The Dream House (19 page)

When she first arrived at Seddington, only Agnes went out to the front with her father to greet Vanessa and her aunt as they stepped down from the car. After introductions and embraces, they swept into the hall and almost right past Raven who was loitering in the shadows by the stairs. Only Agnes noticed the shock that passed over his face as he took in Vanessa’s china shepherdess looks. Then the usual sullen shutters came down.

‘Oh, this is my brother Raven,’ gabbled Agnes, pulling him forward. ‘We always call him Raven – he hates his real name, Arthur.’

Vanessa put out her hand to Raven and dimpled prettily at him. He took it briefly, then nodded at Aunt Evelyn and slipped round the newel post and up the stairs, two at a time. After a moment they heard a door slam upstairs.

‘Well, really!’ started Aunt Evelyn.

‘I’m sorry, he finds this hard,’ stuttered Agnes.

‘Poor boy,’ whispered Vanessa, and Agnes was surprised to see her baby-blue eyes well with tears. ‘I know how you both feel, you see,’ she appealed to Agnes. ‘Losing our mothers.’

After that, Raven did his best to be staying with friends when Vanessa came, or else just went to another part of the house. Mr Melton was furious about it, but what could he do? Raven was perfectly polite to Vanessa when they had to meet at meals or in company, but otherwise he kept his distance.

After the wedding, and the reception at a nearby hotel, Gerald swept his new bride away on a three-week honeymoon, travelling in Italy.

When they returned to Seddington House, the Meltons threw a Christmas party for their neighbours. It was the first time for many years that there had been any sort of entertainment there, and Mrs Duncan and her staff were worn to a ravelling with the cooking and the preparation, despite the recruitment of extra help. Ethel came in every day for two weeks for light kitchen duties, looking palely fragile – it was known that she was already expecting a child. Alf himself was busy, for Vanessa insisted on a huge Christmas tree covered with candles in the hall, then that he deck the reception rooms with boughs of holly, pine and mistletoe from nearby woods. A great yule log was dragged in to burn in the drawing-room grate.

If the vast buffet lacked the glamour of London haute cuisine, it was the very best of hearty country fayre. There was roast beef, a huge ham, a variety of game, fish and pies, an array of vegetables, salads, breads, mousses and aspics. Then came a spread of trifles, fruit pies, mince tarts, custards and creams. Lister had plundered the cellar for the remainder of the fine wines laid down before the war and spent hours with Mr Melton negotiating with his London wine merchants to build up a new stock.

The night of the party, the second Mrs Melton appeared to her guests at the top of the stairs, a vision in shimmering eau de nil silk studded with sequins and with a short train. It exactly complemented her complexion and set off her hair. She looked ravishing and Agnes saw that even Raven could not take his eyes off her as she swept down the staircase to greet everyone and wove her way through the throng like a lively little bird, stopping for a moment to converse with each and every one.

The rector and his wife were there, of course, with Diana, who had an admirer in tow – the new young curate, fresh from theological college in Oxford. He was a little spotty, Agnes thought, and more than a little earnest, but he seemed most solicitous of Diana, though he was clearly hurt to see the way his inamorata’s glances would frequently rest upon Raven.

Raven really was very naughty where Diana was concerned, Agnes thought – such a tease, encouraging her when Agnes knew he considered her friend to be too serious and too plain. What was the point of this behaviour? Everyone except Diana could see that a relationship between the two would be disastrous. Agnes made up her mind to have a tactful little talk with her friend soon.

Raven, who had miraculously scraped through his penal exams, had a friend from Cambridge staying, a dapper young man wearing a white tuxedo and with a transatlantic accent. His name was Freddy Irving and his family currently lived in Chelsea. Raven was hazy about his background, but it was known that his father was very wealthy. Freddy had a man-of-the-world air and a kind heart, so Agnes, just turned seventeen, ducked the attentions of a bluff farmer’s son, who had opened a conversation with her by asking if they could smell their pig from Seddington House, and practised flirting for the first time.

