Happily Ever After

Chapter 21

21

THORNFIELD HALL – JANE EYRE, CHARLOTTE brONT?

Mrs Compton limped into the dining room, scraped up our empty plates with an immense amount of noise, and eyeballed Hugo and me.

‘Her Ladyship has gone up,’ she said. ‘And I’m going home. My legs is awful.’

‘Of course, Mrs Compton,’ Hugo said evenly. ‘Good night.’

‘She said to tell you, “no hanky-panky”.’ Mrs Compton’s focus switched to me and her stare could have drilled through granite. I smiled, as blandly as I could, although half of me wanted to swing at her with the soup ladle.

‘I promise you there will be no hanky of the panky kind, or otherwise.’ Hugo smiled too, more warmly than I thought the statement deserved, but then he’d grown up with Mrs Compton and probably didn’t notice her rudeness any more.

‘Well, then.’

A bit more ostentatious limping and then she and the crockery rattled their way out of the dining room and Hugo burst out laughing. ‘I think she and Mother assume we’re locking ourselves away in the Yellow Room to, err…’

I remembered some of Mrs Compton’s more prejudicial side-remarks to me. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s what they think we’re up to. Is that better, or worse than what we’re really doing?’

‘Infinitely preferable.’ Hugo pushed his chair back. ‘So, I’ll meet you in there in, what, twenty minutes?’

I finished my coffee. ‘Yep. I just need to shower. All the dust from the library gets in my hair.’

Hugo grinned and left the room. He was probably going up for a solo prowl around his collection before I arrived, but I really did need a shower. The Master, ever attendant at my side, blew into his fur, one leg cocked into the air.

‘And you can’t come,’ I told him sternly.

One eye solemnly regarded me over his own hip.

‘You’re not allowed in the Yellow Room. Fur on velvet is a dreadful thing, look at the sofa in the library.’

The athletic stare continued.

‘I’m going to shut you in here, so you don’t sit outside the door and shout to come in.’ I put down my cup. ‘I’ll let you out to come up with me when I go to bed, all right?’

The Master straightened, looked at me down his aristocratic dark nose, and twitched an ear.

‘I’m taking that as acquiescence then.’ I stood up. ‘You really can be a dreadful nuisance sometimes. But it’s warm in here and you can sit on the window seat. I’ll see you later.’

Before the cat could jump up and try to squeeze out of the door with me, I fled through the gap and closed it firmly. Mrs Compton wouldn’t be back in, she’d be taking her leg home, firm in her belief that we didn’t know that tonight was Bingo night down in the town, so she’d clear the cups tomorrow morning. Somehow, I didn’t think that even a full house would sweeten her general demeanour.

I showered, checked that the diaries were safe, tucked inside their Sainsbury’s bag amid my clothing, and went to the Yellow Room to meet Hugo.

It was dark outside and the gentle light from the lamp he had set up on the floor glowed appealingly. I felt another momentary pang that this couldn’t be my life. Would it really have been so dreadful? Then the moon, full and netted among the branches of the trees, shone over the grounds and I remembered Jay kissing me and knew that I would rather have him, the mud, learning to prune and plant and a gardener’s cottage than this whole estate and a lifetime’s worth of costume design.

‘Right.’ Hugo was oscillating with anticipation, the newly arrived package in his hand. ‘Shall we open this?’

‘You open it,’ I said. ‘I’m going to pour some wine.’

I leaned back on the floor pillows that stood in for furniture in here and waited for Hugo to appear from behind the screen in the corner.

‘I’m teaming it with the diamanté Jimmy Choos,’ he said. ‘For the length.’

‘Mmm,’ I said, not really listening. Hugo didn’t need my input, he just liked to drop designer names. Not his fault, of course, he couldn’t talk about his interests anywhere else, so he had a lot of pent-up chat to get through when we found ourselves alone and outside his mother’s influence.

There was a strange smell in the Yellow Room this evening. It came and went, faintly, as though blown in on a breeze. ‘Ta da!’ Hugo swirled out from behind the changing screen. ‘What do you think?’

