Happily Ever After

Chapter 7

7

SATIS HOUSE – GREAT EXPECTATIONS, CHARLES DICKENS

It was another day of dust and data. I’d cleared one complete shelving unit now and several floor piles and felt quietly proud of myself for the empty space, the organised stacking and the text-filled computer screen.

‘No sign of your diaries yet though, Ozzie, my man,’ I said to the portrait. I had to talk to him as there was nobody else present, apart from Old Fishbreath, who had taken up residence under the desk and enlivened moments by occasionally seeping forth to stare at me. ‘Where on earth did you put them? And why hide them?’

Oswald continued with his fixed grimness. I did have to admit that there were traces of handsomeness there, in his cheekbones and the firm set of his chin. I bet he’d turned a few heads when he was younger, alive and not made of paint and canvas. Like his grandson, his eyes were dark brown under stern eyebrows, and there was a sensuousness to the twist of his mouth that made me wonder just what he and Lady Tanith had got up to. I just hoped they hadn’t got up to it on this table.

I was bored with inputting books, so I got up for a stroll around the walls again. These were panelled in a dark wood which increased the air of foreboding, as though any panel may conceal a passage leading to a dead body. Where they weren’t wainscot they were either tattered silk paper, cupboard or shelf. I’d opened every cupboard and moved all the random piles of books, just in case a stack of diaries was behind something else but hadn’t found so much as an old calendar. The room smelled like a second-hand bookshop which had had a flood in the last ten years and looked as though a mobile library had crashed into Thornfield Hall and nobody had bothered to pull the survivors from the wreckage.

Why did I keep thinking about death and corpses? I had another momentary vision of that figure on the landing this morning amid the memory of the sounds from the attic and some of the other stories Hugo had told me about the house. Death and corpses. Maybe even Oswald was still hanging around, drawn in by longing and loss to tap at windows in the middle of the night?

‘Maybe they aren’t even in here,’ I carried on monologuing to Oswald’s portrait to distract myself from my imaginings. After all, if he were to be still here in some form, being friendly towards him could only help. ‘Maybe you gave them to a friend to keep. Or you destroyed them. Were they full of lots of Forbidden Love stuff, I wonder? Or were you more of a “today it was hot and we had sponge pudding for dinner” man? No, you were a professional, I bet your diaries were full of long, luscious descriptions of the way your beloved’s hair moved in the breeze from the window and the way she looked lying naked on your…’

I stopped. The cat had poked its head out from under the table and was watching me again. It had a disconcerting way of behaving as though it understood everything I said.

‘What?’ I asked it irritably.

The cat gave me two solemn blinks of those blue eyes and withdrew back beneath the table again.

I wondered where Hugo was and why he hadn’t accompanied his mother on her visit to his brother. There definitely seemed to be some animosity there, I thought, opening another spreadsheet page on the computer. Hugo clearly felt forced to take on the estate because Jasper had renounced his right to inherit – I wondered what Jasper was like and how he had managed to get his own way with Lady Tanith, who looked as though she’d rather bulldoze the place to the ground than let it go out of the Dawe family. Then I thought about what Hugo had said about selling it when she died, and travelling around the world, and whether Lady Tanith had the faintest idea of what he had planned. If she had, I wouldn’t put it past her to just not die, but keep going, getting more and more withered, until Hugo gave up and died first. She already had the lean and dehydrated look of a kiln dried log, a very ‘preserved’ look, not enough body fat and a touch too much make-up. She could probably keep that up for another fifty years if she had to. Plus I was still taking private bets that she drank human blood, and that somewhere in a back room there were the desiccated corpses of lesser estate workers.

Hugo and I at least had something in common, something we could bond over – our generalised resentment of our siblings. I stopped, my hands resting on the computer keys, seeing my face reflected in the screen. I looked a lot like Jude, I knew, despite being two and a half years older. A round face, which gave us a touch of the ‘naughty choirboy’ look, fair hair, although mine was wavy whilst hers was straight. We both tended to a little too much bust and not quite enough hip to balance it out, so we were less hourglass and more balloon that’s been squeezed at one end. She was four inches taller, so on her, it looked good. On me… on me, it made me not heroine material. Not thin enough, not enough of the ingenue and the waif. I didn’t look like someone who needed taking care of, I looked like someone who is at home with the business end of a screwdriver and who knows her way around the internal combustion engine without having to watch a YouTube tutorial. Which, I supposed, was true enough, as Dad had often had me help when the bus wouldn’t start, or when it started making graunching noises halfway up a hill in Dorset.

Jude, of course, hadn’t been there to help. She’d been away at school, learning maths and geography and how to behave around other people; being taught things without having to find them out for herself in whichever library we were currently parked near.

