The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (51 page)

She was right, and I did
believe her. It all made sense, of course. Mama’s diary entry the night that I
had first mentioned Aunt Clare’s name. Her remark the other night: ‘Maybe he
would have been better off with someone older, someone with more confidence.’
She must have known about their evening outside the opera house. Papa must have
told her about the one woman who had stirred him before he met her, and being
Mama she had never forgotten it.

‘You
know nothing ever happened between them? What she read there was the absolute
truth,’ said Charlotte, watching me carefully. ‘Oh, darling Penelope, don’t
cry!’

Of
course, tears take their cue from lines like this, and I found that once I had
started weeping, it was impossible to stop. I cried for Papa, and for what we
lost when he was killed. I cried for Mama and for Magna and for Inigo. But most
of all, I cried for myself, for realising too late that it had been Harry all
along, and for pushing him away from me every time he nearly got close. Then,
to my horror, the door creaked open, and Aunt Clare’s white-blond head peered
round it at us.

‘Penelope!’
she cried, and it was the first time I had seen her
truly shocked.

‘Why
did you have to read that bit?’ demanded Charlotte, and it was the first time I
had seen her truly angry. ‘How could you do that to her? In front of a room
full of people?’

Aunt
Clare just sighed and placed her hand on my shoulder. ‘I could never tell you,’
she said. ‘And the oddest thing about it was that to anyone else, it would
appear that there was nothing to tell. There
was
nothing to tell, just
that I once spent an evening dining with a terribly nice man who happened to be
your father. Yet of course, to me, it was everything,’ she said simply. ‘Oh,
Charlotte, do open the window. It feels as if the house is on fire.’

‘It’s
quite all right,’ I said truthfully. ‘I suppose it’s just so jolly — oh, I don’t
know,
maddening
that Papa had to be killed.’ I blew my nose. ‘Sometimes
I feel so
cross
with him for not staying alive.’

‘For
goodness’ sake, Charlotte, get the child some brandy.’

Charlotte
poured me a double and I took a great gulp.

‘I seem
to have drunk rather a lot this year,’ I said with a half-laugh.

‘Comfort
yourself with the knowledge that however much you’ve drunk, Marina Hamilton
will have drunk more,’ said Charlotte.

‘I won’t
have that girl’s name mentioned in this house,’ said Aunt Clare ominously.

‘Was — was
Papa very like me? To look at, I mean?’ I asked Aunt Clare. I knew the answer,
of course I did, but I needed, very much, to hear it from someone other than
Mama.

‘Oh,
you’re very like him,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘That wonderful long nose and those
exquisite freckles! I knew right away. as soon as I first set eyes on you, do
you remember?’

‘Did
you think him very handsome?’ Charlotte asked her. Aunt Clare paused before
answering. ‘I wouldn’t say that he was handsome in the usual way.’ she
admitted. ‘He was too rare for that, too unusual-looking with that strange colouring
and those long eyelashes. Goodness me, Charlotte,’ she went on, much her old
self again, ‘who on earth ever fell in love with anyone who looked
handsome?
What a ghastly bore handsome is.

I
remembered Charlotte and me in the back of the cab, a few moments after we had
first met at the bus stop.

Is
he the most handsome boy in London?’
I had asked
her of Harry.

Of
course not! she had responded But he’s by far the most interesting.

‘Do you
mean he was funny? Mama says that she never had a straight face for longer than
five minutes when Papa was alive. She says he made her laugh more than anyone
else in the world.’

‘He
liked words — liked the way he could twist their meaning to make me laugh.’

‘Ooh!
You do that, Penelope!’ cried Charlotte.’

‘Do I?’
I was absurdly pleased.

‘There
was a
lightness
about him,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘That’s the only word I can
think of to describe it. You have it too.’

‘What
do you mean?’

Aunt
Clare stretched her hand out towards my brandy. ‘He struck me as being terribly
good at living, which is the greatest gift anyone can ever have. A talent for
life.’

‘You
mean he seemed very happy?’

‘Not
just happy.’ said Aunt Clare. ‘Nothing as straightforward as that.’

‘What
do you mean, then?’

‘He was
at ease with himself, he was at home in his own skin. I remember seeing the
waitress light up when he asked her where she got her pretty shoes.’

‘He was
charming, then?’

‘More
than that, too. It wasn’t because he was handsome, but because he made people
feel as though they were in the right place at the right time when they were
with him. I don’t think for a moment that he was aware of this. It was
instinctive, his talent for living brilliantly.’

‘Brilliantly?’
It seemed an odd choice of word. No one had ever called Papa brilliant before.

‘For living
brightly.’

‘So why
did he have to die, then?’ I asked. I didn’t mean to say it out loud. It
sounded so stupid. But Aunt Clare looked at me and smiled.

‘One
thing I’ve realised,’ she said slowly. ‘The people who are good at living are
very good at dying too. I don’t think he was afraid of death.’

‘You — you
don’t?’

For a
moment it was as if someone had lifted a great weight from my shoulders and I
felt almost dizzy with the relief of it, my head light with what Aunt Clare had
said. Yet what was I doing, filling myself up with romantic notions about my
father from a woman who had only ever spent a few hours with him? What could
she know about the man’s soul? However much I loved Aunt Clare, I couldn’t
allow myself to be drawn into thinking that she understood Papa better than
anyone else. It wasn’t possible.

‘How
can you say that? You hardly knew him,’ I said sadly.

But she
took my hand in hers. ‘He wasn’t afraid,’ she said quietly. ‘I just
know.
He
wasn’t afraid.’

And I
believed her. Not because I wanted to, but because I knew it was true.

Charlotte came with me in
the cab to Paddington. We didn’t speak much. My mind swam with images of Papa
and Aunt Clare, Papa and Talitha on their wedding day. Papa fighting, Papa
dying.

