Happily Ever After

Chapter 20

20

THE TALLIS HOUSE – ATONEMENT, IAN MCEWAN

Jay left me at the back door of the house. ‘I’ve got some beds to reshape,’ he said, although I had no idea what this involved, ‘so I’ll be around somewhere if you need me.’

‘I’ll be fine. As long as Lady Tanith doesn’t suspect our big secret, she’s not going to be any worse today than she is on any other day.’

‘Well, you know. Need me, just scream.’ Jay shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. ‘I’d like to kiss you goodbye, but Lady Tanith is probably glued to the front window, keeping an eye out for hanky-panky among the staff.’

‘Yes, better not.’ I felt the heat of the earlier kiss ripple through me again, an overcoat against the cold morning. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘You will.’ Jay melted off again into the bushes, as though he were part foliage himself, while I squared my shoulders and opened the kitchen door, preparing myself for a day of outright lying.

I spent most of the day cataloguing, although in an even more desultory fashion than normal now that I knew I probably wasn’t going to get to finish the whole library. I occasionally glanced up at Oswald, whose painted face had lost the slightly lascivious expression I’d imagined on it, and taken on a hunted look.

‘You soft old bugger,’ I said to it. ‘You should have just sent her packing.’

Oswald’s fixed glare told me that this would have left Caroline without anyone to assist her; that Lady Tanith probably would have taken being fired as Oswald’s admission that he could no longer contain his feelings for her, and that she probably would have camped out in the woods rather than go home, simply to be close to her love. After all, what had been her alternative? The cousin who’d brought her up had presumably handed over responsibility for the young woman with a measure of relief and made it impossible for her to return there. She had nowhere else to go.

Tanith and I had more in common than I would ever have wanted to admit.

Pity fought with incredulity somewhere behind my heart. How could Lady Tanith have been so blithely unaware? But then I remembered some of the less fortunate people that we’d met out on the road. Travellers who didn’t have my parents’ advantages, those who moved around not because they wanted the freedom, but because they had nowhere to go. Those whose mental health was so fractured that they entertained some strange beliefs and imaginings. Lady Tanith was broken, yes, but she had the financial backing, the education, the wherewithal to maintain a normal life. Other than her firm and abiding belief in a relationship that had never existed, and an unpleasantness to anyone she considered lesser, she functioned perfectly well in society. She was managing the estate, she’d brought up her sons, she kept everything ticking over, ready for Hugo to inherit. The fact that she was still having monthly memorials for a man who had actively hidden from her, that she kept his house exactly as it had been when he’d lived in it and had a shrine to him in the attic – well, did that make her mad? Or very, very single-minded? Or just brave?

Around mid-morning, clearly in search of someone to upset, Lady Tanith wandered into the library. I felt the immediate leap of guilt fire into my cheeks, and kept my eyes fixed firmly on the computer screen as she walked around, looking at the piles of books that teetered against the walls.

‘You still haven’t found those diaries?’ she asked, giving me a horrible moment of uncertainty when I wondered whether she could have overheard Jay and me yesterday, moving the furniture.

‘Nope.’ I kept my burning face down, pretending to drop a book so that I could hide as much of myself as possible under the table.

‘I know they are here.’ She picked up a book, looked at its spine, and flung it down again, where it let out of a puff of dust. ‘Oswald wanted me to have them, so he put them away in here to keep them safe from prying eyes.’

I so, so wanted to say, ‘Did he, did he really ?’ but knew it would be cruel. I wanted to ask why, if Oswald had wanted her to have the diaries, he hadn’t just given them to her in the first place. I knew, though, that confronting delusional people with reality never worked. I’d tried often enough on my parents, asking why we couldn’t just buy a house and live somewhere, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about the bus breaking down or bad receptions from locals or not being able to find anywhere to empty the toilet and have a shower. They would just stare at me, as though it were I who was obsessed with travelling, never settling, showing off a new, viable way of life.

Presumably Oswald had known what reading those diaries might do to Tanith. He’d kept them for himself, memorabilia perhaps, or maybe he meant to publish them himself one day, with anything personal removed. But he’d hidden them away, somewhere she wouldn’t find them, to save her from the knowledge they contained.

‘I’m still looking,’ I said, when I came back up off the floor, hoping my face had gone back to normal. ‘In between cataloguing.’ I fought my eyes, which wanted to stare beadily at Oswald’s portrait in a treacherous betrayal.

‘Hmm,’ Tanith snorted. ‘Clearly, you aren’t looking hard enough. I think, a week more, and if you haven’t found them by then, I will let you go and recruit someone else. Someone with a touch more impetus . More drive. That will be good for Hugo, too.’ Then, to my horror, she stepped back and looked up at Oswald, but without her usual doting expression which always made her look as though her face was melting. She tipped her head to one side. ‘Does Oswald look a little askew?’ she asked.

‘What! No!’ I took a deep breath. ‘No, he looks all right to me.’

From beneath the desk, The Master’s head protruded and he let out a soft, multi-vowelled vocalisation. Lady Tanith’s attention immediately switched.

‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, as though she’d come in purely to look for the cat. ‘The Master seems very attached to you, Andromeda.’

‘He’s good company,’ I said, and didn’t mention the ever-attendant smell that came with him.

Lady Tanith ‘hmmed’ again and withdrew. I stroked the cat’s head. ‘Thanks,’ I said, fondling the dark ears. ‘I owe you. Again.’

The cat blinked at me, hopefully telling me that it was all right, he was being well paid back for all these favours by being allowed to snuggle up with me in the increasing chill of the nights. Our gas canister had sputtered its last gasp earlier, and I was trying to screw up enough courage to ask Hugo to ask Lady Tanith for a refill. I suspected The Master was sitting under the desk because it was the warmest place, cuddled up to my legs.

What was I going to do?

I couldn’t let Lady Tanith see those diaries. Unless… just maybe she would read them and decide that they must never see the light of day. But she’d always suspect that I had read them. Would that make me Enemy Number One? And what would she do? What might they do to her , with her insubstantial memories of what she thought love was?

No. I’d have to destroy them. I could probably get Jay to put them through the leaf shredder, remove any trace of their existence. Could I convince her that I hadn’t found the diaries or their hiding place and that Oswald must have destroyed them himself? I shook my head. Lady Tanith was so entrenched in her fantasy, and I was dreadful at lying, that I’d give myself away and she would know. I imagined that landscape gardening meant having a fairly high profile and being easily found – maybe I could persuade Jay to change his name? And move to Tierra del Fuego? After all, how long could Lady Tanith hate me for? Ignoring the fact that she’d managed to love and grieve for fifty years, how long would it be before she sighed and decided I wasn’t worth the effort and investment in lawyers to hunt down?

What if she passed the hatred on to Hugo? Sweet, kind, Hugo, whom I’d have to leave to his solo fashion shows. Would he resent me too?

Oh God. There really wasn’t an easy way out of this.

The cat meowed at me softly as I banged my forehead against the desk in desperation. Why had I ever found those bloody diaries? Why couldn’t I have remained in blissful ignorance?

I looked up at Oswald. His stern rigidity in the portrait, painted before he ever let Lady Tanith into the house, must have been severely eroded by the presence of a woman besottedly in love. I knew from his diaries that he had kept the extent of her fixation from Caroline so as not to worry her, and that must have meant a good deal of tiptoeing around the staff who must surely have seen. He’d been the victim in all this. Lady Tanith had, in effect, been his stalker; living under his roof didn’t make her behaviour any more acceptable than anyone else’s. The realisation that, from fifty years’ distance, I was seeing it as a slightly amusing tale of an appalling writer being followed about by an infatuated young girl, when in reality it must have been dreadful for him, hit me hard.

Lady Tanith had made Oswald’s life hell. I owed her nothing. I should make the diaries public and blow her lies open.

But then I remembered those little posies of hand-picked flowers that she left on his memorial stone every twenty-first. Diaries could be very subjective, Oswald making himself the tragic hero of his own story. Maybe he had encouraged Lady Tanith’s devotion, at least at first. Perhaps he’d liked someone’s close interest in his work and by the time he realised that she was taking it all too seriously, it was too late. After all, even by his own admission he hadn’t really done much to stop it – he’d just tried to avoid her. He could have sent her elsewhere, but he hadn’t.

Did that painted face show a hint or two of malice? Of enjoying control?

Oh, this was ridiculous! I banged my forehead again. I had to stop feeling sorry for absolutely everyone here and come up with a plan before Lady Tanith forced me out of the house. It was far too soon for me to consider moving in with Jay, even as a housemate, and I needed a job anyway. I couldn’t see Lady Tanith taking me on as an under-gardener – the phrase gave me a tiny tingle of anticipation – and she might even fire Jay too if she discovered we were in cahoots.

‘Arggh!’ I vocalised my utter frustration into the musty air of the library, making the cat leap from beneath the desk and flee to hide behind the sofa. Then I took a deep breath, feeling slightly better for having shaken paint flakes from the ceiling and made the one loose panel bounce on the wall. ‘All right. I’ve got a week. Think rationally and think properly.’

A few seconds later, the library door was cautiously opened. ‘Andi? Are you all right? I thought I heard – I mean, the library is a long way from our wing, but there was a noise?’

Hugo came in looking worried, presumably in case I’d fallen from the top of the library steps and was currently crumpled in a bloody heap on the floor.

‘Sorry, Hugo. I…’ I thought fast. ‘I caught my finger. It hurt and I may have sworn a bit loudly.’

‘Oh.’ His face cleared with relief. ‘You haven’t forgotten tonight? We’ve got a date with the Yellow Room and a bottle of wine?’

