The Lynmara Legacy

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘Cold?’ he said. Damn, did he know everything about her? ‘Or did someone just walk over your grave?’

  ‘Perhaps …’ How had his thoughts so quickly reached to what she wanted to stay buried?

  ‘How morbid,’ Judy said. ‘And on a lovely spring afternoon. We’re all going to live for ever, didn’t you know? Everyone’s young and fair, and England is back in her golden youth again. Yes, I know there are dark Welsh mining towns that don’t look golden, and the men have no work. But when I get this close to home again, and it’s a spring afternoon, I just somehow can’t believe that everything isn’t beautiful.’ She gave a slight, embarrassed laugh. ‘Forgive me, I’m being a fool. Or am I just young, Lloyd?’

  ‘You’re young, Judy, and rather sweet, despite the sheen. Believe all the beautiful things as long as you can. They don’t come round the second time.’

  He wasn’t that much older, Nicole thought, not yet thirty. But he sounded as if he had seen through the golden dream, had experienced it once, and knew it would not come again. She wished he didn’t make her so uncomfortable. She wished she could have been a friend, as Judy was, but that wasn’t going to be. She knew it.

  They turned off the main road, and started through the winding narrow roads of Sussex. ‘Nearly home, nearly home,’ Judy sang from the back seat. ‘And the apple trees are in blossom.’

  2

  Fenton Field was, as Nicole knew from the photographs, the perfect English house. It seemed almost as old as the land it sat upon, and older than some of the oaks which ringed it. The wistaria hung about its half-timbered frame was in bloom; at its back, along the edge of the orchard, the rhododendrons were flaming scarlet, paling the apple-blossom almost to nothing. When the car stopped, there was the hum of bees in the sudden silence, and then almost instantly, the varied barking of dogs. They all came out, the rush of dogs, the slower emergence of people. They came into Nicole’s vision as some remembered dream ‒ the faces of people, middle-aged and young, and the swarm of dogs. She couldn’t have ever seen it before, but she already knew it all in her heart.

  ‘This is Nicole, of course. Welcome, my dear.’ A beautiful, rather tall woman was looking into her face, perhaps sensing her sudden feeling of being an outsider. Margaret Fenton was not stylish, but she was beautiful. Age had only added to grace. Hers was the face Nicole remembered from Judy’s album. Then came her husband, Andrew, who also offered his welcome. His hand felt hard in Nicole’s. The hand of a farmer, not a looker-on, and yet a hand delicate enough to know what was happening to a horse, a dog, or a child. Judy’s youngest brother, Ross, was there, a thin child, with too-big eyes of a blue he had inherited from his mother. Lloyd was received as if he were also a son. A man called Wilks, somewhere between a butler and family custodian, began to take out the suitcases, and at the same time told Ross to go and wash his hands.

  Upstairs, in the room which Nicole was to share with Judy, Judy flung the casement windows wide to catch the breeze blowing from the orchard. There was a scent ‒ Nicole could not distinguish between the wistaria and the apple-blossom.

  ‘It is the most beautiful place in the world,’ Judy said.

  And Nicole, crossing that heavy-beamed room, with its floor of hand-pegged oak shining in the spring sunlight, with its vision on an enchanted world of green lawn sloping off to orchard and oaks, with the sound of the bees and the more distant sound of a stream, came to stand beside Judy. Yes, she could agree that it was, it just could be, the most beautiful place in the world. And once more she had to choke back her envy of Judy’s place in this tight little world of beauty, closed to those who did not inherit it.

  The Fentons, with their easy manners, did all they could to draw her into their world. ‘You were a help to Judy,’ her father said softly as he poured drinks before dinner. ‘We could tell that she admired you. All we heard from Paris was how hard you worked. You made her want to keep up. We have to be grateful to you that she wasn’t lonely. Her time there was a great success, you know.’ And his gaze went fondly across the room to his golden-haired daughter.

  ‘But it was Judy who did all that for me!’ Nicole protested. At the same time she felt an exhilarating sense of pleasure. She couldn’t remember when anyone had ever paid her such a compliment, nor so obviously meant it. So she was content to sit quietly and still while they had their drinks, indulging in family gossip, hugging her compliment to herself with pride and gratitude.

