Every Secret Thing

by Rachel Crowther

  ‘Well,’ said Stephen, ‘there’s no obligation to stay any longer, of course.’

  ‘There is if we want the house,’ Cressida said. There was that shrill tone again: the others turned towards her and she blushed crossly. But wasn’t that why they were all here?

  Judith looked at her, then back to Bill. ‘Do we all have to stay for the conditions of the bequest to be fulfilled?’

  ‘Certainly everyone had to come up to High Scarp,’ said Bill, ‘but –’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Judith. ‘We should have questioned him. That clown.’ She sighed in exasperation, before continuing in the brash, give-a-damn tone she used to flaunt sometimes in the old days. ‘Does anyone actually want the house? I’d be perfectly happy never to see this place again.’

  ‘Why don’t we go and have lunch at the pub?’ Stephen suggested. ‘We can talk things over there.’

  ‘It’s very early for lunch,’ said Bill.

  His wife looked at him. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said. Her voice was quiet but – another curiosity, Cressida thought: Isabel was more of a force to be reckoned with than you might imagine. She hoped that was true. ‘By the time we get down there and order . . .’ Isabel went on. ‘And there’s no more food here, anyway.’

  ‘Well, that’s clearly what we were meant to do, then,’ said Judith. ‘Good old Fay, still pulling the strings.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Stephen. ‘We’re free agents. What would you like to do, Judith? A longer walk, maybe? Take a picnic and blow away the cobwebs?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Judith kicked savagely at the gravel. ‘The heavens are about to open, by the look of it. I suppose we can’t blame that on Fay.’

  *

  The rain started before they reached the Queen’s Head: proper, no-nonsense Lake District rain, not the insidious drizzle that was Cambridge’s stock-in-trade. The five of them hurried down the lane with coats pulled up over their heads. Inside, the pub was warm and rather dark. Dripping onto the bare boards and surveying the fire that blazed in the wide hearth, everyone looked a little more cheerful. Escaping the rain was a sure-fire consolation, Cressida thought. Perhaps it would even furnish them with conversation for a while.

  But of course it was Fay they all wanted to talk about.

  ‘Did anyone see a death notice?’ Bill asked, when they’d retreated to a nook by the fire. ‘I couldn’t find one online.’

  ‘No one to place it, perhaps,’ said Stephen. ‘Leaving High Scarp to us rather suggests she had no living relatives.’

  ‘What about her other house?’ Cressida asked. ‘She must have been living somewhere after she left Cambridge.’

  ‘It’s possible the proceeds from that house are to be used to maintain High Scarp,’ Bill said.

  ‘In our dreams,’ said Judith. She’d ordered a whisky and ginger, and it was finished already. Cressida could see her eyeing the others’ glasses, wondering when it would be acceptable to buy another. ‘But you’re right, we’ve been told nothing about the rest of the estate. That’s something we need to know.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Cressida. ‘If we’ve got High Scarp, surely –’

  ‘What Judith means,’ said Bill, ‘at least, I assume what she means is that if there are other legatees, that limits our flexibility. If we’re the only people to benefit from the will, we can agree to set it aside, which means we can set aside any conditions it imposes.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ Judith said. ‘I doubt Fay would have failed to close that loophole. The vicar will have a bequest, or something.’

  ‘The scouts,’ said Bill, with a sudden grin. ‘Stroppiest legatees of all time. The vicar would be a lamb by comparison. The Church is always far too accommodating for its own good.’

  ‘God forbid,’ said Judith. ‘But scout camps in the garden doesn’t sound much like Fay.’

  This was an improvement, Cressida thought. More like the old days. Except . . . The strange thing was that she could remember so little of their conversation back then. A few in-jokes – Bill’s red hair, Judith’s godlessness, Cressida’s smart school – and a lot of talk about music and the choir and poor clumsy Lawrence Watts, but all the detail had vanished. These days there’d be a whole trail of exchanges on Facebook and Instagram; reams of emails and text messages to document their friendship. It was as though they’d grown up in the Dark Ages – only a scattering of photographs, a couple of postcards left in the pages of a book, to show for those three years.

