Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor

by Melanie Dobson

  Maggie glanced back at Mrs. Doyle—Walter’s mother—on the front row. She wore an elegant pastel yellow and white dress, and joy radiated from her face as if she were the bride. Walter’s dad had died in the war so Mrs. Doyle traveled almost two hundred miles alone by bus to watch her only son marry.

  Walter gently squeezed Maggie’s hands, bringing her back to the reality that the entire congregation was waiting for her to respond. In that moment, she decided she would do everything possible to honor this man and their marriage. “I will.”

  Likely no one else heard Walter’s sigh of relief, but it pounded like thunder in her heart. Then they began to say their vows.

  Over his shoulder, through the clear glass among the stained, the sea called to her. Instead of answering, Maggie silently vowed to remain strong for the baby growing inside her even as she promised Walter to love and cherish him, for better or for worse.

  When they finished, the rector pronounced them man and wife, and Walter took her hand, guiding her down the long aisle, past the smiling faces and eyes critiquing the details of her white gown.

  She knew all these people, but very few were friends. Her childhood friends had been other war evacuees who’d returned to their families after the bombings stopped in London, and her school friends had either married or left Clevedon for college. She’d wanted to attend a university, but her aunt and uncle felt they’d already done more than society and even God required of them. And she didn’t have the income to pay for an education on her own.

  She and Walter wouldn’t just provide food and a place for their child to sleep, but an environment with love and laughter and an education so her child—and their other children—could go wherever they pleased.

  That thought made her smile.

  As they emerged into the sunlight outside the church, she blinked. Walter opened the door to the Rolls-Royce he’d borrowed from her uncle, and their chauffeur—a friend of Walter’s—pretended to ignore them in the backseat.

  “The best day of my life,” Walter whispered as he put his arm around her.

  “Mine too.” A white lie, spit and polished, so it wouldn’t hurt either of them.

  Then he pulled her close and kissed her. Their first kiss.

  There were no fireworks in her heart like when Elliot kissed her. No danger.

  She told herself that she wouldn’t miss the danger. She was secure now, and she would savor the security.

  He took her hand again as the car crawled through the narrow streets in town.

  God was the only one who knew her secret, and she hoped He would guard it well.

  Wheat starch and a few drops of water were all Heather Toulson needed to fix the torn painting of Mount St. Helens. She dabbed the white paste onto the back of the ripped paper and gently edged the pieces of pale-blue sky against the dark fringe of leaves until they were a coherent image again. The watercolors captured the reflection of the volcano in a mountain lake, sixty years before the snow-capped peak erupted and left behind a gaping wound of rock and ash.

  The painting wouldn’t be worth anything in the art world, but it was invaluable to her client, the tenacious Mrs. Young. And Heather happened to think tenacity was a virtue.

  Mrs. Young’s mother had painted it in 1922, and after Mrs. Young moved into a retirement village in Southern Oregon, she’d stored her prized painting in her son’s basement. Then his washing machine overflowed. Even though the painting was behind glass, the delicate paper had been no match for the moisture. When her son took the glass off, he’d torn a piece of the tree branches that framed the lake and mountain. Mrs. Young had been devastated.

  Heather scooted back from the table to admire her handiwork. The spring sunlight filtered through her studio window, illuminating the painting.

  She considered herself an expert in devastation. Or at least she was an expert in restoring damaged artwork. Perseverance, she’d told Mrs. Young and her son when they’d brought her the picture, and patience will put the pieces back together again. If they could be patient, she hoped to fix Mount St. Helens for them.

  Mrs. Young and her son left the painting with Heather, at her studio in Portland’s Pearl District, and she’d heard them arguing all the way back to their car. The son thought it was a waste of money to fix the painting, but Mrs. Young countered that neither of them could put a price on his grandmother’s artwork. He said that if she treasured it so much, she shouldn’t have stored it in his basement.

  Heather sighed. Treasures from the past kept art restorers like her in business. Fortunately, unlike relationships, very few pieces of artwork were beyond repair.

  She lifted the painting and carefully reinforced her patchwork on the verso with Japanese tissue. A restorer was more chemist than artist, imitators who knew how to mimic the greats—and the not-so-greats like Mrs. Young’s mother.

  Even though the elder Mrs. Young wasn’t an exceptional artist, she had left her children and grandchildren an image of beauty from her mind’s eye. Anyone willing to expose their heart and mind through art, opening themselves and their work to both praise and critique, was a brave soul.

  While Heather didn’t snub any type of art, she was clear with prospective clients about the time and expense of restoration. Artwork like this landscape wouldn’t have cost much, at least monetarily, to create, but it was very expensive to restore any tears or structural weaknesses. In that, perhaps, art conservation mimicked real life.

  She scooted away from her work table, leaving the painting to dry overnight before she repaired the cockling—rippling of the paper—and did a bit of inpainting to conceal the jagged thread of black where the tree limbs met the sky.

