by Jenny Eclair
Life was good for Mrs Alessandro. She’d married her second husband, Bobby, a successful walnut farmer, seven years ago. Although he was the opposite of an English gentleman they got on well enough and had sufficient land to stable horses.
Peggy lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. It was May; in Chester Square the cherry blossom would be out and the children attending the local prep schools would be wearing their summer uniforms, the girls in straw boaters walking in crocodile formation two by two, hand in hand.
The thought prompted an image of Natasha at six, a gap where her front teeth should be, hair in pigtails, one ribbon missing.
Time had gone so fast. Her daughter was now a married woman and, judging by the newspaper clipping her old friend Lydia Cashman had cut out and sent from the Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle, Natasha made a handsome bride.
She was too like her mother to be conventionally pretty, but the clever combination of an ornate hairpiece, tiara and veil served to draw one’s eye away from her rather beaky nose. Peggy had to admit, even in profile, Natasha looked quite beautiful.
The groom, on the other hand, resembled any number of chinless English boys that Peggy had encountered a quarter of a century ago when she had ‘done’ the season in London.
Why had she chosen Teddy? Huge cock and twinkle toes aside, the man had proved himself a disappointment. Once the dancing had stopped he’d turned peevish and joyless, and the light went out of their marriage. It was easy to forget how once upon a time they had laughed together and how handsome her husband had been.
She hoped Natasha hadn’t made a similarly disastrous mistake with this Hugo Berrington fellow. She kept the folded newspaper clipping tucked into the bottom of her old jewellery box, along with a certain black-and-white photograph, the one she no longer looked at.
Peggy had been invited to the wedding, which surprised her. A silver-edged card had arrived with her name on it, but not her husband’s – how rude. After all, what had Bobby done to upset anyone? They hadn’t even met him. No, she decided, it was no more than an empty gesture.
Natasha’s idea, no doubt. In recent years the girl had taken to sending her the odd postcard. They arrived out of the blue, from England or holidays in Antibes and once from Venice. Sometimes they were simply random views of London, one featured a Beefeater at the Tower of London with a great big raven perched on top of his silly hat.
Peggy found them disconcerting. At first she thought perhaps it was an impostor pretending to be her daughter, but Natasha had always been appalling at spelling and it appeared nothing had changed. And anyway, it was somehow so typically Natasha; even when she was a child, Peggy had occasionally found her daughter’s behaviour decidedly peculiar.
Citing a fear of flying and with no time to organise a boat crossing, Peggy hadn’t attended the wedding but she did send a fifty-six-piece Spode Byron range dinner set to Natasha’s new address in Barnes, wherever that might be.
A postcard of a London bus eventually arrived with ‘Thank you, Mother’ on the back, but no kisses. Natasha had always been the type to bear a grudge.
Peggy put down her cup of coffee, a squeal of bike brakes alerting her to the fact that a telegram boy had cycled right up to her breakfast table, and was handing her a telegram.
Genuinely, rather than surgically, surprised now, Peggy opened the flimsy document only to read,
TEDDY CARMICHAEL DEAD,
TOOK OWN LIFE, GUNSHOT STOP
A sudden gust of wind lifted the slip of paper and wafted it gently into the pool. Peggy watched as the boy attempted to fish it out.
Water and death, death and water. She hadn’t wanted a pool but Bobby insisted. They lived in California, everyone who could afford a pool had a pool. Peggy had never set foot in it.
Peggy ground out her cigarette. It was 1961, eleven years since her family had been smashed to pieces. Surely no one would expect her to attend her ex-husband’s grave? Would there even be a funeral?
Given that the man had chosen to end his life, there could be consequences. Some churches refused to bury suicides.
In any case, having cited ‘fear of flying’ as an excuse not to attend her own daughter’s wedding six months previously, she couldn’t exactly jump on a plane and turn up at a funeral. And what good would it do anyway? Her children were adults now.
Motherhood wasn’t something she missed. The horror of losing Ivor had pulled the plug on her heart and drained what maternal resources she might have had. There simply wasn’t enough love left over for the other two.
