Apple Blossom Time (45 page)

‘How nice to see you, Laura dear. You should have warned me. I would have killed a fatted calf! You’re such a rare visitor, these days.’

She whipped off her turban and shook out her perfect perm. That was another shock. I’d expected it to be grey and I saw that it was white. I hadn’t looked at her properly for a long time.

‘Come along, then. If you want to be useful, you can make me a cup of tea while I wash my hands.’

She trotted off in front of me and I was relieved to see that her pace hadn’t slowed a jot.

‘Well, now,’ she said, as we sat comfortably around the kitchen table. The Lady Ansty of pre-war days wouldn’t have dreamed of sitting in the kitchen – I wonder if she could even have found it; Mrs Ruggles had always come to her – but it was the only warm room in the house. ‘This is cosy. I’ve missed you, Laura. You haven’t had much time for your grandmother in the last few months.’

Damn, damn, damn. I felt bad enough already. Now she was putting me thoroughly in the wrong before I’d even begun.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she went on, all sugar and spice. ‘Wouldn’t it be splendid if you could move in here permanently? It would make space in the cottage and we would be company for each other. We’d have such fun.’ She gave an unsuitable, girlish grin. ‘Two girls together. And one must be realistic about these things – I’m seventy, after all. The house will be yours before too long.’

The house. And the portraits. And the medals. And the weapons. And the burden of history.

‘And now that awful Buckland boy has stopped hanging round you. Thank goodness you had the sense to send him packing. He was only ever after what he could get. I could see that, even if you couldn’t. I know they all say that class doesn’t matter a jot these days, not now we have a Labour government, but really – there are limits. It’s bad enough to think of Kate involved with that man – although he does have a certain rough charm – but you, Laura, you are an Ansty, after all.’

‘Grandmother, if Martin crooked his little finger today, I’d go running, but he won’t. And that’s my loss, not his.’

‘More fool you, then. Quite ridiculous. A woman should
never
let a man think she’s interested in him. The trouble with you, Laura dear, is that in many ways you are too like your mother. She has always allowed her emotions to overrule her common sense.’

‘As when she conceived me?’ I queried, acidly.

‘Exactly. A little irregularity that could so easily have been avoided. Not that … oh, darling, don’t look like that, I didn’t mean that you should never … we all loved you, the moment we saw you. You were so bright, so quick. And we were always so close, you and I. Do you remember? When you were a little girl, you were always up here and I’d show you around and you’d patter along behind me in your little sandals and ask such intelligent questions. I knew then that you loved this place and I’ve always wanted it to go to you one day.’

I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it with a sudden passion that amazed me. I’d sell it to an institution, pull it down, leave it to rot, set fire to the damned thing, if I had to. And it ought not to be mine. There was an earlier generation still living. It should belong to my father. In fact, in law, it should already be his and she must know it.

My grandmother didn’t seem to notice my silence. But then, she never had before, either. She hadn’t changed all that much, then. When had she ever noticed what anyone else said or did?

I felt sick, really sick. Dear God, what am I about to do? Stop me, before it’s too late.

But it was already too late.

‘Don’t you think that my father ought to be allowed to make that decision for himself?’ I asked, quietly and calmly.

And she shrivelled, before my horrified gaze. Her voice was breathy, as though a chill wind had blown across her vocal cords.

‘You know?’

I nodded.

‘How much?’

‘I’ve seen him.’

And to my horror, my grandmother stretched out her hands in a plea that was both tragic and distasteful. Her rings swung loosely on desiccated fingers and the stones slipped in towards her palms.

‘You’ve seen my son? Is he well? How does he look? My son?’

And I wanted to say, what did it ever matter to you? You put him there. Go and see for yourself what your beautiful boy has become.

Instead, and I scarcely recognized the icy voice as my own, I said, ‘You wouldn’t know him. He’s a middle-aged man. And he wouldn’t know you, because he doesn’t seem to know anything – or want to know – I’m not sure which. But he would still fit the uniform you have folded into the trunk upstairs.’

