Kind Hearts and Coronets
There is one thing Anna still needs to do. She messages her parents and arranges to go home to Larkford Park, her family’s estate, as soon as she has two days off.
It is a dull, grey day when Anna steps onto the familiar station platform at Bridgetown, the closest rail link to Larkford. She still hasn’t replaced her umbrella, so is grateful that the rain is holding off, although the clouds are low and threatening. She spots the big black SUV, typical of the family’s cars, and heads towards it.
Lily, one of her twin youngest sisters, jumps down out of the driver’s seat. It always gives Anna pause to see her driving. Anna still thinks of Lily as she was when Anna left home. Also, despite being twenty-four, Lily still gets identity-checked in pubs and clubs. Her slight form and petite features enhance her air of youth and innocence. Lily always reminds Anna of the film star Audrey Hepburn, not only in looks, but in style and essence. There is not a single person in the world who has a bad word to say about her Lily. Anna knows the same is not true about herself or Eleanor or Jasmine, and most definitely not about Phoebe. Lily opens the tailgate at the rear of the vehicle which dwarfs her, and Anna slings her bag in the back before giving her sister a hug. Lily bounces on her toes excitedly as Anna releases her.
“Oh! It’s so wonderful to see you home. It’s been so long!” Lily says.
Anna knows Lily intends no criticism, but she cannot help feeling a little shamed. It has been a long time. She has fostered the story of her onerous life as a medic, so no one is ever surprised if she cancels or avoids family gatherings. Still, it is a shock to her when she reckons back and finds she has not visited all year. Lily’s happiness at her presence is a gentle chastisement and she promises herself she will do better.
She opens the passenger door while Lily climbs back behind the steering wheel. Anna wonders if she should have offered her sister a boost up. But Lily checks the rear-view mirror and backs the big car out with ease. She keeps up a stream of chatter as they pull onto the road leading out of town towards the countryside. She is telling the story of how her family went en masse to help Jasmine win her election.
“You should have seen her face, Anna. I swear she looked like she was about to swallow her tongue when she saw us. She was speechless. And when has Jasmine ever not had a ton to talk about? I texted you they’d won, didn’t I?”
Lily had. When Anna had a free moment, she video called Jasmine to congratulate her. In the background, Anna had heard a male voice calling her sister’s name.
“Who’s that?” Anna had asked.
“Ben.”
“Your candidate? You don’t still need to work for him now, do you?”
Jasmine’s face flushed. “Shush. He’ll hear you. And it’s not like that anymore.”
“What is not like what anymore? You hate him, don’t you?” In fairness to Anna, she had been awake all night and was not as fast on the uptake as usual.
Jasmine’s colour deepened further. “We’ve reached an understanding. Things have changed.”
The penny had finally dropped in Anna’s head. “An understanding? Is that what the youth are calling it these days? And has this understanding been understood?”
Jasmine bit her lip and Anna had laughed.
As Lily stops to let a pedestrian cross the road, Anna recalls Jasmine’s happiness. The whole world is happy except for her. And James.
Lily resumes her story. “Mummy thinks Ben, the candidate, has the hots for Jasmine. I’m not so sure myself. I mean, Jasmine’s quite scary. She’s not the type men sigh over. But wouldn’t that be a lovely ending? And he was quite a hottie.”
“I think it’s more of a beginning. But I’m pretty sure Mummy’s right.” Not words Anna says often. “Maybe Jasmine scared him into bed, but I definitely interrupted something going on the last time I called.”
“Do you think so?” Lily briefly takes her eyes off the road, turning to Anna with the soppiest look on her face.
Anna points ahead. “The road,” she reminds her sister.
Lily turns her head back quickly, but Anna can see the biggest grin stretching. She half expects Lily to bop in her seat. “That would be perfect. And maybe she would come home more.” Lily’s voice is wistful. “We were so mean to her after she broke up with Petey. I would have stopped Phoebs if I’d known it was going to drive Jasmine away. It’s so quiet at home with all of you gone.”
