The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (42 page)

‘Tell
me, Penelope,’ he said. ‘Your family been here since the dawn of time?’

‘My
father’s family,’ I said.

‘Who
was your farther?’ asked Rocky, imitating my accent.

It was
a funny question. Who was Papa? He was a million things that I would never
know, and a million things that I had made him as a result of never knowing. ‘His
name was Archie Wallace,’ I said, as ever his name feeling high and strange in
my throat.

‘What
did he do? Before the war, I mean.’ Rocky spread a thick layer of butter on his
bread, which struck me as terribly cavalier.

‘He
worked in the city,’ I said. ‘Stocks and shares.’

‘Oh
yeah?’

‘He
wasn’t frightfully good at it,’ I went on, faltering slightly. Charlotte gave
me a whisper of a smile and I spoke a little louder. ‘He — he hated wearing a
suit. He only did it for us. Well, for the family, just because it was what he
felt he should do. Really, he was suited to being outside.’

‘And
war’s always been a great excuse to get the hell outside,’ said Rocky without
irony.

‘He was
very brave,’ said Inigo suddenly. sounding about twelve. Unthinkingly. I
stretched out my hand to him.

‘He was
very brave,’ I repeated in a whisper. Why couldn’t I learn to talk about Papa
the way other people talked about their fathers? My heart crashed against my
chest and Rocky, to his eternal credit, sensed my unease.

‘I
couldn’t have done it myself,’ he said. ‘I got this awful knee injury in a car
smash when I was nineteen. Woulda been no good to anyone in a battle. So I
figured that I could do something for the ones who weren’t fighting, but hoping
— the women, the kids, the injured. It made me feel better about not being out
there. So I started making radio shows, TV shows. Got rich so quick I was
blowing my nose on twenny dollar bills.’

Inigo
laughed loudly.

‘Doesn’t
it make you feel guilty?’ blurted Charlotte, which was something that I was
wondering but would never have had the nerve to ask. ‘Making money that way?
When people are dying by the thousand?’

‘Not
one little bit,’ said Rocky cheerfully. ‘If I could take people out of their
heads for a little while, if I could give them a dose of fantasy, that was all
that mattered. You can’t put a price on escape.

In my
head I could hear Johnnie sighing with agreement.

‘That’s
why I want to get out of here,’ Inigo said restlessly.

Charlotte
looked from Inigo to the ceiling. ‘You should be careful what you wish for,’
she said. ‘This place — Magna — I sometimes feel that it knows you want to get
out.’

‘Goodness,
Charlotte! Whatever do you mean?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, I
don’t know. I suppose what I mean is that I’d sell my soul for good shoes and a
stack of good pop records. Who wouldn’t?’

‘And?’
asked Inigo, baffled.

‘Well,
maybe we’re just too modern,’ said Charlotte. ‘This perpetual craving we have —
music, and the cinema and good clothes — when this house is the most triumphant
work of art any of us will ever know.’ She picked up her wine glass,
uncharacteristically self-conscious. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s just how
it strikes me sometimes.

‘Hear
hear,’ said Rocky and he raised his glass. ‘To Milton Magna. May her pretty
ghosts haunt us long after we leave her gates.

‘To
Magna.” we repeated, and sloshed our glasses into the air and into each other’s
glasses.

After dinner, Charlotte,
Inigo and I showed Rocky round the rest of the house. Like Charlotte, he had a
beady eye for a good book and an interesting, painting, but he was unafraid of
admitting to not knowing things, too. He fired questions at us, and I am
ashamed to say that Charlotte stepped in and answered more than Inigo and I.

‘Tell
me about the carvings on the staircase,’ he said, examining the detail on the
horses’ hooves.

‘They’re
medieval,’ I said with the usual flourish.

‘They’re
unusual. Why are they so ornate?’

‘Um …’
I didn’t want to tell him that I had ceased to notice the carvings a long time
ago and that to me it was simply the staircase, part of the familiar route from
my bedroom to the hall. I remember being very hard on myself later that night
as I lay in bed and recalled Rocky’s questions and my half-hearted answers, but
now I see that it would have been odd for me to have been any other way. Magna
to me aged eighteen was my home, and what I loved about it was not what anyone
else would love about it, after all. What Charlotte had was a newly developed
eye for beauty.

‘Oh! I
wondered that, the first time I came here,’ she said in answer to Rocky. ‘I
looked it all up in this wonderful book my aunt has called
Great English
Houses.
The ornamental design was commissioned by Wittersnake, the original
owner of the house, who apparently had seen a similar design in a Dutch palace.’

Rocky
looked impressed and Charlotte gave me a pleading look. ‘Do let’s show him the
tapestry room!’ she cried. She turned to Rocky. ‘When I have my own house one
day, an entire floor is to he based on the tapestry room. You’ve never seen
anything quite so delicious.’

Rocky
grinned. ‘You should charge people for the tour,’ he said. Charlotte tossed her
hair over her shoulders.

‘How
much have you got?’ she asked, spinning off in the direction of the East Wing.
Rocky and I lingered behind her at a slower pace.

‘Don’t
you think someone should make sure Marina’s recovered?’ I said. ‘After all, she
hasn’t had anything to eat this evening. Do you think we were rather cruel to
her?’

‘Not
nearly cruel enough,’ said Rocky cheerfully. ‘When we’ve finished looking round
the house, I shall pack her into my car and take her back to London with me.’

‘I
shouldn’t think she’ll be very pleased about that,’ I said, trying to hide my
disappointment.