And she gave me a sharp, assessing look, with a revival of her old spirit. ‘You know that, too, do you? Quite the little detective. Didn’t you find it loathsome, grubbing around in private lives? What else do you know, Laura? What other secrets have you dug out of their graves?’

‘Enough to know that there are more to come.’

‘Oh, yes. There are plenty. You will wish you had never begun to dig. And all of them have been a burden to me for a quarter of a century.’ She gave a short, hard laugh, quite unlike the feminine tinkle she had cultivated for years. ‘Confession is said to be good for the soul, isn’t it? I wonder if you will agree with that when I have finished. No, sit still. This won’t take long. And it’s far too late now to be sorry …

‘You have been married. I can speak to you without embarrassment. And I wonder sometimes … I wonder if you have allowed the Buckland boy more liberties than you ought. I’ve watched you. I’ve seen you, sometimes, with your face rasped and your lips swollen and your eyes heavy and languorous. You have the look about you of a woman who has been well loved. You will understand what I mean when I tell you that marriage to an old man is hell. Your mother would never understand. She has never, I’d swear, felt desire. But we are alike, you and I, we are both passionate women.

‘Your grandfather was forty-one years older than I – I wonder if Kate really understands what her married life will be like when her husband becomes a shuffling dotard? – he was born before Victoria was even crowned, he was already a young man during the Crimean War, he fought at Delhi and Lucknow. Imagine that. And I thought I was a modern young woman. Hubert had lost his first wife and had no children. I was young, presumably fertile, and I was an Ansty, too, some sort of obscure cousin, closely enough related to care deeply that there was no-one to carry on the name and traditions. So suitable. I had been brought up here. As a child, I’d been dandled on Hubert’s knee. I’d been petted, fed sweetmeats, spoiled by him. He would give me things that my parents could not afford, the pretty things I craved, ribbons and gloves and bracelets, a little enamelled watch that hung from a tiny gold pin … and, as I grew older, I was expected to pay for the gifts. We had secrets … no, don’t shudder.’ Her tiny hand closed over my wrist and pinned it to the table. ‘Better an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave – that’s what they say, isn’t it? He gave me pretty baubles and, in return, I gave him pleasure. That was fair, I thought …

‘When I was seventeen, Hubert and I were married. I was very silly. I imagined – without knowing how – that we would have a fine young family and I would dote on them all. I would have pretty girls and strapping sons. After a year or two of marriage, it became clear, even to me, that there would be no children. I won’t talk of that. It’s quite unnecessary to elaborate. I used to pace the corridors and think – I should have been a boy, this should have been mine. I would never allow the roof to leak and the gutters to fill. I would never have sold the farms or cut down the woodland. I felt a sort of fury, to think that if I had been a boy I could have had everything and would have been forced to give nothing in return …

‘Does this distress you? You didn’t have to meddle. You didn’t have to poke around, like a child with a stick in a muddy pond. Some things are better decently hidden. Sit down. I haven’t finished yet.

‘I wanted children. The Ansty name needed sons. So I produced a son. I wasn’t cheating. My husband and I had an agreement. Hubert’s only proviso was that I should be discreet and not involve the neighbours. So I chose my mate with care. He was an intelligent man, a gentleman, a doctor who had been introduced to us by friends who were involved with a charity he ran. I was a young, passionate and – I like to think – attractive woman and he was middle-aged and flattered by my attentions. It worked very well. I was pregnant within a fortnight and the doctor went back to Surrey. We both agreed that we wanted nothing more from each other.

‘Hubert – dear, doting Hubert – was thrilled. He adored Edwin. The boy was the light of his life, the solace of his old age. How could that be wrong? We were a happy family, I think.’

She smiled and her sharp-featured face softened at the memory. I wished she would stop. I didn’t want to hear any more. It was none of my business. Ham, son of Noah, was cursed because he saw his father naked. I sat and listened to my grandmother uncover her own nakedness and I was afraid, because I knew, now, that there had been too many shameful secrets.

I pushed back my chair and tried to escape, but the hand she had clamped over my wrist was more powerful than mine. Her little hand was bony as a bird’s claw and strong as a madman’s. I was afraid to hurt her.

‘He was a good boy, none better, but stubborn. That was his only fault. Once he had made up his mind to do something, nothing would deflect him. Like you. When that silly girl, Diana, became pregnant, he
would
marry her, no matter what I said. She wasn’t good enough for him. No-one was.

‘When I heard that my son was to die,’ she went on, in her cracked, old woman’s voice, ‘I thought that I would die, too. The news reached us, discreetly, through old friends of Hubert, before the sentence was confirmed, but we were told that it was a foregone conclusion, that there was no hope. I shut myself in my room and wept and paid no attention to my husband’s pain. What was his grief compared to mine? Who had carried the boy in her body? Who had endured the pangs of his birth? Who had suckled him? Not you, Hubert. So I shut my door and shut my husband out.

‘And then I thought – no, I won’t allow them to do this. The
waste.
His beauty, his loving nature, all that promise to be wantonly destroyed. It made me so
angry.
I can’t expect you to understand, Laura. But when you are a mother, you will know what I felt. I was so
furious
– that some dunderheaded oaf should dare to condemn my son to die. If I could have laid hands on that man, I would have torn him to shreds.

‘So, for the first time in twenty years, I contacted Edwin’s father. By then, he was a very senior army medical officer, a psychiatrist, a rare bird indeed, then. I went to see him at the War Office. I smiled and shouted and cajoled and bribed my way into his office. He was horrified to see me. What man likes to be reminded of his indiscretions? And when I asked him to save our son, he told me that it was quite impossible, out of the question. I wept. I pleaded. I reminded him of how we had made Edwin between us. I offered him anything – anything … But he said that no-one could halt the process of confirmation.

‘So, do you know what I did? I got down on my knees and followed him around the room. And when he tried to escape, I followed him, on my knees, out of the door and into the corridor, slithering down the black and white marble, so that he was obliged to rush back in again, in case anyone saw us. I hung on to his coat tails until he prized my fingers off. Then I clung to his high, polished boots and he realized that he would have to break my wrists to make me let go.

‘Edwin’s father saved his son. He chose his moment wisely and whisked him out from under the very rifles of the firing squad. So clever, so neat. The correct paperwork is everything in the army. Edwin was lost in the flood of maimed bodies being transported back to England and his father had him admitted as a psychiatric patient to Netley and, later, to a private nursing home, Greentops, which he owned. It was his own home, I believe. I never saw either of them again.

‘I made a decision and I kept to it, no matter what it cost me. I have been silent since then. It has taken courage. And in your eyes that makes me a twisted, vindictive old woman. You still don’t understand, do you? I have never thought you stupid, Laura, but now I’m beginning to wonder.

‘For the first year or two, I said and did nothing for fear that Edwin would be snatched back and the sentence carried out. I realize now that I was being illogical. But at the time, it seemed a very reasonable fear. What did I know? I had so nearly lost my son. I bullied Tom, until he told me the little he knew. No-one else would talk to me. Edwin was sick. He must have been, to have done what he had done. He was an Ansty. He was born to be a soldier. He seemed to have lost all connection with his home and his family, with everything that mattered. It was as though he had passed on to another world, a lonely world inhabited by ghosts, where we could not follow. So I kept my silence.

‘By the time I was certain that Edwin was safe, your mother had married Tom and Edwin had married the daughter of the owner of Greentops. He had married his sister.’

*   *   *

Old age doesn’t qualify anyone for sainthood. Sweet old ladies are a rarity. The years simply exacerbate the qualities we start out with. My grandmother had been a ruthless young woman and had progressed to becoming a ruthless old one.

Sometimes I really believed that. And sometimes I thought – well, what would I have done? Enmeshed by lies and secrets and self-spun half-truths, would I have handled things so very differently? We were alike, she and I, in so many ways.

I wanted to talk to someone so badly. No, specifically, I wanted to talk to Martin. I needed someone to tell me to stop. I needed someone to tell me to shut my mouth, go away, find a job, travel, make love, forget …

I sensed that, if I stayed, there would be a tragedy. Yet, on my own, I didn’t have the strength to avoid it.

But Martin wasn’t there. And there was no-one else to shake some sense into me.