‘Does it smell weird to you? Is it the dress?’ I sniffed once or twice.

‘Can’t smell anything,’ Hugo said briskly. ‘Anyway. What about this?’

He did a twirl. I didn’t know anything about fashion history, although Hugo was doing his best to enlighten me, but I wasn’t completely sure about the provenance of this particular gown. ‘It’s very pretty, but I’m not sure about the Doris Day-ness of it.’

‘They did only say that it was rumoured to have been worn by her.’ Hugo stopped rotating and stroked the skirt. His joy and enthusiasm were infectious.

‘It’s lovely, whoever wore it, and does it really matter after all?’

‘I do like the gowns to have history. It’s part of the fun, imagining who wore them and to which event. If I can find pictures it’s even better. Hollywood glam, and all that.’

Another billow of vague, mysterious smell. It was faint, and had that edge-of-recognition nudge, as though I ought to know what it was.

I looked at Hugo, nearly seven feet tall in his enormous heels. The look of love and pleasure on his face made him extremely handsome, particularly as he hadn’t got his wig on, his fair hair standing up at angles and his cheeks partially shaded by stubble. I made a sudden decision.

He should know. Maybe he could use the knowledge as leverage with Lady Tanith? ‘Let me live my own life and I won’t mention what I know?’ Could I do it? Could I destroy his innocent happiness and belief in his mother and her stories of her past?

But was it fair to keep it from him? If he understood, if he could see what had made her so desperate to keep first Jasper and then himself close – her lack of experience of how parental love should look or how any form of real love should look – it might make it easier for him to finally break away and have an independent life. ‘I just need to pop to my room to fetch something,’ I said. ‘Be back in a minute.’

Hugo was stroking the fabric down over his hips, admiring the fall of the skirt. ‘All right,’ he said cheerily. ‘I’ll let you out. Usual knock to come back in though.’

‘Of course.’

We’d had to develop a ‘secret knock’, to ensure he didn’t throw the door blithely open to Lady Tanith or Mrs Compton, whilst fully encased in a Vera Wang sheath dress or similar. It gave everything a Secret Seven vibe, a childish fun pastime air which I hadn’t objected to, because it matched Hugo’s childlike glee.

Cautiously, and with much giggly staring up and down the landing, because we were pretty certain that Lady Tanith had gone to bed, and I was pretty certain that she’d been up in the loft at her home-made altar for most of the afternoon so would have taken to her room, Hugo unbolted the door and let me out.

‘I’m going to put something else on while you’re gone,’ he said, as though promising me a treat. ‘This one is a wee bit tight and I don’t want the seams to give.’

I nodded, my mind far away in a time where he already knew. Was showing him the diaries the right thing to do?

I went next door to my room and fished the plastic bag out from where it sat in my bag under my neatly stored clothes. The smell was out here too, still faint and almost imperceptible, a chemical, swirling smell. Maybe Mrs Compton hadn’t gone home as promised, but was cleaning with some industrial bug spray. Fumigation was probably what Templewood Hall needed.

Back to the Yellow Room, secret knock given, Hugo let me back in with a half-curious glance at the bag swinging from my hand, the weight of years of lies making it hang heavily. He was wearing his favourite dress, the full-length blue velvet with the spaghetti straps, still teamed with the Choos, and he’d put his blonde wig on. It gave him a certain Cate Blanchett look.

‘Can you smell something weird?’ I asked.

‘Not really. What have you got there?’ Hugo pointed at the plastic bag looped over my wrist. He looked so innocently happy; did I really have the right to blow his life out of the water? My heart felt swollen and just under my throat with the potential of what I was about to do.

‘It…’ I started, but that was as far as I got.

A tremendous clanging started, distant at first but closing in on us, a dreadful, mechanical wailing sound, seemingly issuing from the far wing of the house but advancing, and, at the same time, something heavy hit the window of the Yellow Room.

