The Forget-Me-Not Sonata

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘I’m lonely,’ Leonora replied in a small voice. Audrey smiled indulgently.

  ‘Come on then, my love. I’m lonely too.’

  Leonora climbed into bed and blew out the candle. She curled into a ball and felt her mother snuggle up behind her, so that they lay pressed together.

  ‘I miss you when I’m at school,’ said Leonora. It was easier to speak of her fears in the darkness, when she didn’t have to look at her mother’s sad face.

  Audrey squeezed her gently. ‘I miss you too. I miss you terribly. Not a moment of the day goes by when I don’t think about you both. But you’ll settle in and love it the way Aunt Cicely did. She talks about it now as if she’s still there. It seems a lovely place.’

  ‘It is. I like Miss Reid and I like Gussie. Cazzie’s my best friend. She’s homesick too sometimes, but at least she has her sisters there and they’re kind to her.’

  ‘You have Alicia.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leonora flatly. ‘I have my sister too.’ She couldn’t explain how Alicia acted as if they weren’t even related, that would have upset her mother too much.

  ‘You’ll be home for the Christmas holidays. Four whole weeks, imagine. We’ll have a very English Christmas. I’ll show Mercedes how to cook a Christmas pudding and mince pies and we’ll open all our presents under the tree with Granny and Grandpa. It’s not long now. Only ten weeks. They’ll go very fast and you’ll be home before you know it.’

  ‘But then we’ll have to leave again. I hate leaving,’ she said.

  ‘I know you do, my love. Don’t think about it now. Things always seem so much worse at night. You’re with me now and I love you very much. Very much. Try to think of nice things.’

  So Leonora tried to think of nice things while Audrey thought of all the nasty things for her. Like parting, returning home to a hollow marriage and an empty house. Like long years ahead of airport farewells and precious moments together that would go far too quickly. Oh, Cecil, she thought, what have you done?

  The following day it rained. Leonora was unable to enjoy herself because the minutes drained away pushing her closer to the afternoon and the painful drive back to school. She clung to her mother and said very little while Alicia sat in the gypsy’s caravan making Ravena read her fortune over and over again. Audrey tried to cheer Leonora up by making a small garden out of a shoebox, using moss from the roof of the house and little flowers that they hunted for in the rain under a big golf umbrella that had once belonged to Hugh. The child began to smile as she busied herself with gluing pieces on and setting a circle of aluminium foil in the bottom of the box to resemble a pond. Cicely made chocolate crispies for tea and let the twins lick the bowl, which they had to fight over with Barley, who was determined to shove his wet nose in there before them.

  Parting was horrible. Leonora cried and Alicia scowled because once again she had to look after her. Audrey left quickly on this occasion having learned from the time before, but she sobbed all the way back in the car and all the way back to Buenos Aires in the plane so that when she arrived at the airport her eyes were so swollen she was barely recognizable.

  But she could never have anticipated or imagined what had taken place in her home while she had been away.

  Chapter 20

  When Audrey stepped out of the car and heard the hauntingly familiar sound of the piano dancing on the air like an echo of a distant memory, she believed it to be an illusion produced by exhaustion and sadness. A cruel illusion that ripped at her heart and mocked the hope that she always harboured even though she knew her wishes were impossible wishes and her dreams nothing but mirages forged out of hopelessness. She stood there listening, not believing her ears but wanting desperately to believe. She glanced at her husband who was already opening the boot of the car to retrieve her luggage. She looked at the house and found herself walking towards it as if in slow motion, fearful of what she would find inside. Surely, she thought, if Louis had returned, Cecil would have told me. The certainty that she would have been informed clouded her mind with doubt and disappointment and yet there still remained a spark of hope.

  As she entered the door the music got louder. The tune was unmistakeable. It was their tune. ‘The Forget-Me-Not Sonata.’ Her legs felt unsteady, her emotions raw so that she worried she might give herself away by collapsing or dissolving into tears. She heard Cecil on the path behind her and this spurred her on. She didn’t dare turn to ask him who was playing the piano in case her voice exposed the sudden turbulence that had seized her spirit.

