Chapter Forty
It’s a quick thing. My part, at least.
Osian leaves me alone with the two reps while he pretends to be busy fetching coffees and cakes.
I put on my best chatty TV act and tell them about my own impressions, my fears of causing more harm when I made someone cry, about the two men who barely met my eyes.
Then I show them the fans and point to each individual flowerbed that one of the Perllans took special care of.
I make them laugh at the ‘butchery’ of the roses and the competition over whose tulips grew fastest. Finally, I point to the social media campaign that Amani created with Ricky, and I mention Ashe’s request to work here long-term.
Osian obviously can hear because my voice is clear. He’s very pleased; I can see it in the way his face relaxes and the smile in his eyes. When he judges that they’ve heard enough, he comes to join us, bringing his own coffee. “Thank you, Evangeline. We’re keeping you from your lecture.”
I take the hint and leave them to him. A happy, warm feeling swells in my heart as I walk back to the lecture. He called me Evangeline; the name he likes, the bringer of good news. “My Evangeline,” he said that night when we almost kissed.
I almost skip back to the lecture.
Our seats have been stolen. Or at least borrowed.
Shirley and one of the teenagers are sitting, but when Shirley sees me, she gives the younger girl a nudge to give me back my seat.
“What have I missed?” I whisper, sitting down.
“A lot of waffle about tracing birth registers and going round the top floors with a magnifying glass.” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, making her red curls flutter on top of her head. “Men! They love a long police procedural. It’s only now got interesting.”
“…and this clue was enough.” Professor Jones is saying while the screen flips to show a portrait of a fair-haired woman in Victorian clothes.
“This is Beryl Kendric. In 1840, aged sixteen, she married John Kendric, the heir to the Kendric fortune. John died in 1841, leaving his wife pregnant. Beryl, at 18, became the executor of her son’s inheritance and therefore mistress of Kendric Park.”
I take another look at the picture. It’s hard to see what someone really looks like from an oil painting. She looks pretty – mousey hair in slim braids looped under her ears.
“As the widow of a rich man,” the professor says, “she could have attracted plenty of suitors, but not so. Beryl had literary aspirations. She wanted to be a writer. Remember this was the age of Austen, the Bronte sisters and George Elliot. Beryl became friends with Christina Rossetti and invited her to stay here at the house. We think it was Beryl who started the tradition of making Kendric House a meeting place for artists and writers. It’s around that time that author and scientist Lewis Carroll stayed here and took part in designing the first extension of the house. ”
A faint spill of light behind me makes me turn in time to see Osian sneak in and stand at the back.
The professor’s voice goes on. “Around that time, a young unknown poet called Elias Gruffudd became part of the group.”
Osian gestures for me to turn back to the lecture and settles against the wall with Evan.
“Elias isn’t known now; very little of his poetry survived. What we know of him comes from what other, greater and more famous writers say about him.”
“Ah,” Shirley says, sotto voce. “So he was a hopeful hanger on.”
“Elias, our top hat gentleman, was good looking. He had wit and charm by the bucketloads. No surprise he quickly became a popular guest at Kendric House.”
I can almost feel Osian’s mocking smile behind me but the next thing the professor says keeps me hooked.
“He also started a love affair with Beryl Kendric. In her early letters she compares them to Chopin and George Sand. Mary and Percy Shelley. This, we believe, explains the paintings. Beryl would have commissioned visiting artists to paint her lover.”
“She was rich,” someone in the audience says.
“Yes and no,” Professor Jones answers. “Beryl wasn’t rich.
The money didn’t belong to her and her income was stretched to its limits funding the constant stream of guests and parties.
We don’t believe Elias was after her money.
What he enjoyed was the society that collected around Kendric House.
Remember, he too was a poet, albeit a less successful one.
He’d have wanted to mix with other writers. ”
My phone vibrates in my hand and lights up with an incoming text.
OSIAN: Bet you ￡100 they had a torrid affair and an illegitimate baby.
I quickly tap out a reply.
EVIE:You’re on. I bet he dumps her for a younger woman. (winky face)
But before I press send, the professor says, “The affair lasted a few years, until Elias fell out of love with Beryl and in love with Octavia Reed, the wife of the engineer Samuel Reed. In the memoir of another guest, it was said that the affair was an open secret and went on here. Beryl walked in on them in the library.”
