The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (53 page)

‘That’ll
be something of Mama’s,’ I said to Johns, feeling uneasy. ‘Something she
probably tied up and forgot about—’

‘Sure
to be,’ said Johns. ‘You just take it back to ‘er, won’t ye? Shouldn’t leave
these sortsa things hangin’ about in the pigeon house fer too long.’

‘Thank
you, Johns,’ I said. And I knew.

I don’t know how I knew,
except that perhaps I had known all along. I hurried back through the garden
and out of the gate, clutching the box to my chest. It wasn’t very heavy. It’
rattled a little as I ran. When I got to the clearing at the top of the drive,
when Magna was all but obscured by the lime avenue, I crouched under the copper
beach tree.

The
layer of tissue paper on top of the contents of the box blew away when I opened
it and I was too late to catch it. Underneath was something soft, something
neatly folded, something that was so familiar to me that I would have known it
merely from its touch or smell. Mama’s wedding dress. With shaking hands, I
pulled it out of the box and held it up. The sunlight gleamed on the thin, pink
material, making it translucent, a fairy’s dress. Carefully. I placed it beside
me on the ground and pulled out what had been packed away underneath it.
Everything was quintessentially Mama. She had saved last year’s ration book,
her
Pirates of Penzance
records, several photographs of Papa and,
discarded from its ugly frame, and lining the bottom of the box, Aunt Sarah’s
watercolour. Funny. I thought. Away from the majesty of Magna’s ancient
tapestries and Inigo Jones ceilings, it looked rather good. I balanced it
against the trunk of the tree and reached into the box again. There was a
letter in. the bottom. A letter whose handwriting I recognised instantly. Aunt
Clare. Yet it was addressed not to Papa, as I expected, but to my mother.
Talitha
Wallace, Milton Magna, Westbury Wiltshire.
The date on the envelope was
just a month ago. March 1955. I sat quite still for a second, my mind whirring.
Then I read. Slowly and carefully. and hearing Aunt Clare’s voice in my head
all the time.

My dear
Talitha

I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear from you. Since meeting
Penelope it has been bothering me very much
—
how you’ve been since the war, how on earth you’ve managed Milton
Magna on your own. It must have been hard for you to write to me, and I thank
you very much. We should have de-Rebecca’d each other years ago. It is never
too late, not even now.

Funny how often you came into my thoughts. Talitha Orr
—
the luckiest girl in the world, the girl
who won Archie. Whenever I saw your photograph together in the paper. I would
search your faces for some flaw, some sign that you were not as happy as
everyone said you were. I searched in vain. Even after I read of Archie’s
death, I envied you. Isn’t that strange?’ To envy a widow as young as you. But
at least you had him for a while, even if your time together was short. All
that changed when I met Penelope and I realised how awful it must have been for
you. To lose your husband and be landed with a house like Magna
…
The weight must indeed be great. And your letter was so sad.
You have held yourself back for so long. The idea that I have haunted you is so
ridiculous to me. So futile. You are far too young to live like this. Life is
long and full of possibility if you set yourself free.

A great house is a remarkable thing, but all great houses are
 
built for men, by men. Any house, great or small, ceases to seem
real when the people you love are no longer there. Free yourself because you
are too young not to.

Yours with great affection,

Clare Delancy

PS Penelope is
such a dear girl. My son once said that he is not good enough for her. Perhaps
you could persuade Penelope that this is not the case?’!

I liked the exclamation
mark. I placed the letter back in its envelope and put the envelope back in the
box, but as I was doing so I noticed one more thing. Another photo. It was one
I had never seen before, although it was of Inigo and me, sitting together,
laughing by the pigeon house. I flipped it over.
11 July 1941 (21st
birthday)
Mama had written.
Penelope and Inigo.
She had drawn a
rather wobbly heart shape in pencil next to our names. For some reason, it was
this, above everything that had happened and everything that I had seen, that
filled my eyes with tears.

Inigo and Rocky arrived at
the Dower House later that afternoon. Rocky looked tired but still impossibly
glamorous. I wanted to run into his arms and wait for him to tell me that
everything was going to be all right, because somehow just having him in the
same room made everything better. It was always the same with Rocky. First you
were knocked sideways by his height and his charm, then by that unmistakable
kindness. He poured Inigo and me a stiff drink.

‘I don’t
think any of you guys should go near the big house for a few days,’ he said,
giving me a look. ‘There are still men out there trying to work on saving as
much stuff as they can, and I think you should leave them to it. I need to go
up to London for a few days, but I can be back here by the weekend. If you want
me to, I can take a look at the insurance for you, get the papers worked out.
It’s a complicated business, but I can help you, if you want me to.

‘All my
records,’ said Inigo dully. ‘I suppose it was impossible to save any of them.’

Rocky
lit a cigarette and said nothing. Later that evening, I took Mama’s box to her
bedroom. Neither of us mentioned it. We didn’t need to.

Rocky took care of
everything, despite having to spend most of his time in London. New furniture
arrived for the Dower Hose in vans from Peter Jones — smart, modern sofas, an
American refrigerator and even a television set.

‘You
can’t let him pay for all this stuff, Mama,’ I gasped. ‘It’s too much.’

Mama
agreed with me and tried in vain to send it all back.

‘I
suppose it must give him pleasure,’ she said. ‘Helping other people.’

I
couldn’t disagree with Mama. Rocky was the only true philanthropist I had ever
met. It was what made people suspicious of him. It was hard to believe that he
only ever wanted the best, for everyone. Of course, in our case it made matters
easier for him that he was madly in love with Mama.

‘I
expect he’ll want to marry you,’ I said, testing the idea out for size.

‘Don’t
be ridiculous, Penelope,’ said Mama, frowning. ‘Not everyone thinks the way you
do. He’s just a very generous man.

‘Indeed,’
I added wryly. ‘so you don’t mind all this American stuff? The new cooker, and
the ‘fridge?’

‘It’s
not ideal,’ sighed Mama, ‘but Mary tells me the washing machine it a marvel.’

The first few days after
the fire were nothing like what you might imagine them to have been. I
envisaged tears and drama, delayed guilty regret from Mama, sinking despair
from Inigo and me as we realised that our childhood and our home had gone for
ever. I was quite wrong. Rocky was careful not to overwhelm us with details,
but he let us know that we would be receiving enough money from the insurance
to keep us living quite happily at the Dower Hose for the next few years. I
didn’t ask him any questions. Above everything that had happened, I was aware
only of his kindness. Watching Mama and Rocky was like watching the unravelling
of a fascinating, slow-moving film. I felt, much of the time, that Inigo and I
should be passed a paper bag of popcorn when he arrived for dinner, their
friendship was such a delicate, butterfly-ish thing. Rocky bought Mama
presents, not always expensive gifts, but sweet little things that he thought
she might like — a bag of sugared almonds from Fortnum’s, a sweet-smelling
candle from a shop he knew on the Portobello Road. He was the least sentimental
man I knew — he had a practical answer for everything — yet when Mama talked,
you could actually see his face softening, mark his eyes smiling. He found her
fascinating and frustrating in equal measures (which of course she was) but he
was not afraid to challenge the frustrating part, much to Inigo’s and my
delight. He pulled her up on things — her views on America, her petulance at
dinner one night, her criticism of Inigo’s love of music — and she actually
listened to him. In return, she teased him, she made him laugh with her
outrageous impression of Mary and her tales of life in the village during the
war. It took me two weeks of observing them both to realise that they were the
perfect combination. It took Mama a great deal longer than that to admit it.
Almost more than anything, I felt grateful that Rocky understood me. One
evening, as I lay on my bed reading an article about the joys of Spain in
Woman
and Beauty
and wondering if Harry had ever been there, I heard a light
knock at the door.

‘Come
in,’ I said.

Rocky
stood awkwardly in the door. ‘Hey. kid,’ he said.

I put
down the magazine.

‘Hello,’
I said.

‘I was
wondering,’ he said. ‘Not that it’s any of my business of course, but what
happened to your magician?’

‘Oh, he’s
not my magician,’ I said lightly. There was a pause.

‘Ah,’
said Rocky. ‘As long as you’re all right with that?’

‘Oh,
quite fine, thank you,’ I said.

Rocky
didn’t believe me, of course, but he knew when to leave me alone. I wasn’t quite
fine about Harry. I had never known hurt like it, the constant, persistent
ache, the continual dull longing. I lay awake at night scribbling into my
notepad and driving myself crackers with memories of how cavalier I had been,
how presumptuous, how
ridiculous
not to recognise that I had been
falling when I was, and now it was too late.

One
evening Rocky came to dinner smelling of
Dior Homme
and I nearly passed
out.

‘Are
you feeling quite well, Penelope?’ asked Mama.

‘Yes,’
I muttered.

It wasn’t
until nearly three days after the fire that Rocky suggested that Mama went with
him to look at Magna for the first time. He took with him a hip flask and a
handkerchief, but she needed neither. On the same day. I went up to London to
see Aunt Clare. She had written a letter to me asking if I would pay her a
visit as soon as I could. She didn’t mention Magna in the letter.
Everything
will work out right, you’ll see, Penelope,
was the closest she came to
mentioning the fire. I wondered why on earth she wanted to see me so urgently;
for a fleeting moment I wondered if it was something to do with Harry.

Aunt Clare answered the
door, which was unheard of.

‘Penelope!’
she said, kissing me hello. ‘Do come in. We’re quite alone, which is something
of a novelty, isn’t it?’

‘It is
rather,’ I agreed. ‘Where’s Phoebe?’

‘Oh, I
gave her the day off She’s not herself at the moment.’

Has
she ever been?’
I wondered.

It was
a curious fact that I had never spent any time at Kensington Court between
eleven in the morning and tea time. Sitting in Aunt Clare’s study at midday on
a sunny morning felt wrong, somehow. It felt like a different place entirely.

‘No
tea, I’m afraid,’ she said, reading my thoughts. ‘Would you like something
stronger? I’ve rather taken to gin at this time of day.’

I
grimaced, thinking of the stage door of the Palladium. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

Aunt
Clare poured herself a large gin and tonic and sat down. ‘Now. How is your
mother?’

‘I
laughed. ‘Uncommonly well. Surviving beautifully without Magna. She’s free,
just as you said she should be.’ I felt the heat rising in my face. ‘I read
your letter to her.’

Aunt
Clare didn’t give me the thrill of looking remotely surprised.

‘I
found it. Mama was never much good at keeping secrets. I’m amazed she managed
to keep her communication with you to herself for as long as she did.’

‘She’s
a great believer in fate, isn’t she? She felt that your becoming friends with
Charlotte was too much of a sign for her to ignore.’ She crossed the room to
her writing desk and pulled out an envelope addressed to Clare Delancy in Mama’s
trademark peacock blue ink. ‘Don’t open it yet,’ she said, her voice strange. ‘Open
it when I’m not here.’

‘When I
get home?’

‘No.
When I’m gone.’

‘What
do you mean?’

Aunt
Clare sat down. She held out her hand to me and I sat next to her, a sudden
dread filling up my soul. ‘I may not be here much longer,’ she said. She spoke
lightly. without difficulty. ‘I’m dying, Penelope.’

Everything
went blank. Blindly. I pulled my hand away from hers and found myself standing
up, though my legs had turned to jelly. ‘How— What do you mean?’ I whispered.

‘Oh, it’s
something I’ve known about for quite some time,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘Nothing
anyone can do for me now, or so they say. Once it takes a hold, et cetera, et
cetera. Still, I’ve had longer than they predicted last summer. But these past
few weeks have been — difficult. I don’t want to wilt away here. I always said
that when it got to this stage, I would go abroad. Paris, perhaps. The
Tuileries in spring cannot be bettered.’