The Peacock Summer

by Hannah Richell

  He looks up at her through teary eyes. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘No. I’m fine.’

  Sarah arrives in the room, hovering in the doorway. ‘Yes, Ma’am?’

  ‘We’ve had a little accident,’ she says. ‘Please bring us some iced water and bandages, as quickly as you can.’

  Sarah’s eyes widen at the sight of Albie crying in Lillian’s arms. ‘Of course, Ma’am. Right away.’

  When she has gone, Lillian draws the boy close. ‘I’m so sorry, Albie.’

  Albie lets out a choking sob. ‘It’s not your fault.’ He sniffs and wipes his face with the back of his hand. ‘I know he can be horrid, but he loves us.’ He sniffs again. ‘I think he must do, don’t you? He’s always sorry . . . in the end.’

  ‘Of course he loves you,’ Lillian says, holding the boy close. ‘He’s a . . . complicated man, but he’s your father.’

  Albie winces and holds his arm. Damn it, thinks Lillian. Where is Sarah?

  ‘It doesn’t hurt. Not that much.’ Albie pulls away from her and looks up at her with huge eyes. The lie is easy to read on his face. He is trying to be brave. ‘You mustn’t leave us. We’ve already lost Mother. I couldn’t bear to lose you, too.’

  Lillian nods in understanding. He is afraid that she will judge Charles harshly and leave them both. But the truth is, she would walk through fire to protect Albie – she would throw herself in front of Charles’s fists over and over to prevent this boy feeling pain. He needs her in a way that no other ever will. Holding the trembling boy in her arms, she thinks of the dark-haired woman in the portrait above the dining-room hearth. Poor Evelyn, stolen from her life – her child – too soon; and poor Albie, because Lillian herself knows the pain of losing a beloved parent.

  This is what it means to be a mother. She may never bear her own children, but she will always have Albie. She will always put him first.

  Lillian releases a long breath of air as she presses the boy fiercely to her chest. ‘When I married your father, Albie, I made a promise to love him, for better or worse. But I also made another promise: to love you as much as a mother ever could. And I do, Albie. I love you very much and I will never leave you. You have my word.’

  Chapter 10

  It’s not the fault of the man at the end of the telephone, but Maggie still lets him feel the full force of her disappointment the next morning. In her head, everything has been hanging on this one call: Cloudesley will either thrive or fall, depending on her powers of persuasion.

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ Maggie says, trying to retain a degree of patience, ‘the house is old. Really old. Built in the 1700s, or something.’ She is sitting in her grandfather’s study, her feet up on the desk, gazing unseeing at the mosaic of objects scattered across its surface. She reaches for a heavy crystal paperweight, turns it over in her hand absent-mindedly before returning it to the desk. ‘I’ve had a good look on your website and it’s really not that different from any of the other places your members pay to visit each year. You know, the blue-rinse brigade? All those old biddies who love flower gardens and teashops? With just a little work, they’d love it here too. I know they would.’

  The man at the other end of the phone clears his throat. ‘At the National Trust, we’re very proud of the fact that we’ve expanded our membership database to become much broader than “the blue-rinse brigade” as you call it, Miss Oberon.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ agrees Maggie, quickly. ‘Families would love it here too. There’s plenty of space for kids to run around and trees to climb. It’s magical.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ says the man. He sounds younger than she’d imagined, and he’s not exactly unsympathetic. ‘It sounds charming. And of course it’s our aim as an organisation to preserve as many heritage properties as we can. Everyone who works here believes passionately in protecting our cultural history.’

  Maggie nods, encouraged. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But I’m afraid it’s simply not feasible for us to support every property that comes our way,’ he continues. ‘We’re a charity, dependent on memberships, donations and legacies for our income and we must be guided not just by our mission statement, but also by financial objectives and targets. We have very strict criteria that must be met before we’d even begin to consider a new property. Tell me,’ he asks, ‘have you considered a private investor? Perhaps selling the property to someone better equipped to undertake the restoration work required?’