EVIE:The professor just saved you ￡100. Jammy so and so!
“I hope Beryl threw him out of the house,” Shirley calls out from her seat beside me.
Professor Jones shakes his head. “No, she didn’t.
She hoped the affair would end sooner or later because Octavia was married.
And it did end. Because Elias started an affair with a French singer and left the country.
Two years later, that affair also ended after Elias spent a lot of money in Paris.
Beryl wrote to him saying that she forgave him and he would always have a home with her.
In fact, she offered him a large apartment for his use.
He could live here, write his own books and invite friends. ”
There are several exclamations of outrage from the audience.
Now Alex moves forward and takes up the story.
“As you can guess, Elias Gruffudd settled here at her expense and carried on various affairs right under her nose. One of his lovers commissioned the small miniature we showed you earlier. And another posed with him for the stained-glass plate. But eventually Jack Kendric, Beryl’s son, turned twenty-five.
He came into his inheritance and took over the house.
By then, Beryl had been in love with Elias Gruffudd for twenty-two years, most of them unhappy.
Her letters are full of expressions of misery and attempts to reawaken the love he used to feel for her.
The fifty-year-old Elias by that point was no longer in demand as the life and soul of parties.
His friends like Anthony Trollope and Thomas Hardy had moved on and become big names.
They had little time for the aging party boy.
Newspapers which used to publish his poems had found newer, more fashionable poets, and he was slowly forgotten. ”
“Serves the bastard right,” Shirley mutters.
“He lived out the rest of his life here in Kendric House in the apartments given to him by Beryl. She alone continued to treat him like an important man, invited him to dinner parties held by her son and insisted on including him in all activities. We found this letter from Beryl to her sister in which she asks in despair, ‘Why won’t he marry me? What does he wait for? No one remembers his name anymore. I alone love him; why won’t he marry me now? ’”
“Why buy the cow when he gets the milk for free?” someone asks, and this starts a bit of a discussion.
“No, I don’t think it’s that,” a woman says. “Marriage would have given him a more legitimate role in the house.”
“For my money, I think it’s because he got into the habit of saying ‘no’ to her. She let him get used to rejecting her.”
After a couple more comments they turn back to the professor. “So what happened?”
“Her last letter to him is a poem. Remember Beryl had hoped to be a writer herself but never had the time.”
“No, she was too busy looking after everyone else.”
Alex comes forward again and clicks another slide. Another letter. The handwriting is hard to read because the letter has some faded bits.
“Because of water damage, we only have fragments of this poem.” The professor reads out in a rich and solemn voice:
Many are the time I have sat by yon stream,
Dreaming of you, sad hopeful dreams,
In vain I wept for you, in vain I raged,
In sorrow I knew that your eyes followed another,
While my years washed away with my tears,
Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. Wilt thou ever see?
There comes a tomorrow when you weep for me.
“Beryl never saw fifty; she died a few weeks after her forty-ninth birthday. But even on her deathbed she begged her son to keep Elias in his apartment. But her prediction proved right. He did cry for her. In a letter from one friend, it’s said that Elias broke down at her graveside and cried for an hour. ”
“Tah,” Shirley almost jeers. “He wasn’t crying for her. He was crying for himself, because there was no one left to talk to him.”
My phone vibrates with another text. Also from Osian.
OSIAN:I’m on my way.?
I turn around immediately.
He’s not there. The patch of wall where he’d been standing is empty.
When had he moved? During the part of the lecture so absorbing that he slipped away without me noticing? And now he’s on his way back? He didn’t need to text me that.
My pride won’t let me text him so I just stay put, pretending to read things on my phone. By 9pm, the ballroom is empty, and the volunteers start folding chairs and clearing up. Eventually I lose the battle with my pride and text him.
EVIE:Where are you?
Barely a minute later, he replies.
OSIAN:On way to Cardiff, why?
EVIE:Cardiff???
As soon as I press send another message comes from him. Obviously typed at the same time.
OSIAN:Sorry, sent previous messages on the wrong thread. I’m an idiot.
He’s not. I’m the idiot and it’s too late to delete mine because the double ticks turn blue. I can see the three dots dancing.
They stop, then start dancing again.
And again. My heart leaps with worry as I watch him struggle with what to say. Finally, a message comes through.
OSIAN:My sister lives in Cardiff.