Hugo and I looked at one another.

‘That’s the smoke alarm,’ he said.

‘Then what the hell is that ?’ Another soft weight against the glass.

I went to the window and threw it open. Jay stood outside on the lawn below, with a couple of other people from the estate. ‘Thank God you’re in there!’ he shouted up. ‘I’ve been trying all the lit windows. The house is on fire, you need to get out, now!’

The words were in English, they were logical and spoken in a tone loud enough for me to hear, but somehow they made no sense.

‘No it isn’t,’ I said.

Hugo clutched my arm. ‘The house is on fire?’ He was keeping himself hidden behind the curtains, from the group outside.

‘I’ve called the fire brigade, but I don’t know how long it will take them!’ Jay called up again. ‘Someone’s gone for a ladder, I’m not sure you can get out any other way now! The fire’s moving through the roof space by the look of it, but we don’t know how far it’s got, just get down here!’

In the background the wailing clamour had reached the landing. The smoke had clearly got far enough through the house to set off the alarms in this wing.

‘Mother!’ Hugo shouted, ran to the door, ran back, looked at me and then looked at his discarded clothing, jeans and shirt on the floor.

‘Let’s just get out,’ I said. ‘Lady Tanith will have heard the alarms, she’ll get out from her side.’

‘But if she’s taken her tablets she might not wake up!’ Hugo was staring at me again, his wig disarranged, holding his skirt bunched in both hands.

I chanced another glance out of the door. ‘The fire is above us, at the front of the house.’

‘Come on !’ Jay yelled from outside. From somewhere deep in the house I heard a cracking sound, like a beam giving way.

‘You can’t go, Hugo.’ I grabbed his arm. ‘We have to get ourselves out.’

‘But Mother ,’ he wailed.

I’d thought that whether or not to show the diaries to Hugo or Lady Tanith had been the epitome of my moral dilemmas, but now it seemed that was subsumed under ‘do I let this man run back into a possible inferno to rescue a woman who has stunted and stifled his entire life?’ Rescue human life, yes. Save Hugo from a future of furtive dressing-up and marriage to please his mother? Also, yes.

‘See how far you can get.’ I gave him a tiny push. ‘If her wing is already on fire, leave it, she may already be out.’

Hugo opened the door and fled down the landing in the direction of the back of the house. I went to the top of the stairs, but it was obvious that the fire was above the library wing. From that side of the house the smoke was billowing into the hallway, filling it with grey clouds that smelled not smoky but of a far more solid kind of smell. There was a creaking sound from the disused bedrooms in that wing and ghostly shapes wound their way along the landing as smoke issued from under the doors. I couldn’t feel any heat, but I knew enough to know that the smoke would reach and kill us faster than any flames.

‘Hugo!’ I shouted.

He came back, tottering in his shoes. ‘What?’

‘We can’t go out this way. The fire must be in the library wing and spreading from there. We can’t use the main stairs.’

From behind, I could hear Jay yelling at me from outside the window above the racket of the alarms, but then a voice cut through all the noise.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Lady Tanith, wearing a beautiful chiffon negligee, wafted like her own spirit, along the landing from the back of the house. ‘Who is making that dreadful noise?’

She gave me a grim, hard stare, as though I may be solely responsible for the siren-like shrieking that was now reverberating through the entire house. Smoke puffed, coming up the staircase towards where we were standing, then cleared, revealing Hugo, full-length velvet and all.

‘We need to get out,’ he said calmly. ‘The house is on fire.’

There was a tremendous bang from somewhere behind us. It sounded as though the library ceiling had fallen in, or was about to, and I could see a red glow now, just a sinister red line beneath the doors across the landing.

‘We need to go now,’ I said, my voice commendably level.

Lady Tanith stared at us both. ‘You will have left the gas on in the library,’ she said, haughty and gathering her swathes of chiffon around her, then she turned to her son. ‘And what on earth are you wearing?’

