be able to say that the Wickhams had contributed in some important way to contemporary knowledge of the stars, but from what Cecelia had said so far that wasn’t likely.

  What she wouldn’t write about was the connection this story had with her own family, about the dream. As well as being difficult to explain in a way that would be taken seriously, it would be wrong to bring Summer’s experiences into the public eye. Anyway, Summer’s story was still unfolding.

  * * *

  When Jude parked her car outside Blacksmith’s Cottage at seven-thirty that evening, it was to find her sister’s guests long gone and Summer weary after an afternoon running around in the sun. “Is she OK?” Jude asked when she was told Summer was upstairs.

  “Yeah, fine. I told you, the doctor said the same thing yesterday as last time. That there’s no need to worry, young children often have periods of disturbed sleep or bad dreams. Since she’s eating well and enjoying life there’s really nothing to worry about. Full stop.” Claire, who seemed tired, too, drank down the last of her tea and brought the cup down firmly on the table. “I ought to feel relieved. I do feel relieved.”

  But Jude didn’t. “Did you tell him about how the dreams started or that I had the same ones?”

  “I tried to, but he wasn’t really that interested.”

  Jude sighed. “I suppose it’s not surprising. It sounds too outlandish.”

  “It’s got to be a coincidence, the whole thing. Jude, your face, you look so serious. Do you still think there’s something wrong?” Claire’s eyes looked large in her face and for the first time Jude saw she looked done in.

  “No, I was just wondering about you. Are you sleeping?” she said gently.

  “Not very well,” Claire confessed, her hands wrapped tightly around the empty cup. “I’m worried. I still don’t quite believe what you say, but I’m worried.”

  So am I, Jude thought grimly. Their differences about Euan faded into the background. They were both more concerned about little Summer.

  “I’ll go up and say goodnight,” Jude said, “and then we can look at that astrological chart quickly. I won’t stop long.”

  “OK. Don’t read her one of those dreadful stories,” Claire begged.

  “Worry not. I’ll find something light.”

  Jude read her “The Little Porridge Pot,” about a woman with a magic food bowl who didn’t know the fairy password and flooded the village with porridge. Not scary at all, just silly, and instead of sitting up in bed, Summer wanted to play with the doll’s house while the story was being told.

  She closed the book and watched her niece pack everything away.

  “I haven’t looked at the ‘me’ doll properly yet,” she said. “Can I see?”

  “Here she is. Euan said he made her smart like when you go to work.”

  The doll was wearing a semblance of a black skirt and jacket with a white blouse underneath. Jude laughed. “Look,” she said, pointing to the gold ink dots, “she’s even wearing my earrings.” So that was how Euan saw her. The urbanite, the career woman. Part of her felt flattered, the other felt the distance between them. She sincerely hoped that when she smiled it didn’t look as much of a smirk as that.

  “What was the story you were making them do the other night?” she asked Summer. “The one about the fox and the cat, I mean. When Emily was staying.”

  “Oh, that was a sad one, wasn’t it? But the other girl was right, she did get another cat. It was a tabby called Moony and it never went running off like Thomas.”

  A tabby. Moony: Luna. She even got the name almost right.

  “Where did the story come from, Summer?” She almost asked, “From a book?” but realized that would be feeding her
the answer.

  “I told you,” Summer said, with that world-weary air that only a nearly seven-year-old girl could deliver so crushingly, “I woke up with it in my head. Sometimes I do. Emily said I’m a liar, but she’s the liar. She’s just jealous, because Mrs. Hatch put my creative writing on the wall and said everyone should read it.”

  “Good for you,” Jude said, smiling. Then, “What other stories have you woken up knowing?”

  “Oh, lots. There’s this gypsy girl, you see. She lives in the forest near the folly with her family sometimes, but then they put everything onto their wagons and ride away to faraway places, but she likes the folly place best because she’s got a friend there. Her friend’s called Esther. It’s a pretty name, isn’t it? If Mummy gets me another doll for my birthday I’m going to call her Esther.”

  “What’s the gypsy girl’s name?”

  Summer made a moue of her mouth as she thought. “I can’t remember,” she said. “Wait … no, I can’t remember.”

