The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (3 page)

Aunt Clare altered the
room in the same way that a vast bouquet of spring flowers would, complementing
everything around her with a vibrant, arresting beauty and a strong smell of
rose water. She was a large woman, but handsome and excellently proportioned,
with huge yellow-green eyes, high cheekbones and, like her niece, thick
straight hair, a shade nearer to grey than blond, all of it piled on top of her
head in a beautiful chignon. Fifty-five, I thought, and only just. (I pride
myself on being able to guess people’s age, and I’m rather good at it.) I
jumped up at once, outraging the sleeping cat who slunk off under the piano.

‘So
here she is!, cried Aunt Clare in a sing-song voice. ‘Introduce us at once,
Charlotte.’

‘Oh —
this is Penelope,’ said Charlotte. There was a silence and my eye opened in
astonishment. At no point thus far had I told her my name.

‘H-how
do you do?’ Aunt Clare’s tiny hand was as delicate as a budgie’s claw in my
great paw.

‘Wonderful!’
said Aunt Clare briskly. ‘This is my son, Harry,’ she added, and out of the
shadowy corridor emerged a boy. I sighed to myself because Charlotte was right.
He certainly was not the most handsome boy in London. He was short, a couple of
inches shorter than me, and skinny as a rake in his crumpled white shirt and
charcoal grey trousers. His hair was the same dark blond as Charlotte’s, only
his was not poker straight, but all over the place. He looked as though he had
just woken up from an afternoon nap.

‘Hello—’
I began, and the word choked in my throat because when he looked up at me, his
eyes threw me completely off balance. I had never seen anything so spooky, so
arresting, so brilliantly
original
in all my life. His left eye was a
sleepy bluegreen, while the right was as brown as dark chocolate, and both
were framed by thickly black, curling lashes, giving the uneasy impression that
he had spent hours in the powder room.

‘What,
ho!’ he said sardonically.

‘How do
you do?’ I recovered myself, stretching out my hand. He took it and held my
gaze in a deadpan stare until I blushed scarlet, and, noting this, he grinned
and actually stifled a snort of laughter. I hated him in that moment.

‘I
expect you’re hungry,’ said Aunt Clare, eyeing the green coat now covered in
ginger hair.

‘Yes,’
I said, turning to her in relief.

‘Phoebe,
we’d like toast, and some of Mrs Finch’s raspberry jam, and chocolate cake, and
ginger scone and a big pot of tea please,’ Charlotte instructed, beaming at
Phoebe. ‘Ooh, and some of those nice chocolate biscuits, not those ghastly
coconut ones please.’

Coconut!
I thought.

Phoebe
gave her a spectacular glare and vanished again.

‘Now,
come and sit next to me, Penelope,’ Aunt Clare commanded, oozing onto the sofa
and patting the seat beside her. Charlotte nodded encouragingly. Harry was
lighting a cigarette with long fingers. ‘Harry has dinner with the Hamiltons at
seven,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘He’s terribly nervous about seeing Marina again.’

‘Am I?’
said Harry in a bored voice. Just then the telephone rang and he shot across
the room to pick it up.

‘Hello?…
She did? The little darling, I knew she could do it … No, thank you… Not at
all…’

As he
spoke, Aunt Clare remained as still as a lioness, barely breathing, her face grim
with concentration. She certainly didn’t have my mother’s subtlety when it came
to eavesdropping. When Harry had finished his call, he replaced the receiver
with a bang, hurried across the room and picked up a coat from the back of a
chair.

‘That
tip I had for the four-fifty came good,’ he announced. He spoke very fast,
scooping up coins, keys and betting slips from the table beside the door. ‘And
please don’t talk about me when I’m gone, Mother, it’s bloody boring.’ With
that he left us, banging the door behind him.

‘How
rude!’ exclaimed Aunt Clare.

‘Isn’t
he?’ agreed Charlotte merrily.

‘Oh, he’s
impossible!’
went on Aunt Clare. ‘Penelope — Harry has been madly in
love with Marina Hamilton for the past year.’

‘Oh?’ I
said politely. I knew of Marina, of course, but only from her photographs in
the social columns. She and Harry struck me as a most unlikely match.