She was, however, dutiful, and leaving her toast untouched, Peggy went indoors and sat at her small bureau in the vast colonial drawing room of the Alessandro homestead and filled her fountain pen with violet-coloured ink.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she wrote, ‘your father’s weaknesses have long cast a shadow on all our lives. Do not let his selfishness be your cross to bear.’
She didn’t for a moment pause to consider her own selfishness. The fact that she had abandoned her surviving children in order to create a life free from the pain of losing Ivor didn’t cross her mind. To Peggy, her own actions seemed quite natural – especially now that she’d had years to justify them. But Teddy! How typical of him to take the coward’s way out, he really was the most spineless creep.
She pictured him slumped in his own gore, blood splattering the wall behind him.
At least now someone would have to change the wallpaper in that gloomy little study of his.
Peggy signed and sealed the airmail letter. Let that be an end to it, she thought.
Inevitably there followed a flurry of communication between her solicitors in Florida and Cudlip and Bird in London. Some months later, when it became apparent that Chester Square and all its contents would have to be sold to cover Teddy’s debts, Peggy felt a tiny prick of conscience. Her children might be adults, but they still needed a roof over their heads.
She couldn’t leave them homeless – what would people think? After all, she and Bobby were well known for their charitable good works.
Hopefully, Natasha with her newly wedded status would be secure, at least as long as her marriage lasted, but how would Benedict, fresh out of university with a lower second-class degree, fend for himself?
Peggy couldn’t imagine how her youngest child had managed to get into Oxford in the first place. He had never shown much academic prowess as a child, his handwriting was poor, his arithmetic worrying and his tutors despairing. He had never shone in the classroom as his older brother once had; no doubt Teddy had pulled some strings, she mused, and somehow Benedict got in, whether he deserved his place or not.
And now he was out, and since no son of hers could be allowed to live on the street, Peggy instructed her lawyer to inform Cudlip and Bird that she was prepared to spend a reasonable sum of money on a London property for her children.
The property, she stipulated, should be in Natasha and Benedict’s joint names and possess at least two bedrooms, so that Benedict could live comfortably while he established some kind of career and his sister would have somewhere to stay should she ever need a bolthole.
Her only other proviso was that the property must be in a decent postcode – which in Peggy’s world meant within walking distance of Harrods.
At the back of her mind, there was another solution to her children’s dilemma. Kittiwake was still at her disposal. She could sell the property at Monty’s Cove and use the proceeds to boost her housing offer. Natasha and Benedict could have something bigger than two bedrooms, in fact they could have quite a nice house – not on the scale of Chester Square, but a smaller version maybe?
Peggy dismissed the thought. The prospect of dealing with the dreaded place and signing papers that bore its name made her head throb. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t have anything to do with Kittiwake.
Hopefully, if she ignored the place, it would go away. Left to its own devices, the house would eventually crumble into a pile of rubble that would tumble off the cliff a
nd get swallowed up by the sea. It had been years since anyone had set foot in the place – let it rot.
7
The Photoshoot
Kittiwake House, Cornwall, March 2018,
five months before the party
The journalist watches the photographer. He’s been busy all morning – changing lenses, squinting at the light, bouncing around on the soles of his Converse sneakers. She has never seen him quite so enthusiastic.
It helps that the location, a stunning house perched on a glorious Cornish clifftop, is owned by a couple as good-looking as the Berringtons. Forty-nine-year-old Lance and his forty-two-year-old wife Freya are a picture editor’s dream. He is dark and wolfishly handsome, while she is as blond and leggy as an Afghan hound, plus they have a couple of ‘catalogue cute’ little kids being adorable in the background, Ludo and Luna – natch.
At this rate there’ll come a day when the name Susan is going to seem quite exotic, thinks Mel.
Nonetheless, daft names or not, this set up has all the ingredients of a glossy magazine front cover: groovy-looking family do up derelict Cornish wreck, what’s not to like?
All she has to do now is interview the couple, get a bit of background, weave a story round it, give the readers something to get their teeth into.