  “Why do you wake up with these stories in your head, Summer?”

  Summer shrugged. Jude wondered whether she’d say that she thought she, Summer, was the gypsy girl or Esther, or that one of them told her the stories or that she dreamed them. But she said none of these things. Instead, she said, “I think the gypsy girl’s called Rowan.”

  “OK, that’s a nice name,” Jude told her. “It’s a country name, too. A tree with red berries. Some people say it’s magical.”

  Summer brightened up and said, “That’s good, because her scarf thing is red.”

  At this Jude practically lost her power of speech. Esther had written about the gypsy’s scarf and it was poppy red. An obvious choice of color perhaps, but it was Summer’s certainty that was bothering Jude, and the fact that so many coincidences were stacking up.

  She tried a different tack.

  “Summer, have you ever been to the folly?” She knew the girl had, but again she was nervous of asking the child leading questions.

  Summer nodded. “Euan took me. I wouldn’t go up in it ’cause I didn’t like it. It was scary.”

  “Scary?”

  “Mmm, it made me think of something frightening. I don’t know what, but I didn’t like it.” Her voice squeaked suddenly.

  “Poor dear.” Summer leaned against Jude, and Jude put her arm round her, ashamed. It would be wrong to pursue this conversation. What could it have been that was so frightening to a little girl, that Euan certainly hadn’t detected about the place, and she hadn’t, either? The folly was atmospheric, in her view, but surely not frightening. She helped Summer clean her teeth and tucked her into bed.

  “I’ll get Mummy to say goodnight,” she told her.

  “And tell her I want a drink of water,” Summer said. But when Jude got up off the bed Summer grabbed her hand. “Don’t shut the door, Auntie Jude. I don’t want it dark.” At that she knew Summer was troubled, more troubled than she was letting on.

  * * *

  When Claire returned downstairs, she spread several pieces of paper and a large book out on the coffee table.

  “This is what Linda found,” she said.

  She showed Jude the different sections of the chart and the meanings Linda had jotted down. “Look, she got them from here,” she said, showing Jude a page about eighteenth-century charts with some illustrations. “The chart says the sun is in Aquarius here, and—”

  “I’m not really sure I understand all that. What does it actually mean in terms of the person’s future?”

  “Nothing very definite. Linda’s written here—creativity, self-fulfillment, conflict, enemies and crisis. I told you it wasn’t a terribly nice one, didn’t I?”

  “It’s just, well, not very helpful, is it? In identifying someone, I mean, or finding what happened to them.”

  Claire shrugged and said defensively, “I can’t help that, can I?”

  Jude snatched up the book, another about the history of astrology, that Claire had left open. Two lines caught her attention. “It says here that ‘astrology was not very popular in the eighteenth century.’ So it might be important that this chart was made at all. Who would have made it?” she wondered. “And listen to this: ‘The discovery of a seventh planet, Uranus, in 1781, would have upset traditional astrological structures altogether.’ I suppose that’s true,” she said, lowering the book. “Which would make nonsense of this chart altogether.”

  “Well, maybe not,” said Claire. “It would be incomplete. And as for who made it, why, traditionally, it was gypsies.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Jude felt absurdly pleased when Euan rang early on Monday morning, asking if she’d like to join him for a walk. “I need to come up with a piece about orchids for a nature website,” he said, “so I thought I’d go and see what’s happening locally. Want to come?”

  His voice sounded casual but Jude still couldn’t help hoping he wanted to see her. For a second she weighed up the work she needed to get through versus a walk with Euan. It was no contest. She’d look at the notes for her article when she got back, though there wouldn’t be much time. She remembered her arrangement to go over and see Gran later. Oh, she deserved a break.

  “If you don’t mind my complete ignorance of the subject,” she told him, “yes, I’d love an orchid hunt.”

  “Good. Come to the house in half an hour?”

  When she arrived at the back door of the cottage he kissed her hello, but not so she knew it meant anything but friendship.

  “How was lunch yesterday?” she asked as he shouldered his backpack and they set off up the lane.

  “Very nice,” was all he said. “Your sister’s a great cook. It’s not often I get a full roast dinner.”

