The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (52 page)

W
hen
I awoke, I was in the Dower House, in the bedroom that Inigo and I had shared
during the war. For a moment I wondered if I was eight again, and if the war
had ended at all.

‘Mama?’
I croaked.

‘Penelope!’
came her voice from the bedside. ‘You’re awake at last!’

I was
awake all right. Daylight streamed through the window. I sat up.

‘What
time is it?’

‘You
fainted,’ she explained. ‘Mary and a kind policeman helped you walk up here.
You slept through the night. It’s seven o’clock in the morning.’

‘Magna!
The fire!’ I flung myself from the bed and ran to the window.

‘Darling,
you must slow down — the shock—’

‘It’s
still burning!’ I cried. ‘Can’t they do something?’ Mama sat down on the end of
my bed. She was desperately pale and wearing her best frock with a fur shrug
round her shoulders. She had obviously not changed from the night before.

‘How
did you hear about it?’ I asked her, my throat dry, the smell of smoke thick in
my hair.

‘I was
in London,’ said Mama. ‘I decided that I couldn’t bear to be in the house on my
own for another night. I called Johns and he drove me to the station.’’

‘Who
were you going to see?’

Mama
flushed. ‘He called me just after you left. He said he would love to take me
out for dinner, but he quite understood if I never wanted to see him again.’

‘Rocky?’

Mama
looked away from me, her fingers pleating the quilt Mary had made for us during
what she described as ‘the long, dark evenings of 1943’. I had not seen the
quilt since we moved out, and it filled me with childish memories to see it now.
Inigo and I snuggled up in it listening for bombs overhead, Mama wrapping her
legs in its warm coverings on the nights when fuel was rationed. Mama saw me
staring.

‘The
quilt,’ she began, ‘remember how you loved it?’

I
realised then how Mama still saw the war years. There was fear, but always,
always hope. It wasn’t until the very end, when Papa had been killed, that hope
died. Everything before that was clouded in romance, and giddy anticipation of
seeing him again. It wasn’t until we had moved back to Magna that we had word
of Papa’s death. The Dower House, to her, would for ever be a place of cocooned
dreams.

‘Rocky
telephoned?’ I asked again. She nodded.

‘I
decided that I should go for dinner, if only to say that I was sorry about the
way I treated him the other night. Now I can’t imagine what would have happened
if I had not gone,’ said Mama. ‘I would — I would have been killed.’

‘Not
necessarily,’ I said, horror at the truth of what she was saying sinking in. ‘I
think you would have escaped all right, Mama.’

‘But
perhaps not,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Perhaps not.’

‘How
did you hear what had happened?’ I asked her.

She
looked at me, eyes tired and smudged with mascara; ‘Well, it was a funny thing,’
she admitted. ‘Rocky and I went to dinner at Claridges — such a treat,’ she
couldn’t resist adding, ‘and afterwards, we decided to take a walk. London was
so beautiful last night, you know,’ she added, forgetting that I had been there
too. ‘It must have been after midnight when I realised that I was too late for
the last train home. Rocky said that he would drive me back to Magna. We
arrived at half-past two. What a sight greeted us as we came up the drive!’

I was
struck by Mama’s choice of words here. There seemed little horror in her voice,
more incredulity than anything else. There were none of Mary’s ‘It’s terribles’!
from her, no fainting like me.

‘I had
no idea that you were going to be here,’ she went on. She crossed the room and
straightened the photograph of Inigo and me on the chimneypiece. ‘It must have
been the most awful shock, darling.’

‘And
not for you, Mama?’

‘Of
course!’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘It is — it was Papa’s house. He would
never have let this happen—’

‘What
about Inigo? He must be told,’ I said, pulling on my shoes.

‘Rocky
drove straight to school to break the news to him,’ said Mama. ‘He left an hour
ago. He should be there by now.’

I said
nothing, but I had to admit to myself that Rocky was the right person to tell
Inigo.