‘Ah. Um. Mother…’ Hugo began. I was beginning to feel two genres clashing – my mild rom-com coming up hard against thriller, as the two of them stood at the top of the stairs amid the drifting smoke.

‘We need to get out !’ I shouted. From beyond the Yellow Room window Jay was still yelling. I could hear his voice cracking with his increasing volume and desperation. ‘We may have to go out of the window.’

Lady Tanith took Hugo’s arm. ‘We can use the back stairs,’ she said, ignoring the fact that her son was wobbling on his enormous heels.

‘I’m not sure we can.’ I pulled at Hugo’s other arm, tugging the pair of them with me back into the Yellow Room, and closed the door so that we could block out the smoke and hear ourselves think. ‘It sounds like ceilings are coming down. If we go down the back stairs we might find ourselves trapped in the kitchen.’

‘We’ve got the ladder!’ Jay was practically screaming now. ‘Come on ! Get out !’

Lady Tanith, showing remarkably little fear considering that Hugo and I were almost dragging her towards the window, stopped again. The smell of smoke was increasing and there were random banging and crashing sounds that were getting closer. There was also an ominous, and growing, background heat.

‘What have you been doing? Is this yours?’ She waved a hand at Hugo’s dress, then glanced around the Yellow Room, where the wardrobe doors stood open and one or two garments were hanging outside the cupboards. ‘And this ?’

Hugo swallowed. I became aware that I still had the diaries swinging from my hand in their bag. I wondered if I could use them as a cudgel. ‘We need to go,’ I said urgently, trying to distract her.

Over at the window, the twin metal arms of a ladder made a clonk as they came to rest against the frame.

‘Er,’ Hugo said. ‘Um. Yes. But we do need to get out, Mother.’

Lady Tanith raked him with another stare. ‘Velvet.’ She shook her head. ‘What possessed you, Hugo? You clearly don’t have the hips for velvet. And blue is not your colour at all. You could get away with a mulberry silk, satin at the very worst.’

Hugo’s mouth dropped open. I tried to drive them both towards the window, where the ladder was tapping with impatience.

‘And these are yours too?’

Hugo clearly couldn’t speak, so I intervened. ‘Yes, yes, these are all Hugo’s. Now can we get down that ladder before the fire comes along the landing?’

From far away came the sound of something dropping, big, heavy and ominous, right through the house. The room was filling with smoke, and we’d all started to cough.

Without another word, Lady Tanith moved to the nearest wardrobe, reached in an arm and scooped the contents out onto the floor. Then she began throwing the dresses out of the window, to the evident and loud consternation of those waiting on the ground below, and the possible disruption of someone halfway up the ladder.

‘Mother! What are you doing?’ Hugo made a motion to stop her.

‘These are couture !’ She had to speak up over the general sounds of fire, smoke, coughing, and random yells from outside.

I made a face at him, and the three of us emptied the wardrobes out of the window in record time. By now, there were audible crackling noises, the heat had risen and there were sounds coming from the ceiling as though the rafters above us were giving up. Thumps and bangs, and a small hole had appeared in the plaster rose in the centre.

‘Look, just go!’

At last Lady Tanith, with extreme dignity, slung a leg over the windowsill and climbed barefoot down the ladder in her negligee. I followed her and Hugo, wrenching off his diamanté shoes, which twinkled in the firelight, came after me. Being followed down a twenty-foot ladder by a man in velvet carrying six-inch heels was almost more of an experience than being in a burning building.

Jay wrapped his arms around me as we arrived on the grass. It was only from down here that I could see the full extent of the fire – the opposite wing was blazing from roof to floor level and the roof was almost fully alight. We all ran into the gardens, away from the inferno, to join the small crowd of watching villagers, several of whom were filming the conflagration with every sign of enjoyment. Jay kept an arm wrapped around me.

‘My house!’ Lady Tanith gave a little cry. ‘My house! All my wonderful things!’