Anna supposes it is. She and Jasmine have been in London for years. Phoebe is everywhere and nowhere. It is hard to keep track. And even though she is close by, Eleanor has been building her love-nest with Jacob. But Anna says none of that. “Rubbish! It was Phoebe who drove her away and Ma and Pa who should have stepped in. There was nothing you could have done.”
She falls quiet as she watches the stone walls of the estate appear, followed by the flint-faced houses of the village opposite. Lily slows, like a dutiful driver, as they enter the village and indicates before she turns into the park. Each wall, each tree, each building is so familiar from childhood. Anna could find her way home blindfolded. But as much as she recognises her attachment to the place, unlike Lily, she has no wish to live here. She needs the vibrancy of a big city.
When Lily pulls the big car to a halt outside the grand Italianate facade of the north wing of Larkford Hall, tyres crunching on the gravel, Anna feels the tug of home. She gazes up at the handsome facade, the big multi-paned windows stacked three storeys high and dominated in the centre by the verdigris copper-topped roof of the cupola.
Anna gets her bag from the rear and follows Lily up the steps to the heavy oak door. They push inside. It is such a dull day that the lights are on. Anna crosses the grand hall to the staircase that leads to the west wing, where all the girls each had a room. When the twins were small, they’d shared a room and a nanny had slept in the wing with them. But the last live-in nanny had departed two decades ago, and Lily has now taken over the room. Strictly speaking, Lily is the youngest, Phoebe having preceded her by half an hour – a fact which Phoebe used to her advantage almost every day of their lives growing up.
Anna dumps her bag and freshens up before going to rejoin Lily, who has promised to rustle up a cup of tea and maybe some biscuits, although it is almost time for lunch. Anna finds Lily in the drawing room, where a lit fire takes the chill off the day and gives a cheery focus for tired eyes. Within a minute, a housemaid arrives with a tray of tea and some homemade shortbread. “Welcome back, Miss Anna,” she says.
Anna plumbs her memory banks. “Thank you, Annabelle. But it’s just Anna. Anyway, if you wanted to stand on ceremony, you would have to call me Doctor.” A designation has not been required since Anna’s grandmother moved out and was old-fashioned even then. Anna blames Downton Abbey for its use by the younger staff. This is one of her problems with Larkford. When she is here, she is relegated to being the Baron’s daughter. All her own achievements are secondary to that.
“Very well, Miss Anna,” the housemaid politely ignores her words and retreats, leaving Lily and Anna together. Lily has only just begun to quiz Anna about her trip when the door opens and their parents arrive, quickly followed by Eleanor and Jacob. It seems it will be a family lunch.
Anna keeps her replies about her trip to Los Angeles circumspect. She is not going to raise the subject of Tolly Hyde in front of her mother or Eleanor’s husband. She delivers her favourable report on the state of her cousin Serena, confirms her own status as still single, and bores them with a description of one of the talks she attended. It is quite enough to ensure no more questions on the subject of Los Angeles.
Instead, her mother takes over as they head into lunch with a summary of the local news since Anna’s last visit. It seems to consist mostly of entries from the parish births, deaths, and marriages register, with the occasional report of petty crime or a motorcycle accident thrown in. Anna’s father spends his time interrogating Jacob, who sits beside Eleanor, in a side conversation. From what Anna can gather, the scintillating subject under discussion is wheat yields. Eleanor seems quiet, almost disassociated from the rest of the party. One hand rests in her husband’s and her eyes stay on her food as she stirs her soup. It is so obvious to Anna, she cannot understand why none of her family seems to notice. Even her father appears oblivious, although Anna knows one of his key character traits is his perceptiveness, rapidly followed by his tendency to meddle.
The meal ends with Jacob announcing his intention of walking over to his father’s in order to help him with some do-it-yourself project. Anna knows her own father will retire to the library to “think” with his eyes closed. She hopes this is her opportunity to talk to her elder sister alone and is relieved when her mother requests Lily drive her on a set of errands. Lily looks unhappy, but obedience is strong in her and she does not demur.
“I’ll walk you home, Eleanor,” Anna offers and Eleanor looks up, as if startled to hear her name mentioned.
The family disperses. Anna and Eleanor head out of the solid oak front door for the short walk to Glebe Cottage.