‘They’re
a most unlikely match,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘Marina’s parents are that ghastly
American couple who bought lovely Dorset House from the FitzWilliams.’

‘Ah. Of
course.’ I knew Dorset House, and the FitzWilliams were a dull couple, and old
acquaintance of my mother’s.

‘God
only knows what they’ve done to the place; it’s too frightening to think about,’
said Aunt Clare.

‘I’ve
appalling taste in interiors. I expect I should love it,’ sighed Charlotte.

‘Don’t
talk nonsense, girl,’ said Aunt Clare sharply. Anyway, last week Marina became
engaged to George Rogerson — who’s a large boy, poor thing, but supposed to be
terribly nice and very rich — so Harry’s having to admit defeat, not something
he like doing at the best of times.

I
giggled.

‘He’s
out for dinner with the happy couple tonight, and on December the third they’re
throwing an engagement party at Dorset House,
naturellement,
which I
think is too awful for words. Harry’s never been able to take rejection, which
is so
tiresome
for us all. I only wish his father was here to set him
straight.’

It was
clear to me that Aunt Clare was the influence behind Charlotte’s way of
talking. They both spoke in a fashion that was at once mannered and completely
natural. Charlotte groaned.

‘Oh, I
wish Phoebe would hurry up with tea. I’m half starved.’

‘She
thinks of nothing but food,’ Aunt Clare informed me. ‘But what of you, child?
How exciting to meet one of Charlotte’s friends, and such an attractive young
girl! Do I know your parents?’ She cleared her throat and paused in a fashion
that the novelist would describe as dramatically. ‘You — you look terribly like
— like — Archie Wallace,’ she said.

For the
second time I was rendered almost speechless.

‘He’s —
he was my father,’ I managed to squeak. ‘He — he was killed. The war …’ I
trailed off and looked down at my hands, horribly uncomfortable. Aunt Clare
paled and for an awful moment I panicked that she hadn’t realised Papa had
died.

‘Ye,’
she said eventually. ‘Yes. I am sorry. I read about Archie. I was so terribly
sad.’ She pressed her hand to her chest. ‘And you poor darling. His daughter.
Good gracious.

There
was something in the way that she spoke these words that made me want to
comfort her, to tell her that it was all right, that yes, Papa had died, but
that really I had never even known him. Her eye clouded over, suddenly dead,
and for a few seconds the room sank back into that weighty silence again. Oh help,
I thought. She’s going to cry.

But she
didn’t. Instead she said after a small pause: ‘Of course, he and Talitha were
married before they were whelped.’ The clouds lifted again.

‘Um — I
don’t think I understand,’ I said.

‘They
were babies themselves.’

‘Oh, I
see. Yes, I suppose they were. My mother was seventeen when I was born,’ I
explained to Charlotte.

‘Seventeen!
How romantic!’ she wailed.

‘Oh,
Talitha Orr was quite the most sensational beauty,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘Thoroughly
thoroughbred, despite being Irish, poor dear. Glorious hair, and always dressed
for men, not women. That was the key to her success, you know.’

I
laughed. I just couldn’t help it. ‘It’s absolutely true. She doesn’t really
like women at all.’

‘It’s a
common trait of beautiful women,’ said Aunt Clare pertly.

‘Is it?
I
adore
women. I suppose that means I’m not beautiful,’ said Charlotte
ruefully. Aunt Clare snorted and rounded on her niece.

‘Don’t
be so damn silly! Your trouble is that you’re far too trusting for your own
good.’

Charlotte
raised her eyebrows at me and Aunt Clare coughed and gave me a slightly salty
look.

‘You
have a brother, don’t you?’

‘Inigo.
He’s nearly two years younger than me.’

‘Does
he look like you, dear?’

‘I can’t
see it myself. He takes after my mother. He’s supposed to be boarding at
Sherbourne but he’s forever sneaking home at the weekend.’

‘Well!
Fancy that, Charlotte. Have you met him?’

‘No,
Aunt.’

‘How
horribly casual you are, Charlotte. It really is unbecoming. You must ask
Penelope to introduce you to her brother. He sounds perfectly brilliant.’

‘Charlotte
and I haven’t known one another very long—’ I began.

Aunt,
we met at a party only two weeks ago but we’re already the greatest of friends,’
said Charlotte, shooting me a warning look.

