A Hopeless Romantic (15 page)

“Is there any more sauce, dear?” said Mary.

“Gosh, you two do look similar,” said Angela fondly.

Laura stared at her grandmother. “Who?”

“You, dear, you and Granny.”

Mary looked at Laura. “We do, don’t we.”

“It’s odd sometimes,” said Angela. “Just now, the two of you, next to each other. You looked rather fierce, Laura.”

“Just like Granny, you mean?” Laura said, laughing, and Mary looked affronted.

“Angela dear, is there some more sauce?” Mary repeated. Angela shook her head. “Well, can you get up and check for me, dear? Thanks.”

Angela stood up, looking from her daughter to her mother again, and went to the larder. Mary carried on eating quietly, and Laura gazed into space, her fork suspended in her hand. George was still talking as Angela returned with a small bowl of tomato sauce.

“…fascinating that, actually, he
never visited the house
again! After she died. Heartbroken, they said. Of course, Sir John’s additions were anathema to him, he loathed Palladian architecture, said it was a betrayal of the old English ways…. Still, fascinating to think that, wouldn’t you say?”

There was silence. Neither grandmother, mother, nor daughter replied, partly because they couldn’t think of anything to say, mainly because they hadn’t been listening to a word.

“Well,” said George, looking rather pink. “That’s nice, isn’t it. Was no one listening?”

“I wasn’t,” Mary said frankly. “I was thinking, Will Jasper remember to water my mint plant while I’m away?”

George scowled.

“I was, darling,” said Angela. “I just had to get up to get the mustard, that’s why I lost the train of what you were saying. Were you talking about the Devereaus?”

“No,” George huffed. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

Laura caught her grandmother’s eye and smiled. Poor Dad.

“Pass the sauce, George,” Mary said serenely, wiping her mouth elegantly with her napkin. “Now, I brought along the Elvis ’68 comeback special on DVD. Who fancies watching it with me after supper?”

“I’m going to mend the shed door,” George said remotely.

“In this weather? Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mary briskly.

“The catch is very loose. Someone has to do it. I don’t mind,” said George with the air of one willing to martyr oneself for one’s family over a loose catch on a shed. “I can talk to myself out there. At least the deck chairs don’t answer back.”

“I don’t know,” said Mary. “You carry on talking to them for long enough, they may well walk off to another shed.”

“Mum,” Angela said. “Don’t be mean.”

Mary smiled wickedly. Laura felt cross with her suddenly. It was irrational, she knew, but she wished Mary wouldn’t do it. She looked at her dad. He pushed his chair back as if to stand up, in a rather defeated way. She took a deep breath.

“So, Dad,” she said suddenly. “Where would you like to go tomorrow, then? If it’s still raining? There’s enough of those bor—er, I mean, big stately homes around here. Which one was first on your list? We could take a picnic, go for a walk, wander round the house. Make a day of it.”

“Er,” said George. He looked astounded.

“What?” said Angela, who was standing up, holding the salad servers in one hand and the bread in the other.

“Laura?” said Mary, moving forward in her chair. “Darling, are you okay?”

“Yes,” said Laura, trying not to sound impatient. “I’m just asking, Dad, what do you want to do tomorrow?”

George’s face turned pink again, but this time with pleasure. “Well, Laura, that’s a very interesting question, love.”

“Is it?” said Mary, sitting back again. “Is it really? Ask yourself, George, my dear man, is it?”

“Granny,” said Laura warningly. She looked at her dad again. “Come on, where shall we go?”

“Well,” said George Foster slowly. “If I had to pick one to kick things off with, I’d say…Chartley Hall.”

“Lovely,” said Angela. “Ooh, it’s beautiful there. We haven’t been there for ages, have we? Didn’t they have a toy soldier festival a few years ago?”

Mary slapped her hands to her cheeks.

“Yes,” said George. “And they used to have that lovely fete in the summer. Super. With the miniature train you could ride on? You and Simon used to love it. We went in ’86. And ’87. Do you remember?”

“Vaguely,” said Laura. All their summers at Seavale blended into one for her these days, but her parents seemed to recall each and every one with the precision of an Exocet missile.