I was tapping at the keyboard, restlessly. Tap tap, random letters expressing my jealousy, my unhappiness that my sister had been assertive enough to get our parents to send her to school. That I had been left behind, teaching myself life from Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and the Bront?s. A string of meaningless consonants showing how unfair I thought it that here I was, inputting data for an obsessive woman, with a ghost on the landing and the son of the house resolutely refusing to become besotted with me, whilst Jude lived a life filled with the normality and domestication that I craved.

Maybe Hugo felt that way about Jasper? That he got to live a normal life, while Hugo festered away here, trying to keep their mother happy? The thought was cheering. So far, Hugo had been pleasant but distant. He was an attractive slender shadow around the house, chatty in an impersonal way and always managing to look busy without actually being seen to do anything in a terribly well-bred way. I wondered what he thought, what he felt, about his life and if he wanted to talk about the resentment he felt towards his sibling.

Maybe I could ask him. After all, I was here to become attached to the heir to an estate. My life so far had been sufficiently unusual for me to know that this wouldn’t be a smooth transition, and sufficiently blighted by having a very attractive sister to know that men didn’t instantly desire me. I sighed and looked at all the little cells that I’d filled in with my restless tapping. Half a page of ‘zzzzzz’ and ‘bdbdbdbdb’. At least it made it look as though I’d done something though.

The library door opened and made me jump. Beneath the table the cat made a little ‘brrp’ noise of startled alarm too and shuffled around my ankles in a disconcerting sweep of blubbery fur.

‘Andi! It’s time to leave for the service!’ Hugo came in, looking around in the dimness for me, which was encouraging. He was wearing a very smart suit, immaculately tailored, and very shiny shoes, which was also encouraging. Maybe he’d dressed up to show himself off to me? It was working. His sharp bone structure looked wonderful above the clean lines of shirt and tie, and his blond hair was neatly brushed. ‘Oh.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Oh, nothing. You look as lovely as ever.’ He smiled at me. ‘It’s just that Mother pulls out all the bells and whistles for the service and you may feel a little bit – out of place? Have you got a nice dress you could pop on?’

Half of me gritted my teeth in annoyance. Lady Tanith was not the boss of me! Except she was, although not really the kind of boss who had any say in what her employees ought to wear. And it might be nice to have a chance to wear a dress and show Hugo that I actually had rather good legs (although I said so myself because I had to, nobody else noticed), and maybe get to talk to him properly.

The other half of me was clenched with worry. Did I have a dress? There wasn’t a lot of call for dressing up when you lived in a bus. All I’d got was the linen one that I’d bought specially for the interview that had brought me here, but that was all in the way of ‘smart clothes’. If I wore that then Lady Tanith would know that was all I had and no doubt look at me scornfully, because, didn’t I know that all employees would be required to dress like Vogue cover models once every month? I sighed. Lady Tanith looked at me scornfully all the time, anyway.

‘I’ll go and change,’ I said, and then, ‘I’ll be quick,’ to his worried frown.

‘Two minutes then.’ Hugo settled himself on the big velvet seat behind the table, where his mother usually sat. ‘Spit spot!’

I dashed out of the room, up the stairs two at a time – which nearly killed me; the staircase had the broad oak treads which made going up at speed feel like a workout – and into my room, where I found the linen dress discarded on the floor with a telltale ring of cat hair on it.

A quick look around told me there was nothing more suitable. Jeans, leggings and T-shirts made up almost the entirety of my wardrobe. Practicality had always been more important than being well turned out and you couldn’t clear a blocked fuel pipe in chiffon so I had never had the need for ‘nice dresses’. The floral printed linen was all I had so I pulled the dress on, buckled on the sandals which had looked so cutely winsome in the shop but which had rubbed my ankles even though I’d hardly had to walk in them, and flew back down again, clip-clopping on the tiles in the hall like a small pony.

At least my hair was clean and brushed, I thought, silently thanking the fountain incident of the morning as I tried to stretch the wrinkles and pleats out of the dress and knock off the cat fur. ‘Ready, Hugo!’ I trilled, as though we were already married and off for a night out. Although where anyone would go for a night out from Templewood was anyone’s guess – the village was a good eight miles away and didn’t seem over endowed with five-star restaurants and nightclubs. Perhaps the Hellfire Club had a mobile branch?

‘So you are.’ Hugo came out to meet me, accompanied by The Master, who sneered. ‘You look…’ He trailed off. The words had had a ‘prepared’ feel; perhaps he’d been working on what to say when he saw me while he sat in the darkness of the library? The fact he felt he needed to say anything at all made me feel slightly warm. ‘Er. It’s linen, yes? I’m sure the wrinkles will come out on the walk. Did you buy it online? There really is some wonderful stuff about that hardly looks chain-store at all,’ he finished.