Mel digs out her phone and checks there’s sufficient battery: 89 per cent – great.
The Berringtons have agreed to conduct the interview over lunch (‘I want to keep things nice and informal,’ she told them, knowing that people tend to let their guard down when they’re distracted by a decent meal).
There’s a story here, she can smell it, and it goes beyond bricks and mortar. Mel comes from round here, she’s heard stories about the place. Her stomach rumbles and the oven timer pings simultaneously. ‘Lunch,’ she calls.
For once they haven’t had to get catering in; the lady of the house offered to do it herself. In the kitchen, Freya is setting food out on a wooden table the length of a runway. It’s a photogenic spread, complete with a basket of home-baked sourdough bread. ‘Lance’s speciality,’ Freya says. Apparently, he gets up early most days so that they can have a warm loaf for breakfast. Mel makes a mental note to include this detail, while Freya admits to making the salads and the frittata.
Each dish is worthy of its own close-up; colour bursts from every platter. ‘Very Ottolenghi,’ Mel murmurs, and the photographer insists on taking numerous shots before anyone can be served.
‘Freya Berrington obviously takes her lifestyle very seriously,’ Mel scribbles in her notebook, trying to unclench her jaw. Honestly, sometimes all this obsessive attention to detail is enough to make you puke. Mel’s father has dementia and visiting his piss-sodden bungalow after jaunts like this can bring a girl crashing back down to reality before you can say ‘buckwheat and rice salad with dried cherries and hazelnuts’. I mean, it’s all very well, but does anyone actually give a shit?
Turns out the photographer does. He’s even knocked out by the earthenware salad bowls.
Freya laughs and brushes a sweep of caramel-coloured hair out of her eyes. ‘Where did I get them from? I didn’t – I made them myself. That’s the beauty of living somewhere like Kittiwake – you can get lost in the outbuildings. I’ve got a little wheel and kiln set up in one of the barns; there’s a shop I stock in the village. Basically, I make things that remind me of home – I’m from Oslo, we take our food and design very seriously.’
Of course you do, dear.
Mel clicks her iPhone on to record.
‘So, tell me, how long has it taken you to bring Kittiwake back to life?’
Freya and Lance are like a well-oiled machine, they speak in turns and are gushingly complimentary about each other. He is a ‘gifted project manager’, while she has ‘an extraordinary eye for detail’; they are ‘blessed’.
Mel feels a metallic bitterness at the back of her throat. Out loud she gently probes for a bit of human interest. It’s all very well banging on about under-floor heating and air vents, but most readers want a bit of family background with their renovation of the month. ‘You inherited it, I believe?’ She looks directly at Lance, who has the grace to blush.
‘Yes, from my uncle, my mother’s younger brother. He, um, inherited it from his mother.’
Mel can feel her feminist hackles rise. ‘The younger brother, even though he had an older sister?’
‘Yes, um, it’s the old-fashioned way, primogeniture. Ridiculous, I know, but in the bad old days it was the only way to keep larger estates together. Not that this is a huge estate – I mean, it’s big but . . . ’ He trails off, refusing to meet her eye. They are sitting in a kitchen that could easily house her entire flat. Lance gestures to a wooden clothes pulley above their heads, ‘It’s not grand,’ he adds, a tad defensively.
Mel has never seen the romance in these pulleys. In fact she can’t think of anything worse than eating your breakfast while pant juice rains down from above – especially if it’s your incontinent father’s pant juice. But then posh people are different.
Mel has been snooping around houses in Devon and Cornwall on behalf of Better Homes for long enough to know how the other half fetishise their laundry. Lance might point to the ancient pulley as an example of how the house still connects with its roots, but Mel suspects that the housekeeper is instructed to arrange only attractive garments on the rack. Unsightly and intimate items of clothing will be confined to some utility room kitted out as a state-of-the-art ‘laundry room and ironing station’, complete with an iron that looks like one of those small motorboats millionaires use to get from their megayachts to the shore.
