The House of Vandekar (41 page)

‘You know how long Diana's been dead?' Alice said suddenly. ‘Six years. And still something happens to bring it all back again. For Christ's sake, why can't she stay buried!'

‘Perhaps Richard's not saying his prayers hard enough,' he remarked. There was silence between them. He cleared his throat.

Alice felt overcome with irritation. ‘Why do you always do that before you say something?' she demanded.

‘I'm sorry. I know it gets on your nerves. I must engage a good divorce lawyer for Fern. He won't get a penny, I'll see to that.'

‘He's never money-grubbed,' Alice pointed out. ‘He's rolling in money himself. His portraits sell for twenty thousand. Why don't you stay out of it? You won't get any thanks for interfering.'

He looked at her. His expression was coldly unpleasant. ‘You're very consistent, aren't you, Alice? You've never altered in your selfishness and dislike of that poor girl. You can keep out of it – I'm going to help her cope with this. She wouldn't come to you even if you offered.' He got up and walked out of the room.

For some minutes Alice remained looking at the empty chair where Hugo had been sitting. Fern's always come between us, she thought. I'd forgotten he could look at me like that after all these years because of her.

She opened a drawer in the library table. She kept a packet of Marlboro cigarettes hidden there for emergencies. She lit one and had a few puffs. ‘Stupid,' she said to herself. ‘What the hell do you care after all this time. Put it out and go and get it off your chest. Lily will be delighted. She always hated her.'

Lily was confined to her room with flu. No amount of arguing and answering back deflected Alice's determination that she should stay in bed and take the medicine prescribed for her. There was one brief outburst during which Alice simply shouted her down, and then Lily gave in and admitted that she was ill. It embarrassed her to have Alice come in and sit on the bed and chat to her as if she were an equal.

‘You'll catch it,' she answered. ‘And you'll be laid up yourself.'

‘Rubbish,' was Alice's retort. ‘I'm never ill.' Which, as they both knew, wasn't strictly true.

‘She's not coming back here to live, is she?' That was Lily's first reaction.

‘Not if I can help it,' Alice said. ‘She won't want to – she's got a lot of friends and a busy social life in London. What a fool. What a fool she's been. Nagging and bitching at him for every little thing. I don't know how he's stood it for so long.'

‘I'm surprised he didn't pack up and clear out long ago,' Lily said.

She glanced quickly at Alice. I've kept my secret, she thought. I've never let her know what I saw that day. And thank God for it. He's gone, and thank God for that too.
She
had it easy, dying like that. At least he's gone on paying.

And Alice, playing with the fringe on the bedcover, twisting it in and out of her fingers, thought much the same thing. The only secret I've ever kept from Lily. I couldn't bring myself to share that, even with her. Hugo and I are bound by it for ever, just as Richard is and Brian will be, whether he leaves Fern for good or not. Perhaps Lily guessed. She misses nothing that goes on in this house. Or this family. But she'd never say. Just as she never said anything about Nick and the baby.

‘I'd better go,' she said, and got up. She drew the cover back and smoothed it down.

‘Oh, don't do that, My Lady,' Lily protested.

‘Why shouldn't I? You've been doing it for me for thirty odd years. Hurry up and get well, Lily. I miss having you around.'

It was a bitter divorce. As Hugo said, it was one thing to suspect, another to be told in cruel and wounding terms that Brian had been in love with Diana, as well as being her lover. If Fern had ever loved him, she forgot it. She was consumed with jealousy and hatred; and fear, because she was going to be alone. There would be other men, her friends consoled her, but she rejected the idea. She couldn't tell the truth, so she invented drunkenness and mental cruelty, hinting that sometimes it had gone even further. She got a lot of sympathy, and Brian was surprised to get invitations from one or two of Fern's friends suggesting he come round for a drink. She had made him sound rather exciting with her tales of violence. There was no need for Hugo's divorce solicitor. Brian wanted nothing except his freedom and he agreed to any terms suggested. But he insisted on joint custody. And that was where Fern decided to fight him.

And Hugo backed her. Alice watched the contest and saw her grandchildren growing more fretful and uncertain, because Fern didn't hesitate to tell them what a wicked man their father was and how unhappy he had made their mummy. And Alice forgot her own advice. She hated to see children suffer, and the twins were miserable, poor things. ‘Mother love, my foot!' she exploded to Hugo. He didn't rise to her outburst. He wouldn't discuss Fern with Alice, and the subject hung between them, a fragile taboo destined to be broken. And broken it was one day when Fern had come to Ashton with the children. She had brought them, she announced, because she didn't trust Brian not to try to kidnap them.

Alice's patience was in short supply whatever Fern said or did. She lost it completely at the absurdity and injustice of that suggestion. ‘I've never heard such rubbish in my life! Brian wouldn't do anything of the sort! You're just making a drama out of the whole lousy business. Take those poor children home at once. You ought to be damn well ashamed of yourself!'

Fern also lost control. She had always been afraid of Alice. But adversity had made Fern strong too, and suddenly she faced her mother as an equal. And an enemy. ‘You would stand up for him,' she accused. ‘You don't care what he did to me. No wonder you both got on so well together! You cheated my father with Armstrong, just the way he cheated me with that filthy little nympho!'

She stopped and took a deep, deep breath of relief and triumph. It was out. After all the years of nurturing her secret, feeding on hate and frustration, Fern had struck back at her mother. And what a blow – in all her poisoned imaginings she'd never hoped to see Alice falter as she did then. Lose colour, clamp one hand to her breast as if she were having a heart attack.

‘I saw you,' Fern went on. ‘I was only a little girl and I came to this very room and opened the door and there you were. You were so busy kissing him you didn't hear me. I'll never forget it. I was sick all over the floor outside.'

Alice didn't move. The pain in her chest made it impossible to speak for a moment. And for that moment the hate-distorted face of her daughter blurred in front of her.

Then it was gone. The pain stopped and her breath came back.

‘You're not even going to deny it, are you?'

‘No,' Alice's voice sounded hoarse. ‘No, I'm not. You saw me comforting a sick man. What you made of it doesn't bother me one good goddamn. Now take your children and get out of my house.'

‘One day I'll tell Daddy,' Fern said at the door.

‘You do that,' Alice said. ‘Hurt him as you're hurting Brian. And your children. It still won't make anyone love you. Now get out.'

When the door closed she sank onto the sofa. The pain had stopped but there was a persistent ache and niggling pain down her left arm.

She couldn't have seen us. I locked the door myself. It must have been before, before we became lovers and I had anything to hide. I don't care. I don't care if she tells Hugo. Nothing can hurt Richard now. He's gone from all of us. He's gone into his silent world and he might as well be dead. I don't care about anything any more except living to see Nancy safely grown up.

It was a long time before she felt well enough to ring for Lily.

Fern didn't tell her father. It wasn't a serious threat; reflection advised caution. He might not believe her; he might not forgive her for telling him if he did. She rang her friends and told them her mother had refused to take her and the children in, and everyone agreed that Alice was an inhuman bitch, and if poor Fern needed somewhere to stay she could always borrow their house in the country, villa in Italy or whatever refuge was available. Fern sobbed into the telephone and refused all offers but they made her feel better.

The next day she wrote Alice a short envenomed note. ‘I have thought it over. I don't want to hurt Daddy. When I do come home in future, it will only be to see him. Fern.'

Alice read it and tore it up. Thank God for that, she said. Let's hope it's not too often. She had an appointment with a specialist in London for the following day. And not even Lily knew why she was going.

9

‘I was eighteen,' Nancy said. ‘I'd finished school and I was going up to Oxford to read modern languages. I hadn't spent Christmas at Ashton that year. A group of us went to Gstaad to ski. It was great fun and I was rather good at it.'

‘I bet you were,' David said. He'd woken and found that she'd got up early and gone out walking in the grounds before breakfast. It made him uneasy. Already she had slipped away from him, engrossed in the family and the past. They hadn't made love that night. His plans for a celebration dinner as the lead-up to asking her to marry him had gone awry. He couldn't reach her, and they had drifted to sleep lying close but very much apart.

She had come back from the walk looking too bright and didn't respond when he kissed her. They went down to breakfast in the splendid green and gold dining room, and it was peopled for him with the ghosts of Nancy's past. He felt ill at ease and unhappy. He wasn't used to such feelings. He reached out and held her hand under the table.

‘Let's go for a walk,' she suggested. ‘There's so much to show you and so much I haven't told you yet.'

‘All right. I'm ready when you are.'

‘I went walking with her that day,' Nancy said. ‘Down here towards the lake. It was very cold, and there was a bit of snow about. I remember telling her about the skiing. She wanted to know everything; she had this gift for making you feel important and that everything you did mattered to her. She said to me, “Isn't this the loveliest view? When I came here to look at the house with your grandfather, we came down here, just on this spot. That's when he said he'd buy it for me. He knew I loved it. I've tried so hard to show him I was grateful, Nancy.” I was horrified, David, because her eyes were full of tears. I'd hardly ever seen her cry. It scared me, because she was so strong you couldn't imagine anything getting the better of her. I didn't really understand what she was talking about. Maybe that's why she said it. She'd kept so much bottled up for all those years. “He did love me you know. He wasn't always like he is now. Things have gone so wrong for him. I wish I'd done more to try and make up for it all.”

‘I didn't know what to say. She turned and looked at me and smiled. “Poor Nancy, you don't know what I'm talking about do you? Never mind. You will one day. Come on, let's walk. It's getting chilly.”

‘When we got back to the house she took me into her sitting room. “I've got something for you,” she said. “I want you to keep it and not open it until I tell you. It's very special to me and I want you to have it.” She took an envelope out of her desk drawer. It was sealed and it felt like a book of some sort. She said it again, “You promise you won't open it till I say so?” I promised. Nothing in the world would have made me break that promise, David.'

‘What was it?' he asked her. He couldn't imagine himself as an eighteen-year-old resisting taking a look.

‘I don't know,' Nancy said. ‘I never opened it. It's still in the flat with the other things she left me. I haven't looked at any of them. Let's walk back. I want to show you the secret garden.'

Other couples were strolling past them in the bright sunshine. The rainstorm of the night before had cleared completely, leaving everything fresh and green. He took her arm and held it tightly.

What was a ‘secret' garden? He didn't ask, but let her lead him to it. He understood when they rounded a long path through a shrubbery and came upon it suddenly. It was enclosed by walls of clipped yew and anyone inside was quite invisible.

‘There were statues and a line of little ponds with fountains, and we used to play hide and seek when we were little. There were places to sit where you couldn't be seen. I loved this garden. Let's sit here for a minute, shall we?' She led him to a deep marble seat in the shelter of the tall yew hedge.

He said, ‘You love this place. The house, the gardens, the views … I can see by your face when you talk about it. This place and your grandmother. What happened to make you walk out on all this?'

‘I didn't walk out,' Nancy said. There was a pause and then she looked at him. ‘I was driven out.' She stood up. ‘The sun's gone in. Let's go back.'

‘Wait a minute.' He caught hold of her. There was a bright flush on both cheeks, as if she had a fever. ‘What do you mean, driven out?'

‘Three weeks after we went for that walk, my grandmother died. The day after her funeral, my Aunt Fern turned me out. “Your lather was a bastard and you don't belong here. God only knows who
your
father was!”'

Nancy started walking, walking so rapidly that he had to pull her arm to make her slow down. ‘I was eighteen,' she said. ‘I'd been left my grandmother's money as well as a legacy from my mother. I was independent. I didn't stay another night. I packed up and left. That was ten years ago. I've never been near Ashton until we drove up here last night.'

He said slowly, ‘Where's your Aunt Fern?'

‘She's dead,' Nancy answered.

‘Pity,' he remarked. ‘I'd have liked a word with her. You've got cousins, you said so.'

‘They're dead too,' she said. ‘They were going to Switzerland to ski. Fern and Ben and Phyllis. Do you remember there was a terrible plane crash in the Alps about six or seven years ago? They were all killed, all the passengers. My Uncle Brian died a couple of years afterwards. He never got over losing them – his children. I heard he just drank himself to death.'