  ‘We won’t have to speculate for long,’ said Stephen. ‘All will be revealed tomorrow. But if anyone does want to throw in the towel now . . .?’ He stopped, looking round the table. Directing them, Cressida thought, and the notion was, to her shame, rather pleasing. ‘Otherwise, I suggest we find something to fill this wet afternoon.’

  ‘What about Troutbeck church?’ Cressida said, perhaps a little too eagerly. ‘I’ve always wanted to see the Pre-Raphaelite windows.’

  ‘Or Townend Farmhouse?’ suggested Isabel. ‘That’s near Troutbeck. It’s National Trust.’

  Bill was scowling: not at his wife’s suggestion, Cressida thought, but at the way Stephen had taken the lead. But if Stephen noticed, he ignored him.

  ‘We could do both,’ he said. ‘A cultural tour: how delightful. Cressida and Isabel can be our guides.’

  *

  The rain was easing by the time they reached Troutbeck. The church, set a little above the road, was surprisingly plain inside, the stained glass window at the east end dominating the whitewashed interior.

  ‘Are you going to tell us about it, Cressida?’ asked Stephen, as they stood looking up at it. ‘It’s rather wonderful, I must say. I like all the greenery around their heads.’

  ‘That’s William Morris,’ said Cressida. ‘His workshop made the windows to Burne-Jones’s design, and he’s supposed to have added the leaves.’ She frowned, studying the two pairs of figures flanking the Crucifixion. ‘Those must be St Peter and St Paul and St John,’ she said, pointing. ‘And Mary, of course.’

  For a few minutes they all lingered, looking at the glass, and then Judith made a little show of studying a leaflet she’d picked up on the way in. ‘There’s a war memorial cross in the churchyard, apparently. And notable yew trees, it says.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Cressida saw Bill taking a step towards Judith, and Stephen hesitating, then following them. She wasn’t going to involve herself in that little dance, she thought.

  ‘Some of the other windows are worth seeing, too,’ she said. ‘There’s a Burne-Jones Ascension further down.’

  Isabel was still beside her as the door closed behind the others, the sound echoing theatrically up the empty church. Cressida smiled at her, and Isabel smiled back, her face relaxing for a moment in a way that made Cressida realise how tense she’d been, perhaps for the whole weekend.

  ‘I did a stained glass course once,’ Isabel said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I went through a phase of doing courses. I decided I ought to – well, find a hobby. I don’t have many artistic genes, though.’ Isabel smiled again, with an inflection of self-parody Cressida found touching. ‘I like the pictures at the bottom there,’ she said, turning back to the window. ‘Look at those lambs being blessed. And the children, on the other side.’

  Isabel’s eyes lingered on the image of Jesus receiving a child in his arms, and Cressida was conscious, suddenly, of a connection between them: two childless women, each of them searching, hoping – missing something, she thought. For a moment she considered sharing with Isabel what she hadn’t told another soul: the story of Michael’s dereliction and the Norwegian prince who’d vanished back to the fjords, and the baby that had never been. Possibly, even, the hope she’d begun to nurture, to rekindle, in another direction. But before the words came, Isabel spoke instead.

  ‘Are you all right now?’ she asked. She gave a quick, appeasing smile. ‘I could see you were upset, earlier. In that other church.�
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  ‘I’m fine,’ Cressida said. ‘Thank you, though. It’s kind of you to ask.’

  Her heart was still beating fast. The moment had passed, and she wasn’t sure, now, whether she was glad not to have spoken. What might it have felt like to divulge her secrets to an almost-stranger? Isabel gave another quick tweak of a smile, and Cressida could see there were things she might say too, questions she wanted to ask.

  ‘You were fond of her, weren’t you?’ she said; and then, after a little stumble, ‘Of Marmion?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cressida said. ‘We all were. She was a very easy person to be fond of.’

  ‘Bill never talks about her,’ Isabel said. ‘He’s never talked about any of you, really, until this bequest came along. but I know he and Marmion . . .’

  ‘They went out for nearly three years,’ Cressida said, hating the awkwardness of the terminology, the outdated words she’d chosen. ‘I expect . . . You must know what happened?’