No doubt this lot sail too. It’s something the wealthy have bred into them: the ability to swim, ride and ski – all the skills necessary to practise sports that separate them from the hoi polloi.
Sometimes, when Mel goes on these house jaunts, she steals a tiny memento. Nothing that could possibly be missed – maybe a mug or an egg cup, or a fancy soap from the bathroom (because these places always have a stash of elaborately wrapped, exotically fragranced soaps stacked up on a shelf – pomegranate and fig, the kind of thing one would never find in a supermarket).
Mel turns her attention away from her caramelised roast carrot, chickpea and feta salad with its delicious smoked paprika aftertaste for a second to grill Lance further about the origin of Kittiwake.
‘There was a rumour that Kenneth Grahame based Toad Hall on the place?’ She smiles innocently and he laughs in response.
‘I think that was something my Uncle Benedict made up to entice visitors. He was what you might call a bit of a character. He rented it out as a small hotel for a while, back in the eighties – he was mostly living abroad by then, in France and Switzerland. Kittiwake has had all sorts of incarnations: wedding venue, conference centre . . . ’
‘That’s why we had so much work to do,’ Freya interrupts, smiling with those perfect teeth. God, she is such an incredibly healthy-looking specimen of womanhood, thinks Mel, resentfully pushing away the bread basket, knowing full well it will trigger her chronic IBS.
Freya continues, ‘The people who ran Kittiwake when it was a hotel changed the name and everything. It was called The Cove back then – we’ve still got a stash of brochures and some headed notepaper, all terribly corporate. Fortunately, when it had its disastrous eighties makeover, they simply panelled over the original features without destroying anything. It was a complete bodge job. They carpeted over the parquet and everything – can you imagine?’
Freya pulls a funny little face as if to say, Some people have no taste whatsoever. Mel is immediately reminded of her mother’s china bird collection, most of it smashed up by her father – ‘Fucking chaffinch, fucking blue tit, fucking canary’ – smash, smash, smash against the slate hearth of the electric fire surround.
‘It’s definitely had a chequered past,’ adds Lance. ‘As I’m sure you know, with you being a local.’
Mel finds herself nodding encouragingly
, this is what she wants.
Warming to his theme, Lance continues, ‘It was requisitioned by the government for a while during the Second World War, and then, before my grandmother bought it, it belonged to an American film star, fellow by the name of Ray Hammond – made a fortune out of cowboy movies and advertising cigarettes. He filmed a swashbuckler over here, fell in love with the place, bought Kittiwake and added all the mod cons. Unfortunately, the cigarette advertising backfired: within a year of doing the place up, he was dead. Lung cancer. That’s when my Grandma Peggy bought it – not that I ever met her.’
Freya corrects him instantly and Mel is pleased to see a flash of annoyance cross his handsome features. ‘Yes you did, at your christening,’ she insists. ‘There is a photo,’ she tells Mel. ‘On the grand piano in the entrance hall. Lance is the tiny bundle in his grandmother’s arms.’
Lance picks up the thread: ‘She was American, didn’t actually live here after . . . um, terribly sad. She and my grandfather closed the place up, and then he, er, died.’
‘Shot himself in the head,’ Freya adds in a very perfunctory fashion.
‘An accident, actually,’ Lance insists. ‘They were divorced by then, and she was living in the States. When she died, this place went to my mother’s brother, her eldest son.’
‘Her eldest surviving son,’ Freya jumps in again. She is obviously a stickler for the facts.
This time Lance puts a restraining hand on his wife’s arm. ‘I don’t think she’s interested in all the gory details,’ he laughs, before adding, ‘But yes, Freya’s right, there was an older boy who drowned.’
‘Here at Kittiwake,’ Freya interjects. This time Lance manages to silence her with a look.
‘But to cut a long story short,’ he sighs, ‘after a lot of legal wrangling and boring probate stuff, the house went to her second son, Benedict, who used it for all kinds of things – parties, mostly – in his younger years. Later, as I mentioned, he turned it into a business: rented the place out as a hotel and conference centre while he lived abroad. And when he died, it came to me.’
