The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (50 page)

‘They’re
upstairs,’ she said, taking my coat. She looked even more miserable than usual,
her skin greasy. her blouse practically hanging off her. Miserable without
Harry, I thought, with a pang of empathy. She took the bluebells from me and I
fancied I saw them sigh and hunch in her fist. Never was there a girl so suited
to unhappiness. I made my way up to Aunt Clare’s study and, raking a deep
breath, opened the door. The quiet emptiness that had filled the room when I
was last there had utterly vanished, replaced by a carnival atmosphere. The
room was packed. I was thankful that no one took the slightest bit of notice
when I walked in. Charlotte extracted herself from the crowd.

‘Do
come and meet Patrick Reece, the great theatre critic,’ she said to me with a
wink. ‘He hasn’t seen Aunt Clare in years but he couldn’t resist turning up
this afternoon.’

‘Terrified
he’s going to appear in the book, I imagine. ‘With good reason,’ whispered
Charlotte. ‘He makes up most of Chapter Twelve.’

‘How do
you do?’ interrupted Patrick, flashing me a beaming smile. ‘So nice to see some
young people here.’

‘Yes.’
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I kept thinking of Hope Allen and
cocaine and the engagement party at Dorset House and Harry and me playing Dead
Ringers.’

‘I
suppose you know Harry too?’ asked Patrick. Was he a mind-reader, I wondered in
alarm.

‘Yes, I
know Harry,’ I said with a forced smile.

‘You’re
in love with him, I presume?’

I felt
the heat rise. ‘Whatever makes you say that?’

‘Oh, I
don’t know. Those wonderful two-tone eyes he has. Devilishly attractive to the
ladies, I gather.’

I was
saved from a response to this by Aunt Clare who bustled up in a magnificent red
and black striped dress with matching shoes. There was none of the weariness of
my last visit. She sparkled.

‘You
mustn’t monopolise this dear girl, Patrick,’ she scolded. ‘Penelope, dear, go
and get yourself a glass of champagne, won’t you?’

Gratefully.
I slipped off to find myself a drink, but not before overhearing Aunt Clare’s
next comment.

‘Delightful
child, so intelligent! Archie and Talitha Wallace’s eldest, you know,’ she
murmured.

‘Talitha
Orr that was?’ demanded Patrick throatily.

‘Indeed.’

‘Gracious,
she looks nothing at all like the dam and everything like the sire. How jolly
interesting. Is she engaged, Clare?’

‘Not at
all, more’s the pity. I longed for my Harry to fall for her, but it seems he
was too smitten by the ghastly American girl.’

‘Ah.’

I
missed Aunt Clare’s next comment and nearly sent Phoebe and the drinks tray
flying in my rush to get to Charlotte. She was taking a break from the throng
just outside the study and stuffing her face with a currant bun.

‘Sorry
to dump you with him,’ she apologised. ‘I’d had him for nearly an hour.
Goodness, right now Aunt Clare’s study has to be the bad breath capital of the
world. Men over sixty simply should not be allowed to drink champagne, it’s
just
too
hideous.’

‘What’s
happening next?’

‘Aunt
Clare’s going to read an extract from the great book,’ said Charlotte, ‘a
passage that I’ve selected about a chance encounter between her and a tiger
cub in India. Once that’s over I suggest we scout around the room for any
remaining drink and get happily sloshed.’

‘I
should go home tonight,’ I said. I didn’t like to think of Mama at Magna on her
own at the moment. Charlotte ignored this.

‘Come
upstairs and let me show you some of my new designs,’ she said.

On the
way to the stairs, we bumped into Christopher.

‘I
heard you were going to be here,’ I said delightedly. ‘I like your jacket.’

‘Rather
beautiful, isn’t it?’ agreed Christopher. ‘But then it should be. She charged
me enough for it.’

‘Who?’
I looked at Charlotte who had the grace to have gone slightly pink.

‘I
think it turned out rather well,’ she said.

Christopher
looked at her with genuine affection. ‘She’s a talented girl, loath as I am to
admit it. I’ve had nine compliments on the jacket already this afternoon, and
eight of them were from Patrick Reece. You know he tried to push some cocaine
on me when I arrived? I thought those days were behind him.’

We stayed in Charlotte’s
room for longer than was strictly polite, but eventually Charlotte decided that
the breath and Aunt Clare’s reading could be put off no longer. Re-entering the
study was like walking into a furnace. The voices had grown louder with drink
and the windows were foggy.

‘Open
the window, Phoebe,’ ordered Charlotte, ‘and get me another drink.’ Once
Charlotte had her glass in hand, she tapped on the side with a teaspoon, but it
didn’t begin to cut through the wall of gossip.

‘Excuse
me!’ said Charlotte, and again, louder, ‘EXCUSE ME!’

Everyone
fell silent and looked at Charlotte in amazement, as if she had just taken off
all her clothes.

‘I’d
like to introduce the reason why we’re all here this afternoon,’ said Charlotte
in her clear voice. ‘She’s an angel and a slave-driver to boot. The one and
only. once met and never forgotten — Her Serene Highness — Clare Delancy!’

There
was a great whoop of applause and Aunt Clare moved over to the fireplace where
Charlotte was standing.

‘I’ve
been with this remarkable book from the start,’ Charlotte went on, ‘and I
thought it would be rather nice for everyone if tonight Aunt Clare read an
extract from her memoirs.

A few
people murmured in agreement.

‘If you
would all take a seat or remain standing quietly just for a few minutes,’ said
Charlotte, ‘Aunt Clare will begin.’