  ‘I know she died,’ Isabel said. ‘I met Bill just after that. And I know – he told me they’d split up, before she died. That made things worse for him, I think.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cressida glanced away, avoiding the look of appeal in Isabel’s eyes. Did she know, suspect, about Judith?

  ‘You were all very close, weren’t you?’ Isabel asked. ‘Until that summer you’d all been good friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cressida said again. She steeled herself, searching out a version of events that would be truthful, helpful, without causing unnecessary pain. ‘We’d lived in each other’s pockets for three years, but we lost touch, after we graduated. Stephen went to Dubai, and the rest of us went on to other things, and – Marmion died.’

  Isabel nodded. They hadn’t moved away from the east window, and Cressida could feel the light from the stained glass, a greenish-yellow glow of haloes and foliage and flowing robes, falling on them both.

  ‘I wondered . . .’ Isabel began. ‘I thought there might have been something else. I thought something might have happened, when you were all here before.’ She swallowed. ‘Something to do with Fay, maybe. The way you’ve all talked about her, I wondered whether . . .’

  Cressida hesitated. The truth, then? Or another thread of it? It was a strange time, she could say. Or a direct answer to the question about Fay, describing the little shifts and alterations in her manner, the things Cressida had pondered afterwards, when Fay disappeared from view.

  But she was spared the decision. Behind them, the door clunked open.

  ‘Ah, you’re still here.’

  Bill came a little way down the aisle and then stopped, as if wondering what they might have been saying to each other. Almost, Cressida thought, as though the pressing presence of all they had not quite said was palpable in the air.

  ‘We’re just coming,’ Isabel said. She shot a tiny glance at Cressida, a glance of complicity but also of – not quite caution, Cressida thought, nor closure, but – gratitude, possibly. She didn’t deserve gratitude, though. If she’d reassured Isabel, that was more a disservice than anything else. She looked at Bill, and wished she hadn’t seen the apprehension in his face.

  September 2015

  Bill

  Standing in the low-ceilinged kitchen at Townend Farmhouse, Bill’s eyes strayed from the tour guide to the other faces around him. Isabel’s was rapt as she listened to the history of the farming family who’d owned this place for centuries, while Cressida maintained a discerning reserve and Judith a barely feigned interest. The barrage of facts and objects was a trial, he thought, but even so, this was a good way to spend the afternoon. Despite himself he’d rejoiced at the lawyer’s stay of execution, at being given another day to work things out, and it was hard to think how else they might have passed these hours.

  The guide sent them on to the next room, inviting them to examine the furniture that had been elaborately carved by a long-gone patriarch. Bill stood back to let an elderly woman pass, and then his arm brushed against Judith’s in the doorway – just the lightest, the slightest of contact, but even so he felt his skin flare. Melting back through the crowd, he pressed himself against the wall, his heart beating hard. Judith was only a foot or two away, and he knew she had felt the touch too, that the thrill of it had passed between them like a match being struck. She lifted a hand to brush back a strand of hair, exposing a delicate triangle of skin above her collarbone that quivered as her pulse throbbed beneath the surface, and Bill felt something inside him tremble too. Oh, if he kept his eyes just there, just there, he thought, he could be happy forever. That small portion of her, that soft place, was enough to entrance him. If he could only – but then he felt Isabel’s hand sliding into his, and it was all he could do not to flinch; almost more than he could manage to squeeze her fingers.

  ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ Isabel said, pointing at a pair of carved feet sticking out at the bottom of a grandfather clock, and Bill smiled and felt treason course through him.

  He must deal humanely with Isabel, he told himself. He mustn’t let guilt and panic overtake him as they had once before. But it was hard to act rationally when he was stretched tight between craving and dread and remorse – and when he tried to think things through, he got tangled in knots. Would it be honourable, or unnecessarily cruel, to tell Isabel he was still in love with Judith before he was sure of Judith’s feelings? He hadn’t been as good a husband as Isabel deserved, but what she’d had all these years was worth something, and he shouldn’t jeopardise that if . . . But could he really go on being that husband, if Judith wouldn’t have him? Could he manage another twenty, thirty, forty years?