  Cecil walked on up the stairs to put her suitcase in their bedroom and Audrey remained in the doorway to the sitting room, where Louis sat at the piano, his fingers floating over the keys that she had touched so often and with such wistfulness, thinking of him.

  He must have sensed her there for he stopped playing and turned around. They stared at one another for a moment that seemed to defy the laws of time and hung suspended in an uneasy limbo. Within that moment each nervously watched the other, Louis in search of a flicker of affection to reassure him that she still loved him and Audrey in fear of finding anger in those faraway eyes. She felt guilty. Here she was married to his brother when she should have been married to him. But he could smell the marital discontent in the alcohol on his brother’s breath and see it in the tight knot of hair that restrained Audrey’s joy and her vitality and clung severely to the nape of her neck. In the fortnight that he had been there he had made a pretty damning assessment of his brother’s marriage. It could all have been so different.

  When Audrey managed a tender smile it was the only encouragement Louis needed. He rose to his feet and pulled her into his arms, pressing his lips to her temple, murmuring that he still wanted her, that he still loved her and that he always would. ‘Louis, please,’ she begged, pushing him away as the stairs creaked under Cecil’s feet.

  ‘How could he break you like this?’ he whispered, holding her face in his hands, his expression crumpled with compassion and sorrow. Audrey looked away tearfully. She wanted so much for him to hold her because in his arms was the only home that counted. But they didn’t have time. Cecil appeared as Louis drew away.

  ‘I wanted Louis to be a surprise,’ he said, walking past his wife into the sitting room where he poured himself a strong whisky. Audrey followed him, tearing her eyes off the man she had feared she might never see again. She floundered, not knowing what to say, trying to act as normally as she could. Cecil continued seemingly oblivious of the emotions that tore through the air in razorsharp vibrations. ‘It was a hell of a surprise for me, I can tell you. He just turned up one day, about a week after you’d left with the girls. No warning. Rather in the same manner that he left us.’ He looked up at his brother then across to his wife. In the weighty pause that ensued he lit a cigar.

  ‘Where is he staying?’ Audrey asked, too scared to direct the question at him.

  ‘With us,’ Cecil replied, swirling the ice around in his glass. His face was grave and his jaw stiff. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ He looked up at her from under his brow.

  Audrey panicked but shook her head. ‘Of course not. Have Mummy and Daddy seen him?’ Louis went and sat on one of the sofas where he could see her better. She perched on the arm of the other. He thought how much older she looked with her hair tied back. The girl in her seemed to have disappeared altogether.

  ‘I have seen your parents and Aunt Edna,’ he replied. ‘All a little older but basically the same.’

  ‘Henry gave Louis a dinner party at the Club to welcome him back,’ said Cecil. Then he added in a softer voice, ‘Rose wants to hold a memorial service for Isla, now that Louis is here, but she was waiting for you to return.’

  Audrey lowered her eyes. So much had happened while she had been away. ‘I see,’ she replied. ‘I would like that very much.’ She looked at Louis nervously, playing with the handle of her handbag. ‘How long will you be staying?’ She focused her eyes on the shiny brown leather, not wanting to reveal how mu
ch she wanted him to stay. Cecil drained his glass and stood up to pour another. He had to muster all his strength to control his shaking hands.

  ‘I don’t know. I have no plans.’

  ‘If he stays he’ll have to marry Nelly,’ Cecil joked, sitting down again. The alcohol now dulled his senses and his pain gnawed at him no longer. ‘Because Nelly believes she’s the reason he’s returned.’ He chuckled.

  ‘Nelly?’ Audrey gasped.

  ‘Hilda’s determined. Only Agatha is married and Nelly’s getting on a bit.’

  ‘We went to Hilda’s for dinner the other night,’ said Louis with a sigh. ‘Of course, she seated me next to Nelly. Poor girl, nature hasn’t been kind, has she? The girl’s not unpleasant though. Not like her mother.’

