The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (7 page)

‘Who
was that?’ asked Inigo instantly.

‘A
friend. She’s called Charlotte Ferris. I’ve invited her and her cousin to stay
next weekend.’

‘Who is
this girl, Penelope? I’ve never heard her mentioned before.’

‘She’s
a new friend. Inigo’s always making new friends. I don’t see why I shouldn’t,
for once.’

‘Well,
I couldn’t agree more, darling,’ said Mama, her eyes full of suspicion.

We took
our places in the dining room again. Inigo began cutting up a potato into tiny
piece.

‘You
know, you really should have checked with me before inviting strangers to the
house,’ said Mama with a how-I-am-put-upon sigh.

‘I know
you’ll like them,’ I said, with more confidence than I felt.

‘Where
did you meet?’

‘Oh, out
and about,’ I said uneasily. Mama would have been horrified if I had told her
the truth, not just because she herself would not have been seen dead at a bus
stop, but also because she disapproved of accepting tea invitations, clinging
fast to her own mother’s theory that tea should only ever be eaten with one’s
family, and taken with anyone else it became common. Exceptions were made in
the case of invalids, who merited teatime visits as they were ‘less likely to
be infectious at that peaceful time of day’.

‘Out
and about? How odd!’ she remarked.

‘I met
her with some friends from my literature class,’ I went on, feeling that
dastardly blush creeping in again. Gosh, I was a hopeless liar.’ Mama poured
herself another glass of wine.

‘Well!
Charlotte Ferris, indeed. Where does she live?’

‘I don’t
know exactly.’

‘What
on earth
do
you know? Really, I can’t think what you find to talk about
with anyone, Penelope.’

Inigo
lit another cigarette. ‘She’ll be like all of Penelope’s friends,’ he said. ‘Slightly
pretty and very dull.’

‘Darling,
you know that’s not fair,’ protested my mother gleefully, for nothing gave her
greater satisfaction than hearing the female sex criticised. Unfortunately,
what Inigo had said about my friends was perfectly true, but I took comfort
from imagining his jaw dropping open in amazement as he saw Charlotte for the
first time. He would be charmed and disarmed at the same time, a lethal
combination.

‘She’s
different,’ I said carefully. ‘Rather amusing, in fact.’

‘Amusing?’
asked Mama.
‘I’ll
be the judge of that. What
about the cousin? Is she another great wit?’

‘She is
a he. He’s training to be a magician. Apparently, he used to keep a pet loaf of
bread in a wire cage.’

‘How
plain,’ shuddered my mother.

‘Plain!
That’s very good!’ shrieked Inigo. ‘Next you’ll be telling me he’s well bread!’

I
cursed myself for bringing up Julian the Loaf. It was too absurd outside the
confines of Aunt Clare’s study.

‘His
name is Harry,’ I went on. ‘His mother is called Clare Delancy and she says she
knows of you — and Papa,’ I added, heart thudding away as it always did when I
mentioned my father.

‘Clare
Delancy. Clare, Clare, Clare,
Clare Delancy.
Let me think.’

It was
my mother’s favourite pastime: trying to work out who, what, when and where
were the scores of people who claimed to have met her. It was rare for her to
remember anyone — I had been on the receiving end of many a ‘Who on earth was
that
ghastly
woman?’ usually demanded when she had met the person in
question at least five times. She dropped her face into her hands to help
herself ponder the issue. Inigo drained his wine and seized the chance to feed
his duck to Fido.

‘What
did she look like?’ she asked me. Detailed description was all part of the
game.

‘Well —
tall and rather big, and grey rather than blonde, but quite beautiful in a
funny way. Much older than you, Mama,’ I added hastily.

‘Big
and beautiful? Don’t talk nonsense.’

‘Her
husband died last year. Apparently, he was killed by a falling bookcase.’

Mama
snorted. ‘That’s what they all say.’

‘She
lives in a sort of apartment in Kensington and she seems to know all about
Magna. I don’t think she’s the sort of person one could forget.’

‘Sounds
exactly
the sort of person one could quite easily forget. An overweight
widow with too much time on her hands. You’re going to tell me that she keeps
cats next.’

‘She
does have a cat.’ I sighed.

My
mother looked at Inigo in a what-did-I-tell-you sort of way.

‘Never
trust anyone who keeps a cat within twenty miles of London. It signifies very
poor housekeeping indeed. Not to mention the smell and the hair—’

‘But
Fido sleeps on your bed!’ Inigo and I protested in unison.

‘Fido
is a
dog.
The smell and the hair are entirely different.’

‘Much
worse, you mean,’ said Inigo, stroking Fido with his foot.

‘Cat or
no cat, I have no recollection of ever meeting this woman. What did she say
about me?’

‘She
said you were a sensational beauty.’

‘Hmmm.
Well—’

‘She
knew that you and Papa were married young, and she said that she’d heard Magna
was wonderful.’

‘She’s
welcome to it.’

‘Oh,
don’t say that, Mama. You don’t mean it.’

‘I
think I can translate this Clare’s words as follows,’ said Mama beadily. ‘She
wants to unleash her — frankly unhinged —son in our direction in the hope that
he will marry either you, Penelope, or one of your ripe, rich cousins. Well!
There’s not much hope of that. No money, house full of dry rot and absolutely
no ripe, rich cousins, more’s the pity.’ Mama gave an unexpected bark of
laughter.

‘I’d do
anything for some ripe, rich cousins,’ said Inigo, with feeling.