‘You must find us very provincial after London and Cambridge, Mr Irving. Do you go to parties every night or do you sometimes find time to attend to your studies?’

‘If someone goes to the trouble of giving a party, Miss Melton, we feel it is our Christian duty to attend, do we not, Raven?’

Raven smiled and took a drag on his Turkish cigarette. ‘Never let it be said that we don’t do our duty. Unless, of course, it’s someone frightfully dull and then we feel it’s a veritable act of charity to go.’

‘And,’ she paused a moment, ‘are the girls very pretty in Cambridge?’

‘Damned pretty,’ Freddy sighed. ‘If only I could get one to even look at me.’ He rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘But,’ he went on, leaning towards her, ‘not as pretty as here.’ And Agnes giggled deliciously.

She laughed at Freddy’s stories about undergraduate life and teased him about his flippant attitude. She didn’t feel seriously attracted to him, nor, she thought, he to her, but it was heavenly fun all the same. She had begun to realize that there was something about her that was engaging to men. Freddy seemed animated by her attentions and the farmer’s son continued to hover and pass compliments if in the slightest way encouraged, which she felt tempted to do merely for the sensation of power it gave her.

She hoped she was looking quite pretty this evening. Vanessa had taken her to a dressmaker in London and she knew the very pale blue dress her stepmother had ordered suited her newly shingled dark-honey hair. Her father had taken her aside the evening before and presented her with one of her mother’s diamond pendants, which now flashed at her throat, together with matching clip earrings. She would treasure them for ever, she had whispered through her tears, and her father had hugged her tightly.

Freddy, it turned out, was an accomplished pianist, and after supper, cajoled by Vanessa, he perched himself at the newly tuned Bechstein grand and played the requests of the different generations – Scott Joplin, Ivor Novello and Strauss. There wasn’t really room to dance, but some couples tried anyway. Raven leaned against the mantel, watchful, a glass of wine never far from his hand.

Much later that evening, when all the guests had gone and the servants were clearing away the last of the debris, Agnes went looking for her father to say goodnight. She found him in the library in deep conversation with Mr Armstrong. They didn’t even notice when she looked round the door, so she closed it again quietly. She stood for a moment in the hall, waiting for Lister and Alf to carry through a borrowed table, then followed the sound of gramophone jazz music into the drawing room. There, Freddy and Vanessa were dancing the Charleston together. Raven was sorting through a pile of records, talking animatedly.

‘Let’s try this one. I got it from Levy’s last week. It’s Fletcher Henderson. Everyone’s wild about him.’ And a thrilling new sound filled the room. Freddy and Vanessa swung back and forth. Raven changed the record again – Louis Armstrong’s ‘Hot Seven’ this time. Then Duke Ellington. Finally, exhausted, Vanessa fell back into a chair, flushed and laughing.

‘Come on, the night is yet young,’ Freddy gasped, and this time he grabbed Agnes and tried to take her through some steps.

‘I’m sorry, I’m terribly stupid about this.’ Agnes laughed. ‘No one’s ever shown me, you see.’

‘Raven and I will demonstrate then,’ said Vanessa, regaining her energy and returning to the fray. ‘Come on, Raven. I’ve never seen you dance.’

‘I don’t like to,’ he stuttered, but she gently took his hand and steered him round the floor to a popular number by Duke Ellington. ‘One, two, one two. No, like this. And round, come on, swing me,’ and she twirled and bobbed with surefooted grace.

Raven was absorbed with getting the steps right, one, two, one, two, swing. His sullen expression was gone utterly. Much later, looking back, Agnes would imbue this moment with the significance it deserved. But at the time she was merely relieved that her brother and stepmother seemed finally to have become friends.

The few months that followed were the strangest time that Agnes could remember. On the one hand, they were blissfully happy. Although Vanessa accompanied her bridegroom frequently to London, there were periods as long as a fortnight when the couple were down at Seddington. These were times when Agnes would get up in the morning not knowing what the day held, although she knew it would be something fun.