‘Mmmm,’ I said, in vague agreement. I hadn’t forgotten but I’d been hoping he had. Every time I looked at Hugo I found myself thinking should I tell him? I should tell him, shouldn’t I? Give him the diaries. Then I’d worry about not only Lady Tanith’s reaction, but Hugo’s reaction to Lady Tanith’s reaction, Hugo’s thoughts about being lied to all these years, his worries about how to deal with his mother – I suppressed the urge to bang my head again. If he knew about her upbringing and her background he’d never, ever leave. I knew Hugo now and his sense of duty and affection would mean he would be stapled to her side until she died, all thoughts of an independent life of any kind gone.

‘Only I haven’t opened the new one yet. I thought I’d wait until you were there and we could look at it together?’ There was such suppressed excitement in his voice, an anticipation of a treat, that I knew I couldn’t say anything.

‘Is that the Doris Day one?’

My remembering encouraged him. ‘Yes! I wasn’t sure you remembered. Yes, I won that one at auction, much cheaper than I thought so I’m not sure it’s genuine now. But I want to look it over, I mean, if it’s beautiful anyway does the history matter so much?’

‘Not if you love it.’ I smiled at him. His sheer joy was infectious. I hoped his mother’s madness wasn’t similarly catching. ‘I’ll be there. What time?’

‘About nine? I’ve got some work to do before then. And once it’s dark it will be more spectacular. If we put that little lamp in the middle of the floor, all the sequins show up so much better!’

‘That sounds great.’

There was a pause. Hugo was walking around, pretending to look at the titles on the books at the top of the stacks piled around the walls. I felt my stomach leap. Did he know? Had he seen or heard something?

‘You and Jay…’ he started, carefully not looking at me. ‘I saw you come back with him this morning?’

‘Yes.’ It was all I could say.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I was up at the balcony window. I’d been to the bathroom and I happened to glance out and you…’

‘Yes,’ I said again.

Hugo’s face turned to me, wearing a resigned kind of frown. ‘Ah. I had hoped, you and I… I know it’s not perfect and you struggle with the dresses and everything, but I thought maybe I could… only at weekends, or something?’

Poor Hugo. Oswald and Lady Tanith shuffled over in my heart to make room for a moment’s pity for Hugo too.

‘I’m going to learn landscape gardening. When Jay leaves here I’ll go with him,’ I said.

‘Ah.’

‘He and I are…’ I tailed off. It was far too soon to put words to what Jay and I were to one another.

‘I see. I had hoped…’

‘No, Hugo. We’ve had this conversation. I’m sorry. I can’t marry you, lovely as you are.’ I smiled. Hopefully my tone conveyed everything I thought and felt more gently than words could ever do. ‘There will be someone out there for you.’

‘I never meet anyone though.’ He came and perched on the edge of my desk, half an eye on the screen. ‘I’m stuck here. Nobody comes, and there’s not much time to travel. Plus, you know, Mother. No sign of me being able to get away until I can sell up.’

I shook my head and patted his hand. ‘I know. I can’t really help you there. Maybe, when I leave, the person who comes to do the rest of this job might be more suitable?’

Hugo brightened unflatteringly fast and I realised that he didn’t want me , he just wanted someone . ‘True, true,’ he said. ‘By the way, what on earth did you have shoved down your front when you and Jay came back? You looked as though you were carrying half the contents of the library!’

Shock made my throat feel as though it bounced down into my stomach for a second and my brain froze in utter horror. Then I remembered Jay’s kitchen. ‘Just some gardening books that Jay has lent me,’ I said, proud of the smoothness of my voice. ‘I didn’t want them to get wet, so I tucked them inside my top. Some of them are quite valuable, you know.’

‘Oh, right.’ Hugo stood up again. ‘Right. So, tonight, nine o’clock? I don’t want to mention it over dinner, if Mother is there, just in case. She already knows we’re meeting, from last night, and I don’t want her to get her hopes up any further.’

‘See you later.’ I turned back to the computer screen and pretended to type diligently, until I heard him leave, closing the door quietly behind him. Then I stopped, swivelled around in my chair, and saw The Master, eyeballing me silently from the depths of the gloom under the velvet couch. ‘Don’t you bloody start.’

The Master blinked, eyes sapphire in the darkness. He looked reproachful and for a second I wondered if he was reproving me for not being upfront with Hugo so I turned my back on him. If this were a book, I thought, what would I do? I typed in another entry, but I was working on automatic pilot. If this had been one of my novels, greedily consumed by lamplight whilst sitting on the floor in a corner of the bus, what would the heroine do?

Narratively speaking, she’d face up to Lady Tanith, wouldn’t she? Sit her down, have a conversation. Lay out the diaries and tell her that she knew about the stalking of Oswald, and let Lady Tanith have her character arc, whereby she came to realise she had been at fault. Lady Tanith would come to her senses, agree to therapy for her childhood trauma, apologise to Hugo for keeping him a prisoner here, all in the name of Oswald’s memory, they’d embrace and… fade to The End.

I ran the scene through in my head but couldn’t find a part that didn’t end in someone screaming. No. Life wasn’t like the books. Books assumed that people would be rational, that they would behave in accordance with the narrative. Books didn’t allow for the messiness of human nature and life had an inbuilt hatred for narrative causality.

I was buggered.