Happily Ever After

Chapter 15

15

THE PRIORY – FOOTSTEPS IN THE DARK, GEORGETTE HEYER

Hugo had brought a few bottles of wine up to the Yellow Room and we were sitting on the floor getting slowly drunk.

‘It’s Oswald Day tomorrow.’ Hugo stretched his legs out and stared admiringly at his feet, clad now in a pair of Dior heels. The rest of him was wearing Chanel, and I told him that it was tacky to mix-and-match designers, but he didn’t care.

‘Yep. I even washed my dress.’ I poured myself another glass. I had never really had much chance to drink alcohol. My parents didn’t drink, but Jude had introduced me to WKD on one of her visits home from school, and I quite liked the buzzy relaxation it gave me.

Hugo nodded in appreciation. ‘You could always wear one of mine, you know. If you were careful.’ He waved an expansive, and slightly drunken, hand at the wardrobes, which all stood open to display their jewel-coloured contents, like three boxes of Quality Street.

‘Wasted on me.’ I rolled my glass between my fingers. ‘But why don’t you wear one?’

He tipped his head back in surprise. ‘But Mother would see!’

‘She has to find out sometime, Hugo. You can’t live like this forever. And don’t you think you’d stop resenting Jasper so much if you could come out and say, “This is me, I like couture dresses and I look pretty bloody good in them as well”?’

Hugo pulled his legs up under his chin, digging the heels into the carpet. ‘Andi. You know my mother. She’d disinherit me faster than you can say “Balenciaga”.’

‘But would that be so bad? You don’t want the estate anyway. You could travel, go out, wear what you want and not have to be restricted to this one little room.’ I held up my glass and mock-toasted him. ‘Be your own person.’

‘You don’t know what it was like.’ He wrapped silver-clad arms around his knees, sitting like a small, scolded child, only much better dressed. ‘When Jazz came out, when he told her that he wouldn’t take over the estate, she was distraught. Almost as bad as Mrs Compton described her when Oswald died. Mother has – expectations, you see. She likes life to go the way she has it planned out in her head and she doesn’t deal well with deviations. That’s why she reacted so badly to Oswald dying in Switzerland – not so much because he died, but because he was supposed to come back and marry her. She can be rather – rigid in her thinking. Her father was a duke, you know,’ he finished, as though this explained everything about his mother.

‘Yes, she said,’ I muttered vaguely.

‘Anyway, if she disinherits me, I will have to go out and get a job.’ Hugo sounded rather more prosaic now. ‘All I’ve ever done is help Mother manage the estate. Like I told you before, I’m not exactly overwhelmed with qualifications, and I think I’ve just spent too much time at Templewood.’

He sounded so hopeless that I put my head on his shoulder. ‘There’s a whole world out there, Hugo. Allegedly.’

‘I’ve got nothing else.’ He was staring out, past the colourful fashion collection, through the night-darkened window. ‘Mother sort of gathered me in, if that doesn’t sound too weird. When Jazz… once she knew that he didn’t intend to inherit, it became her project to turn me into the Lord of Templewood.’ Earnest eyes found mine. ‘It’s just not me , Andi.’

‘I don’t suppose it’s Jasper either. I’ve never met him.’

Hugo sighed so deeply that my head bounced. ‘He’s around, somewhere,’ he said vaguely. ‘He works from home, but he’s often down in London. I wish I could go to London.’

‘Then go. Tell your mother you’re away one weekend and go.’ I patted the general direction of his arm.

He shrugged now and patted me in return. ‘Not sure I’ve got the confidence for that, Andi. I’ve always been a bit – well, shy. I’m afraid prep school didn’t toughen me up as much as my parents hoped. I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to get about in London or where to go or stay.’