  This was all too much for Audrey to take in. She stood up and rubbed her forehead. ‘I’m very tired,’ she explained. ‘Do you mind if I go and have a bath and a rest? Cecil, will you apologize to Mercedes for me, I’ll go in and see her when I come down for lunch. I have a letter for her from Alicia.’

  ‘Of course, my dear, can I get you anything?’

  She shook her head and pulled a tremulous smile. ‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine after a sleep.’ Then she made for the door but stopped suddenly and turned around, defeated. ‘It’s very quiet here, isn’t it?’ she said sadly.

  Louis looked at his brother who stared into his empty glass, the ash from his cigar dropping onto the carpet.

  When Audrey reached the sanctuary of her bedroom, she locked the door behind her and ran a hot bath. She had been dreading returning to an empty house. She could barely think about her daughters without sobbing. It had been so painful leaving them and then leaving England where she had at least been close by. But Louis’ appearance had been a far greater shock than finding the twins’ rooms empty and silent. She had expected a miserable homecoming, but she hadn’t expected Louis.

  She sank into the bath and let the water ease the tension that had knotted all her muscles in tight, painful balls of unhappiness. Why wasn’t Louis furious with her? How could he sit there with her and Cecil as husband and wife and smile as if he felt nothing? What did he hope for now that he had returned? She fingered the gold band on her left hand. She was married. Everything had changed except her heart.

  The bath made her drowsy and when she curled up under the covers she slipped into a deep sleep quicker than she would have ever thought possible under the circumstances.

  She was awoken by a light tapping on the door. She opened her eyes and glanced at the clock. It was two in the afternoon. ‘Audrey, it’s lunchtime,’ said Cecil, trying to turn the knob. ‘Why have you locked the door?’

  ‘Did I lock it?’ she asked, pretending that she hadn’t meant to.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied, getting up.

  ‘You look much better now,’ he said once she’d unlocked the door. ‘The colour’s returned to your cheeks. Do you feel better?’

  ‘Much,’ she answered truthfully. ‘Sleep is a great healer.’ She opened the curtains letting the sunshine tumble into the room with the enthusiasm of spring.

  ‘Louis has had the most amazing adventures,’ he said, sitting down by the window and watching his wife make the bed.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, he went to Mexico where he spent eight years teaching music to children.’

  ‘He would be good at that,’ she said. Then she remembered that he was downstairs and her skin tickled with excitement.

  ‘No, my dear, the amazing thing is that the children were deaf.’

  Audrey looked at her husband and frowned. ‘Deaf?’

  ‘Exactly. I thought it sounded a little incredible myself. But he explained how he taught them to close their eyes and express their feelings through their fingers. I think they could feel the vibrations or something. He brought back a few cuttings from the local papers. He caused quite a sensation. It obviously did him the power of good.’

  Audrey smiled and felt her stomach flutter with the memory of the first moment they had played the piano together. He had taught her in the same way.

  ‘I always knew he was special,’ she said quietly.

  Cecil’s jaw stiffened and the muscle pounded in his cheek.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ he said carefully, without taking his eyes off her. ‘Well, now everyone here thinks he’s special too.’

  ‘They do?’ Audrey slipped into a pair of white trousers and shirt then sat at her dressing table where she applied a little make-up and tamed her curls into a shiny chignon.

  ‘Well, he’s been elevated to the ranks of a romantic hero of old. Even the Crocodiles, what’s left of them, have welcomed him with open arms. Mothers are throwing their daughters at him and he has so many invitations he’s barely ever here.’

  ‘I’m so pleased,’ she said. But she felt a stab of disappointment. How fickle people are, she thought sadly, if they had loved him like this when he had first arrived in Hurlingham, we’d be happily married by now.

  When Audrey stood up she noticed Cecil was watching her with a strange look on his face. She smiled at him and frowned. He returned her smile but it did little to hide the apprehension that distorted his features.

  ‘You look wonderful, my dear,’ he said jovially, collecting himself, but his eyes betrayed a sadness she hadn’t noticed before

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied, walking to the door.

  ‘It’s good to have Louis back, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ She tried to sound nonchalant, as if he were any old brother-in-law who had come to pay them a visit after twelve years.