‘What
will be left of the house?’ I whispered. ‘Oh gosh!’ I said with a sob. ‘Marina!’

‘Who?’

‘The
guinea pig!’ I felt tears stinging my eyes. Marina, the pet Harry had given me
to look after, the closest thing I had to him — what had happened to her last
night?

‘Oh,
darling, don’t worry about her,’ said Mama with a smile. ‘Funnily enough, I
decided yesterday that it was time for her to move outside permanently. I put
her in a box and handed her to Johns just before I left for London. He was to
take her home with him to show her the new cage he’s been making.’

‘Oh,
thank goodness,’ I muttered, and it wasn’t until later that I thought how odd
this was. Why on earth did Marina need to leave my bedroom while Johns finished
her new hutch?

‘You
were right about Rocky,’ said Mama quietly. and I think it was the first time
that she had ever admitted to me that I was right about anything.

‘What
do you mean.

‘He is
wonderful. Of course, I knew it from the moment I first met him, but I was
afraid, Penelope. So afraid of— of—’

‘Being
happy?’ I asked her.

‘Happiness
can be frightening when one is not accustomed to the sensation.’

‘So now
Magna’s burnt to the ground, you think you might be happy?’ I sounded harsher
than I meant to. ‘What about Papa? His home!
Our
family home. Mama! Now
it’s over, it’s gone!’

‘Just
as your father is gone!’ shouted Mama, animation turning her face whiter still.
‘I never wanted the place to die like this! But I couldn’t go on living there,
either. Your father would never, ever have wanted me to. He used to say to me
that Magna only felt real to him when I was there with him.’

‘He
would have done something,’ I cried. ‘He would have fought the flames, he would
have done
anything
to save it! It was in his blood, Mama. It’s in our
blood!’

‘No!’
screamed Mama.
‘We
were his blood, not the house! The hose trapped him,
owned him, frightened him as it did me. Oh, he loved Magna,’ she went on, her
voice rattling now, ‘but he would have done anything to get away. He never said
anything to prove it, but sometimes there was something in his eyes, just the
occasional flicker of doubt as to whether he had taken on something too big for
him. You understand that, don’t you? Something had to change,’ she said. ‘Something
had
to change.’

It was
the first time I had heard her sound certain about anything for years. But none
of it would be true unless I saw it for myself. Nothing about the fire would be
real until I saw what had happened to Magna. I shot out of the bedroom and down
the stairs. Mama rushed to the door and shouted after me, but her voice sounded
like something unreal, like a sound from a wireless, ghostly. detached. I
turned out of the Dower House and ran and ran towards Magna. I heard my feet
thumping rhythmically on the solid earth beneath my feet, and it gave me
strength. I looked down at my feet as I ran, and I saw the glowing patches of
bluebells swim into focus as I raced up the drive. I felt the sun warm on the
back of my head, and the unexpected brightness of the morning hurt my eyes. I
rounded the bend into the courtyard and reached the bench by the pond where we
had sat that winter’s night — Inigo, Charlotte, Harry and I, eating hard-boiled
eggs and drinking champagne in the snow. Now the air was soft, too warm for my
thin woolly. I pulled it over my head, and walked slowly. slowly. towards the
house.

How could it have only
taken one night to change everything? I had read of houses being destroyed by
fire overnight, but had never believed it was possible. Surely someone should
be able to put those infernos out before they took hold? Yet the fire at Magna
was
still going.
It looked smaller now than it had last night, yet there
it was; I could see it calmly smouldering through the blackened windows of the
morning room. I walked, without any thought, up to the front of the house, and
stood where the front door had been. No more. It had caved in to reveal the
hall, or what had been the hall, indistinguishable from the chaos of the rest
of the ground floor. Knowing I shouldn’t, I stepped inside. There was a rumble
in front of me, and a huge chunk of the hall ceiling crashed to the floor,
still red with heat, still hot with the exertion of damage.