Unworldly, I thought, that was Hugo. Unworldly and his mother wasn’t doing him any favours trying to keep him close. She was just making him lonely and isolated and unfit for life beyond the estate. Poor Hugo, who wasn’t so dissimilar to me, apart from looking a whole lot better in designer wear. Unfit for life. I nudged him with my shoulder. ‘You and I are a right pair, aren’t we?’ I said.

‘You could take me to London,’ he said eagerly. ‘Show me the sights. I’m fine if I’ve got someone with me.’

I thought of being Hugo’s personal tour guide and minder. Steering him around the city like an eighteenth-century earl dropped into the twenty-first century. Fine for a time-slip rom-com but I had the feeling that in real life it would just be annoying. Hugo might be gorgeous, but he was foppish and ineffectual and I didn’t want to have to become a bossy organiser like Jude just to get from place to place.

The sudden thought that perhaps my sister hadn’t wanted to be bossy and controlling either, hit me. Perhaps Jude had had to become what she needed to be. If she hadn’t channelled her inner Miss Trunchbull she’d be in the same position as me, so she’d done what she had to do, despite the upset it had caused. Just like Jasper.

‘We really do have a lot in common,’ I blurted out.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’ve never been to London either,’ I improvised, not wanting to even try to explain my thought processes. ‘So I’d be no good as a guide. I went where my parents decided.’ All my life, dictated by my parents. No education, no job prospects, just bumbling through life with a vague hope that it would turn out all right in the end. Shit.

‘Yes. I have a lot of sympathy for your position. Which is why I’ve always talked Mother into keeping you on, when she’s been, well… having one of her moments.’

I froze. ‘She’s talked about firing me?’

‘Sometimes. Oh, not often! Just – sometimes. She mutters about you not doing your job and how you haven’t found what she wants you to find. I think she may be trying to get you to look for books that are valuable? That she can sell to raise money for the estate?’ He looked at me quizzically. ‘Mother is only really interested in Oswald’s books, anything else is disposable. Besides, a lot of it is Father’s collection and she and Father – well, it wasn’t the most affectionate of marriages, from what I remember.’

‘It’s… something like that.’ I hid my face in my wine glass now.

‘Thought so. Sometimes she has a bit of a go about you but I always leap to your defence, Andi. I know how much you need to stay.’ A pause. ‘Are you sure you won’t just marry me? It would solve such a lot of problems for both of us.’

I raised my head and looked properly at him. Bony, hairy legs, visible from the knee down under the layers of skirt and ending in a slightly-too-small pair of Dior narrow-toed pumps. His top half wore a bodice covered by a silver jacket, with a padded bra. (‘Just to give the dress shape, I’m not into women’s underwear.’) His wig had moved slightly, due to alcohol. He looked like a debauched society beauty who just hadn’t taken much care of her personal grooming lately.

And I knew, once again, that I couldn’t marry him. Poor, desolate Hugo, heir to an estate that he didn’t want, and a future he was going to hate.

‘Sorry, Hugo.’ I put my now-empty glass down. ‘It wouldn’t work. And even if we were married, you still couldn’t dress up when your mother was about.’

‘Suppose not.’ He hiccupped. ‘I’ll just have to wait for Mother to drop off her perch, take over Templewood, get it in a fit state to sell and then’ – he made a wild hand movement that nearly spilled his wine – ‘head for the hills. Find myself an assistant to steer me through. Maybe I could learn to make friends. An all-boys boarding school wasn’t my best preparation for life, but at least I’d have money behind me from the sale of the estate.’

‘You can’t buy friends, Hugo,’ I said sternly.

‘No.’ His momentary animation was gone. ‘I know that. If it was simple, like being rich got you companionship, then I’d be fine. I just don’t have the right personality to be a playboy, do I?’

I shook my head. Then a thought struck me. ‘Who would inherit, though? If Jasper doesn’t want Templewood, and your mother disinherited you, who would she leave it to?’

‘I don’t bloody know.’ Hugo poured himself more wine. ‘Probably leave it to the gardener or something, knowing Mother. Or Mrs Compton. Someone who would “properly take care of the place”.’ He mimicked Lady Tanith’s Dreadfully Upper Class accent.