‘Frederick
and Lavinia?’ suggested my mother, referring to Papa’s sister’s children of
about our age.

‘Freddie’s
a dream but Lavinia’s awful,’ said Inigo contemptuously. ‘I caught her setting
a mouse trap in her bedroom last time she came to stay. She said she couldn’t
sleep knowing that they were out there. I said I felt the same about saxophone
players.’

‘The
mice were terrible last year,’ agreed Mama.

‘Of
course, if we had a car—’

I felt
that the conversation was veering off course, as it tended to when my mother
and Inigo were involved. I played with my duck and ate my potatoes and onions
and drank three glasses of water for Inigo’s three of wine. (It was still a
couple of weeks before my appreciation of good wine was due to begin.)

Mary
brought round spotted dick for pudding, which cheered my mother up, and Inigo
smoked while I drank a grainy cup of cocoa. I pushed off my shoes and sat on my
feet to warm them up and wondered how poor Harry was going to cope with this
kind of cold. After my cocoa, I announced that I was going to bed, and stood up
to kiss my mother goodnight. As quick as a jack-in-the-box she was up too. It
was another of her distinguishing characteristics, this need to be in bed
before anyone else. I think that it stemmed from her days of dramatic exits
when she and Papa were first married. She once told me that it was vital to
retire to bed early in order to allow those left to talk about one in
flattering terms in front of one’s beloved.

‘Goodnight,
darling,’ she said with a small yawn. ‘I
am
sorry about the duck, but
really, tonight has been quite bearable after all. Your mysterious Aunt Clare
really has been a marvellous distraction.’

I
smiled and kissed her on the cheek. My mother liked to be in her bedroom by
ten-thirty, but I don’t think that she ever slept until well after midnight. I
watched her and Fido float off upstairs, then wandered to the kitchen to get
myself a drink of water. When I returned to the dining room, Inigo was studying
the sleeve of a new record.

‘Guy
Mitchell,’ he said.

‘Let me
see.’

‘You
should hear the song. His voice—’ Inigo shook his head in wonderment, his black
hair falling over his eyes. ‘I should be in America. Anyone with any sense
should be in America.’

I
giggled. ‘Not before next weekend.’

‘No. I
suppose not. I shall stay here and ask your new friends awkward questions.’ He
grinned at me.

‘What a
strange duck supper tonight.’

‘Very
odd. We must speak to Johns about organising another gymkhana. I quite enjoyed
watching hordes of ten-year-old girls on ancient Shetlands wrecking the park.
Perhaps we should charge more to watch this year?’

I
think, even then, that we both knew how futile such events were. In my heart of
hearts I knew that Magna would need to hold a gymkhana every day of the year
for the next decade in order to keep going. I pushed such thoughts out of my
head, said goodnight to Inigo and decided to stick my head round my mother’s
door and check that she had quite recovered from the duck supper. I padded
along the first-floor corridor, imagining my mother writing her diary at her
desk, her left hand scribbling fast over the page. As a child, I would tiptoe
down the winding back staircase and into her room for words of comfort and a
quick peek at the famous black, leather-bound journal. When I was small she
never much minded me reading it — I don’t think that she had any idea quite
what an advanced reader I was — but soon after my eleventh birthday she took to
hiding it, securing it with a padlock and key, and it went from being a book
that I loved and revered to something I rather hated. I would not think about
my mother’s diary tonight, I decided, it would only depress me.

Outside
her door, I knocked softly, and, getting no response, crept into the room.

‘Mama?’
I could hear sounds of running water coming from the adjoining bathroom. Open,
and resting on her bedside table alongside the laughing photograph of my father
that reminded me that he looked nothing like James Stewart and an awful lot
like me, was the blessed diary. I hesitated. She had not heard me come in. I
don’t know what it was that made me step forward and crane my neck over the
entry for that day, but I did it, and there’s no point in saying that I did
not.

16
November 1954. Penelope has invited a young girl called Charlotte Ferris to
stay. She has an aunt called Clare, and although I did not say anything to
either child, I think that I know exactly who Clare is. Fancy her reappearing
now when…

I fled,
and dived into bed, heart thumping, wondering if my mother’s nose had detected
the giveaway scent of French Ferns. I couldn’t even go and look for Debrett as
I had spotted it heroically holding open her bedroom window, letting in icy
blasts of cold November air.

Chapter
4

MISS
SIX FOOT NOTHING

I half expected Charlotte
to telephone again before the weekend. The ten days that I had to fill before
she and Harry arrived yawned in front of me, interminable. I had been looking
forward to my time with Christopher in the shop on Tuesday (when I planned to
bring Aunt Clare and Rome subtly into the conversation) but to my
disappointment he telephoned me on Monday to say that he was going to be away
until after the new year, sourcing new stock for the shop.

‘I shall
expect you back in January,’ he said.

‘Are
you going to Rome?’ I demanded, utterly without thinking.

‘Rome?
What on
earth
makes you think I might be going to Rome?’

‘Oh,
nothing. I thought there was a big ceramics conference going on at the moment,’
I said wildly.

‘Ceramics?
Heavens, Penelope, don’t make me nervous, please!’ I heard the sound of
shuffling papers. ‘No one has sent me
anything
about a ceramics
conference in Rome,’ he muttered. ‘Oh! Unless you mean that poxy affair run by
William Knightly? He wouldn’t know a decent bit of art if it ran up and bit him
on the ankle.’