  ‘There is a potential buyer sniffing around, but I’m not sure restoration is quite what he has in mind. Besides, we don’t want to sell,’ she says, lowering her feet and leaning forwards in the chair. Nowhere but Cloudesley. Lillian’s words echo in her ears. ‘It’s been the Oberon family home for over a century. We want to preserve it. I was thinking that my grandmother and I could move into one wing of the house and hand the rest over to you, to restore and open to the public. You’d never see us. We’d be like mice. I promise.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Miss Oberon. Believe me, I do understand your distress—’

  ‘But I don’t think you do. If you don’t help us, Cloudesley might not even be standing here in a year’s time. If you’d only come and see it?’

  The man sighs. ‘All I can do is pass on your details to one of our regional contacts,’ he concedes wearily. ‘I can ask them to consider your proposal. If they deem it a viable property, it would move forward to our acquisitions panel and trustees.’

  ‘Great. How soon could that happen?’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving you an exact time frame. There are a great many properties across the country suffering the same fate as Cloudesley, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But are we talking weeks or months?’

  ‘Months . . . perhaps longer.’

  Maggie’s heart sinks. It had seemed like such a brilliant plan when it had come to her in the middle of the night. It had felt like the most obvious way to save the crumbling house, in the light of their financial stress. Yes, it involved signing it over to a new entity and opening their home to the public, but if that’s what it took to save the old place . . . She had never anticipated such a lukewarm response.

  ‘I must advise you, Miss Oberon,’ continues the voice at the end of the telephone, ‘that in the case you’ve outlined to me, it is unlikely we would take on Cloudesley. As beautiful as your home sounds, in these matters the head must rule the heart. If the property doesn’t have unique historic or cultural significance then in these financially challenging times, I don’t believe it’s something we would consider taking on. I wouldn’t want to give you false hope. I feel your time would be far better spent seeking an alternative solution.’

  Maggie puts the phone down. All around her are papers and bills spread across the desk. A rather eccentric ornament of a frog, mouth gaping in a wide ‘o’, gazes up at her from beside the banker’s lamp. His shocked expression mirrors exactly how she feels. ‘I know,’ she says, dropping her head into her hands and letting out a long groan. ‘Seems we can’t even give the old place away.’

  Chapter 11

  Lillian wakes to the churring call of a nightjar, singing out across the garden. She hasn’t been sleeping well since Charles left for London. Every time she closes her eyes she sees the red cigar burn on Albie’s arm and hears his anguished cry.

  Though dawn is little more than a glimmer of grey at her curtains, she pushes off the covers and slides out of bed, dressing quickly. Some mornings, in that quiet hour before dawn, before the staff has risen and the place is still cloaked in sleep, Lillian likes to move about the house. It’s then that she walks Cloudesley, free and unobserved. It’s then that she feels free from scrutiny and judgement – the one time she almost feels she is mistress of her domain, rather than the caretaker of another’s.

  She tries not to think too much of Evelyn, but this morning she can’t seem to help her preoccupation with her. She tortures herself with thoughts about the woman whose shadow
she now occupies. Did she suffer the same furious outbursts from her volatile husband, or was Charles more satisfied with life with his first wife? Charles never discusses her, but the portrait hanging in the dining room suggests a woman of grace and confidence. By comparison, Lillian can’t help but feel small and ill-equipped for such a life. The fault must surely lie with her. A complicated man like Charles – so bottled-up, so full of repressed emotion – needs careful handling and she seems to be failing him – and Albie.

  Why hadn’t she intervened sooner in the library? Why hadn’t she stepped in and saved Albie from Charles’s punishment? Perhaps Evelyn is looking down upon her right now, from whatever celestial perch she might occupy, horrified at Lillian’s inability to pacify her husband or protect Albie from Charles’s brutal outbursts. Perhaps she doesn’t deserve any of this – Charles, Albie, Cloudesley? Lillian tortures herself with thoughts of her failings as she moves through the silent house.