Oh no, don’t give me that thought. I excused myself and headed off to bed, weaving my way down the landing and past the hanging balcony to my room. Don’t start another story, where Jay will inherit if I can persuade Hugo to tell his mother about the frock-wearing. Jay and I… I stopped, flopping down onto my mattress. Jay already only thinks that I talked to him because I thought there was something in it for me. When actually… actually I rather like him anyway. Even if – my eyes began to close – his clothing choices are nowhere near as lovely as Hugo’s.

Thankfully, I had set an alarm, because I would have slept through Lady Tanith’s treasured twenty-first of the month breakfast otherwise. Although that might have been rather better, because I felt decidedly fragile when I tiptoed my way down the stairs to the Breakfast Room and was confronted by the smell of kippers and kidneys, Mrs Compton having taken a leaf out of the Pride and Prejudice cookbook this morning.

‘Good morning, Andi.’ Hugo looked like I felt and we exchanged a glance of regret over the toast and kedgeree.

‘Church at eleven thirty sharp, both of you.’ Lady Tanith sipped a delicate cup of tea and nibbled a small piece of roll. ‘And, after that, a chat in the library, Andromeda, if you would, please.’

My stomach jumped. ‘Can we not have the chat in the library before church?’ I asked, sticking firmly to only a cup of coffee, despite the goodies on display.

‘No. I have work to do. After church.’ She got to her feet. ‘And appropriately dressed, please. Both of you.’

As she closed the door, Hugo gave me a wide-eyed stare of panic. ‘Oh God. You don’t think she knows, do you?’

‘I think it’s more of a dig at us both for wearing jeans on the morning of an Oswald Day. To be honest, I think she’d probably prefer you in a ball gown. Honouring his memory and all that.’

‘Don’t even joke about it.’ Hugo subsided. ‘Honestly, I never used to worry about… about Mother finding out. Now you know, I’m in a state of perpetual agony.’

‘So tell her .’

He dropped his gaze. ‘You know I can’t. For her, for me, for the estate. It’s all right, Andi, I’ve kept this up for the last twenty years, I can keep it up for a bit longer.’

Not for the century or so that your mother is going to live on , I thought, leaving the room to head upstairs. I needed a wash and to wake up properly before I lurched to the library for a morning’s dedicated slumping and headache-losing before church. Lady Tanith was so nearly a vampire that it had crossed my mind, when I was still thinking that Marie was real and that I had psychic powers, that this might turn out to be some kind of paranormal horror story. I’d be drained of my blood and life force, to give new energy to Lady Tanith, and I’d continue searching through the library for eternity. Especially given all the mysterious thumpings and footsteps that went on around this place, and the fact that it was so large it could have housed an entire pack of Igors, plus laboratories.

But it wasn’t. It was just life, ‘boredom and shit’, as Jay had described it.

I felt a bit of a pang when I remembered him and his accusations. He’d jumped to unfair conclusions about me, and that made him a judgemental idiot. Which was a shame, when I thought about how nice he’d been that night of the storm, then in the morning, giving me coffee and talking to me about my generally thwarted great expectations, and the tour of the gardens when he’d been wonderfully practical. Jay was genuinely straightforward and straightforwardness and practicality seemed to be in very short supply around the rest of Templewood.

Oh well. Onwards and… onwards. I went to my room to splash my face with cold water before I started in the library, to try to make myself feel awake and able to cope with a day of dusty tomes, a church service, and Lady Tanith. As I climbed the stairs, I wondered how my parents were doing out in Canada. Film crews, travelling and the general bustle of making a TV series didn’t leave them much time for postcards and they would probably have phoned Jude with updates. I hadn’t even given them the number for Templewood, although I had sent Jude an email to tell her where I was and what I was doing.