Aunt
Clare picked up the manuscript, looked at the passage Charlotte had selected
for her to read and placed it back down

on the table. Charlotte
frowned. Aunt Clare sighed and smiled. ‘I would like to read you an extract
that my darling niece hasn’t even heard,’ she said, pulling two pieces of paper
out of her bag. They were covered in smudgy blue ink. ‘I had to wait until I’d
finished the rest of the book until I wrote this bit,’ she said. ‘I hope you
don’t mind, Charlotte.’

Charlotte
looked bemused. By this stage the room was simply humming with people — some
were standing in the corridor peering in as far as they could. I had been
squashed rather further into the room than I would have liked and felt a sudden
wave of claustrophobia. I felt awkwardly giant, for next to me stood a woman
half my height and five times my age with the most enormous head of white hair
and long fingernails, while on my other side was an eccentrically dressed man
of sixty-five-ish who can’t have been far off dwarf status; and as the
exception that proved Charlotte’s bad breath rule, he smelled overwhelmingly of
peppermints and snuff. I tried to move my feet a little and nearly toppled
over. I caught Charlotte’s eye and saw her trying not to giggle.

‘I’d
like to read you the prologue to my story, because it is, in many ways, the
most important passage in the whole book,’ began Aunt Clare, headmistress to
pupils, and the force of her presence and the richness of her voice was such
that the whole room fell silent at once. ‘It is simple truth and it happened in
1936. What more could anyone want from a prologue?’ She glanced down at the
typed page and began to read.

‘I
always felt there was a resonance in the fact that my years exactly matched
those of the war and of the century and as a result, I measured the world in the
same way as I did my own existence. When I was ten, the world around me was ten
and growing fast. Equally the century and I began the Great War as children of
fourteen. We ended it women of eighteen.’
Aunt
Clare paused here and for a second I thought I saw a flash of uncertainty in
her expression. She’s nervous, I thought, and thank goodness for that. She
cleared her throat and went on, a little too fast at first, then slowing down
as she progressed so that every sentence could be captured in the imagination
of her audience. I don’t think that there was one person left in the room by
the time she finished. Of course, we were all physically there, but everyone’s
minds had run away with Aunt Clare. Everyone was with her in 1936.

‘At
thirty I met the only man I have ever truly loved outside the opera house at
Covent Garden. I was pleased to be on my own; freedom was a rare and delicious
treat for me at that time. A man who looked barely old enough to be out of
school, carrying an empty birdcage, asked me if he could be so rude as to steal
a cigarette. Certainly I said, and he ended up repaying me by taking me out to
dinner. We talked of everything but opera, laughed a great deal and drank
endless glasses of Chablis and he grew up in front of my eyes. He was just
nineteen and so alive with that elusive, inquisitive lust for existence that I
felt myself transforming in front of his eyes. I talked in a way I had never
talked to anyone, I laid my soul down on the table between us and let him hold
it up to the light and ask what it meant: I want to see the world, I said. Go,
he said I’m married to a man who detests travel, I told him. Leave him behind,
he said. I have a seven-year-old son, I retorted Better and better, he claimed
A boy of seven is the perfect companion on any journey I imagined for a
blissful few hours that I would be with him for ever, but when midnight came he
said he had to drive home, to his parents’ house in the country and could he
stop a taxi for me?’ Of course, I said, and I sat in the back of the cab on the
way home, imagining that any moment it was to turn back into a pumpkin. I never
forgot that evening. Not only because I met him, but because I realised that it
was possible for the world to spin just for you, even if only for the length of
time that it took to have dinner. For those few hours, I experienced a
happiness so acute it felt half holy; a happiness made all the more intense
because I knew it was a limited joy just passing through. I did what I had
suggested to him that I might do, I did what I never imagined I would ever have
the courage to do. Harry and I left Samuel for an entire year and opened our
eyes to the rest of the world. What follows is an account of that year, and
none of it would have happened were it not for that evening with a stranger in
Covent Garden.’

Aunt
Clare stopped for a moment and you could have heard a pin drop.

‘I
never saw him again, though I heard his name occasionally and it was in India
the following year that I read of his engagement in the papers. He married an
astonishingly beautiful girl of seventeen.’

I bit
my lip and choked back the tidal wave of saltwater that threatened to spill
from my eyes. As if feeling it too, Aunt Clare’s eyes hit mine for a moment and
hers smiled, infinitely kind.

‘He
was killed, of course. The war saw to that. Yet my memory of him is as clear
today as it was the morning after our meeting. I think of him still, and in
writing this book, the boy with the birdcage has never been far from my
thoughts.’

She
stopped there and placed the manuscript down on the table in front of her. Her
hand was shaking a little. And I knew in the way that you realise you have
known something all along. Aunt Clare’s birdcage boy was Papa.

The guests showed no signs
of leaving when Aunt Clare had finished reading. If anything, they grew louder
still, clattering their teeth on champagne glasses, ordering Phoebe to find
more cakes and scones. Charlotte and I moved, without speaking, away from the
noise and into the morning room.

‘Goodness,’
said Charlotte, who was looking rather white. ‘I don’t suppose you saw that one
coming. I certainly didn’t.’ She stood by the window looking down onto the
street. ‘Aunt Clare certainly hasn’t lost the ability to hold an audience,’ she
added.

‘It’s
quite all right,’ I said, and my voice sounded high and unnatural. ‘I think I
knew all along that there was something unspoken between Aunt Clare and me. I
suppose you did too.’

‘She
didn’t dictate that passage to me, Penelope,’ said Charlotte in sudden panic. ‘You
have to believe her on that count. She would have known that I would have told
you.’