I
stepped back. I could see the sky through the hall ceiling, the blue and white
spring morning laughing down on the blackened shell of Magna. It felt as though
the house, for the first time ever, was naked, ashamed, unable to hide
anywhere. Last night it had seemed to burn with a cackle of laughter under the
midnight sky. Now it looked — there was the word! It looked
hungover.

Three
firemen were loitering about, one of them drinking from a Thermos flask. Just
behind them was a huge pile of objects that had obviously been salvaged from
the house. Mama’s desk from the morning room was stacked with stuff from the
kitchen — a whisk, a blackened saucepan and Mary’s singed copy of
The Lady.
Ironically.
Mama’s WI calendar for 1955 had flapped open to December to reveal a photograph
of a blazing Christmas pudding sitting above a fireplace. We would never see
another Christmas at Magna now.

‘Miss
Penelope?’

I swung
round to see Johns, his pipe in one hand, and a weeding fork in the other. I
stepped back and he nodded slowly and walked away from the house, towards the
pond. I followed behind him, wondering if he was real. It seemed impossible
that Johns could exist now, on this morning of all mornings. Was there a Johns
without Magna? As if reading my mind, he bent down and started to fork out the
weeds around the bench. Without thinking, I knelt down and started to help him,
knotting the tough stems round my fingers, listening to the resistance of the
roots in the earth as they were pulled from the ground.

‘You
leave these too long, you’ll ‘ave nothin’ but trouble in no time,’ muttered
Johns. ‘Best keep on top of the garden, specially this time of year, what with
new shoots all over the place.’

‘Yes,’
I said in a whisper.

How long we worked
together I don’t know. It felt like no more than five minutes, but it could
have been an hour. Occasionally. we looked up when another police car or fire
engine swept up the drive, but I said nothing. My throat was dry. I felt afraid
of trying to talk.

‘Won’t
be much good they can do now,’ was all that Johns said. No one bothered us. I
don’t know that they even noticed us. The more time that passed, the harder it
became for me to talk. I didn’t know what to say. didn’t know how to begin. I
took my lead from Johns, and Johns, it seemed, was equally unwilling to say
anything. Until I stood up and announced that I had to go, that I had been out
for long enough and that Mama would be waiting for me at the Dower Hose.

‘Won’t
you help me with sommat, just for a minute, Miss Penelope?’

‘Of
course, Johns. What is it?’

‘Won’t
you come with me, just to the pigeon hose? There’s a coupla birds need checkin’
in there. Frightened last night, they were. I’d like you to be able to tell
your mother they’re all right.’

‘Certainly.
Johns.’

I
followed him silently. through the gate and into the garden. The sunlight
blasted on the path, white blossom exploded from the apple trees. In the
garden, not one shoot, not one petal or new bud cared whether the house stood
or not. It was another country altogether. Johns tidied as we walked, as he had
always done. He had gone from seeming absurd to seeming the most sensible of
all of us. Getting on with his job, and his job had always been outside.

Harry’s
doves perched together in a line in the pigeon house, a little away from the
rest of Mama’s doves. How like Harry they seemed, and I swallowed, imagining
what he would have to say if he could see what had happened to the Long
Gallery. None of the birds seemed any more flustered than usual — Johns filled
their trays with seed and they all flapped around his hands making the usual
racket.

‘They
seem to be fine, Johns,’ I said, relieved.

‘Ah.’

‘I
really should get back—’ I began again.

‘One
more thing, Miss Penelope,’ said Johns. ‘Just one more thing.’

I said
nothing, but stood and watched as he bent over and pulled a small box out from
under the seed bins.

‘Found
this ‘ere this mornin,’ he said simply.

‘What
is it?’

‘You
take it. You see fer yerself.’

It had
been tied up with several pieces of string and ribbon, some of which I
recognised as the ribbon from the Fortnum’s ham that Charlotte and Harry had
brought with them on New Year’s Eve. I heard Mama’s voice.
Oh, do save the ribbon
—
it’s too wonderful to throw away.