  Her cell phone chimed, and she turned toward where she’d stashed it, next to the orchid on her windowsill, but she didn’t race to answer it. Ella—her twenty-five-year-old daughter—had selected a head- and heart-pounding drum solo to differentiate her calls from anyone else, and the drum solo calls were the only ones Heather rushed to answer.

  Most of her calls were from clients checking on the status of her work or potential clients wanting a proposal for restoration. She waited to return those when she wasn’t working on a project, and she didn’t plan to take on any new work anyway—not until she returned from her trip to England.

  Her newer clients wanted their restoration done quickly. She’d learned to explain that it took decades and sometimes centuries for artwork to decay, so it also took a substantial amount of time to breathe life back into what either time or a disaster had stolen away. Some restorers made grand promises, and a few were actually able to jump over the high bar they’d set. But she was completely honest at the beginning of each new project about her abilities and what she thought she could do. She decided early in her career that she would set the bar rather low. Then she could exceed expectations as much as possible. Some clients moaned about the length of her process, but few ever complained about the quality of her work.

  She stepped toward the sink under her window and rinsed the wheat starch out of her brush before reaching for her phone.

  The missed call was from Nick Davis, the curator at the Portland Art Museum and a friend who once said he wanted more than friendship from her. She’d been clear that she wasn’t interested in navigating the complexities of a relationship. But ever since Ella married earlier this year, Nick had been able to convince her to leave the sanctuary of her studio once or twice a week for dinner or an exhibit at the museum.

  She’d just begun to listen to his message when the door to her studio chimed and Nick walked into the small lobby she’d set up for her clients. He moved past the leather chairs where most people waited, straight into her workshop.

  Most Portlanders embraced casual attire for work, but Nick wore a tie and dress trousers every day. Today he also carried a portfolio case used to transport artwork.

  She held up her phone. “You just called.”

  “I wanted to see if you were here,” he said with a shrug. “I figure
d you were ignoring me.”

  “Not ignoring,” she retorted, pointing at the light table. “Working.”

  “You’re always working,” he said as he put his case onto a table, more admiration than criticism in his words. Whenever he needed restoration work for the museum, he called her—another reason why they couldn’t be anything more than friends. “I’d like you to look at this.”

  He unzipped the nylon case, and inside was a discolored frame that smelled like smoke. A thin layer of soot covered the painting under the glass—a picture of an old manor house. Gothic Victorian. Wisteria climbed the wall near the entrance, the pale-lavender blossoms clinging to the gray stone. The artist had brushed flowers below the windows as well, though those colors had been muted by the smoke damage.

  Heather pressed her lips together as she studied it. The stone walls and flowers reminded her of Ladenbrooke, the manor home beside her parents’ cottage in England. The place that had mesmerized her as a child.

  “Can you fix it?” Nick asked, pointing to the black streaks that rippled down from a garret to the back wheels of a carriage waiting beside the grand entrance.

  She reached for her magnifying glass in a drawer and studied the damage. No matter how many hours she spent trying to repair this painting, she’d never be able to restore it to its original state.

  Nick leaned closer to her. “Heather?”

  She set her magnifying glass on the table. “How did it get damaged?”

  “I’m not certain,” he said. “It was found in an attic.”

  She let out a breath. Why did people keep such treasures in an attic? “You think I’m a miracle worker?” she asked.

  He straightened his tie. “I do.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said, trying to hide her smile.

  “Nor will false modesty about your talents,” he quipped. “I know you can restore this.”

  “I can certainly try—when I get back from England.”

  He sighed. “Can’t someone else clean out your parents’ place?”

  She’d asked herself the same question many times but kept arriving at the same conclusion. She’d spent most of her life cleaning up and restoring other people’s artwork. Even though she didn’t want to return home, it seemed ludicrous to let someone else rummage through her family’s possessions.

  She zipped up the case, protecting the artwork in its cocoon until she could begin her restoration. “I’ll be back in two weeks.”

  “Two weeks is too long.”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “It will be the last time I go to England.”

  “I’d bet money you’ll be back in a week.”

  She wouldn’t bet against him.

  After he left, she locked the painting in her fireproof cabinet and escaped to the courtyard outside her studio. Tucked under the maple tree was a fountain, sculpted by a local artist, and she watched the water trickle down it into a small pool.

  Her father had passed away in February, and she’d returned home for his memorial service. She’d flown into Heathrow and drove over to the village of Bibury the morning of the service. Then she’d returned to the airport that evening.

  Over the years, she’d begged her dad to move to Oregon so she could help care for him, but he’d relocated to a retirement village in Oxford four years ago instead. The last time she’d visited him, the week after his stroke, she’d sat beside his bed and held his hand, suspecting it was good-bye. Still, she’d clung to the hope that one day, before he was gone, their relationship would be reconciled. Restored.

  It was much too late for restoration now, but she still had the good memories of both her parents in her childhood home—a stone cottage on the hill above Bibury. Even after her father moved to Oxford, he refused to sell or even let their home out, and she hadn’t been able to do it either. But the cottage had sat vacant for long enough now, and a local real estate agent kept contacting her about selling it.