  She had sorted them out now, knew one from the other; they were no longer faces in the album. The oldest was Allan, who would be a farmer, like his father. Nicole knew about the girl he was engaged to, Joan Brewster, and about the labourer’s cottage, a mile from Fenton Field, which was being modernized and enlarged to be ready for the time that they would marry in September. Nicole smiled a little to herself at the slightly absent-minded way Allan had greeted her; he seemed to be at the stage of being in love where he didn’t notice another female. Judy had said, ‘He’s been waiting so long for Joan Brewster to grow up, and to get over the couple of times she’s fallen in love with someone else. She did finally, and she’s turned right back to Allan, whom she’s known all her life. And Allan acts as if he’s planned it all that way. I think they’re going to be very right for each other.’

  Nicole moved her attention to the next son, Richard, and found him staring at her with a studied frankness. She stared back, knowing that this was not someone whose eyes would waver. He was almost impossibly good-looking, blond like all the Fentons, his mother’s face cast in a masculine mould, but his eyes a deeper shade of blue, and with startlingly dark lashes and brows. She knew from the way he looked at her that he was used to girls flocking about him, girls waiting for his glances, his invitations. He even made a grace of the heavy cast he wore on his foot and ankle, the ankle broken in a fall he had taken while fielding at cricket. ‘Watch out for Rick,’ Judy had said. ‘He likes to think of himself as a bit of a playboy. He’s certainly broken a few hearts. He’s supposed to be reading in chambers ‒ studying to be a barrister, but he’s not very serious about it. In a way it’s a sort of a pity about that money a Cavendish great-aunt left him. She doted on Rick, and he used to see her quite often. She lived near Cambridge all by herself, with just a housekeeper. None of us had really any idea she was so well-off. Rick is unexpectedly kind at times, and I suppose he felt sorry for the old girl. He used to take her to cricket matches and things like that at Cambridge. Made a bit of a fuss of her. When she died she left quite a lot of money to him. He hasn’t gone exactly wild with it, but since he’s come down from Cambridge, he hasn’t been exactly serious about his studies, either. I suppose he could live without working, but none of us would like to see that happen. Rick needs something ‒ someone, perhaps, to make him be serious. He’s just bought Potters, the farm adjoining Fenton Field. He’s leaving it to Father and Allan to farm. There’s a rather lovely house that goes with it. He’s having it done up, and spending a lot of money on it. He says he’s going to rent it, but we all expect he’ll suddenly spring an engagement on us, and he’ll live there when he’s married.’ A faintly worried frown had creased Judy’s forehead as she had dressed for dinner, and talked to Nicole about the family. ‘I do hope there is someone, and that she’s right …’ she suddenly blurted. ‘Rick’s so charming, and things have come so easily to him. I’d hate to see him play the field, end up with the wrong girl, fritter his time away in chambers, just because he won’t be serious.’ Then she shrugged. ‘Oh, well ‒ what am I worrying about? There can’t be many young men as blessed as Rick is. Fortune’s darling …’

  There was Ross, seated at a chess table, scowling with ferocious concentration. Across the table from him was a man a few years older than Allan, Nicole guessed, someone called Gavin McLeod. Nicole noted the thinness of Ross’s body, the sharpness of the Fenton features here too finely drawn; he had been absent from his prep school for almost a year after an attack of rheumatic fever. Every so often Nicole saw Margaret Fenton
’s glance go to her youngest son, and the beautiful cheeks hollowed a little, as if a constant anxiety gnawed at her. ‘It’s such a damn shame,’ Judy had said. ‘Ross was doing so beautifully at school, and he was jolly good at games. That’s all stopped. They say he’ll be perfectly strong in time, but he’s missing so much. Well, thank heaven there’s Gavin McLeod, even if we’re all a bit scared of him …’

  Gavin McLeod was in his thirties. ‘He’s absolutely brilliant,’ Judy said. ‘He’s a Fellow of Christ Church. He doesn’t do any teaching, just pure research in physics. He’s been an absolute godsend for Ross, just taking over as a sort of tutor, and Ross has made up for all the lost time, and is even ahead with his studies because he’s so passionately attached to Gavin he wants to be just like him. If Ross ever does take to physics, or something like that, and ends up with a Nobel prize one day, it’ll be because of Gavin McLeod. If only Gavin weren’t so fierce … Those Scots, you know. They’re such an awkward lot … especially when they’re proud and poor like Gavin. The chip on his shoulder’s so big you’d almost swear he kept it there deliberately to frighten people off. That … and being so brilliant.’ She shrugged, ‘Well, he awes us, really, and yet we’re so grateful to him …’

  ‘But what’s he doing here? Shouldn’t he be at Cambridge?’