  ‘I think it’s highly appropriate to hold a memorial service for Isla in his honour, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She felt there was an ulterior motive to his questioning, but then perhaps she just felt guilty. ‘Isla would have wanted it.’

  ‘He’s recovered well, though. Let’s hope he finds a nice English girl out here and marries her.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ she replied tightly, stepping into the corridor.

  They walked down the stairs in silence. Audrey resisted glancing across the landing to Alicia and Leonora’s bedrooms and Cecil, who in the last month had accustomed himself to the emptiness, didn’t even feel the urge to. Audrey felt her husband’s presence behind her like a weighty shadow. She had greeted him at the airport with the same cool politeness with which she had left him and hadn’t even noticed the look of disappointment that had darkened his eager face. Her kiss had been stiff and awkward and their conversation in the car had revolved very much around the children and their new school and Audrey’s tone of voice had dripped with bitterness, accusing him of callousness and insensitivity. She could barely talk about the twins without crying and had only stopped when they had changed the subject to talk about Cicely and Marcel and the gypsies. Cecil hadn’t ever heard of Marcel and the Cicely she had described seemed like a stranger to him.

  ‘Have you met this Marcel fellow?’ Cecil asked Louis when they had all sat down for lunch. It wasn’t warm enough to sit outside, but the French doors were open and the sweet scents of the garden floated in on a fresh breeze. Louis was barely able to take his eyes off Audrey, who seemed to have blossomed in her sleep. Her eyes were no longer puffy and dull but shone with vitality and her blushing cheeks revealed that she was only too aware of his stare.

  ‘Yes, I stayed with her last year,’ Louis replied. ‘Not that I saw much of Marcel. He spent most of the time in the attic painting or in bed with Cicely.’

  ‘Good God,’ Cecil exclaimed, nearly choking on his soup. ‘Perish the thought.’

  ‘Cicely’s not the woman you once knew, Cecil,’ he said with a chuckle. Audrey wondered how Louis could be in such good humour. Why wasn’t he angry with her and bitter towards his brother? It just didn’t make sense.

  ‘She was always a paragon of old-fashioned values and phlegmatic like Papa. Can a man change a woman so much?’ Cecil dabbed at th
e corners of his mouth with his napkin. Audrey gazed into her bowl of soup.

  ‘Yes, a man can change a woman. He can either nurture her and love her so that she grows like a plant in the sun, or he can hurt her and let her dry out so that she withers and dies.’ Audrey felt his gaze upon her once more and remembered Aunt Edna’s sunshine Harry. ‘Marcel doesn’t love Cicely, he lusts after her, and that’s very different. But it’s had the same effect. She’s let go of all restraint and is quite changed.’

  ‘He doesn’t love her?’ Audrey asked without raising her eyes.

  ‘No, I don’t believe he does,’ Louis replied. ‘He has a roof over his head, good food and good sex. He doesn’t pay for any of it. He’s an artist; all he cares about is his art. No, I believe he’s using Cicely.’

  ‘I found him a bit creepy,’ Audrey confessed, looking at her husband because she couldn’t stare into her soup for ever. ‘He crept about in the shadows, watching, listening. He was like a spy.’

  ‘Spying for whom, my dear?’ Cecil asked.

  ‘For himself. I don’t know,’ she replied and then her eyes engaged with Louis’ as if they had a will of their own and his were familiar, more familiar than anyone else’s in the world and she knew that she didn’t need to speak in order to communicate what she thought. He understood her. Slowly she felt the void inside her fill up with warm honey and she wanted to laugh because she had been so sad before and now she felt so happy. She noticed the corners of Louis’ mouth quiver as if about to break into a smile and she tore herself away. Cecil sat there drinking far too much wine so that his head grew as heavy as his heart. He watched his wife and wondered whether he was just imagining an intimacy between her and his brother or perhaps the alcohol was making him paranoid, giving him hallucinations.

  ‘My dear, I’m going into the city this afternoon,’ he said, draining his glass and watching their reactions carefully with bloodshot eyes.