The Talisman (25 page)

Edward was enjoying the damp morning air and the sun. He was also elated, the prized results burning in his pocket. He overtook Harriet and looked back, laughing, and she came to his side as they pulled their mounts in and headed for the thicket. ‘You hardly ever laugh, you know that?’ Her red hair bobbing and shining in the sun, cheeks flushed, sweat dripping down the back of her shirt, Harriet swiped at the branches with her crop, looking back and urging Edward on. She shouted to him to make sure his mount had a clear path at all times, horses don’t like being whacked in the face by branches any more than their riders.

The bushes grew thicker and they slowed to a walk, finally emerging into a clearing. It seemed darker, and they looked up between the trees to the sky. Black clouds had gathered above them, and Harriet cried, ‘Oh pisspots, it’s going to rain.’ They mounted and trotted up a small bank towards a wood.

‘Keep on talking to him, tell him he’s doing well, he’s getting to know you now . . . we’ll head for the woods, I’m taking you to the special place I know where we can shelter.’

Edward patted the neck of his sweating horse and whispered ‘good boy’ and ‘good chap’. Harriet disappeared into the woods about eight yards ahead of him, and he thrashed at the branches with his crop.

The sky grew darker and a cold wind began to chill them. Fierce rain lashed down, and the ground quickly became slithery with mud as the horses picked their way over the uneven grass.

‘We’ll have to get off, walk the rest of the way, it’s too dangerous. The stream up ahead must have burst its banks. You okay? Just lead him on.’

Within a matter of minutes Edward was soaked to the skin. He pulled at the horse’s reins and followed Harriet, twice losing his footing, the mud oozing around his boots. ‘Harriet, Harriet, we should go back . . .’

She was way up ahead, dragging her horse beside her, and she pointed off to the left. ‘Just a few yards . . .’

The tiny chapel was dilapidated, the roof had partly fallen in and one wall was crumbling. In the old arched doorway two heavy oak doors hung off their hinges. Harriet tethered her horse to some branches and nuzzled him. ‘Get his saddle off and take it inside.’

Edward obeyed, wiping his face as the rain was blinding him, and pulled his horse towards the arch to give him some shelter. Heaving off the saddle, he carried it into the chapel.

Inside, it was a mass of fallen debris and overturned pews, and the font was cracked in two. The stained glass window was shattered, broken glass littered the small stone altar.

Harriet’s voice echoed as she pulled off her boots, rubbing her cold feet. She sat on a pew and turned to grin at him. ‘This is my secret place, you like it? Used to come here when I was little – course, it wasn’t all tumbled down then. I was christened here, it belongs to the family. Some of my father’s family are buried here. His father was a curate, not that he likes to broadcast that too much.’

Edward removed his soaking jacket, rubbed his wet hair and sat in a pew opposite Harriet. She shook her hair and unwound the ribbon that held it at the nape of her neck. She grinned at him. ‘You hungry? Open up the bag, I’m starved.’

She wandered around the chapel as Edward unloaded the picnic, telling him that her father had always kept his origins quiet. Being a judge he liked everyone to think he was somebody, but really he was just a vicar’s son. The family had bought the old manor house, they didn’t inherit it. ‘I think Pa married the old lady for her cash. I mean, have you seen some of the old photographs of her when she was young? Frightfully ugly, but he was quite good-looking.’

Throwing herself down beside him she searched the contents of the bag, opened a neat packet of sandwiches and munched hungrily, still shaking the water out of her hair.

‘I didn’t know you had such long hair.’

Harriet told him she had cut the fringe herself, and if she’d had long enough she would have cut the back as well, but the needlework teacher had taken the scissors away. ‘Shall we light a fire? I’m frozen, we could light one on the altar, it wouldn’t be sacrilegious, I mean nobody uses this place now.’

Edward shrugged his shoulders and began picking up dry sticks from the floor of the chapel.

Edna Simpson’s sister and her family, the Van der Burges, arrived to find no member of the family there to greet them. They sat in the warm spot in the house – the kitchen, Sylvia still wearing her mink coat. She surveyed the cards and invitations, assuring her husband they were going to have a pleasant festive season.

‘I should ruddy well hope so, after the trek down here. Why they don’t get rid of this place, God only knows. It’s rundown, freezing, and the roof looks as if it leaks. I’d say you needed to spend ten to fifteen thousand on the place before it’d be habitable . . . Social ruddy climbers, this place must be breaking the Judge. He’ll no doubt touch me for money, as usual.’

Richard snapped that perhaps they kept the Hall because they liked it. Not everyone was as obsessed with money as his father was.

‘You ought to know about that, Richard, never having earned a brass farthing – yet you manage to spend more in one week than a man earns in a year of hard labour! If all Eton taught you was to play goddamned backgammon, then I for one wish I’d never sent you there.’

Throwing up his hands in despair, Richard walked out, leaving BB, his father, to take over his position by the fire, warming his rear end.

‘Leave him be, dearest,’ Sylvia remonstrated feebly, ‘you always criticize him. He’s a dear boy, and means no harm . . . Did you bring your hunting jacket?’

BB bit the end of his cigar, spat it in the fire and bellowed for Fred to get him a drink to warm him up.

The thundering sound of Buster charging down the hall announced the arrival of Mrs Simpson. She proffered her cheek for Sylvia to kiss, while BB complained bitterly about not being able to take a bath after their journey. Mrs Simpson pursed her lips and murmured that there was a war on. BB snorted, ‘Don’t tell me they’re rationing hot water now, Edna, for Gawd’s sake.’

Sylvia could see her sister was furious, so she suggested Edna might tell them when it would be convenient for them to take their baths.

‘Well, come along now, dear, and I’ll show you your rooms and explain the intricacies of the plumbing system at the same time.’

They left BB still hogging the fire, his trousers sizzling. Sylvia followed her sister upstairs, noting Edna’s pathetic attempts at flower arranging. ‘My dear, perhaps you would like me to make a few Christmas decorations? I can paint some twigs and put some coloured balls and ribbons on them – they look very festive.’

‘We don’t really go in for that kind of thing . . . The gardeners haul a tree up outside the house and the Judge switches on the fairy lights – that, my dear, should suffice. And we’re not sending Christmas cards this year – rather goes against the grain, but there is a war on.’

Sylvia sighed. There was indeed a war raging, but somehow here in the depths of the country it seemed very far away.

Feeling a bit miffed at Sylvia’s condescension, Edna ushered her into her bathroom and explained how the hot water supply worked. Noting how many trunks her sister had brought from London, she said, off-handedly, that they had been invited to the Duke and Duchess’s house party the following weekend. Of course, she would call and ask if she could take her sister along.

The two women were so different, one five foot eight in her stockinged feet, the other five foot nothing. Their only similarity was in their plummy, aristocratic voices, Edna’s hoarse from constant shouting and Sylvia’s husky from chain-smoking. Sylvia must at one time have been very pretty in a doll-like way, with her big, liquid eyes, tiny upturned nose and cupid’s bow mouth.

Edna looked around the bedroom and folded her arms. She loved to take digs at Sylvia, as if they were still children. She’d always been jealous of her younger sister. It was unfair that Sylvia should have all the looks, but the fact that she herself had married a judge, and now mixed with high society, was reward enough. The family beauty was married to a South African, and a rough diamond at that, and Edna never let an opportunity pass to rub it in. ‘I can’t say for certain that the Duchess will oblige – they must have so many guests . . . It’s rather an honour, you know, to be invited, but then the Judge is very well thought of in these parts. The rumour is that he may even become Lord Chief Justice, did I tell you that?’

‘Yes, you did, dear, and I’m thrilled for you both.’ Sylvia fluttered her eyelashes, which were thickly coated with mascara, and looked so down, so hesitant and nervous that her sister felt quite sorry for her.

‘No doubt Richard will be roped in. Young men are always in demand, there are so few about with the war on . . . I don’t suppose you’ve got any dresses that would suit Harriet, have you? We really should do something with the gel. She’ll be coming out in a year or two, and she’s not the slightest bit interested in fashion. Would you see what you can do with her? The wretched child cut off half her hair, you know. Her best feature and she ruins it . . . Well, not the back, it’s just that the front’s gone fuzzy.’

‘I’m sure I can find something appropriate for Harriet . . . She’s out riding, I hear, with – Edward, isn’t it?’

Edna snorted and strode to the window. With all the students up at the university Allard could at least have brought home someone less peculiar. ‘Chap hardly speaks, you know. Good-looking, I suppose, but I find him rather disturbing. He’s sly in a funny sort of way – can’t fathom out his background at all. Welsh, or his family were, but then Allard was always one for collecting lame ducks.’

Sylvia carefully placed a silver-framed photograph on the bedside table. It was of two blond, angelic-looking boys, arm-in-arm and smiling into the camera. She touched the frame fleetingly, a sad, motherly gesture as if she were touching the child itself.

‘You shouldn’t carry that around with you, Sylvia. A constant reminder like that doesn’t do any good, you know, not after all you went through. I’d put it away somewhere.’

Sylvia ignored her, but she continued, ‘I don’t know why you put up with that husband of yours, I really don’t. He’s so dreadfully coarse and loud. He may be rich, but that’s not everything. Does he still run after the ladies the way he used to?’

Sylvia blinked, her nervous little hands trembling as she began to arrange her pure silk underwear, all neatly packed in layers of tissue paper, in the drawers. But she said nothing.

Edna pressed the point. ‘I do care about you, you know. You are my sister, after all.’

Sylvia shut the drawer very carefully and blinked, gave a tight little smile. ‘And I care about you, my dear. But I am perfectly well now, and BB takes care of us all, in more ways than one. Don’t be cruel about him, he is a good man.’

Silently thanking God that he was also a rich man, Mrs Simpson kissed her sister’s powdered cheek and walked out.

Left alone, Sylvia sat on the bed and looked at the photograph. Her tiny hands fluttered above the two beautiful, smiling boys, then dropped like birds to her side. Her eyes filled with huge tears and brimmed over, staining her cheeks with mascara.

BB walked into the room. For a moment his face puckered with pain, then he assumed a neutral expression and breezed over to lay a hand on her curly, blonde head. ‘Hold on, there’s a good girl, keep yer pecker up – we don’t want you having to go away again, now do we?’

She smiled up at him, and he took out his big silk handkerchief and wiped her tears away as though she were a child. She patted his hand and managed a small smile, saying she was perfectly all right, it was just that her sister sometimes got the better of her.

‘All I know is I got the best of the sisters. By God, I couldn’t survive that creature for long.’

BB watched his wife pull herself together, take her little silk make-up bag and go quietly into the bathroom to patch up her face. He sighed. She was so fragile, he could never tell her everything he felt, everything he was going through. The photograph of the two blond boys caught at the big man’s heart. He gritted his teeth and frowned, then took the frame and laid it face down so the two boys would not be looking at him, not forever making him feel guilty . . . He wished he could love his last born as much, but somehow he had closed off a part of him when his two eldest sons had died.

‘Be quite a social time here, Sylvia, my lamb. You’ll like that, and you know something – you’ll be the prettiest woman they’ve seen in these parts for years. Always said you’re the loveliest woman I ever set eyes on.’

She came out, refreshed and repainted, kissed his cheek lovingly. BB turned to leave the room. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, old gel, see you down in the arctic lounge.’

Harriet held her feet up to the fire. In the cracked, stone-flagged floor were little blue-flowered weeds, and she picked them one by one and threaded them through her toes, then held her foot up and laughed. She leaned on her elbow and looked at Edward, who was staring at the wall, a strange, expressionless look on his face.

‘What are you thinking? You’re miles away.’

He moved to her side and touched her hair, hair like gold, just like gold, just like his mother’s, so long that it hung below her waist. He remembered brushing it by the old grate, how Evelyne had loved her hair to be brushed. ‘You remind me of someone.’

Harriet smiled and leaned back against his shoulder, a natural and unprovocative move. The fire was low, there was no more wood in the chapel, and Edward noticed the rain had stopped. But he made no move to go. The quietness, the peace, was nice.

‘Did you love her, this person I remind you of?’

He smiled down at her and nodded his head. He found himself talking freely, unashamedly, and for the first time without any pain inside him. ‘I loved her, loved her very much.’

Harriet touched his face softly, looked into his dark-brown eyes. ‘You’ve got all the girls running after you round here, haven’t you? Is this a girl in Cambridge?’

He laughed and whispered to her that it was his mother, she had red hair too, long, long red hair.