The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (28 page)

I wanted desperately to
tell Charlotte all about my encounter with Rocky (was that
really
his
name?) but I did not dare to make a phone call to her until six o’clock the
following evening, when, at last, Mama vanished for a bath and I could be sure
she was not in earshot. Mama had ears like a bat, and the matters up for
discussion that night were especially delicate. Were Mama to hear me telling
Charlotte that a strange man (oh, and an American too) had paid my fare home,
and that I was planning on going to see Johnnie at the Palladium in exchange
for pretending to be Harry’s lover, I don’t think she would have been too
delighted.

‘Charlotte!’
I hissed.

‘Oh,
hello. You’re late calling today.’

‘We
need to meet tomorrow. Urgent matters to discuss.’

‘I can
come to Magna. Aunt Clare’s given me the day
off’
Charlotte was hard
pushed to keep the glee from her voice.

‘I’m
working in the shop until lunchtime. Shall we meet for lunch in Bath?’

‘Bliss.’

‘Twelve-thirty
at Coffee on the Hill? You can get the early train, can’t you?’

‘Yet
more ~expense,’ said Charlotte cheerfully. ‘Of course I can.

‘Oh,
and I’ve two essays to complete by tomorrow night,’ I said quickly. ‘You’ll
have to help me.’

‘What
are we talking about here?’

‘Tennyson.’

‘The
curse is come upon me,’
quoted Charlotte.

‘What?’

‘The
Lady of Shalott.
Really. Penelope, you are
hopeless.’

‘You’ll
help me then?’

‘I can
certainly do your handwriting. I’m getting rather good at it. What are the
urgent matters we need to discuss, anyway?’

‘I can’t
possibly tell you now,’ I said, but I was bursting inside with the need to talk
about Rocky and Johnnie Ray and what Harry had proposed.

‘Harry’s
been horribly smug all day.’ said Charlotte, reading my mind. ‘It’s nothing to
do with him, is it?’

‘It
might be. I’ll tell you tomorrow.

‘Penelope!’
came Mama’s voice from behind me.

‘There’s
my cue,’ I muttered. ‘See you tomorrow.

‘You’re
far too mysterious. It doesn’t suit you, Penelope, ‘Charlotte complained.

Inigo was home from school
that night, and Mary had made an insipid stew for our dinner.

‘So
warming on a cold night,’ Mama said stoutly. ladling it onto her plate, but
earlier on I had noticed the first daffodils of the year outside the kitchen
door and I had cried out loud with delight. Daffodils packed a glorious punch
at Magna, such bright, assured successors to the exquisitely shy snowdrops that
crept up the verges of the drive with heads bowed at the end of January. I
loved them for the confidence they instilled; their merry sunshine heads
bobbing in the wind seemed to make a mockery of the idea that Magna could not
survive. Winter was being edged out of the picture by spring — lovely. lovely
spring — and that evening I felt it all around us, crouching in the wings,
waiting to burst out and trample the dark evenings to the ground.

‘Good
week at school?’ I asked Inigo automatically.

‘Pretty
horrific. I got lines.’

Mama
dropped her fork with a clatter onto her plate. She always overreacted to Inigo’s
misadventures, and he got a strange thrill from relating them to her. ‘What on
earth for?’

‘Listening
to the radio after lights out.’

‘You’re
a silly boy.’ said Mama angrily. ‘Why on earth did you get caught?’

‘It was
that dronesome prefect, Williams-May. I got off lightly. actually. Thorpe was
caught doing the same thing last night and got caned before breakfast.’

‘What’s
wrong with you two?’ demanded Mama. ‘You’re always so damn
careless.
Your
father would be horrified!’

‘You’re
always telling us how radical Papa was at school!’ complained Inigo, edging a
watery onion to the side of his plate. He hated onions; even as I watched him,
he unobtrusively spat another into his napkin.

‘But he
was never
caught!
And he was captain of every team!’ Mama’s voice got
higher and higher with excitement.

