2
Cecilia
‘WHAT HO, MOTHER – YOU look like half of Kew Gardens,’ says Leo as he saunters into Cecilia’s room. The whole household has been in gloom since Lydia’s abrupt illness, but Leo alone seems immune.
Penelope laughs and swats Leo on the arm, scoldingly.
‘You honour us with your presence,’ she says. ‘Can the partners spare you for so long?’ She has come to rifle through Cecilia’s jewellery for something that suits the pale ivory evening dress she has chosen. A series of necklaces are laid out for her inspection.
‘Oh, I should think so. Half of them have taken off to Mont Blanc to attempt a climb and the other half have gone to Monte Carlo to take the waters – or rather to have half their wallets taken from them, so I shan’t be missed at all.’
Penelope fixes a bracelet around her wrist and looks Leo up and down. ‘You are looking quite fine, I must say. They keep you sharp on the London fashions?’
Cecilia knows that Leo is restraining himself from rolling his eyes. Instead, he leans on the dresser and lights a cigarette. ‘We’ve much more important things to be doing than worrying about fashion, Mother. That’s yours and Cecilia’s domain.’
‘Hardly Cecilia’s,’ says Penelope, eyeing the stained hem of Cecilia’s skirt. ‘University girls don’t go in for that sort of thing, apparently.’
Cecilia tucks away the soiled patch. ‘I don’t think there’s any rule in the college handbook that says we can’t take an interest in dressing well. I suppose it is simply that the women worry they will not be taken seriously if they come to lectures dressed as finely as they might wish to.’
Leo snorts. ‘Tell me, are blue stockings evening wear or only for casual use?’
Cecilia scowls. ‘I am not a bluestocking.’
‘So, why do you want to go to Oxford? Isn’t it a bit much? I thought there were correspondence courses and lectures for ladies in London.’
Leo went to Durham and feels the slight keenly. He told her once that it was far easier for her to study at Oxford than it would be for him, because of all the allowances they made for girls.
‘Somerville suits me, and I believe I will be happy there. Besides, why shouldn’t I go?’
‘I suppose I just don’t know what it’s all for,’ he says. ‘You can’t take a degree – you’re hardly going to get a job after, so why bother?’
There are more reasons than she can count, but none that Leo or her mother would understand.
In the midst of Lydia’s illness, university has been the bright star on the horizon, the moment when the world will be set back on its proper track.
Odette, who is hazy and distracted, Odette, who cannot leave her mother’s side, will be given respite.
They can take the first step into the life they have planned for themselves.
That is only for her to think about. She must have some private things, some places in her mind where her mother is never allowed – otherwise she will become so filled with hatred and anger she could take a letter opener and stab them all.
Cecilia smiles sweetly. ‘Would you be happier if I went to a finishing school?’
‘Lord no, what a waste of money – no school could finish you up to a decent standard.’ Leo laughs, and Cecilia lobs a hairbrush at him.
‘Stop it at once,’ snaps Penelope. ‘You are both adults; do not replicate the schoolroom for want of anything else to do. Leo, go downstairs and be good company. Cecilia, put something clean on – you embarrass yourself. Now, don’t protest – you must come down and occupy Odette so that she doesn’t sulk about like a dark cloud.
And do not exchange those glances that you think the rest of us can’t see. It is quite trying.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
Penelope appropriates a necklace in gold and the bracelet still on her arm, and returns to her room.
Cecilia considers the clothes in her wardrobe churlishly: all picked by Penelope, all entirely fine and proper. She would rather go naked than wear them.
No, she will not go downstairs yet.
Whenever Odette is with Lydia or otherwise indisposed, and Cecilia finds herself untethered, she slips again into the walls and makes her mouse-like way between morning room and scullery, attic and bedroom, tracking each of the occupants of the house, picking up each discarded line of conversation and unguarded look.
It pleases her to have some small thing for herself, a secret to carry around like something to nurture.
Everyone in Herne House has their secrets.
Claudine most of all.
At school, they did not call Cecilia ‘Mouse’.
They called her ‘Rat’. Always squirming and scurrying and putting her twitching nose into unwelcome places – so the girls would tell her as they held her down and scrubbed her delicate skin with a nail brush or poured ice water down the back of her neck.
They would never dare do the same to Odette; they only called her cold and haughty behind her back and ignored her when she was present.
Cecilia didn’t care. She and Odette only ever needed each other.
For Odette’s birthday, Cecilia has bought her a fine volume of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, bound in green leather and inscribed with a coded message of love.
It does not feel like enough. She wants to give Odette something truly special, to take her to the top of a mountain and shout about her love or to swim an ocean for her. It never feels like enough.
Claudine must not ruin it.
Cecilia has seen no more strangeness in Herne House, beyond the strangeness that Lydia’s illness and Claudine’s rise brings – and perhaps that is strange enough. But of the blackmail, the secret her mother harbours – nothing.
It worries her, like a snake in the long grass. It does not move while she stays still, but if she were to act, she fears it would strike.
So, to her mousing.
In the kitchen, the cook is scolding a kitchen maid over blunt knives.
In the study, George stretches his back at the desk.
Several guest rooms are occupied, and in the morning room, a game of bridge is being fought over.
Mr King pours the drinks, the dark curl of hair hanging across his forehead again.
Cecilia does not want to look at him. Does not want to remember.
