The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (4 page)

‘How is
your mother? Did you see her yesterday?’ she asked Charlotte, briskly changing
the subject.

‘She’s
unwell at the moment. A dreadful cold that she can’t seem to shake.’

‘Good,
good,’ mused Aunt Clare.’

‘And
your sister?’

‘Still
away.’

‘Gracious,
she’s been gone a long time. Still, they say New York is the place to be.’

‘She’s
been in Paris for the past two months, Aunt.’

‘Has
she? How futile. It’s a Frenchman, I suppose?’

‘No. An
Englishman living in Paris.’

‘Worse
and worse,’ said Aunt Clare cheerfully. ‘There is no sight so depressing as the
English trying to dress French. I should know.’

Neither
Charlotte nor myself ventured to ask her how she should know, but I, for one,
didn’t doubt her expertise on the subject. I ate more toast and studied
Charlotte. I had never seen a face that altered so much with movement. When she
talked, her face took on a slightly lascivious, amused expression, yet when she
was listening and still, she looked wide-eyed and innocent, as if an impure
thought had never entered her head. She did a great deal of listening (as I
imagine was customary for everyone when they took tea with Aunt Clare), but
unlike most people who pretend to listen and then show themselves up by
forgetting everything two minutes later, Charlotte really seemed to take
everything in, almost as if it were an exam and she was going to be tested on
it later. Aunt Clare was incapable of staying with one topic of conversation
for longer than thirty seconds, though the chat repeatedly came back to Harry,
as if there was some game going on where his name had to be mentioned every
three minutes. After nearly half an hour of trying to keep up, I decided that
enough time had passed for it to be perfectly acceptable for me to go home.

‘I
really should be going,’ I said. ‘I have to catch the train home.’

‘And
where is home?’ asked Aunt Clare.

‘Wiltshire,
near Westbury.’

‘Milton
Magna Hall,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘Of course.’ She spoke the name in what was
almost a whisper. Although I was accustomed to people knowing of the house,
there was something in Aunt Clare’s tone that unsettled me.

‘Milton
Magna Hall!’ said Charlotte. ‘What a name!’

‘It’s
supposed to be quite the most magnificent building in the West Country,’ said
Aunt Clare, recovering her voice.

‘It
was,
perhaps,’ I said. ‘It’s in rather a state at the moment. I mean, it hasn’t
quite recovered from the war. There was a lot of mess made when it was
requisitioned. The soldiers treated it pretty appallingly—’ I stopped there, my
heart bearing furiously. I hadn’t talked about the problems Magna faced to anyone,
not even my mother. The subject made me more nervous than anything else in the
world.

‘To
watch a great house dying is a terrible tragedy,’ murmured Aunt Clare. ‘One
of
the
great tragedies known to man. Goodness knows, I’ve known enough of the
one that have gone. We’ll look back on this time in horror, you know, girls. In
fifty years, no one will believe that so many beautiful houses were forced to
fall.’

‘We’re
fighting to keep it alive,’ I muttered, slurping noisily at my tea to cover up
how moved I was by her words.

‘Is the
house glorious at Christmas?’ asked Charlotte, sensing my discomfort.

‘It is
lovely. Though fearfully cold.’

‘I love
the cold! So inspiring. I’m quite sure we shall all pass out with heat in this
room.’

Aunt
Clare stood up, crossed the room and poked at the fire. ‘Harry adores a warm
house,’ she said resentfully. ‘He has no stamina at all.’

‘He has
a warm heart,’ Charlotte observed. Aunt Clare snorted. Ah, Harry, I thought.
Always, we returned to the boy.

‘So
tell me, Penelope. What do you do with yourself? Do you work hard? Do you
fixate upon the notion of having a career, like Charlotte?’

‘I work
one day a week in an antique shop in Bath,’ I said, seizing the chance to prove
my worth. ‘It’s owned by a man called Christopher Jones who was a great friend
of Papa’s at school. He knows more about art than anyone else I know. I’m
learning all the time about beautiful things,’ I added lamely.

‘From
Christoph? I doubt that-very much,’ said Aunt Clare kindly. ‘He’s the most
outrageous
gossip.’

‘Oh!
You know him?’

‘Oh
yes.’ Aunt Clare smiled blandly. ‘Oh yes,’ she said again.

Charlotte
raised her eyes at me with an expression that said, ‘Don’t ask.’

‘Penelope,
have
you
ever been in love?’ Aunt Clare asked congenially, as if wanting
to know whether I took sugar in my tea, swerving off the subject yet again. I
blushed furiously. (You may as well know now that I am a terrible blusher; it’s
a trait I gather I inherited from my father who had freckles and a pale
complexion, like me. I’ve heard that if one wiggles one’s toe at the moment of
acute embarrassment or humiliation, it can distract the brain from the task of
reddening the face. Well, I spend my whole life wiggling my toes, but I’ve
never noticed any difference to my hot face.)

‘Gosh,
no!’ I said eventually. ‘I don’t really know many boys. Well, my brother has
his school friends, I suppose, but they seem awfully young and silly to me.’

‘How
lovely to have a younger brother with pretty friends,’ sighed Charlotte. And
how lovely they would think
her,
I thought.

‘Very
useful for tennis,’ remarked Aunt Clare, bafflingly. Then, on cue, and just as
I was preparing to get myself out of the place, the door opened again and Harry
was there. Despite Aunt Clare’s talk of his insomnia and rage, he looked far
from troubled — he gazed at us almost pityingly, with a hint of a smirk on his
face, his chaotic hair almost hiding his extraordinary eyes. New-found
knowledge of his skills as a magician seemed entirely appropriate; never before
had I met someone who looked capable of turning men into frogs and frogs into
princes. Charlotte smiled at him.