  No amount of paste would repair the torn pieces from her past, but she would still return to England and face her ghosts one last time.

  SPRING 1954, CLEVEDON, ENGLAND

  Walter disbanded with all formalities when Maggie told him the news, lifting her off her feet and twirling her around the floor of their sitting room. He startled her at first, but then she laughed along with him.

  Just as quickly as he’d lifted her, Walter returned her feet to the woven rug. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, apologizing in earnest.

  She straightened the satin headscarf that covered her hair. “You didn’t hurt me.”

  Stepping away, he eyed her stomach as if he could determine whether or not he’d inflicted an injury. “But our baby—”

  “You didn’t hurt the baby either.”

  They’d been married two months now, and he’d treated her with utmost care since he found her in the storm, as if he might lose her forever if he didn’t watch closely and attend to her needs. His attention overwhelmed her at times, but other times she felt elated at having someone love her so wholly. Someone who would never leave her.

  He leaned back against the dark paneling in the room, crossing his arms. “Are you certain you’re expecting?”

  “Quite.” And the growing bulge in her belly didn’t lie.

  “I didn’t think we would start a family so soon—”

  Her smile fell. “Are you disappointed?”

  “Not in the least.” Walter grinned again as he rested one hand on the mantel of their fireplace. “I hope we have five or six children.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps we should start with two.”

  He looked around the tiny space as if seeing it for the first time. “We’ll need a bigger home,” he said, then his eyes clouded with the realization. Even though they were both working, they could barely afford this terrace house they’d rented from her uncle’s friend.

  “We don’t need anything bigger,” she assured him.

  Walter stepped toward the calendar and flipped the page back to their wedding date.

  January 28, 1954

  Since their wedding, she kept tightening her girdle, hiding her abdomen under baggy blouses and her spring jumper. She wouldn’t be showing if she was only three or four weeks along, but Walter didn’t seem to know the difference. Nor would he ever find out. She wouldn’t deny him the happiness of fathering a child he thought to be his own or deny her baby the security of having a father.

  Even when the baby came, five or so months from now, she could feign an early birth. Like one of her friends from school had done when she gave birth six months after her wedding day.

  When Maggie had visited Sally, the midwife in Clevedon, the elderly woman hadn’t bought her spiel about being newly pregnant. Sally thought she and Walter—

  Her husband reached for her, wrapped his arms around her. “You will be the most beautiful mum in all of Great Britain.”

  “And you will be the most doting father.”

  He grinned again, pulling her close. “I will be counting down the days until October.”

  She tilted her head up. “Perhaps our baby will come a bit early.”

  His smile turned into worry. “Not too early.”

  “You’re a good man, Walter Doyle,” she said before he kissed her.

  THE FIERCE STORMS THAT CHURNED the estuary all winter turned placid by late spring. By the middle of May, the water gently loped against Clevedon’s beaches and seawall, but another kind of storm was brewing in the town. This one much more covert but in Maggie’s mind, just as dangerous.

  Maggie knew the moment Aunt Priscilla realized she was expecting. She broke away from her circle of friends at church to greet her and Walter, but her gaze didn’t linger for long on Maggie’s face or even on the new tweed jacket and skirt that Walter purchased for her at Debenhams. Instead it fell to Maggie’s stomach and the swell she could no longer hide, even with her girdle.

  Walter telephoned his mother back in March, and she was thrilled with the
news. Her first grandchild. Once the baby was born, she would know the timing was off, but now that they were married, everything was in order. Maggie only hoped her mother-in-law would believe the child was Walter’s.

  But Aunt Priscilla wasn’t so easily fooled.

  She arrived at Maggie’s doorstep the morning after church for a private visit, after Walter left for the newspaper office. Maggie boiled water for tea, pretending to be gay while Aunt Priscilla watched her from the kitchen chair, her arms crossed. “Is Walter pleased about the baby?”

  “He’s thrilled about being a father.”

  Her aunt leaned closer. “And what about your sailor?”

  Maggie shrugged, willing her heart to beat at a normal pace again. “What about him?”

  “What will you tell him when he finds out?”

  “He won’t find out,” she said, the familiar pain piercing her.

  “You don’t know that—”

  Maggie shook her head, determined. “He came and left, just as you said. He won’t inquire after me.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain,” Aunt Priscilla said, twisting her purse in her lap. “And then word will get out—”

  Maggie tilted her head. “Word about what?”

  “Don’t be coy, Margaret,” her aunt replied, her voice a sharp whisper. “Walter may be entirely clueless about your conduct, but I’m not daft.”

  Maggie’s hands trembled as she lifted the teapot though she managed to fill her aunt’s cup. No matter what Aunt Priscilla said, she wouldn’t admit her indiscretion.

  “Have you seen one of the midwives?”

  She nodded. “Sally.”

  Aunt Priscilla spooned a lump of sugar into her tea. “What does Sally say?”

  “That the baby seems to be healthy.”

  “Not that,” she said, waving her spoon. “What does she say about the timing?”

  “The health of the child is her only concern.”