Somehow, life here seemed to exist in a bubble. Contact from my family would have been strange, like a message from another planet. They’d be busy, and they knew I could get in touch in an emergency. Jude was probably waiting for me to message and say I was at Truro railway station, could she come and pick me up and was it all right if I stayed in her annexe? Even though this whole venture had been her idea, I’d been able to tell at the time that she gave it about a week before I came running back, unable to cope with real life.

Ha! I sluiced my face. I was showing her! Then I remembered how I’d felt last night and my wondering whether Jude had had to adopt a personality to get away from our upbringing. Perhaps she was showing me . Being yourself wasn’t enough, sometimes you had to find your inner dragon to get through life.

I wondered if Hugo had an inner dragon and if he did, how I could tempt it out so he could have a life.

From overhead, in the attic, came the creaking again. I’d learned to ignore the strange noises that the house made, wind whistling through gaps in the woodwork, rattles and bangs and drips, but I had never got used to the footsteps. If that was what they were. I was still clinging on to the hope that mice or squirrels in the attic could account for the regular, board-to-board groan, as though the woodwork was being subjected to pressure.

I raised my head. It could be rats? But only if they were extremely large – which I didn’t want to think about. Birds? I knew they scuffled in and out somewhere above my window, I’d seen their shapes as newly fledged youngsters dropped into the air and launched out across the acres. Swifts had built nests like small, upturned pots under the guttering and frequently lined up along fences or overhead wires to prepare for leaving. Maybe they were responsible for the noises in the attic?

No ghosts, I told myself firmly. There were no ghosts. No madwomen in attics, no secret girlfriends. There was a perfectly reasonable excuse for that slow, soft tread. Hugo was downstairs in the Breakfast Room still, making a brave and spirited attempt to force down some scrambled egg – or at least, he had been when I left him. He had no reason for secrecy now, anyway.

So, was Lady Tanith in the attic? Why would she have any need, or desire, to go up there? She’d got the whole of the house to stalk around in, being haughty and officious, and unless she’d got ranks of minions in the attic to command, I couldn’t see her putting in the effort to fiddle about in dusty, deserted rooms.

It must be Mrs Compton, I thought with a sudden relief, as I tracked the noises across the ceiling, from the bathroom, along the landing, to come to a sudden halt above the wing that contained the library below and Lady Tanith’s rooms above. I wasn’t normally upstairs at this time of day. I’d usually go directly from breakfast to the library, so Mrs Compton may well spend her mornings dusting and polishing whatever lay at the top of the house. She must, after all, do something with her time, because she certainly wasn’t spending it on cleaning the rest of the house. Or maybe – I tilted my head to try to catch a sound, but there was nothing – it really was rats? Rats were, I hated to think it, more likely than Mrs Compton cleaning.

The library was cold. Despite the fact that there was an enormous fireplace in one wall, it was obvious that nobody had thought that heating the room was a priority, and I shivered my way through another shelf-worth of dusty tomes. Nothing of any note had come to light, apart from some rather nice early editions of Dickens with illustrations, which I’d whiled away a pleasant couple of hours with, catching up with favourite characters. Most of the rest were bound editions of court reports; histories of countries now absorbed into their neighbours and renamed and which, some cursory reading told me, were probably a lot better off no longer under the rule of whoever wrote the histories; or interminable numbers of the driest novels I’d ever opened.

I hadn’t yet found any of Oswald’s writings, let alone his diaries, although I could only too well imagine him in here, bent over the desk with his pen and sheaves of paper, composing away. I wondered if he had ever come dashing in from a day on the estate, in full shooting kit or riding gear, trailing mud and inspiration, to scribble down some lines of poetry that had come to him as he had… done whatever he did around the place.

Then I thought of the truly dreadful poetry that Lady Tanith had quoted at me, and hoped that, if he had, someone else had had the sense to burn it.