  “Yes, she is,” Jude replied, wondering whether he was oblivious to Claire’s charms or just keeping his cards close to his chest.

  They climbed the hill, but this time Euan took a path to the left, on the other side of the road to the folly. This footpath was at first overgrown with nettles and brambles, but soon they passed into a thick, wooded area where the canopy blocked out the light and little could grow. It had rained sometime during the night. The trees dripped patiently, and everything was fresh and sweet-smelling.

  “Where do we look?” Jude asked. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at this kind of thing.”

  “There won’t be anything yet, but we might have luck farther on where the trees thin out,” Euan said.

  “Some of these trees are hundreds of years old, surely,” she said. “Look at that oak.” It had a huge girth, having split into several sections so it was like three trees growing up together in one.

  “It’s still producing little acorns, isn’t it?” Euan said, examining a leafy branch. “I wonder how many new trees it’s parented over the years.”

  “Thousands, maybe.” There must be layers and layers of fallen leaves beneath their feet—centuries of oak leaves. “It feels so ancient and mysterious,” she said. “You can imagine Robin Hood and his men making merry here.”

  “It is a good feeling here today,” Euan said, “but it can be different. Think of all those fairy tales in which the forest is a dark and threatening labyrinth, where the trees reach out to grab the unsuspecting traveler, where fearsome animals lurk, where little girls and boys become lost forever.”

  She shivered. “Like ‘Snow White,’ and ‘Babes in the Wood’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel.’”

  Stories she’d read to Summer.

  And like the subject of the dream. Running through the forest, pursued by something dangerous …

  “The forest has always been a metaphor for the wild, the primeval, hasn’t it?” Euan was musing. “For communities in villages and towns and cities I suppose that became particularly so. The forest would be the opposite of civilized—the home of the ancient, the pagan, the savage. The woodwose, the wild man of the woods.”

  “He’s different from the Green Man, isn’t he?” she asked. “I remember you wrote about the Green Man in
The Path through the Woods. He’s a bit kinder, a sort of pagan fertility symbol, is that right?”

  “Yes, think of Morris Men and real ale.” They both laughed at the genial folksy image this conjured up. “The woodwose is darker, more elemental.”

  Every now and then where the trees were sparser Euan would stop to inspect the grasses and wildflowers that flourished in the light.

  Eventually, the trees began to peter out altogether.

  “Eureka!” he said suddenly, and together they examined a group of plants like mauve spears, which were scattered amid the long grasses. He bent to part the greenery around the nearest one. “This is known as the common spotted orchid. You can see why.” Jude sank down to study the plant he was twisting toward her. The spear, she saw, was in fact made up of dozens of tiny flowers, pinky mauve spotted with a darker purple.

  “Even each individual flower is quite complex,” she said.

  “Like tiny tiger lilies, I always think.” He took a camera out of the backpack he was carrying and spent a couple of minutes photographing them.

  “I would like to see some bee orchids,” he said, looking about, “but we may not be lucky in this terrain. They’re easy enough to identify—they really do look like pale purple bumblebees.”

  “I wish I’d taken more notice of this sort of thing at school,” Jude said. “I’m useless beyond obvious things like oaks and buttercups and daisies. I missed the nature rambles. I always had my nose in a book.”

  “You did better than me in that respect, then,” Euan said. “I was always desperate to get home from school and out into the countryside.”

  “But you write books now,” Jude said, surprised.

  “Yes, I’m sure my old teachers are astonished. But then I’m writing about things I care about. It’s easy to communicate then.”

  “You do write with passion,” she said. She’d liked that about the book of his she’d read, that the author’s enthusiasm flooded out from the page.

  “Thank you. Oh, look, there’s a stag beetle. I’m glad I’ve seen him.” He took a notebook out of his backpack and jotted something down with a stub of pencil from his pocket. “It’s for a local survey,” he told her. “You know, it wasn’t until I left formal education that I started seriously reading and writing and thinking properly for myself. I suppose it felt like exploring, rather than doing it because someone told me to. I’ve made some mistakes along the way, but I’ve carved out my own place in the world. It wouldn’t suit everyone, but it seems to suit me.”