‘What
party?’ demanded Aunt Clare.

‘Harriet
Fairclough’s wedding reception,’ said Charlotte, not missing a beat.

‘Really?
How extraordinarily clever of you, Charlotte, to meet someone as pretty and
interesting as Penelope at such a dull affair,’ said Aunt Clare.

‘Wasn’t
it?’ agreed Charlotte.

I
gulped. Five seconds later we were interrupted by the entrance of Phoebe and
the tea tray.

‘Oh,
clear the table,’ Aunt Clare instructed. ‘Just put everything on the floor.’

Being a
self-conscious sort of person, I was very impressed by the fact that she felt
no need to apologise for the quite spectacular disorder surrounding us. Phoebe
poured tea and gave me a plate with my toast and jam as if bestowing a huge
favour the like of which I could never begin to repay. I have to admit that the
cake was exceptional, the scones melt-in-the-mouth delicious and the tea
weirdly but deliciously smoky. Charlotte ate as if she hadn’t seen food for
weeks, stretching over everyone to grab at the scones, shoving cake into her
mouth like a child and swigging at her tea as if it were ale, and quite
ruining the elegance she had acquired through the use of my coat.

‘We
never get tea like this at home,’ she sighed mid-mouthful. ‘How would you know?’
I found myself asking. ‘You’re never
at
home, are you?’

Aunt
Clare snorted with laughter. ‘How true, Penelope dear.’

‘Yet
what would you do without me, Aunt?’ demanded Charlotte.

‘Manage
perfectly well, I’m sure.’

‘No you
wouldn’t. What would you do without me keeping an eye on your errant son?’

‘You
know, Harry worries me, girls,’ murmured Aunt Clare, absent-mindedly passing me
a pack of playing cards instead of the milk. ‘I never imagined I would have a
son who
gambled!
I mean, it’s perfectly acceptable if you can justify it
by knowing one end of a horse from the other but Harry simply hasn’t a
clue.
I lie awake at night wondering what can be done about his behaviour.’

She
sniffed again. Unfortunately for Aunt Clare, she possessed the clear eyes,
unlined skin and bright expression of one who drops off for nine hours of
uninterrupted sleep as soon as her head has hit the pillow. I fought a desire
to giggle.

‘He
needs help,’ admitted Charlotte. ‘No one can deny that. Aunt Clare helped
herself to a slice of cake. ‘It was all well and good when he was a child,’ she
said regretfully. ‘We used to laugh about Julian the Loaf back then.’

‘Julian
the Loaf?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘Oh, he
kept a loaf of bread called Julian in a wire cage because I refused to buy him
a rabbit. Whether Julian was white, brown or sliced, I forget. Harry was quite
upset when his father insisted that he stopped behaving in such a silly way. I
must say, we all grew quite fond of that loaf.’

‘Harry’s
always been the same,’ said Charlotte, shoving another scone into her mouth. ‘Full
of ideas. An inventor of sorts.’

‘Oh!
Always
inventing. But really, I do wish I had put a stop to it when I could. I
should have known from the start, of course. After all, there aren’t many
children whose first word is “dumbwaiter”.’ Aunt Clare looked pained and I
gulped loudly to avoid laughing.

‘He’s
training to be a magician,’ explained Charlotte. ‘He’s really rather good.’

‘What
sort of magician?’ I asked, suspiciously.

‘The
usual sort. Sleight of hand. Pulling rabbits, or perhaps loaves of bread, out
of a hat,’ said Charlotte with a giggle. ‘He has a great talent, apparently.’

‘Oh, it’s
all very impressive indeed,’ said Aunt Clare irritatedly. ‘Very amusing for
everyone but his mother. What future is there in fooling people? And how on
earth
he ever hoped to snare a girl like Marina Hamilton with no fixed income I
simply do not know. He must be stark, staring mad.’

 
‘Oh, Aunt!’ said Charlotte airily. ‘You
do exaggerate. Anyway, it’s absurd to talk about such matters in front of
Penelope who can be of no help at all.’ Charlotte smoothed crumbs off the lap
of my coat. I felt momentarily piqued by her dismissal, yet recalling this part
of the conversation later that night, I recognised a challenging tone to what
Charlotte had said.