I looked down at myself. The dress being left on the floor had not done the fabric any favours. The pink roses of the pattern were pleated and creased into patches and swirls of colour as though a sudden frost had passed, and the pale stretches bore distinct paw prints. It looked like a dress that had been worn to commit a bloody murder and then inadequately cleaned.

‘It’s all I’ve got,’ I said. ‘And we’ll be sitting down, won’t we?’

Hugo looked cheerful again. ‘Perfectly true,’ he said jauntily. ‘Now, let’s get a trot on.’

He led me out of the front door of the house, and around to a narrow path that wound through the grounds. If we hadn’t been hurrying, I hadn’t been desperately trying to iron my dress smooth by pulling bits of it taut, and my sandals hadn’t instantly started to rub, it would have been pleasant. Hugo had taken my arm in a gentlemanly fashion and was pointing out sites of interest as we went.

‘That’s the old icehouse there, under that mound. Over there is the biggest specimen of Douglas Fir outside the Highlands; that’s a ceanothus, we’re quite proud of that one, very regular flowerer. That looks like a flowerbed there, but in the middle of the planting is where the controls for the fountain are. My maternal great grandfather liked to keep the workings out of sight – being able to see switches and so forth was a little too plebeian for him.’

I wondered if it was too soon to stumble and pretend to sprain my ankle. Suspecting that Hugo would not have carried me back to the house and tended to me, but would have sat me carefully on the side of the path for collection on his way back from the memorial service, I made sure I looked carefully at where I was putting my feet.

‘And through this gate is the chapel, and the estate village.’ Hugo opened a small metal gate in a huge yew hedge, which, he had informed me, dated back over three hundred years. The bushes had half-collapsed onto one another, so the entire hedge line sagged and dipped like elderly buttocks. We passed through the gate and on the other side lay a graveyard, a tiny church and, beyond, a tumble of old thatched cottages. The village was incredibly pretty, if slightly overshadowed by the encircling hedge, and made me think of Hobbits. ‘We came the private way, from the house. Oh good, we’re not late.’ Hugo stood back to allow me through first.

Lady Tanith, wearing a black hat and veil so large that she looked like a helicopter landing pad in mourning, was leading the way into the church. Behind her followed a straggle of people; Mrs Compton was among them so I supposed they were estate workers. Hugo and I tagged along at the back, but, once inside the church, he led us down the aisle to sit next to Lady Tanith in the front pew.

The chapel smelled like the library, I thought, as the service, conducted by a man so wizened that he looked as though he was being eaten by his vestments, got underway. A bit damp, a bit bookish. Furniture polish. Flowers, from the huge floral arrangements that stood either side of the chancel. Insufficient light filtered through the hedge which loomed in at the window, watching proceedings from its encirclement of the churchyard. My parents had no notable interest in religion, so churches hadn’t been a regular feature of my childhood, although I’d taken to visiting historic-looking ones when I was old enough, envisaging Jane Eyre, and then myself, standing small and plain at the altar. I wondered whether Lady Tanith had married Richard in this church, and tried to imagine a Dawe family wedding, but could only come up with Count Dracula marrying the mistletoe bride amid a corpse-filled congregation. Probably a little unfair, but it was impossible to imagine Lady Tanith as a blushing young bride.

Lady Tanith kept her eyes focused on the vicar during the entire service. She didn’t acknowledge Hugo or me, or any of the twenty or so people who sat scattered through the pews behind us, all obviously wearing their best clothes in the dark dampness, like beads from a dropped necklace. She dabbed at her eyes occasionally through the veil, particularly when the vicar mentioned Oswald’s name, and sang her way in a faint fashion, through a hymn I didn’t know the words to. There were no hymnbooks or orders of service to help me, I just had to make a sort of throaty burbling attempt to follow the tune.

Side glances at anyone else I could catch sight of made me think that this was such a regular occurrence for them that they were making their way through the service by rote. Mrs Compton sat, stood and prayed in a determined and rigid way in the pew opposite, and just behind her I could see the figure of the gardener, going through the motions. I wondered who all the others were. I’d seen occasional distant figures about the place; the mystery joiner and bullock-shouting-man. I knew there was a man who sorted the plumbing too because I’d seen him unblocking a drain once, and Hugo had spoken about carpenters and farmers who worked on the estate, but I’d never met any of them. Here they, and their wives and husbands, evidently felt it necessary to put in an appearance. Perhaps it was a condition of working at Templewood. The gardener was certainly giving every sign of being here under duress, barely kneeling during prayers and apparently not even attempting to sing.