  Every outcome seemed impossible just now, that was the trouble. He couldn’t imagine his old life continuing, but he didn’t dare believe in a new one. Judith’s response to his declaration last night had tormented him all day, but she’d posed a question, he kept telling himself, not given a judgement. I know I’m the reckless one, but really, what could we possibly . . .?

  It seemed to him now that the failure of will twenty years ago had been his, not Judith’s. She’d rejected him, but perhaps she hadn’t meant – hadn’t wanted – to be taken so literally. He felt increasingly sure that she’d been testing his resolve, and that he had failed her. Had she too counted the wasted years, regretted the folie à deux that had allowed them to be separated all this time?

  The tour guide was heading upstairs now; he’d missed the last part of her commentary.

  ‘Thank you for bringing us here,’ Stephen said to Isabel. ‘It’s a fascinating place.’

  ‘I was thinking how much Marmion would have liked it,’ Cressida said, with an edge of defiance in her voice. ‘Not all the carving, perhaps, but the house. The family history.’

  Bill’s heart thumped again – but there was no need, he told himself, to feel . . . Oh, everything was such a muddle. The things he’d done wrong and the things he hadn’t; the things that had turned out worse than he’d expected, worse than he deserved. Wasn’t that what made him hesitate: because cause and effect had never really matched up in his life? He’d so often been outsmarted by tricksy footwork on the part of Fate, but he was no less nice, surely, than most men; no less worthy of a simple happy ending. Wasn’t it time, now, to seize it?

  *

  ‘Which did you prefer?’ Isabel asked him, as they drove home. ‘Townend, or the church?’

  ‘That window was beautiful,’ Bill said, turning his attention to her with an effort. ‘The Burne-Jones. But the house was interesting too.’

  ‘I know you didn’t really like it,’ she said. ‘I could tell you weren’t enjoying it.’

  ‘I was,’ he protested. ‘All that marvellous carving.’

  She smiled a little sadly. ‘You’re a bad liar, Bill,’ she said.

  He glanced sideways at her. Was that true? he wondered. Did she suspect . . .? For a few moments there was silence as he cast about for a way forward. Isabel, you know that I . . . There’s something I really h
ave to . . . But Isabel’s next words brought him up short.

  ‘Judith seems to me rather an odd person,’ she said. ‘There’s so much brilliance and bravado, but she’s so – bad-tempered, isn’t she? So cross with life. It seems a shame.’

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’ he began. Could cross and bad-tempered mean lovesick? Certainly this assessment couldn’t come from a wife appraising her rival, could it, unless Isabel was cannier than he’d ever suspected?

  ‘Cressida is nice, though,’ Isabel went on. ‘I like her.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Bill said. ‘She’s never been an easy person to like, but . . .’ Perhaps she and Isabel could support each other, he was thinking, conscious, even as the thought took shape, of its callousness. ‘She’s always had a soft spot for Stephen,’ he said. ‘I think she still does.’ Cressida’s eyes had hardly left Stephen all weekend, in fact. Another one of them hoping to resurrect an old passion, he thought, with a painful dart of irony.

  ‘Stephen?’ Isabel looked surprised. ‘Goodness.’

  Bill glanced at her, wondering what she meant – whether she might have thought Cressida held a candle for him, rather than Judith – but they were pulling into the drive at High Scarp now. Bill sat where he was for a moment after turning off the engine, but Isabel was already undoing her seat belt and opening the door.

  ‘The others are back,’ she said.

  Bill followed her into the house with a gloomy feeling of déjà vu. Here they were, just like yesterday evening, the five of them assembling and –

  A scream from inside the house cut abruptly across his thoughts.

  ‘What is it?’ Bill called. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Other people were shouting too; everyone was racing towards the sitting room.

  In the semi-darkness Cressida cowered. ‘There’s something in here,’ she cried. ‘It came at me when I opened the door. It hit me in the face.’

  ‘A bird,’ said Judith, and they all looked where she was pointing, above the piano. ‘Don’t move: you’ll scare it.’