“Well, you’ll see tomorrow,” George said. “It’s one of the great houses of England. Of anywhere. Beautiful. Inigo Jones. Finest collection of Hogarth’s work in private hands. The library—all carved by Grinling Gibbons. And the most incredible books, a set of Austen first editions, of Henry James. The—was it the seventh Marquis of Ranelagh? A bibliophile, it consumed him.” He cleared his throat. “Landscaped grounds…beautiful, just beautiful. In its heyday”—his eyes glazed over, and he reminded Laura almost of St. Teresa in her moment of ecstasy—“ah, it was the great house for miles around, its own kingdom, you know. The Needhams—there was no family like them in the area, no one at all.”

“Why’s that, then?” asked Angela, picking up the place mats.

“Well—more of everything than anyone else,” George said simply. “They survived the Civil War, emerged with all their money intact, and they built themselves this great house to demonstrate it. They were a terrible lot to start off with. Brigands, extortionists. They made their money in the 1300s as debt collectors; then they married into money, then more money, then more, till they were the Needhams of Chartley Hall and everyone else had long forgotten they were thugs. Then Charles II’s great mate, Thomas Needham, he was given the marquisdom. Mainly for letting Charlie have his mistress, I understand.” George chuckled in an all-boys-together way, delighted at this behavior; then realized he was on his own and coughed. “So, yes. More money, more power, more of everything. The most glittering marriages—they married well, the Needhams. The greatest prizes—there was a Michelangelo plaster cast in the ballroom, till they sold it to pay off the—ooh, now, what was it? Which marquis? Nineteenth century, anyway. Terrible gambling debts, bad business.”

“Hm,” Mary said. “I remember the chap who was there when we went. Flew planes. He still alive? He was getting on a bit, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, died two years ago. Terrible business, what happened to him. Broken man.”

“Why?” asked Laura.

“Wife left him. Ran off with someone. Can’t remember who, someone in the family. Big scandal, it was.”

“His brother,” said Mary. “His brother, Frederick.”

“Really?” said Laura. “Blimey.”

“She was the film star, Vivienne Lash,” Mary continued. “You wouldn’t remember her, Laura—she was big in the late fifties, sixties. Beautiful. It was this very high society match, the marquis and the actress. But, yes…” Mary pushed her glass backward and forward between her fingers, then looked around at them all. “Nice girl. I knew—I thought he couldn’t have been much fun. Not a very nice chap, I hear. So she ran off with the brother, never saw her children again.”

“Extraordinary,” said Angela. “How could she do that to them?”

“Well, she was in love,” said Mary, slightly sharply. “She would have done anything. And they weren’t babies, they were grownups, I seem to remember. I met Vivienne and Frederick once, several years ago. They were—lovely.”

Mary and Xan had met everyone. “Did you?” said Angela, refusing to be cowed. “Still—”

“Anyway, it’s not him now,” George interrupted his wife. “Died a couple of years ago. It’s his son, Vivienne’s son. Young chap. I saw her there once, you know. She was absolutely lovely. Stunning.”

“Right,” said Laura, wanting to say, “Get on with it, Dad!” but instead she said firmly, “Wow, sounds great, Dad. Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” said George, looking round the cozy room. He rubbed his hands together. “And, Mary, we need to talk about the plans for Saturday, you know. What you want to do. Angela and I are going to buy the food on Friday. We need to prepare.”

“Oh, yes we do,” said Mary, her eyes twinkling at him. “Preparation is key, my dear boy.”

“I’ve got to ice the—” Angela broke off suddenly, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh. Nothing.”

“Ooh,” said Mary. “The dreadful suspense, my heart is in my mouth. What can you be talking about, darling?”

“Er,” said her daughter. “Nothing. I’m icing—nothing.”

“Great,” said Mary. “How jolly. Just remember, I hate green food coloring with a passion. Thank you.”

chapter fourteen

L
aura woke up on Wednesday morning, forgetting where she was. She lay there in her light, airy bedroom, listening to the sound of the waves breaking as the gradual rush of memory slid into her waking brain. She got up and pulled up the blinds, to be confronted with a beautiful sunny day. The storm of the previous night had blown all the clouds away and the sun was dancing on the sea; there was a faint breeze, and the beach huts were already showing signs of life, colored doors open, windbreaks being erected. Laura’s heart lifted.

Then, out on the terrace, she heard her parents having breakfast with Mary and discussing departure times for their expedition to Chartley Hall, and her heart sank again. Oh, Lord. It was one thing to cheer Dad up by encouraging him to reenact the National Trust guide at the dinner table; it was another to actually go with him to one of these places, just to keep the peace. Sure, she had liked them a lot when she was smaller. She especially liked the daydreaming you could do, pretending this beautiful silk-wallpapered room with its enormous bed was yours, pretending this marble staircase with the huge sculpture at the bottom was what you had to descend each night in a huge crinoline, skirts swaying from side to side as you greeted your guests, then were danced off onto the moonlit terrace by your husband, the terribly dashing Baron of…something. Or was that a scene from
Regency Buck
? She couldn’t remember, and wouldn’t, especially now that all her Georgette Heyers were probably languishing in an unecological landfill somewhere.

