A Gathering Storm
Authors: Rachel Hore
Rachel Hore worked in London publishing for many years before moving with her family to Norwich, where she teaches publishing at the University of East Anglia. She is married to writer D. J. Taylor and they have three sons. Her previous novels are
The Dream House
,
The Memory Garden
,
The Glass Painter’s Daughter
, which was shortlisted for the 2010 Romantic Novel of the Year award, and
A Place of Secrets
, which was picked by Richard and Judy for their book club.
A Gathering Storm
is her fifth novel.
Praise for Rachel Hore’s novels:
A Place of Secrets
‘Rachel Hore’s intriguing Richard and Judy recommended read . . . is layered with a series of mysteries, some more supernatural than others’
Independent
‘Sumptuous prose, deft plotting, lush settings, troubling personal histories, tragedy, heady romance and even a smattering of eighteenth-century scientific wonderment mark Hore’s fourth novel as her most accomplished and enthralling yet’
Daily Mirror
The Glass Painter’s Daughter
‘Fans of
Possession
and
Labyrinth
will recognize the careful historical research Hore has undertaken and enjoy the seamless blend of past and present narratives into one beautiful story’
Waterstone’s Books Quarterly
The Memory Garden
‘With her second novel, Rachel Hore proves she does place and setting as well as romance and relationships. Tiny, hidden Lamorna Cove in Cornwall is the backdrop to two huge tales of illicit passion and thwarted ambition . . . Clever stuff’
Daily Mirror
‘Rachel Hore knows the tricks of her trade and keeps the pages turning by adding a hint of a past mystery, too. Cleverly done’
Now
‘Pitched perfectly for a holiday read’
Guardian
The Dream House
‘
The Dream House
is a book that so many of us will identify with. Moving from frenzied city to peaceful countryside is something so many of us dream of. Rachel Hore has explored the dream and exposed it in the bright light of reality, with repercussions both tragic and uplifting, adding her own dose of magic. It’s engrossing, pleasantly surprising and thoroughly readable’ Santa Montefiore
‘I enjoyed it enormously and was genuinely disappointed when I got to the end, having read deep into the night to finish it because I couldn’t put it down! I was completely drawn into the plot. I thought it a wonderfully evocative and cleverly woven story’ Barbara Erskine
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2011.
A CBS Company.
Copyright © Rachel Hore 2011
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Rachel Hore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia
Sydney
Simon & Schuster India
Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-84983-288-5
eBook ISBN 978-1-84983-289-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Typeset in Palatino by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire
For my brother David
South London, March 2000
Slipping into the chapel, softly as a wraith, Beatrice found a seat at the back. Aimless organ music was playing, but she hardly noticed, for she was putting on her spectacles and examining the Order of Service the usher had given her. There was a photograph of Angelina on the front, and the sight of it tugged her straight back into the past.
It was a picture she remembered well, a snapshot Beatrice herself had taken in Cornwall, on Carlyon beach, just before the war, when Angie was seventeen. Angie’s mother had framed it and kept it on the grand piano in Carlyon Manor. From it, Angelina gazed out across the years, laughing, beautiful, and bathed in sunlight.
As Beatrice stared into those luminous eyes she felt a hot lava of longing and resentment rise inside. She laid the card face down beside her on the pew. She thought she’d mastered these feelings long ago, wrestled them down during many nights of torment. Now she knew that she was wrong: beneath the veneer of good sense, the passions of the past still raged. She closed her eyes, trying to collect her thoughts. She should never have come. But there was someone she needed to see.
Beatrice opened her eyes and looked around. The pews in the crematorium were nearly but not quite full. As her gaze wandered over the rows she noticed they were filled mostly with people of her own generation, the women proper in hats, the old men florid or shrunken inside their dark suits, some, the old war-horses, with medals glinting. There was no one she recognized. Finally, she allowed herself to look towards the front, sitting up a little straighter, craning her neck. At the top of the aisle was the coffin, piled high with blue and white flowers, but her eyes slid over this. Her pulse quickened.
For there they were. It must be them, though it was difficult to be sure from behind. A middle-aged woman with frizzy hair tinted blonde and tied back with ribbon, her crushed-velvet coat of midnight blue cut in a flamboyant style. The man in a crow-black overcoat, his dark hair, Beatrice noticed tenderly, streaked with grey. It was astonishing, she thought, that Tom must be getting on for sixty. And between them, a girl of perhaps sixteen, who kept turning round to look at everything, so that Beatrice had plenty of opportunity to study her pointed chin, her turned-up nose and the lively expression in her stubby-lashed brown eyes. Lucy, it was.
And now the congregation was rising to its feet as the minister, his white robes flying, hastened to the front, and the organist started the first hymn. Beatrice grasped the back of the pew in front for support and tried to focus on the words. But she found no strength to sing.
The comforting words of the liturgy washed over her. She hardly noticed them, so intent was she on watching the small family in the front row. Lucy stroked her father’s arm but he barely acknowledged her. There was something lonely about the way he stood, shoulders hunched, head bowed.
And now everyone was sitting down again and Tom was moving to the lectern, so that she saw his face for the first time. So absolutely like his father’s. It was the pallor of his skin, the steady way he pushed on his spectacles, his quiet demeanour as he contemplated his audience. But when, finally, he began to speak, his voice was utterly his own, deep and so low she had to strain to catch the words. And what he had to say astonished her.
‘My mother Angelina Cardwell,’ Tom said, ‘was one of the most beautiful . . .’ and here he smiled at his wife and daughter in the front row ‘. . . and certainly the bravest woman I have ever known.’ That didn’t sound right. She’d never thought of Angie in that light before. Beautiful, yes, but brave? What did he mean? ‘. . . a difficult life,’ she heard him continue. ‘The tragic deaths of her brother and mother, her husband’s health problems . . .’ The volume of the words ebbed and flowed in that soft bass voice. ‘It was, I know, a disappointment that I was her only child, and I was always aware of how precious I was.’ He glanced up at his audience. ‘Many of you will know how she struggled in her later years with illness. This too she bore with great courage, never more so than after the death of my father. Beautiful and brave she was, but I also valued my mother for her loyalty. She was a devoted mother and wife and, as all the letters I’ve received since her death bear witness, a warm and loving friend. I was proud to be her son.’
Beatrice squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to assimilate all she heard. Devoted, warm, loyal. That’s not how she saw Angelina. When she looked up again it was to find Tom Cardwell staring directly at her, a look of slight puzzlement on his face as though he were trying to place her.
At the end of the short service, everyone stood waiting quietly as the electric curtains closed around the coffin. Only Lucy broke the tension with a single sobbing cry and her mother seized her hand with a little rattle of bangles.
It was over.
She watched Tom, his wife and daughter go out first, and Tom take up a position at the door, to thank everyone as they walked out. Beatrice hung back but saw there was nothing for it; she would have to speak to him. She’d rehearsed some words, but now she wasn’t sure that they were the right ones. As she waited her turn in the line-up, someone jabbed at her arm and spoke her name. She turned to find a familiar face: a stocky old woman with a raffia hat pulled too tight over wispy grey hair and an expression of malicious pleasure.
‘Hetty. It is Hetty?’ Beatrice said. Angelina’s sister must be in her early seventies, three or four years younger than herself, but she looked older.
‘Of course it’s Hetty,’ the woman said with her usual brusqueness. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Bea?’ The eyes, it was always the eyes that gave someone away. Hetty’s were brown and baleful, and her mouth still turned down. Charmless, that had always been the word for Hesther Wincanton.
‘How are you?’ Beatrice said, ignoring the rudeness. ‘I didn’t see you earlier, wasn’t sure you were here.’