I looked up at the painted face which glared at me as though reading my thoughts, and wondered what had really gone on in this house. A man, in full middle-age with an ailing and frail wife, and a young and – although it pained me to admit it – beautiful woman. Perhaps it had been inevitable. Mid-life crisis meets doting admirer, well, there was only one outcome, wasn’t there? Maybe Caroline had colluded in their relationship? Perhaps she had known all along that her husband was seducing her companion? Maybe – the thought crept into the back of my head, almost unwanted – maybe that was why Lady Tanith wanted so badly to find those diaries? Perhaps they would prove that Caroline had tacitly approved of her relationship with Oswald, her lusty and in-the-prime husband, while she was ill and incapable. Could the diaries relieve Lady Tanith of a guilt she’d carried all these years, about her relationship with Oswald?

Then the thought of Lady Tanith feeling guilt about anything, ever, met my daydreaming, and I shook my head. I was doing it again, trying to impose a narrative onto someone’s random actions. Lady Tanith wanted the diaries because she wanted them, that was all. Nothing secret, just her desire to publish, probably with appropriate editing, his final works to complete the set.

No stories. No narrative. Just, as Jay had said, heartbreak and then the daily grind.

I changed into my dress at the appointed hour, and made my way to the church, with Hugo toddling alongside, full of excitement about an online auction for some dresses that had, apparently, once been owned by Princess Grace of Monaco.

‘I’m not sure of their wearability,’ he chuntered. ‘But I could keep them to look at, couldn’t I, Andi?’

I smiled at him, rather sadly. ‘Hugo, you can’t keep on living like this you know.’

He deflated instantly. ‘I do know, Andi. I really do.’ His lovely face retreated into lines of defeat and sadness. ‘But I don’t know how to stop.’

‘Do you really not have any friends at all ?’

Hugo held the gate for me and I brushed between the yew hedges ahead of him, feeling the prick and scratch of the needles like real life trying to intrude again. ‘Not really. There’s a few people I email sometimes, some dress suppliers, a few costume historians. But I’ve never met any of them, we’re more like pen pals. After all, I can’t leave Mother.’

We were early to the church and took our places in the pew at the front, where Lady Tanith was already seated, head bowed and veil in place. Behind us, I could hear the coughs and shuffles of the estate workers filing into their seats, but I didn’t turn around to see if Jay was there. A hot wash of shame came over me every time I remembered our last encounter. He’d jumped to conclusions, but then, hadn’t I been leaping to fairly large ones myself since I came here? I’d thought he was Jasper, on really flimsy evidence, when I could have asked Hugo whether his brother was a gardener instead of assuming he must be. So Jay’s presumption that I’d only talked to him because I thought he was Hugo’s brother could be seen as a fairly natural progression of ideas.

I got hot again with second-hand embarrassment, but it was just as well because the chill in the church rivalled that of the library. There weren’t enough people in here to warm the place up, and there was clearly no heating, or none that anyone chose to turn on. I wished I’d worn a thicker top over the dress. I wished I had a thicker top. Maybe I could get away with borrowing one of the ancient furs (‘rumoured to have been part of Marlene Dietrich’s collection’) that Hugo had tucked away in the third wardrobe. No. I’d never worn fur in my life, objected to it on principle, and my mother would have disowned me if I had.

I gave a tiny inner giggle, which Lady Tanith clearly picked up on because she side-eyed me during the sermon. My mother had nothing to disown me from . We’d always lived a fairly impecunious life, at least, until the YouTube channel had taken off and the TV companies had started sniffing around. My father’s money had bought the bus, paid expenses and Jude’s eye-watering school bills. I was hardly going to inherit a fortune, and given that my parents were in their late fifties and in excellent health, by the time I inherited anything, should there be anything to inherit, I’d probably be in my sixties and not know what to do with it. Plus, it would probably be a heap of rusted metal in a barn. I snorted again and Lady Tanith elbowed me.

‘A sense of propriety , Andromeda, please!’ she hissed.