‘Back
already?’

‘I
haven’t been out yet. Got trapped with Phoebe in the kitchen,’ he said in a low
voice.

‘Oh,
poor thing,’ said Charlotte. ‘Why don’t you have some tea?’

‘No
thanks.’

Are you
dreading this evening terribly?’ went on Charlotte, her voice soft and full of
concern.

‘Nor
particularly,’ said Harry. ‘I love her, she loves him. It’s not exactly the
most original story in the world, is it?’

I
sipped cold tea to hide my astonishment. Where I came from, nobody spoke like
this, least of all in front of their family. Harry lit another cigarette with
elegant fingers, and walked over to the fire.

‘This
house is always so bloody cold,’ he snapped. ‘And I wish you would stop talking
about me to everyone who walks through the door, Mother.’

I
presumed he was referring to me, though I wondered who everyone else was.
Perhaps Charlotte did this every week? Perhaps I was the last in a long line of
mystery guests who were asked to tea with Aunt Clare?

‘Penelope’s
not everyone, she’s my friend,’ Charlotte corrected him.

‘Then I
don’t expect her views differ largely from your own.’

‘I don’t
know about that,’ I said, with perfect truth. Charlotte reached over for yet
another slice of cake. For a second I caught Harry’s eye, but this time, far
from making me blush for his own entertainment, he looked straight through me
as though I wasn’t there at all.’

‘You
see what I mean?’ demanded Aunt Clare triumphantly after he had left us for a
second time. ‘He has none of his father’s ability to sit still and do nothing.’
She stood up. ‘Girls, you must excuse me, I have to see to Phoebe. Delightful,
Penelope.’

I
scrabbled to my feet. ‘Oh, thank you so much for tea. I’ve loved it,’ I said,
suddenly realising I had. Aunt Clare smiled at me.

‘Darling
girl,’ she said. ‘Do visit again soon.’ As she left the room, she paused and
whispered something in my ear. ‘Do remember me to Christopher. Just mention
Rome, September 1935 to him, won’t you?’ She winked, smiled and was gone.

I left the house soon
after. Charlotte saw me to the door.

‘You
were just wonderful,’ she said, taking off my coat and handing it to me. ‘Aunt
Clare says I have to give this back to you now. She noticed right away that I’d
asked you to swap coats with me. She thinks I’m fiendish.’

‘Not at
all.’

‘And I
am
sorry to hear about your father. Mine’s dead too, you know. Heart attack,
which is much less romantic than dying for your country, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t
see any romance in death,’ I, said.

Charlotte
looked at me incredulously. ‘Really? You’re obviously not even halfway through
Antony
and Cleopatra
then.’

There
didn’t seem to be an answer for this.

‘I can’t
thank you enough for sharing the taxi and sitting through tea,’ she went on. ‘It
really makes such a
change
to have a guest for tea. Even Harry couldn’t
resist popping in to have a gawp at you.’

‘I
hardly think he was gawping,’ I said. I gave Charlotte her green coat, feeling
suddenly foolish and wondering what to say next. ‘Well, goodbye then,’ I said
stiffly. ‘I hope we meet again one day.’

Charlotte
laughed. ‘What a thing to say! Of course we shall.’

I
laughed. ‘How certain you are! Why on earth should we?’

‘We all
adore you already,’ Charlotte said, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘None of us will
let you go now. Have a good journey home.’

As I
walked away, Charlotte called out to me. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Penelope!’

I
turned round. ‘Yes?’

‘Do you
like music?’

‘What?’

‘Music.
What music do you like?’

I
paused. Charlotte looked to me like a jazz fan and I hated jazz. But how could
I tell her that I was madly in love with Johnnie Ray? Yet how could I
not
tell
her?

‘Oh,
this and that,’ I replied uneasily.

‘Like
what?’ she persisted.

‘Oh,
the usual stuff, a bit of jazz, a bit of—’

‘Oh,
jazz!’
cried Charlotte, her voice heavy with disappointment. ‘How terminally dull.
Funny, I didn’t have you marked as one of
those.
Harry’s addicted to the
stuff, can’t get enough. Personally, it leaves me utterly cold.’

There
was a pause.

‘I
think jazz is rather important,’ I said pompously, but Charlotte said nothing.
I
can tell her.
I thought.
She’ll understand.
I took a deep breath. ‘But
I — I rather prefer, well, actually, I am utterly and completely dedicated to —
to — Johnnie Ray,’ I admitted.

There.
I had said it. Charlotte pretended to swoon. ‘Thank
goodness!’
she said.
‘I think he’s the dreamiest man alive.’

‘You
do?’

‘Of
course. How could anybody not?’

‘Do you
think he might come to London and marry us?’

‘He’d
be mad not to,’ said Charlotte, without any irony at all.

I hummed ‘If You Believe’
all the way to the station. It was as if I had been watching a play and hadn’t
realised how good it was until the last scene. On the way down to Magna that
night, I missed, yes, really
missed,
Charlotte, Aunt Clare and Harry. It
had taken them just a couple of hours to alter my life, yet I didn’t quite know
how yet.

It wasn’t
until I boarded the train that I felt something strange in the pocket of my
coat that had not been there when I handed it to Charlotte in the cab. It was a
small green velvet box. I opened it up and found a piece of paper inside,
folded up. I opened the paper. On it were written two words, in peacock blue
ink.
Thank you!

I liked
the exclamation mark. Charlotte, I thought, seemed like one herself.

Chapter
3

THE
DUCK SUPPER