‘I wish
Harry was here,’ Charlotte said suddenly. And just the mention of his name sent
the adrenalin pumping into my fingertips.

‘I miss
him too,’ I said, unable
not
to say it. Charlotte looked at me with a
sideways grin.

‘Oh, I
never said I
missed
him,’ she said, ‘I just wish he could have been here
this afternoon. Gosh, Penelope, you’re coming closer and closer to confessing
it to me, aren’t you?’

I didn’t
smile. I didn’t say anything. Missing Harry was the least amusing experience
that I had ever had. Especially when- he was aching as much as I was, but not
over me at all. The cab rattled up Kensington Church Street.

‘He’ll
come back, you know,’ said Charlotte. ‘They always do.’

There’s never any warning
that something extraordinary is about to happen, is there? I got the 6.15 train
home, as usual, and collected Golden Arrow from his usual spot. I quickened my
pace as I rode past the deserted village green and threaded up Lime Hill
towards the drive. It was dark so I kept the estate wall close to my left as I
pedalled along the road, and I hummed Johnnie Ray songs and tried to push away
the strange but powerful sense of dreadful urgency that was swamping me as I
made my way home. I don’t know which of my senses picked up the changes first —
was it my eyes, seeing the sky redder than it should have been, or my ears
hearing the unmistakable sound of distant voices shouting? Was it the taste of
something different but indefinable in the night air, or the prickle of fear
that touched my skin? I reached the bottom of the drive and found a policeman
coming towards me, shining a powerful torch into my eyes. I shielded my face
and applied the brakes to Golden Arrow.

‘What’s
happening?’ I asked him. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Stay
away. miss,’ he said firmly. ‘This is no evening for a young girl like you to be
snooping around this place.’

‘I
live
here!’ I cried, trying to squash the rising panic in my voice. ‘What on
earth is happening?’

‘You
live
here, miss?’ repeated the policeman, suddenly concerned.

‘Yes! I
live
here!’ I repeated, slightly hysterical.

‘I
should come down to the station with me if I were you, miss,’ he said, but I
remounted the bike and pushed off towards the house before he could say any
more. I think he shouted something after me, but I couldn’t hear — the only
thing that mattered was getting home, home,
home.
My legs pushed round
and round, faster and faster, my heart crashed against my ribs and I clenched
my fingers over the handlebars and rode on. I came to the turn in the drive,
and remembered bringing Charlotte here the first weekend she had stayed at
Magna.

‘It’s
like nowhere else,’ she had breathed.

My first thought that
night was how spectacular it looked; the front lawn and the lime avenue lit up
under an orange sky that hurt the eyes with its thunderous, glorious brightness,
the house itself more alive, more powerful than I had ever known it. Magna was
on fire. There was a triumph in the red glow that swept methodically along the
roof, there was beauty in the theatrical leaping of the flames that had taken
hold of the house and danced with the falling timber and the crackling walls;
and Magna was a willing partner in that dance: there felt to me to be no shout
of fear from the burning hose, only a laughter, a joy in its destruction, an
exultation in the majesty of the display.
Mama!
I thought with that
cold, sick feeling of dread, and I cycled on, closer and closer to Magna, until
the heat from the house was so great, and the smoke in the air so thick, that I
had to stop again and gasp for air. In front of me stood a familiarly stout
figure.

‘Mary!’
I gasped. ‘Oh, Mary!’’

‘Miss
Penelope!’ she cried. ‘Oh, it’s terrible!
Terrible!’

‘Where’s
Mama?’ I cried. ‘Mary!
Where’s Mama?”

‘She’s
in London. She telephoned me only a few hours ago to say she was staying with
friends and would be back tomorrow. Back to
this,’
went on Mary. She
coughed so hard that she actually staggered and I leaned forward to catch her. ‘How
can she come back to this?’ she gasped. ‘There’ll be nothin’ left of the place
by mornin’. Nothin’ at all!’

‘She’s in
London?’ I shouted. ‘Mary, are you quite sure?’

‘As
sure as I’ve ever been. I came over five o’clock as usual. She’d gone then.
Johns had taken her to the station. She’d given ‘im the rest of the weekend
off.’

‘So she’s
not inside?’

Mary
shook her head. ‘I can promise you she’s not inside.’

‘Oh my
goodness! Fido!’ I shouted. ‘Where’s Fido?’

‘Johns
has ‘im!’ said Mary. ‘Yer mother suggested ‘e take ‘im home with ‘im since she
was goin’ to be in London for the night. Said you were staying away too, she
added, not without a note of accusation in her voice.

‘I was,’
I whispered. ‘I just got this feeling I should come home.’

We were
interrupted by another policeman. ‘Think you two ladies should stay clear,’ he
said firmly. I didn’t hear what he said next. I stared straight ahead at Magna,
watching the flames shoot out of the downstairs windows, transfixed with the
same dumb sense of the smallness of self that I had felt while watching for
shooting stars with Charlotte. My eyes burned with the red hot power of it all,
and I stepped back with the shock of it. I saw figures dancing on the lawn in
front of me, Mama and Papa as they were on the summer evening that they first
met; I saw Inigo and me as children, running towards Magna on the day the war
was over, shouting with excitement for the end of something that we couldn’t
conceive of living without; I saw Charlotte and me walking through the orchard
and dreaming of Johnnie and I saw Harry and me lying on the floor in the Long
Gallery listening to the wind and the rain bashing against the East Wing. Then
I thought that I saw Rocky coming towards me, and I felt something in my head
shut down, and a light-headedness soothed me with the idea that this was all a
dream.

Chapter
22

THE
OCCASIONAL FLICKER