I composed my features to look suitably attentive to the ongoing service and tried to keep them that way as the service finished. Lady Tanith led the way out of the church and I, not willing to risk another elbow, kept my distance, letting Hugo take his mother’s arm.

‘Andi.’

I turned around to see Jay, wearing the suit he always wore for church and an inexpertly knotted tie, behind me. He was sitting in one of the pews at the very back of the church as everyone filed out past him.

‘Jay.’ I had been going to acknowledge him and walk on, but he caught my arm as I reached the pew.

‘Can I talk to you?’ he asked. He looked tired and roughly shaven, his hair scooped away from his face.

‘What about?’ I stopped, and Mrs Compton pushed her way past me with a look of supreme malediction, as though I were consorting with Satan himself. But then, she looked at me like that when I was doing nothing more blameworthy than stroking the cat, so I took no notice.

‘Oh, not “about” anything. Just, you know, generally.’ Jay smiled. ‘I’m really sorry if I was rude to you the other day.’

I waited for him to come up with a ‘but’, but he didn’t. He let the apology lie, unexcused, so I slid into the pew next to him.

‘And I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I only talked to you because I thought you were part of the family,’ I said. ‘I should have known that you’re far too nice to be anything to do with Lady Tanith and her family.’

Jay snorted a laugh. ‘I don’t know. Jasper’s all right. And I’ve met Hugo quite a few times, he seems OK.’

‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ I said, conscious of Hugo and Lady Tanith just outside the church door, mingling with the tenants. ‘Lady Tanith wants a chat in the library.’

‘With the lead piping?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Nothing. It’s a game. Cluedo.’ Jay shook his head. ‘Please don’t tell me you never played Cluedo on the long, dark nights in your bus.’

I remembered the long, dark nights in the bus. Jude away at school, my parents fussing about doing something. Dad checking the engine, Mum sorting out stuff for the next laundrette we passed or making a list of provisions we’d need when we got to the next town. Me, reading. Always reading, in a corner somewhere, with a little battery-powered light.

‘Not really. But come up to the house after lunch. I’ll be in the library. We can talk in there.’

Jay hesitated, lowering his voice as Mrs Compton came back past us again and strafed us both with her disgust. ‘I’m not sure. Lady Tanith probably doesn’t allow ground staff in the house. I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble for fraternising, if she caught you.’

‘It’s fine. I’ll let you in through the window. Once she’s read me the riot act, I suspect she’ll have to go for a lie down anyway. Lady Tanith seems to spend an inordinate amount of time lying down or resting, and I suspect that a conversation with me will enrage her into a couple of hours’ shut-eye. Besides,’ I grinned, ‘the door locks.’

Jay gave a one-sided nod. ‘All right then. I’ll creep up to the house like a boot boy meeting the tweeny, shall I?’

‘I have no idea what you just said, but yes.’ I looked up to see Hugo making frantic beckoning motions to me, behind his mother’s back. ‘I’d better go.’

‘Right. I’ll come up later and peer through the window to make sure you’re alone. Don’t be alarmed if you see me squeezed up against the glass.’ Jay looked happier now, less tired.

‘As long as you haven’t got your willy in your hand again…’

Of course, at that point Mrs Compton, who had apparently returned for a lost umbrella, walked back up the aisle again, bearing the forgotten brolly and an obvious desire to try to overhear us. My final words sent her eyebrows into her hairline and the rest of her scuttling outside as though the mention of willies offended every sensibility she had.

‘Willy decently restrained. Trust me.’ Jay grinned again. ‘Go on. Hugo’s having a small fit out there.’ He nodded towards the doorway. Mrs Compton had reached Lady Tanith and was giving her a meaningful look, whilst Hugo was rotating with anxiety and making ‘come on’ motions that made it look as though he was groping the air.

Feeling a lot happier, suddenly, I squeezed my way out of the pew and went outside to join Lady Tanith, Hugo, and the combusting Mrs Compton.