I had the uncharitable thought that most of her things could only be improved by an enormous blaze, and then I remembered the cat, shut away to prevent him from following Hugo and me. ‘Oh my God! The Master! He’s in the dining room!’ I pointed at the windows, flaming with reflected light beneath my bedroom. The glass was as yet unbroken, but there was smoke filling the space and pressing itself against the window.

Lady Tanith screamed. Jay let me go and gave me a resigned look. ‘It might be too late,’ he said.

‘We have to get him out.’

‘But we can’t. Look, the whole place is going up.’

‘The fire is worst in the roof above the library. The dining room is ground floor in the other wing, it will be the last place the fire gets to.’

We all stared again at the windows of the dining room. Apart from the smoke which puffed and billowed against the glass, there was no sign of life.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jay said, and Lady Tanith screamed again. She turned and began to run back towards the flaming house. Hugo, showing a surprising turn of speed for a bloke in a frock, belted after her and tackled her to the ground, where she lay, sobbing.

‘We have to get him out,’ I whispered. ‘I owe that cat. Plus, it might be the only thing that Tanith has a healthy relationship with.’

Jay gave me a resigned look. ‘You’re as batshit as the rest of them, aren’t you?’ he said, but there was a fondness to his tone which took the sting from his words.

I clutched Jay’s arm. ‘We can’t leave him. We just can’t .’

‘All right,’ he said tiredly. ‘I’ll do the heroics.’

Cautiously, with an arm up in front of his face to protect him from the heat and smoke, Jay approached the building. Massive rafters were coming down now, as though the roof was tired of the weight and slumping down through the house. Our wing was still intact but the tiles were cracking in the roof as the fire made its way through the space.

Jay drew his other arm back. He was wearing his gardening clothes, jumper and mud-encrusted trousers, and he flickered like an elemental in the ominous light from the fire. A siren wailed now, just audible above the sound of the alarms, and a blue light strobed its way along the drive. Its noise was almost drowned out by the sound of Jay swearing as his elbow rebounded off the glass of the dining room window without making so much as a crack.

From inside, a blue eye blinked amid the smoke.

‘He’s in there, he’s alive!’ Lady Tanith shrieked from her position on the ground.

Jay swore a bit more and clutched his elbow.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Hugo said. He climbed off Lady Tanith and ran to join Jay, recoiling once at the sheer heat, but pressing on until both the men were wreathed in the smoke which now encompassed the whole building. Hugo went back, collected one of the dropped Jimmy Choos and scampered towards the window. ‘Stand back,’ he shouted.

Jay stood back. The shoe hit the window, heel first. Hugo battered the steel tipped point against the glass, once, twice, and finally the window shattered, the flying glass being accompanied by a flying Siamese, who hurtled through the broken frame as soon as the gap was wide enough, and flew out onto the lawn as though rocket launched.

‘Master!’ Lady Tanith cried, getting elegantly to her feet and ignoring the fact that her silk nightwear was mud stained and tattered. Her voice was creaky with emotion and smoke.

The cat ran a few steps, stopped, stared at us, sneezed once and then sat down to begin licking its paws. Hugo and Jay followed, until we were all hunched together against the wall of the pond. At least, the men and I were hunched, Lady Tanith was bolt upright and quivering like an arrow that had just been fired into an oak door. The villagers, I noted, had backed even further off, although they were still filming with notable glee.

‘We’ll need to get further back,’ Jay said, his voice a little tight, although I wasn’t sure whether it was from emotion, confusion or pain. ‘The fire brigade are here and they’ll use the fountain connection for water.’

We stood up again and retreated further. I looked at our little smoke-stained group, Hugo in his now slightly ragged dress and carrying one shoe, his arm around his mother as they limped out into the broad reach of the gardens where the air was fresh and clean and not glowing. Lady Tanith, her back ramrod straight despite the gravel under her bare feet, wasn’t leaning on him in the slightest. The estate workers who’d helped Jay with the ladder were, without a word, gathering up the collection of dresses that we’d flung from the windows and moving them away from the slowly collapsing walls.