‘Except
for hockey,’ chorused Inigo and I together.

‘Except
for hockey. And who on earth wants to play hockey?’

‘I can’t
think, Mama. All I want to play is the guitar.’ Inigo stood up and pushed away
his chair and crossed the room to the window. Mama looked at me with a
see-how-I-suffer expression on her face.

‘Do sit
down,’ she sighed, changing tack.

Inigo
paced a bit and eventually sat down on the window seat and stared out into the
night. ‘Pass me my lighter, will you, Penelope?’ He fished in his pockets and
pulled out a squashed packet containing only one miserable-looking cigarette.

‘Won’t
you sit down with us and finish your stew, darling?’ asked Mama reproachfully.
She didn’t really like getting cross with Inigo, but I could sense her
discomfort. She was unequipped to cope with any scenes not instigated by
herself.

‘No
thank you,’ said Inigo. ‘I find Mary’s stew unutterably depressing.’

There
was a silence and I felt like screaming with laughter and sobbing at the same
time.

‘You
used to love stew,’ said Mama in a wobbly voice. ‘It used to be a treat,
something we all looked forward to— ‘During the war, when we looked forward to
Papa coming home, too,’ I said.

‘But he
never did come home, did he?’ Inigo finished, rubbing his hand up and down the
back of his head as he did when he was talking about Papa.

That’s
done it, I thought, waiting for tears, but for once Mama did not cry. She
looked weary, older suddenly. crushed. Then her face hardened and she rounded on
Inigo. ‘And I suppose you think playing the guitar will make you rich? Will
save Magna from the tax collectors? Will pay to reopen the Long Gallery? You
think singing will keep the place standing? You think—’

‘Yes
I do!’
Inigo shouted. He stood up and shook his
hands out at us in frustration, and the ash from the end of his cigarette
floated gently to the floor. ‘I
do!’
he repeated. Mama gave me a
despairing look yet I looked back at her full of triumph, for I believed
everything that Inigo said.

‘You
see, Mama!’ I cried. ‘He’s thinking of Magna! He’ll sing and play for Magna! I
know
he will!’

Inigo
ran forward to Mama and actually fell at her feet.
‘Please,
Mama,’ he
said. ‘You have to believe me.

‘How
many people do you know who’ve made a record? How on earth would you do it?’
asked Mama, but I could tell she was softening a little. Inigo stood up again.

‘I
could go out to Memphis, to Uncle Luke’s friend Sam Phillips’s place. He could
get me into his studio for a day or two. I could start off there, just like
Elvis Presley—’

‘How on
earth would you get to Memphis in the first place?’ demanded Mama.

‘Aeroplane.’

Mama
laughed, without mirth. ‘And I suppose you’ve made enough money selling booze
and cigarette cards to do just that? Afford yourself a trip to America and back
on an aeroplane?’

‘I don’t
have to come back.’

Mama
burst into noisy sobs. The house felt so quiet around her, I almost hated the
place for not providing more noise, more distraction from this most awful
sound. I felt rooted to the spot, a spectator watching my own drama. I badly
wanted to help Mama, but there was a part of me that hated her for crying, that
hated her for wanting to keep Inigo and me here with her, trapped as she was.

‘How
did this happen? It must be my fault! It must be me!’ she wailed.

Everything,
even Inigo’s obsession with music, had to come back to her.

‘It
must be me!’ she repeated. ‘I’m an awful mother! I’m a terrible person!’ She
reached out for something to clean herself up with, but, distressingly for
everyone, she chose the napkin that Inigo had spat his onion into. With eyes
blinded by tears, she drew it to her face and blew heavily. thereby squashing
the onion onto her delicate nose. For the next few seconds, she teetered on the
brink of further tears, but, being Mama, soon found it impossible to do
anything but throw back her head and laugh and laugh. I think she despaired of
her sense of humour sometimes, for it was something uncontrollable that was
inclined to interrupt perfectly good misery. She had no idea of the power her
laughter had over Inigo and me. When Mama laughed, really laughed, nothing else
in the entire world mattered.