I gritted my teeth and ironed the dress between my fingers again. It had been his fault that I’d got sprayed with filthy green water this morning. He could have told me he was turning on the fountain, rather than just shouting.

I half turned my head to give him a haughty look and caught him looking at me with a smile that I didn’t really like. When our eyes met, he winked, which only served to remind me again that he’d seen me soaked to the skin in my pyjamas, with pondweed hanging from my head. I hadn’t been at all sure that he hadn’t been laughing as I’d fled my way back into the house, trying to cover up the transparent nature of my cotton night things with my hands.

I did not smile back. Instead I huddled a little closer to Hugo and knelt ostentatiously for the final prayer, on a kneeler that gave off an ‘oof’ when I made contact with it. After that we clattered our way back down the aisle behind Lady Tanith, into the welcome fresh air and green, filtered sunlight, which called to mind the pond water again.

The little crowd of estate workers dispersed instantly, leaving the three of us in the graveyard. Even the vicar dissipated – the touch of daylight probably turned him to dust – and Hugo pointed to an enormous granite obelisk which protruded from the centre of the churchyard in such a way that the two surrounding tombs with their semi-circular headstones gave it the look of a giant penis, accompanied by a pair of sandstone bollocks.

‘That’s Oswald’s memorial,’ Hugo half whispered.

A posy of flowers lay at its base, in a pubic frill. Laid, I supposed, by Lady Tanith before we’d arrived. There was something touching about the smallness of the bunch, almost as though Lady Tanith hadn’t wanted the flowers to be noticed by anyone other than Oswald, a little nod to the ages that had passed since his death.

‘I thought he died in Switzerland or somewhere?’ I whispered back.

‘He did. He’s not buried here. Mother had the stone put up to… ah. Lovely service as ever, Mother!’ Hugo’s tone changed as Lady Tanith stalked up to us.

‘Hm. The vicar’s cutting it. We were two verses short, and that sermon sounded rushed to me. Did it sound rushed to you?’ Lady Tanith adjusted her hat. Behind the veil her features were smudged into beady inquisition.

‘It sounded perfectly fine. Oswald will have loved it,’ Hugo said placatingly. He took his mother’s arm now, and I was left standing in the churchyard on my own, with my abrasive sandals and crumpled dress, as they made their way together through the iron gate and back towards the house.

I felt the old, familiar sensation of being unwanted descend over me. It was so familiar as to be almost welcome, a known quantity among the strangeness of my surroundings. My parents had always been busy, doing, planning, filming. When I was a baby, before the YouTube years, they’d written articles for resolutely left-wing magazines on the ‘freedom of the road’, carefully not mentioning that said freedom had been sponsored by a previous capitalist career and inherited wealth. My sister had been away or had a trail of admirers or friends from school who’d come to stay and exclaimed excitedly about the novelty of living in a bus and travelling. And there I had been, in the corner with Madame Bovary , Great Expectations or, during one particularly bleak period, Anna Karenina .

Here I was again, on my own, overlooked in favour of someone who shouted their wants more loudly. I nodded to myself in acceptance. Yep. Of course. And naturally Hugo should help his mother, she was upset…

‘Upset over a death that had happened fifty years ago.’ My gritted teeth juddered over the words as I heard the gate clang shut. Hugo hadn’t checked to see if I was following.

‘You dried out, then.’ A voice beside me made me jump and I twisted around, sustaining a minor ankle injury from a sandal strap, to see the gardener leaning nonchalantly on a nearby headstone. In common with the other men attending the service, he was wearing a suit, although his jacket was unbuttoned, his tie was under one ear and he was wearing wellington boots on his feet, with the trouser legs pulled down over them so that only rubber-coated toes gave him away.

‘Obviously.’ I pulled at my skirt again.

‘I did try to warn you.’ His hair was messy too, long and untidy, and looked like it needed a good brush.

‘Well, just a word of advice, shouting “hey” is not really a sufficient warning. Next time, try “I’m going to turn the fountain on.” It might be of more use to your victims.’ I snapped the words, turned so sharply that the straps of my sandals did my ankles another injury, and stalked off towards the gate in the hedge. ‘And saying “good morning” when someone greets you might be a nice touch too!’ I called back over my shoulder but didn’t give him the satisfaction of actually checking on his reaction. I was trying to concentrate on stalking, which was harder than I’d thought over the loose gravel of the path and in sandals that were slowly cutting off the circulation to both feet.

The gardener did not reply. When I had my first chance to look back – stopping to open the gate and peering back under my arm – he’d gone.

I sat down on the grass edging to the path and took the sandals off. Restraining myself from the urge to hurl them one at a time towards the place where his head had been, I set off back towards the house.