  Down in the kitchen, Monty stirs in his basket and, sniffing the possibility of adventure, trots along at her heels, following her to the flower room where she gathers pruning shears, gloves and a basket.

  There is no one in the walled garden for company but the dog and a lone blackbird fluttering hopefully through the espaliered fruit trees and over the netted gooseberry bushes. The sun is still a low rose-gold blush on the horizon. Dew seeps through her silk slippers but she hardly notices. She moves quietly along the borders, breathing in the morning air, her thoughts circling endlessly back to Albie.

  Since Charles’s departure for London, she’s felt a certain peace descend over the place, as if the house and its inhabitants have all released a collective breath in the absence of his frenetic energy. The fire-damaged rug has been rolled up and stored in a barn; Albie’s ugly red burn is bandaged and hidden beneath the boy’s shirtsleeve; yet the after-effects of the incident remain as silent ripples spreading through the house. Albie himself is noticeably more quiet and withdrawn, spending time on his own, walking the grounds or lying on his bed. She doesn’t know how to reach him – how to make him feel safe. She’s seen the artist chatting with him out in the garden, laughing and ruffling his hair as they’ve shared a joke. In Albie’s bedroom she noticed what looked to be a hastily scrawled sketch of the boy, drawn by the artist on the back of an envelope. Albie had pinned it in pride of place on his corkboard of collected stamps and postcards. Perhaps Jack Fincher’s calm presence might prove to be a balm for the child. She can only hope.

  Stopping at a damask rose bush laden with pink flowers, she cuts several stems, laying them in her basket before bending to breathe in their fragrance, sweet and pungent like Turkish delight. Further on, she trims bunches of ruffled sweet-pea blossoms, growing in spirals around tall cane pyramids.

  She stays in the garden, ruminating on her frustrations and failings until the sun has risen above the brick wall of the garden. Returning to the house, she empties her basket in the flower room. Across the corridor she can hear Mrs Hill and Sarah chatting in the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of running water and pots clanking on the range. Lillian removes the thorns, trims stems and arranges the roses into a large vase for the drawing room, and the sweet peas into two smaller jugs. It’s as she’s appraising her efforts that the idea comes to her: she will take one arrangement to her sister, as she’d intended, but the smaller of the two she will deliver to the artist’s bedroom – just a small gesture – an unspoken thank you for his kindness to Albie.

  Knowing how early he starts his work for the day, she doesn’t expect a reply, but she knocks on the door to the guest bedroom and waits an appropriate amount of time before pushing it open.

  She had presumed that an artist would live in something of a chaotic state, but the bed is neatly made and there are just a few personal items dotted about, here and there: a pair of discarded brogues, worn but polished, lying beside the bed; a pale-blue shirt hanging on the door of the armoire; a book splayed on the bedside table. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. There’s a half-finished cigarette stubbed in the ashtray beside it, as well as a comb and a pair of cufflinks. The window stands flung open to the morning sun. Jack’s presence sits upon the room with the lightest touch, and yet the space feels transformed – somehow more masculine – the air now scented with the faintest trace of aftershave and leather, aromas that mingle with the jasmine drifting in through the open window.

  She places the jug of flowers on the bedside table, stands back to assess its effect, then changes her mind and moves it to the small desk beneath the window, positioning the sweet peas beside a cloth bundle of paint brushes, a cigarette lighter and a large, well-thumbed book bound in red leather. It’s the same book she has seen him carrying about the grounds on his lunchtime wanderings.

  Something about the sight of it holds her. All those hours he has spent closeted in the old nursery and none of them any the wiser as to what he might be painting. With a quick glance back at the open door, she reaches for it and lifts the cover.

  The first few pages show details of Cloudesley. She recognises a sketch of the arched stone portico; the carved peacocks decorating the front door; a gargoyle perched high on the guttering, mouth yawning wide, ready to spill rainwater. She finds a detail of the wooden gate leading to the walled kitchen garden, then a drawing of the rear of the house in its entirety, viewed from the lawn, down near the retaining wall.

