The Woman From Paris (47 page)

Since she had made no effort to get in touch with him, she obviously had no desire to see him. He vowed to let her go.

At the beginning of September, Antoinette found she was feeling less resentful towards Phaedra. She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t miss her. The girl had brought sunshine into the house. Since her departure Fairfield Park had been cast in shadow, and no one laughed anymore. Even Roberta, at first triumphant that her suspicions had been right, seemed ashamed, as if embarrassed to have been so dogged in her determination to expose her. The truth was that Antoinette wished that Phaedra was George’s daughter after all, and that she would come back and things would return to the way they had been before everything had gone so terribly wrong. She wanted Phaedra back, untarnished.

It was a dull, rainy afternoon when she suddenly felt the urge to visit George’s grave. She hadn’t been there since the dreadful DVD exposure in the spring, and up until that moment she hadn’t wanted to. She had felt nothing but resentment and fury, but now, due to the passing of time, she just felt sad. George had taken so much, and he didn’t even know it.

She drove into Fairfield, parked her car on the verge, and hurried through the drizzle to the church beneath a large golfing umbrella. The building looked gray and austere in the rain. The windows were dark, the big door shut, but there, leaning against George’s shiny new headstone, was a bunch of yellow roses. They glowed out of the gloom like a beacon of hope, and her heart leapt at the thought that
Phaedra might have come back. She stared at the flowers, her spirit injected with a shot of optimism. Was it possible that all the while she’d been missing her, Phaedra was right here in Fairfield? She looked around in a fever of anticipation, but the graveyard was empty except for a few mean-looking crows. She dropped her shoulders in disappointment. If it wasn’t Phaedra, it could only be Margaret.
She
was the person in the family who came regularly to church. She bent down and picked up the flowers. They were fresh and sweet-smelling and covered in little drops of rain.

“Oh, George, do you realize the trouble you’re in?” she said quietly. “Do you have any idea of the wreckage you’ve left behind? You’ve jumped ship and left us all to crash on the rocks.” It felt strangely good to unburden her thoughts to the man who had inspired them. “I now realize that perhaps you
did
love me and that you loved Phaedra, too. You probably loved us both in different ways, as Margaret suggested. Perhaps together we completed the woman you wanted to be with. I one half, Phaedra the other. It’s odd, because I feel incomplete without her, as if we really are two halves of a whole. I miss her, George. I miss her very much. She brought joy into our home, and now it’s gone. It’s going to take me a while to forgive you—it’s taken years for your mother to forgive your father for the same transgression, so imagine, I’m not there yet. But I
am
trying. Wherever you are, if you can hear me, know that I am doing my best—and if you have any power at all, bring her back.” Her eyes welled with tears as she replaced the roses against the headstone. Instead of returning to her car, she walked through the churchyard to the wooden gate in the hedge that led to Dr. Heyworth’s house.

A moment later she stood at his conservatory door and knocked on the glass. The lights were on, so she knew he must be at home. She tried the door; it opened easily. “Hello!” she called out. “It’s me, Antoinette!” She sniffed. Wasn’t that the smell of burning? Seized with a sudden panic she hurried through the conservatory and down the corridor to the kitchen. “William! William! Are you all right? It’s me, Antoinette! William!”

The kitchen was full of smoke, and Dr. Heyworth was hastily
opening windows to let it out. When he saw Antoinette, he looked embarrassed. “Oh dear, you’ve caught me burning cake.”

“Cake?” she exclaimed. “Is that what it is?”

“I was making you a lemon cake. But I got distracted.”

“Good Lord, it looks like the place is on fire.”

He bent down and pulled out of the oven a round tin of what looked like charcoal. “Here it is. Not very appetizing, is it?”

“Not your best,” she said with a smile. “I’m sorry I barged in.”

“You came through the church gate, I assume.”

“Yes. It’s become a habit.”

“It’s a habit I like. I tell you what. Fancy going out for tea?”

She laughed. “I haven’t been out for tea since I was at school and my parents used to take me out on Sundays.”

“Then let’s make a new habit. Let’s go and have a cup of tea and a slice of cake in Oliver’s.”

“I’ve always walked past Oliver’s but never been in.”

“How little you know your own town, Lady Frampton.” He grinned at her. “What shall I do with this?” He held up the smoking cake.

“Oh, it’s a shame to throw it away,” Antoinette joked. “I’d save it for a special occasion.”

“Good idea.” He placed it on the counter. “Now, let me go and change my shirt.”

Oliver’s was steamy, the tables full of damp people who had sought refuge from the rain. They chose a table at the back and ordered. Antoinette found the smell of freshly baked bread and ground coffee comforting. She looked across at Dr. Heyworth and found him comforting, too.

“I went to visit George’s grave,” she told him. “I hadn’t been since the spring. I felt it was time I had a word with him.”

Dr. Heyworth smiled at her kindly. “Do you feel better?”

“Yes, I do. I don’t know whether he heard anything of what I said to him, but at least I got it off my chest.”

“That’s good.”

“You see, Margaret held on to her resentment for so long it made her sour. I don’t want to turn out like that.”

“You won’t, Antoinette, because you’ll forgive George. There’s nothing else you can do. Resenting him won’t change what he did, nor will it make you feel better; it will just fester and make you miserable. So accept the past, let it go, and move on. That way you won’t allow it to ruin your future.”

“And what of Phaedra, William? What about her?”

Dr. Heyworth registered the anguish in her eyes, anguish that hadn’t been there when she had spoken about George. “You miss her, don’t you?” he asked.

“Very much—and I feel bad for having loathed her like I did. It was unfair of me.”

“You had to go through that process in order to get here. Only time could allow you the perspective.”

“But she’s gone forever.”

“Perhaps.”

“It’s just so unfair. Everyone’s been pulled down by her absence. She was with us for such a short time, and yet she made a big impression. Fairfield was such a happy place. Now we all mope about like children at a party once the entertainer’s gone. Tom sleeps all day, Joshua sulks in the drawing room reading the papers, Roberta just looks guilty all the time, as if it’s her fault Phaedra left. I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

“They will, in time.”

“I hope you’re right.” She grinned at him guiltily. “I can’t even get my act together to start the farm shop. It’s such a good idea, but I don’t have the incentive without Phaedra. I know we’d have had such fun doing it together, like when we restored the folly. Do you remember when we danced? How we laughed, all of us together. That’s a lost afternoon we’ll never get back.”

“But there will be more afternoons like it, perhaps better. Don’t dwell in the past, Antoinette. Live in the now.”

She grinned at him as the waitress placed tea and cake on the table. “I think this might taste a little better than your cake,” she said with a chuckle. “What do you think?”

*   *   *

The following day as she knelt on the bank of the lake, placing the weeping willow into the hole Barry had dug, she thought of William. She smiled at the memory of him burning the cake, the sheepish expression on his face when he had seen her standing in the doorway, and their tea at Oliver’s. She looked forward to his visits. He had been a great source of comfort during the last six months, the only person who managed to make her feel light inside.

She loved the way he now turned up without calling first. Sometimes he brought another score of music for her to learn, other times they’d walk up to the folly and chat in front of the fire—they never ran out of things to say. He was a wise counsel and a sympathetic listener, but he was also witty, and the more she got to know him, the more she appreciated his humor. He had a very dry sense of humor, transmuting sorrow into laughter, and little by little Antoinette found that with him she could shake off her melancholy and feel joy again.

She patted the earth around the weeping willow and stood up to admire it. “This will be beautiful once it’s big,” she said to Barry.

“Willows grow quite quickly.”

“Good. What next?” She turned to the row of plants and shrubs neatly placed on the grass behind her and thought how beautiful it was going to look. Without Phaedra her plans of opening the garden to the public in the summer and starting the farm shop seemed like a pipe dream—she didn’t feel brave enough to do those things on her own. She wiped her brow and glanced up at the house, half expecting to see William striding down the lawn towards her, but instead Basil scurried into view to herald the arrival of Margaret.

The old lady marched down to the lake in her long green coat and Wellington boots. Once, that sight would have struck fear into Antoinette’s heart, but now her heart warmed in anticipation of her mother-in-law’s good company and irreverent humor. “Come and see what we’re doing down here,” she said as Margaret reached her.

“Gosh, haven’t you been busy at the garden center.” Margaret’s cheeks were rosy from her walk. She wore a green headscarf tied at the chin and a pair of designer sunglasses Tom had given her. They looked comical teamed with her Barbour coat and rubber boots.

“It’s keeping me very busy.”

“That’s the spirit. The gardens are so big, you start at one end, and by the time you reach the other, it’s time to go back to the beginning again.”

“Do you want to come in for a cup of tea? I could do with a break.”

“That would be lovely.” They set off up the lawn towards the house. “You know, I’ve just had Roberta on the telephone. She and Joshua have been asked to a very grand charity dinner-dance at Battersea Power Station. Do you think David would lend her the Frampton Sapphires? By rights they belong to him now, being the eldest son. It’s just the occasion, and it would be nice for them to get a little wear.”

“You know what he thinks of Roberta,” said Antoinette.

“It’s about time he buried the hatchet! Really, it’s no help at all having those two at each other’s throats.”

“Let me ask him. You never know . . .”

“It would be nice. We all have to make up and move on.”

Antoinette shook her head. “I’m not sure David can.”

“Really, is it that bad?”

“Yes, it’s bad, Margaret. His heart is well and truly broken.”

“Good gracious, I never realized. Well, something must be done.”

“He won’t go looking for her. He thinks she doesn’t want him. In any case, he wouldn’t know where to start looking.”

Margaret narrowed her eyes. “Are
you
ready to forgive her, Antoinette?”

“I think I am,” Antoinette replied, a little anxiously. She realized now that, in spite of the charade, the girl’s extraordinary gift of transforming lives had been very real. “At least, if I suddenly found myself face-to-face, I don’t think I’d be able to resist her.” She sighed and pulled off her boots. “I’m not sure she’d want to see us, though. I have a dreadful feeling she’s gone, never to be found.”

That evening, when Antoinette broached the subject of lending Roberta the Frampton Sapphires, David shrugged noncommittally and changed the subject. His face was so dark and serious these days, falling into a scowl as if it were his natural repose, that she
didn’t think it wise to persist. They dined together in the little sitting room, just the two of them, and Antoinette tried to draw him out of himself. She’d lost George and then Phaedra; with every day that passed misery took David a little further from her, too. Soon he’d be but the shell of a man. She was determined not to let that happen. But save finding Phaedra and bringing her back, there was nothing she could do. He didn’t want to go out and meet people; he had even withdrawn from his friends. His life was reduced to the farm and Rufus, and he seemed to have given up on joy. A long, bleak winter stretched out before them.

The second weekend in September, Rosamunde came to stay along with Joshua, Roberta, and Tom. Antoinette had asked Margaret for dinner, and the atmosphere, although more subdued than when Phaedra had been a part of the family, was lighter than before. Antoinette didn’t know why it was so. Perhaps it was simply time putting some distance between the horrendous events of spring and the beginning of autumn: a new season, a new chapter, a new beginning. She thought of the leaves on the trees turning brown and falling to the ground, and wondered whether they, as a family, could shed their pain and grow afresh again.

“How’s the Women’s Institute?” Margaret asked Rosamunde.

“Well, I didn’t really want to join, but you know Marjorie, my neighbor who looks after the dogs when I’m away, was very keen to take the cookery course. I couldn’t let her down and I owed her a great debt of thanks. So I’m keeping her company. She needs me, you see. I couldn’t say no.”

Antoinette noticed the excited light in her sister’s eyes. “Of course you couldn’t, Rosamunde. You’re very generous, considering how reluctant you were to join.”

“Well, it’s not really my sort of thing, but they need people like me on the charity side,” Rosamunde continued, fooling no one. “I’m tireless when it comes to raising money and I’m very good at organizing people.”

“Sounds just your thing,” said Tom, stuffing his mouth with a roast potato.

“I do like to be busy,” Rosamunde replied. “There’s nothing worse than being bored. The WI takes up all of my time, which is more than I intended, but they need me, and I’m not one to let people down.” Antoinette caught Margaret’s eye and noticed the old woman’s mouth twitching at the corners. She looked away in case Rosamunde saw them making fun of her.