Anyway, it was nice to imagine, but quite another thing to have to pretend to enjoy now that she was twenty-eight, and actually basically thought stately homes perpetrated the myth of an outmoded class structure on British society and kept people like her dad firmly in his place, thinking they weren’t good enough for other people, like the Sandersons. Apart from anything else, the idea of trailing round after her parents all day while they went “ooh” and “aah” over some boring carving in a library was dire, not to mention too depressingly embarrassing to imagine. She could stay at home with a good book; she had found an old Lord Peter Wimsey mystery on the bookshelf the night before and was looking forward to settling down with that for the day, perhaps outside if the weather held. No more romances for her.

She got dressed and went out to the terrace, and there was her dad, his head bobbing up and down enthusiastically as he passed his mother-in-law the milk.

“Aha, Laura! Morning! We thought we should set off in about an hour, what do you think, Laura?” he said, munching on toast and brushing imaginary crumbs absentmindedly off his rather bald head.

“Morning, love,” said Angela. “Come and have some coffee, I’ve just made it. Do you want toast?” She stood up. “I’ll get you some, do you want some?”

“I’m fine,” Laura growled. She cleared her throat. “I’m fine, Mum, I’ll get it,” she said, rather more lucidly.

“So, Laura,” said her dad jovially. “Looking forward to our trip today, love?” He waved his guidebook at her.

“Yup,” said Laura, reaching for a mug and pouring herself some coffee. “Look, Dad, the thing is…I was thinking. Do you mind if…if I don’t come today?” She yawned in a deeply unconvincing way. “I’m really tii-iired. Aaah. I didn’t sleep well. And I don’t feel well.”

Her parents looked at her.

“Also, I’ve got to do some work,” she finished. “For the—the thing next week. My meeting. So, I really have to, actually. And—”

“Laura,” Angela interrupted, holding her hand up as if to prevent her from speaking further. “Let me give you a piece of advice.”

“Sure,” said Laura meekly.

“If you’re going to make an excuse, only make one excuse,” said her mother sternly. “Don’t make four. It makes it terribly obvious that you’re trying to get out of something.”

“I’m not!”

“Yes, you are,” Angela said. “Never mind, dear. If you don’t want to come, just say so. We’re hardly going to be heartbroken, you know.”

Laura looked at her dad. He didn’t look heartbroken, of course. He did look quite sad, though. Laura shifted in her seat. She didn’t want to go. She was twenty-eight! She didn’t have to go if she didn’t want to go and—she wasn’t going to go, that was it. Silence fell upon the group.

After a moment, Mary said, “Such a nice postcard from Annabel, did I show it to you? She and Robert are really looking forward to Saturday, Angela. And she says Robert said to let George know he’ll be able to give him a hand with the barbecue, too. Well, that’s nice of him, isn’t it. I suppose he’s remembering George’s slight mishap with the grill last year.”

Whoa, thought Laura. Whoa, whoa. God, those Sandersons, they really were the pits.

“God,” George muttered under his breath. Laura could have sworn she heard him say something else much ruder than that, but—no! not Dad, surely? She looked up at him in Foster solidarity, her chin in the air.

“Sure, I’ll come,” she said. “I just needed to wake up a bit. Great. Great.”

“Great!” said George.

Mary smiled, and went back to her paper. “Have a lovely time.”

Laura looked at her questioningly.

“I’m not coming, darling,” she said serenely. “The garden needs doing and my hip’s much better. You’ll have a wonderful day without me, I’m sure.”

“Hm,” said Laura.

They left an hour later, and it was getting on for twelve by the time they turned off the road for Chartley Hall. Away from the coast it was a hot, still day; the trees along the quiet lanes around the house were heavy and green, the only sound a passing car or a lazily cooing wood pigeon high in the trees. They drove through Chartley, a small village crammed with B and Bs, shops selling tea towels of the house, and quaint old pubs, and a mile farther along came to the turn. A painted wooden sign, cracked and peeling, stood on a stake, partly obscured by cow parsley and trailing leaves. Laura had to peer to read it: