Ghosts of Winter (31 page)

I left the bedroom and returned to the landing. I was about to go back downstairs and maybe examine the restoration work being carried out in the Saloon, when my attention was drawn by a sound like a trapped bird beating its wings against a window in the shadows of the east wing. An eerie and strangely loud sound in this silent house. After a moment, I realised the source of the noise was a flapping tarpaulin. I guessed it had been secured over one of the damaged windows and had come loose. I wouldn’t hear it from my bed, and it wouldn’t disturb me once I went back downstairs, but it was a horribly disturbing noise, and with my reflections about the previous inhabitants of Winter fresh in my mind, I had to restore the peace to the first floor.

The electricity in the east wing was not working, but I grabbed a torch left by one of the workmen and turned it on. The beam was weakening a little, but still shone bright enough for me to see my way to the window. Sure enough, the bottom corner of the tarpaulin had slipped out from behind the piece of wood that should have been holding it in place, and it was flapping in the breeze. Such restless fluttering was unnerving, the sound filling the chamber as though it had a mind of its own. I smiled as I thought how easy it must be to convince someone a house of this age was haunted, if they were ready to believe.

I made my way towards the loose tarpaulin, still absorbed in my contemplation of possible ghosts. I did not notice the black and yellow tape in my path until I felt it touch my thighs. Before I realised that I’d walked into warning tape, or why it was there, I’d taken another step forward. A second later, the floor below me creaked and groaned loudly. Then it disappeared beneath my feet, and I was falling.

Something caught my T-shirt as I fell and held me suspended for seconds before, through my panic, I heard the ripping of fabric and I fell again, farther this time. Though it must have taken just seconds, I had enough time to realise I had fallen through the floor into the room below, which had a very high ceiling. It was a long way from that ceiling to the floor. I was surely going to die. I had no time to be scared, just to be glad I’d made amends with Jeanne, before I hit the floor of the Common Parlour. And everything went black.

Winter Manor, 1927

“Really, Evvie, darling, this was the most top-hole idea!” Clara Bridgford accepted her glass of scotch whisky from the tray the housemaid offered her and reclined on the sofa in the Common Parlour, smiling at her friend Evadne Burns, who grinned back at Clara’s purposeful use of schoolgirl slang.

“Yes, and how!” Courtney Craig added, from her place on the sofa close to Clara. “It’s so long since we saw each other. What is it now, nine years since we left St. Hilda’s?”

“Nine years it is.” Evadne smiled with satisfaction and sipped her gin and tonic as the maid left the room quietly. Inviting her closest school chums to Winter to spend the weekend with her, a small reunion, had felt like a good idea when it had first occurred to her, but she had grown rather nervous over the previous week, as the preparations were made. Her friends were all so much more sophisticated than she was, and though she had seen them on occasion since they’d left school aged eighteen, they had not been together as a group at all in those nine years. She was concerned that, en masse, her schoolgirl pals would be rather overwhelming. However, she’d told herself, she was mistress of Winter Manor, a country house of her own, something none of them could claim. In the end, it was simply awfully exciting to see them again. Their idiosyncratic ways had deepened as they had matured, and they were all infinitely more fascinating than they had been in those long-ago days. She also found she derived endless amusement from the servants’ expressions when they encountered her friends, especially Clara.

Aged twenty-seven, as they all were, Clara was strikingly attractive. Her dark blond hair was cut short in a severe Eton crop. She wore little make-up, just enough powder to make an already smooth complexion flawless. Her outfit was an immaculately tailored gentleman’s sports jacket in blue-and-cream striped fabric, complete with white silk cravat, and cream slacks. To see a woman in trousers was astonishing enough for Winter’s servants, but a woman in a man’s attire was something they could barely help but stare at. Clara sat with the posture of a man too, lounging back with the ankle of her bent leg resting on her opposite knee, her whisky in one hand, her other arm resting loosely around Courtney’s shoulders. Evadne had to admit to herself even she’d been slightly startled by Clara’s appearance when she had arrived with Courtney, driving her own motor car, earlier that day. Though Clara had never been feminine, she’d never been quite so blatantly masculine in their younger days. Yet a few minutes’ conversation had revealed that Clara, underneath the affectations, was still the warm-hearted, witty friend she remembered from their school days at St. Hilda’s School.

That Clara and Courtney were still an item was no great surprise. They’d been sweethearts in their last year at school, and Courtney was totally dedicated to Clara. Originally from New York City, as her accent made apparent, Courtney’s parents had sent her to boarding school in England when she was thirteen. Though she had returned to her home across the Atlantic when she’d left school, it had only been a year before the separation from Clara had been too much for her to bear, and she had returned to England and her lover.

Clara was justifiably proud of her girl. Courtney was beautiful, with her Marcel-waved chestnut hair, perfectly pale skin, red lips, and slender figure. She’d been made for the latest fashion of dropped waistlines and flat chests, unlike Evadne herself, whose swelling hips and rounded bosom she considered the worst of natural curses. Courtney’s midnight-blue dress, its hemline resting just below her knees, intricately covered with dazzling crystal beads, was a work of art in itself. It would have been easy to resent Courtney, were she not so engaging in conversation and quick humoured. Evadne was sure the Common Parlour, or any of Winter for that matter, had never seen a more intriguing or attractive couple as Clara and Courtney.

“But where in this world has Edith vanished to?” Clara demanded.

“I’m not sure, but she and Madge appear to be together wherever they are,” Courtney replied, her tone suggestive.

“Well, can’t say I’d blame Edith, Madge is quite a poppet, even if her taste in dresses is perfectly horrendous.” Clara spoke as though she was serious.

“You can keep your eyes to yourself,” Courtney said affectionately. “Besides, if you ask me, Evvie here’s got her own eye on Edith.” She cast a sly glance at Evadne, who felt her face colouring before she could do anything about it.

“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous,” Evadne said, trying to laugh.

“Do you know, Courtney dear, I think you might be right,” Clara said, as she leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hand, to study Evadne with new interest.

“You can stop that right away.” Evadne squirmed under their attention. “How would you know who I’ve got my eye on?”

“Oh, Evvie, darling, we just
know
.” Clara said.

“We? Is this the secret wisdom of the sisterhood of inverts?” Evadne hoped a witty remark would divert their interest.

“Oh, darling, how could you use that word?” Courtney sighed melodramatically as if really wounded.

“Makes it sound rather fun, if you ask me,” Clara said, with a crooked smile. “As though we spend all of our time standing on our heads.”

“Whereas we only do that some of the time,” Courtney said wryly, with a suggestive grin. “But all of this is drawing us away from the subject in hand.” Her gaze settled firmly on Evadne once more. “Have you got your eye on Edith, Evvie? Oh, do say yes, it would be ever such a thrill!”

“I don’t find women attractive,” Evadne replied, hoping to silence them with a certainty she did not feel.

“What about Miss Goodman at St. Hilda’s? You had a real crack on for her,” Clara said.

“I did not.” Evadne flushed an even deeper red.

“Oh, we all did, sweetheart, don’t even try to deny it,” Courtney put in. “They just don’t make women like her back home. So very severe, but when she smiled, you just wanted to—”

“It’s not
your
fantasies we’re interested in, dearest,” said Clara. “We’re interrogating Evvie.”

“And I would be pleased if you would cease in your interrogation.” Evadne said firmly.

“Just give us a tiny hint,” Courtney said, in the tone of a spoiled little girl who knows she will get her own way eventually. “Please, darling. You don’t even have to say the words. Just nod your head if you like her.”

Evadne hesitated. Then the temptation of confession, of potential empathy, was too great. She nodded her head slightly.

“Oh, darling, attagirl! Welcome to the fun!” Courtney said.

“I still find men attractive.” In truth, Evadne’s emotions regarding Edith were rather confusing—as they had always been—and more so now, considering the secret she was hiding.

“Well, no one said you were forced to choose. Modern times you know, darling. We can do whatever we like,” Clara told her, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

“Whatever we like?” Evadne asked.

“Well, perhaps with a few carefully constructed boundaries,” Clara said.

“You have boundaries?” Courtney enquired of Clara, eyes wide with mock surprise.

“One or two,” Clara replied, “though not when it comes to you, my sweetheart. But Evvie, has she given you any reason to think she might like you back?”

“Of course not. And I won’t be looking for it either.” Evadne knew they didn’t believe her. She wondered how much they remembered of their shared last year at St. Hilda’s. She and Edith had been so careful, but still, Clara and Courtney clearly knew the signs to look for. Had they suspected all those years ago? She found she almost hoped they had.

Clara was about to respond to Evadne’s blunt denial, when the door opened and two women entered. The first, Madge Sidney, was rather plain looking, with her bobbed mousey hair and conservative brown dress, though she was by far the most intellectual of the group and had been Head Girl in their final year at school. She had attended university, studying medicine, but she claimed that her recent marriage to a colleague, a very well-respected doctor, was the happiest event of her life. She looked forward to nothing more than starting a family.

Madge was followed by Edith Richardson, the subject of their conversation. Edith’s hair, which she wore in a short waved bob, was chocolate brown, her complexion lightly tanned, even in the winter months. Her arms and legs were long and sleek, accentuated by the short skirt and absent sleeves of her embroidered mauve dress. Evadne’s gaze was drawn to her beautiful emerald green eyes, so expressive of her rapidly changing emotions. Edith had attended St. Hilda’s on a scholarship, since her family were not wealthy, but her prowess in team sports—particularly hockey and cricket—had soon made her many friends, and she’d been Games Prefect in their final year. She was one of the school friends Evadne had seen on more than a few occasions in the nine years since they’d left school. Every meeting had, however, been in a public place, usually a tearoom, once or twice at the theatre. When there was even the remotest chance of their conversation being overheard, neither of them dared risk even a whisper relating to what had passed between them in their last year of school. Whenever they met they’d shared, in glances, wordless recollections of the past, mutually acknowledged the pain of their separation. But nothing had ever been spoken.

Maturity suited Edith, and at every encounter she was even more beautiful to Evadne, their parting so much more difficult. This was the first time Edith had visited Evadne in her home.

“We were beginning to consider sending out a search party,” Courtney told them.

“We were just talking about the old days,” Edith said, sitting on the arm of the sofa upon which Clara and Courtney were already seated. “Do you have a ciggy, Clara?”

Clara reached into her inside jacket pocket and produced a silver cigarette case, then opened it and offered it to Edith, who took one and placed it between her pink lips. Evadne tried not to stare and accepted the cigarette Clara offered her by way of distraction. Her attempt to divert the insistent course of her thoughts was not helped when Clara remarked, to Madge and Edith, “Say, do you girls remember Miss Goodman?”

“The history mistress? Pretty impossible to forget I’d have thought,” Edith replied. “She hated me, of course, since I’d far rather have been on the cricket pitches than remembering exactly which king was which. I was always in trouble with her for not spending enough time on my prep. She was terrifying.”

“I rather liked her myself,” Madge put in, causing Clara and Courtney to chuckle knowingly.

“That is precisely what we were talking about with Evvie. Everyone
liked
Miss Goodman. Well, apart from Edith,” Courtney said.

“Oh, I liked her. I just kept a respectful distance.” Edith joined their laughter.

“And I didn’t mean I liked her in the way you’re implying,” Madge said, rolling her eyes. “We’re not all deviants like you girls. History was one of my better subjects.”

“They were all your better subjects, Madge, darling. And now look at you, throwing it all away on a man.” Clara’s eyes were dancing, but it was impossible to miss the edge of seriousness in her tone. And Madge surely knew that to some of her friends, her choice to abandon her medical career, take care of her husband, and start her family was nothing short of extraordinary in these progressive times.