Lydia’s studio has no easy spyhole. That will be where Odette is, with her mother.
The closest she can get is a view of the door.
At which she finds Penelope listening.
It is naive, perhaps, that her first instinct is to reveal herself.
‘Mother, what are you doing?’
Penelope startles, blushes. ‘What are you talking about? I’m not doing anything.’
The truth strikes Cecilia like a bolt: she is spying. What need would Penelope have to spy on her friend? Only if, for example, she had been instructed to by someone who was controlling her.
This is what Claudine has asked her mother to do, in exchange for the keeping of her secret.
Turn traitor, sell out her oldest friend.
And her mother has done it.
Penelope lets anger carry her through. ‘Don’t sneak up on people; it is dreadfully rude. And did I not tell you to get changed? Be off with you, at once.’
Cecilia lets herself be chivvied upstairs. There is no point arguing with her mother.
It is time she finds an ally of her own. She cannot burden Odette with this, not now, not with Lydia the way she is.
Leo is smoking in his room, looking down through the window at the Herne House crowd.
The three of them spent far too long as children around Uncle George’s friends to ever truly walk amongst them as adults, but Cecilia knows Leo will not admit that.
The few years he has on Odette and Cecilia is his prize to lord over them.
She hovers at the door, reaching the limit of her bravery.
How is she to do this? She trusts Leo in one way – but not in others – and it is so difficult to know where she will stand with him on this matter.
But who else is there? She must take this risk.
Leo peers at her, frowning. ‘You’re looking quite peaky. You’re not going to be ill like Lydia, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Good, there’s only so many invalids one house can tolerate.’
Her hands are slick with sweat, and she rubs them on her skirt. She does not know if she is brave enough to do what she means to.
‘Leo, can I tell you something? You must promise not to tell anyone else.’
His expression falls, a rare moment of seriousness. ‘What’s wrong? Has someone done something to you?’ His fingers flex, as though preparing to reach for some throat.
She blushes with the expected pleasure of the attention. She is right to trust Leo. He is her brother, and that must count for something.
‘It’s not me, it’s—’ She stumbles over the words. ‘It’s Mother.’
At once his demeanour changes. ‘I’m not weighing in on some disagreement. I know she’s a frightful menace, but you will simply have to find a way to rub along together.’
‘No, Leo, listen to me.’ She comes inside and shuts the door behind her. ‘It’s about Claudine. I overheard something of a row between them when she first arrived.’
‘Been spying again, Mousy?’
Cecilia wrinkles her nose in annoyance, then stops at the thought of the image it conjures.
‘You’re so nosy, Mousy. No one is going to like you at Oxford if you keep it up.’ Leo stubs out his cigarette and begins to change his collar.
Always that name. It shouldn’t upset her anymore, and yet it does, and of course that is why Leo uses it. She has never found a way to wound him so neatly in return. Would he like her better if she could?
‘I know I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but Claudine is blackmailing Mother, I am sure of it.
There is some sort of secret, about Mother.
Claudine had sent her something that looked like an official document, but Mother tore it up – I found a few scraps with Mother’s name on, and a few letters – I didn’t understand it at all, but I’ve never seen Mother look like that. It frightened me.’
Leo hesitates, turning the freshly starched collar in his hands. ‘You’re quite serious about this?’
‘I am.’
‘Surely it is some sort of misunderstanding. If you only hear half a conversation, you’re sure to invent a dozen mysteries to make sense of it.’
‘I heard it all, Leo. And just now I found Mother spying on Lydia and Odette – I think that must be what Claudine is using her for. I hoped it was all a fuss over nothing, like you said, but – but I don’t think it is.’
‘You haven’t spoken to Mother about it?’
Cecilia does not dignify this with an answer.
‘Yes, I suppose that would be impossible. Why are you telling me?’
‘I thought you might help.’
‘By doing what, precisely? Having it out with them?’
‘No – don’t say anything to anyone. But this document she sent Mother. There must be something in it.’
‘What do you want me to do, go hunting through every official document in London – Lord, the whole country? It could be anything.’
‘I know that. But you are far cleverer than me – surely you must have some idea where to begin. It is a secret about our family, about Mother in particular. In the row, Claudine said Lydia had told her about it so that must make it a secret from when she was still in the country. Doesn’t that narrow it down? ’
The flattery mollifies him. ‘And then what?’ he asks. ‘What do you want to do with the information, if I find it?’
‘I don’t know if we need to do anything with it, but at least we won’t be caught unawares.’
Cecilia is determined to know what it is Claudine holds over them. The truth is that she is frightened of her. Frightened of the way Claudine behaves towards Odette. Of the way she has taken over Herne House.
‘I confess I cannot resist a tantalising mystery. Though it is quite hopeless a task – you know that?’
‘So you’ll help?’ says Cecilia eagerly.
‘Yes, all right. But I can’t promise I’ll find anything. It’s less the proverbial haystack I’m looking in than half the fields in England.’
Cecilia throws her arms around her brother in honest relief. ‘Thank you.’
‘Steady on.’ Leo removes her arms, but he is smiling. ‘Don’t get so girly about it all.’
She wonders if she is laying it on too thick, but Leo doesn’t seem to notice, fixing his collar in place with its studs and whistling a tune off-key.
There. That is something. Whatever it is Claudine plans, Cecilia will have some insurance against it.