‘That
is of no consequence whatsoever. She’s got away with far too much already. I
came here to get her out of your hair and to give her a plain talking to. Both
of these things can be achieved by putting her in the car and driving back to
town.

How I
hated Marina! Now she had the pleasure of sitting in Rocky’s wonderful car all
the way back to London, something that I would have happily given my right arm
to do. ‘She came to find Harry,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she wanted to leave
until she had talked to him.’

‘Gee,
Penelope, you sound as if you
want
her to get back with him!’ said
Rocky, looking at me from under his sooty eyelashes and smiling softly, and I
felt the whole world swaying around me.

‘N-no!’
I stuttered. ‘I just think that I — oh, I don’t know
what
to think any
more.

‘She
won’t take him from you. That much I can promise you.’

‘How do
you know?’

‘I’ve
already told you. She doesn’t really love him and he doesn’t really love her.’

I bit
my lip to stop myself from saying anything.

‘He
loves you,’ said Rocky. ‘The magician, I mean. I could see it. At
the Ritz that night. She’s lost him but she’s damned if she’s gonna accept it.’

‘This
is the tapestry room,’ I said, thoroughly disturbed.

An hour later, Rocky and
Marina left Magna. She left without much fuss at all, climbing meekly into the
passenger seat and waiting for Rocky to bid farewell to us all. Once inside the
car, she opened her handbag and fished around frantically for something, and
everything spilled out all over the seat of the car. She rescued her hip flask
before anything else, her hands trembling. I think it was only then that I
realised that Marina was a drunk. In that moment, she seemed to shrink in front
of me.

‘Goodbye,
girls!’ called Rocky to Charlotte and me. ‘Keep sweet and beautiful!’

‘Look
after Marina,’ I called out suddenly.

‘Oh,
she’ll be fine,’ said Rocky. I was glad that he said that. He could say
anything and I would believe it. I didn’t want him to go. I wanted to throw
myself, sobbing, into his arms to stop him from leaving, but instead I smiled
and waved and tried to push memories of waving goodbye to Papa out of my mind.

‘Well!’
said Charlotte as the glorious car roared off into the night, lighting up the
drive and scattering rabbits into the hedges. ‘I can see what you mean about
him!’

‘I can
see what you mean about
her,’
added Inigo dreamily.

‘Oh
shut up, Inigo,’ I said.

You
see, it didn’t really matter if Marina was a fool, or a drunk, or a silly pain
in the neck. Boys just simply didn’t mind. She was that powerful. You had to
admire her for that.

Chapter
18

IN THE
GARDEN AND OUT OF TOUCH

F
or
the rest of the weekend I had to keep asking Charlotte whether Marina had
really been at Magna, for after she left the memory of her arrival seemed
nothing short of absurd. By contrast, the memory of Rocky at Magna felt
entirely plausible. He had left evidence of his fleeting visit that filled me
with longing — his whisky glass in the library, his forgotten cashmere scarf on
the hall table — yet all the time I found it impossible to place exactly what
the longing was for. It wasn’t as if I felt drawn to Rocky in the same way that
I was drawn to Johnnie, which was, if I may be frank, utterly to do with
Johnnie’s monumental sex appeal. With Rocky it was more that I just liked being
near him. I wanted to be
close
to him yet I wasn’t sure how I would feel
if he tried to kiss me. He made me feel like a little girl and something in me
adored that.

That evening, Inigo took a
copy of the
New Musical Express
to bed and Charlotte and I made
ourselves mugs of cocoa in the kitchen and, deciding that we were not a bit
tired, set up camp in the ballroom with a stack of records and a pile of rugs
to keep us from freezing to death. Listening to Johnnie and talking about Rocky
was an odd sensation — like overdosing on delight — and I was relieved that
Charlotte was staying because without her to share how I was feeling I felt I
might well have exploded with the effort of keeping it to myself.

‘Why do
you think he’s never married?’ asked Charlotte, opening a packet of chocolate
sandwich biscuits and dipping one into her cocoa.

‘I don’t
know. Maybe he’s never been in love. Maybe he was let down. Though who could
let
him
down?’ I sighed.

‘He was
wearing the most beautiful clothes,’ said Charlotte. ‘He must have more money
than he knows what to do with.’

‘Imagine
if he married Mama and saved Magna,’ I said idly. I don’t know what made me say
Mama and not me but there it was; something in me had made me say it. Was it
Rocky’s age, or the fact that he made me feel just how Papa had made me feel
when we said goodbye? I didn’t know.

Charlotte
raised her eyes at me. ‘Not such a silly plan,’ she said seriously.

We let
the idea hang in the air for a moment and I felt the whole universe suspended.
The pale moon was nearly full and shone through the ballroom windows like a
silver ghost. It was a clear, clear spring night and the sky was peppered with
stars and possibilities.

‘Oh!’
cried Charlotte suddenly. A shooting star!’ We clambered to our feet and opened
the window. ‘It’s a sign,’ she whispered. ‘We must find another one. Make a
wish.’

We
stared out at the stars for the entire duration of ‘Walking My Baby Back Home’
and then, just as Johnnie sang the last line, we caught one. I closed my eyes
and breathed in. What to wish for? I wanted to wish for a man as beautiful as
Rocky to love me, but something stopped me. Instead, I wished for the one thing
that seemed even less likely than a marriage proposal. I wished for Mama to be
happy again.

The next morning,
Charlotte left on the early train and I telephoned Harry to tell him that there
was no need for him to come and collect Marina as the job had already been
completed by somebody else.