  She knows she is being a terrible snoop, but now that the book is in her hands, she can’t seem to stop herself. She continues to leaf through the pages, scanning exquisite charcoal images of trees and leaves, peacock feathers and flowers. His eye for detail and his accuracy in rendering each subject are startling.

  She is about to close the book and return it to the desk when she catches sight of a face passing on the flickering pages. She leafs her way back until she finds it again – not an entire face, but a section; an eye, the sweep of a cheekbone, the curved line of a neck observed from side-on; all illustrated as if seen in the reflection of a small, oval mirror. A car wing-mirror.

  She peers at the page more closely, breath held in her chest as the moment returns to her: sitting in Charles’s new car, Jack scrunched in the back and Lillian in the front, a peacock barring their path. It is exactly how he would have seen her reflected back at him in the wing-mirror.

  As with the other drawings, the accuracy is remarkable. She is amazed at his ability to recall the smallest details. There is the pearl stud at her earlobe and the almost indiscernible beauty spot above her lip. Yet the more closely she studies the sketch, the more she is discomforted. It isn’t just the precision of the pencil lines conjuring her on the paper – but more the expression he has captured – a certain wistfulness she hadn’t known she wore so plainly. The portrait feels so intimate; almost as if he has laid her bare on the page.

  She continues to leaf through the sketches and finds a second portrait. This time she is seated in the drawing room, her face turned to the window, the skirt of her dress falling in a fan to the floor. A third reveals her standing on the terrace, leaning against the balustrade, a long evening dress sweeping about her legs. The night of the party. The next page shows just her arm, identifiable by a favourite diamond bracelet dangling at the wrist. The last is of her head and shoulders, viewed from behind, the curves of her neck rising up to a twisted knot of hair. Looking at the images she isn’t sure how she feels; flattered to be seen, to be deemed worthy of his time and attention, though at the same time a little uncomfortable at the intimacy of his gaze and at the thought of having been so scrutinised when she hadn’t even known he was watching her.

  She lays the book back on the desk and turns to leave, letting out a small gasp to find Jack standing at the open door watching her. ‘Oh,’ she says, the blood rushing to her cheeks. ‘I was just . . .’ She gestures feebly towards the jug of sweet peas. ‘I thought you might like . . .’ She trails off.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ he says, his eyes tracking to the flowers then back to the s
ketchbook lying on the desk. ‘I forgot my lighter.’

  Neither of them move. They both know what she was doing but the apology she owes him is stuck at the back of her throat. ‘Please . . .’ she stutters, finding a small voice.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Please . . . forgive me,’ and she rushes past him, darting down the landing to the safety of her room.

  She avoids him for two days. Or perhaps he avoids her. Either way, it is a relief not to come upon him in the immediacy of her embarrassing blunder. She busies herself with menus and staffing arrangements. She spends time with Albie, playing chequers in the drawing room and ball games out on the lawn. Mostly, she tries not to remember the expression on Jack’s face – that one arched eyebrow – nor think about how long he might have been standing in the doorway watching her leaf through his sketchbook.

  Her luck runs out on the third day as she sits at her desk in the window of the drawing room. She is writing a short piece for the parish council magazine about the seasonal changes in the gardens at Cloudesley. The sun slants through the glass pane onto her paper while a fat bee, trapped inside, buzzes lazily at the glass. Out on the lawn the peahens peck at the grass, three scruffy brown chicks following behind. Lillian watches them for a moment then sighs and concedes defeat. She lays the fountain pen on her pad of Basildon Bond and watches the birds for a while. The grandfather clock in the entrance hall chimes midday. The morning has already slipped away.

  Frustration bubbles up inside her. She knows this life of hers is steeped in privilege. Unlike many women, she has a freedom to do as she pleases. No menial tasks or housework for her. Her marriage to Charles has brought her a standard of living she never expected. So why does she feel as if she’s living some alternate shadow life? Not a true, meaningful existence but one based on falsehood or illusion.