Later that night, after
Mama had gone to bed, Inigo and I played a hand of rummy in the library.

‘Were
you serious?’ I asked him. ‘About going to America?’

‘To
Memphis?’ said Inigo. ‘To make a record? Of course I was serious.’

‘But
you?
Little old sixteen-year-old you? Making a
record?
In
America?
No
one we know makes records. It isn’t possible, is it?’

‘Elvis
Presley makes records.’

‘But we
don’t
know
him. He’s just some singer Uncle Luke’s met!’

‘Good
enough for me.’

‘What’s
so great about him anyway?’

‘Everything.
You’re just frightened because he’s even better than Johnnie and you know it.’

‘Of
course
he’s not!’

‘I’m
sorry, Penelope, but there it is.

‘Why
don’t we hear him on the radio, then? How come he’s not playing the Palladium
next month?’ I heard my voice growing hysterical, but Inigo just grinned at me
infuriatingly and rearranged his cards.

‘When
Elvis Presley makes it, he’s going to kick everyone else out of the picture,’
he said, not even bothering to raise his voice. ‘It really is that simple.’

‘Show
me a photograph and I’ll be the judge of that,’ I snapped. ‘It’s not as if he
could possibly
look
more dreamy than Johnnie.’

‘He
doesn’t need to wear a hearing aid, if that’s what you mean. Uncle Luke’s
sending me pictures of him.’

‘Uncle
Luke says he looks weird.’

‘Weird
is only ever a good thing.’ Inigo yawned.

‘Oh,
you’re
impossible!’

‘Not at
all. I can just see that there’s life after Johnnie Ray.’

‘But
who’s going to remember Elvis Presley in twenty years’ time?’ I cried. ‘No one!
But
everyone
will remember Johnnie! You’ve only heard him singing four
songs!’

‘You
can believe what you want,’ said Inigo, ‘but I know .that there’s something
different about Elvis Presley. I just know it. Can’t say why or how. I just do.’

We
played the next round of cards without talking.

‘I’m
not saying I don’t like him,’ I admitted grudgingly as we stomped up the stairs
to bed, ‘it’s just that he’s not like Johnnie.’

‘He’s
certainly not like Johnnie,’ agreed Inigo. ‘He’s not like anyone. He’s just
Elvis Presley. That’s enough.’

The next day I left for
work before Mama had even surfaced for breakfast. She claimed to dislike the
fact that I had a job in town, saying that she hated the thought of anyone she
knew entering the shop and seeing me behind the counter, yet privately I felt
that she was glad to get me out of the house for a few hours. She was so lost
in her own self sometimes, so completely immersed in memories of Papa and her
youth, that on occasion I felt my presence clanging out of synch with her; I
seemed to belong to a time that she did not want to be a part of at all. I was
too modern for her, perhaps, and if there was one thing that Mama did not want
to understand, it was modern.

It was
one of those abnormally warm February mornings that shocks the system into
thinking that winter has fled overnight. I cycled to the station on the Golden
Arrow, my ancient but reliable bicycle, and jumped on the train to Bath.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the shop and removed my coat and sweater
and sat on the stool behind the counter, dangling my legs and thinking about
Rocky while waiting for Christopher to arrive. I liked the hours that he and I
spent in his shop. We talked about very little of any importance — we just sat
drinking Robinson’s lemon barley water, which he said was good for the soul. I
liked him because he was a piece of Papa that I could reach out and touch, and
he liked me for the same reason. That morning as we wrote splodgy price tags
for four new tea sets that had arrived the day before, I knew it would only be
a matter of time before Charlotte came into the conversation. I had also vowed
that today would be the day that I would ask him about Aunt Clare and Rome.

‘Price
them all as high as you dare,’ Christopher advised me.

‘People
are drinking tea as if it’s going out of fashion at the moment. He pretended to
be concentrating very hard on refilling his ink pen. ‘Does Charlotte drink tea?’