Anna waits until they are clear of the forecourt before she begins. “Jasmine called me.”
“Oh.”
“I’m here if you want to talk to me.” Silence. Obviously, Eleanor is not feeling chatty.
Anna tries again. “If you need anything. Any help.”
Eleanor gives a vague smile. “I know,” she says.
“She was worried.” Anna offers it softly, as an excuse rather than an accusation, and Eleanor nods.
“I understand,” she says.
Anna tries a different tack. Perhaps, if Eleanor needs distracting, Anna may benefit from the distraction. “I saw Tolly Hyde in Los Angeles,” she ventures.
Eleanor’s face brightens immediately. “Did you?” she exclaims, happier than anything Anna has yet seen today. “How is he? I haven’t seen him since he left for Hollywood.”
In Anna’s mind, her sister’s eagerness for news does not bode well. “He seems to be doing well.” She is cautious in her reply. Eleanor could easily have gleaned as much from the news.
“It doesn’t seem that long ago that he was here and Mummy was planning our wedding.”
Anna blanches. “It got that far?” she queries, panicked.
“No!” Eleanor scoffs. “Of course not. But you know what Mummy is like. Besides, I’d already met Jacob.”
Anna takes a few breaths to calm her wildly beating heart. “What do you mean, you’d already met Jacob?”
But they have arrived at Eleanor’s home. She hovers to one side, her back pressed into an over-large Mexican Orange Blossom bush, as Eleanor unlocks the door.
When her sister asks, “Are you coming in?”, she breathes a sigh of relief. She feels like she is on the precipice, about to discover the fabled city of El Dorado.
She can hardly contain herself as Eleanor bumbles around her kitchen, putting on the kettle and laying out cups. It is an oddly domestic scene, one very un-Eleanor like. She is not used to seeing her sister like this, but she supposes Eleanor and Jacob must use their kitchen. They cannot eat up at the Hall every night and Larkford is too far from Bridgetown for takeaway delivery drivers. She remembers Eleanor telling her about Jacob re-fitting the kitchen. One of the estate workers could have done it, but Jacob had wanted to do it himself. It looks good. Classic. Oak shaker cabinet fronts and a white quartz worktop. Now she thinks about it, a sleek, glossy look would not have fitted the character of the cottage. She blinks at herself. It must be age. There is no other excuse for her pondering interior design choices. She has never noticed people’s kitchen cabinets before.
She calms her impatience and waits as Eleanor makes two mugs of tea and carries them through to the sitting room. Her sister places them on coasters on a coffee table, and that too is strange. Anna’s home is furnished in wipe-clean, flat-packs – the only things she could get up the stairs. It is like Eleanor has moved into another world, one where you own coasters because your furniture will stay with you for life.
When they are finally settled on the sofa, Anna tries again: “You said you’d already met Jacob. What did you mean?”
“Just that,” Eleanor is annoyingly vague. “From the moment I met him, it’s like we were locked in this dance together, slowly moving closer.”
Anna is frustrated. It’s very poetic but doesn’t really tell her anything. But then her sister says, “It wasn’t really fair to Tolly.”
“Why not?”
Eleanor draws a deep breath and exhales. “Because I knew he liked me. And I knew I wanted Jacob. But I thought I couldn’t have Jacob, so I took Tolly instead.”
“But Tolly broke your heart!” Anna is struggling to make sense of Eleanor’s words.
“Tolly never broke my heart because he never had it. Jacob already had it. I was hoping eventually Tolly would replace Jacob, but there wasn’t enough time. I’m not sure there ever would have been enough time.”
“Because he left?”
Eleanor nods. “It rather forced things to a head.”
“But everyone,” by which Anna means the entire family, “thinks Tolly broke your heart and Jacob mended it.”
Eleanor dips her head. “I didn’t lie. They just assumed and I let them. It was easier. It’s not very flattering, though. Not one of them could imagine I might turn down Tolly Hyde.”
Anna thinks she might faint. “You turned down Tolly Hyde?”
“Yes,” Eleanor says. “It broke his heart. But don’t tell Mummy.”