On the other hand, Vanessa, it was becoming clear, required constant entertainment. Unlike her stepdaughter, she was never happy to sit quietly and read or embroider. Agnes would spend long hours looking over her growing collection of miniatures, old coins and other curios, which she displayed in a set of locked drawers that Mr Melton had ordered from a local cabinet-maker for her birthday. Her father would give her pieces to put in it and sometimes accompanied her to Norwich to a coin dealer there. Otherwise it was a matter of looking through curio shops for inexpensive items that interested her.

She had once shown Vanessa her collection. Her stepmother’s enthusiasm had been no more than polite. ‘Oh, you are so clever, Agnes. Such pretty things.’ But that was as far as her interest went. No, Vanessa loved the new and the vital, not the old and the still. Music, dancing, chatter, outings, parties. And these were rare in rural Suffolk in winter.

There were frequent trips in the car, especially if Raven was home, to see friends at Fortescue Hall, at Aldeborough, at country houses up and down the coast. Winter was clearly a difficult time for Vanessa; it was too cold and inclement to do anything outside, the gardens looked wretched at this time of year, and anybody truly society-minded had made their way up to London.

Agnes’s father worried about this. ‘Do you think she’s happy here?’ he asked Agnes one day late in February. ‘Our life must seem, well, a little dull.’ He paced the library, a deep frown on his face, but before Agnes could reply, he sighed and said, ‘I think we will be returning to London at the end of the week. It’ll be more . . . suitable for her there. She pines for her friends, you know.’ Then he smiled and said, ‘And Vanessa is trying to persuade me that you must join us soon. Spread your wings, meet other young people. You’re becoming cooped up here, you know.’ ‘But Father, I like it. It’s . . . well, I know who I am here.’ But, still, she was surprised to feel a flutter of excitement at the idea.

But late in Febrary, Vanessa seemed to have a recurrence of her nervous illness. She lay on the deep sofa in the morning room half the day with the gramophone playing ‘Oh for the Wings of a Dove’ over and over, waving away offers of food and weeping. Agnes could hardly get a word out of her and Gerald Melton was beside himself with anxiety.

‘She has delicate nerves,’ the doctor said. ‘She must be very careful with herself and rest a great deal.’

Thankfully, after a few weeks of this, Vanessa recovered and her high spirits returned. Even the sad news that Ethel had lost her baby failed to diminish the family’s relief.

‘And that’s when our lives took another new turn,’ Agnes told Kate. ‘Vanessa’s recovery really began when Raven was suddenly sent down from Cambridge. It seems his college had finally had enough of him. He just came home and hung around Vanessa and was insolent to Father and the servants. Father was furious with him. Finally we all went up to London and Raven took a job. But the damage had already been done.’

‘What damage do you mean?’ Kate asked quietly.

‘To the marriage, of course,’ Agnes snapped. ‘You see, Raven had developed a crush on Vanessa.’

Kate opened her mouth to ask more, but just then Mrs Summers arrived and Kate got up to go.

‘Mr Jordan telephoned this morning,’ Mrs Summers told Agnes. ‘Says he’ll be along at the weekend.’

‘He only came last weekend,’ said Agnes in an acid tone. ‘Must be getting worried about me! Perhaps you should meet him soon, Kate,’ she added. ‘Max is Raven’s grandson.’

Late June 2004

‘When Kate finally met Max Jordan, on a boiling hot Saturday two weeks later, it was completely by accident.

The Longmans had arrived the previous night and were staying in a borrowed cottage in nearby Blythborough. Claire had come with them, a pale, listless Claire, and was sleeping in the tiny boxroom. Kate had just manoeuvred Liz’s large car with five chattering children in the back into a just-vacated space in the overcrowded car park at Walberswick Beach, turned off the engine with a sigh of relief, and pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head.

Paaah! Paaah!
There came two angry blasts of car horn and a silver Range Rover slid to a halt in front of them. A bespectacled male face frowned at them through the driver’s window.