I looked at Jay. ‘What the hell is happening?’ I asked.

He was also watching Hugo and Lady Tanith’s limping and smoke-stained progress into the darkness. ‘Right now, I haven’t got the vaguest idea.’ He put an arm around my shoulders. ‘But you’re out. You’re safe. That’ll do.’

The part of the house where the library was currently blazing, slumped further inwards. Ash flew out, little sprinkles of pale grey floating up on the breeze and encircling the building, blurring into the smoke and the flame and the additional spray from the water hoses, where the fire brigade were beginning to try to extinguish some of the fire.

‘I need to go over there,’ I said.

‘But the place is falling down!’ Jay clearly felt me tugging against his embrace. ‘You can’t! Anyway, the firefighters won’t let you.’

‘They won’t see.’ I ducked out from under his arm and ran around to the front of the house. There, the fire engine, still flashing intermittent blue lights, stood while people in uniform dashed around unspooling more hoses to attach to the pond supply. Firelight flickered out into the dark, echoing the blue strobe. Two people in helmets and masks moved me gently aside and then passed on. I waited until they were out of the way and then I got as close as I could to the flaming library.

The windows were all broken; flame was belching out through the gaps. The house was almost down to rubble here, the roof and the upper floors had collapsed to lie among the burning books, stone and wood and paper all glowing orange and red and giving off an immense heat. I had to shield my eyes and hold my elbow up to my face. It was like walking up to the biggest bonfire in the world.

‘What are you doing ?’ Jay made a grab for me but missed, probably because his eyes were screwed up against the heat.

‘Just… this.’

I loosened my burden so that it was held by the two handles, then, with a degree of effort, I swung it until momentum took over and then let go.

The bag, with its incriminating contents, flew higher and wider than I thought it would, through the long-gone window and deep into the conflagration beyond. I almost thought I could see it ignite as it went, but that was probably my imagination. I also thought I saw, as the final wall collapsed, the face of Sir Oswald, eyes aflame, dropping onto my hurled bundle but that was almost certainly imagination inspired by years of narrative structure and carefully rounded endings.

‘You are crazy.’ Jay pulled my arm again, now with more success, and I backed away with my eyebrows beginning to singe, until we were behind the fire engine and the bulk of the local fire brigade, who were running hoses everywhere amid lots of organised shouting. ‘And you’ve got a lot of competition.’

Away, over past the bushes, I could see Hugo, his arm still around his mother. She was standing absolutely straight and immobile, watching her house go up in flames. She didn’t even seem to be crying now. The only movement from them both was the passing breeze tugging at his velvet and her chiffon.

Two of the estate workers approached them, gentle hands held out and, in shock, the pair were helped away towards the village. Everyone was carrying dresses draped over arms and shoulders, looking like a costume department on the move.

‘Let’s go back to mine,’ Jay said. ‘We need to wait until the fire is out, and it might be morning before the place is secure.’

‘But…’ I gestured hopelessly towards Templewood, flaming and flaring out of every window space, walls gradually tumbling, like a hotel in hell. ‘All the things…’

‘The fire brigade will rescue what can be rescued.’ Jay gave me a look. ‘But the diaries will have gone up with the rest of the books.’

‘That’s all I could think of to do,’ I said, taking his hand as he held it out to me. ‘Destroy them with everything else. I came this close to telling Hugo, you know.’

Jay looked back at the house where plumes of water were being sprayed onto the burning remains. ‘For the best, I think,’ he said carefully. ‘It all being gone, I mean.’

I stared back too. Most of the roof was gone now, fallen into the attic space. That table covered in photos, gone. The portrait, gone. And, I whispered to myself, the diaries, gone, along with any evidence that they ever existed… ‘Definitely for the best,’ I said, and then sagged against his supporting arm. ‘I think I might be in shock.’

‘My house then, for strong sweet tea and a shower. You smell charred.’

So I let him lead me away over the soft grass, following Hugo and Lady Tanith and the dress-carrying locals.