  Judy had put the final dab of powder on her nose as she answered. ‘Well, that’s a bit awkward too. You see, about seven months ago he was smashed up in a car crash … concussion rather badly. A broken leg and arm … that scar over his eye. And the awful part of it was that Rick was driving the car, and he walked away with a few bruises. Gavin said it wasn’t Rick’s fault ‒ it was raining and they hit some oil patch. But Rick felt responsible. Don’t ask me how they happened to be friends. They’re such an unlikely pair, but they’re both mad keen on rugby, and they’d been to watch a match together. Any rate, when Gavin came out of the hospital, he went up to Scotland to recuperate. He went back to his father’s home. His father’s living in a gamekeeper’s cottage, and renting out his house and moors for the shooting in summer. Rick went up to visit him. He found Gavin in a state of terrible depression, quarrelling with his father over everything, making the old man’s life, and his, a misery. The house was like an iceberg, Rick said. They live up north of Inverness, and the snow was piled everywhere. No way Gavin could exercise and start to get his leg right again. The upshot was that Rick had Mother invite him here. Rather to everyone’s surprise, he came. Everyone was terrified of him, but felt they had to do it for Rick. The big surprise was when he took so strongly to Ross, and Ross to him. It was the biggest shock in the world for everyone to see a brilliant mathematician like Gavin going back to schoolboy algebra again, and brushing up on his Latin and Greek so he could help Ross. We’re all so grateful to him. And he is better. There’s only that trace of a limp there. Mother said he still gets frightful headaches from the concussion, and the doctors say that to give himself a chance, he shouldn’t go back to his work for at least another six months. He’s straining at the leash to get back. He thinks someone’s sure to get further in their research and beat him to the post. But they’re keeping his place for him at Cambridge. He works a bit by himself here, but it isn’t the same as being at Cambridge, with his assistants, and everything. He’s got a string of degrees … and yet he’s coaching Ross. Dr Gavin McLeod … I wish I didn’t feel such a fool whenever I’m around him.’

  That left Lloyd Fenton. How dark he seemed now, beside these fair English faces. She wondered if it was true that conditions changed the way people looked. Lloyd Fenton had something more akin to Gavin McLeod in the cragginess of his features, both men dark, both seemingly stamped with the hardness of the places in which they had grown up, though for Lloyd Fenton it would have been a hardness cushioned by the comfort of money. But why did New Englanders so often look as if they were fashioned by their harsh winters, structured by the rocky land from which they had first scratched a living, and seen it grow to wealth? Lloyd Fenton was Harvard, and he looked it. Perhaps that was why he made her feel uncomfortable. Those kind knew their own; he would have recognized her as being from somewhere outside the fold. For the first time she sensed the wisdom of Iris’s decision to send her to Paris. If she was going to stand out as someone different in this society, there would be acceptable reasons for her difference. But people like Lloyd Fenton would know that it was an unusual kind of difference. She found herself hoping that he would not stay long here at Fenton Field. When he was gone, she could relax into the person Iris wanted her to be. There would be no awkward questions about places, and ‘did you know so-and-so?’ or ‘I suppose you spent your summers at Bar Harbor?’ Yes, better when he was gone. She didn’t want questions.

  Then she turned her gaze back to Richard, and now that steady stare softened, a look of amused laughter came into his eyes. He smiled, as if he had seen everything of her little survey of the people in the room, perhaps partly guessing her summing-up. She could almost have sworn that his left eyelid came down in a wink.

  Wilks’s voice at the door. ‘Dinner is served, Madame.’

  After dinner the Fentons took up their own diversions. Ross had been packed off to bed, and Gavin McLeod now sat reading, apparently oblivious to what went on around him. Margaret Fenton sat in the midst of her family knitting, making herself a deliberate centre to them. Andrew and Allan and Judy had maps of the lower pastures of Potters spread out on the floor, and they were discussing a drainage scheme. Judy perched on the arm of her father’s chair. Richard was supposed to be part of the group; it was his land they were discussing, and his money that would go on the drainage. But he was bored, and uninterested, and he drifted away from them. He went to the piano, and soon a teasing little trickle of jazz came as an undertone to the conversation. Nicole, trying to interest herself in a magazine, and conscious that Lloyd Fenton was watching her while he talked with Margaret Fenton, lifted her head expectantly. With a sort of surprised pleasure she went to the piano. She had not expected the unserious Richard to be so good at anything. Not a connoisseur of jazz herself, she still could recognize style, and Richard had it. She didn’t know what he was playing; it seemed to be totally improvisation, something she knew all good jazz pianists had to be able to do. Suddenly her thoughts went back to the only time she had heard her mother play jazz, and then she wiped out the thought. She listened for a while, standing beside Richard. ‘I suspect you’re very good,’ she said when he paused. ‘I wish I knew more about it.’

  ‘I fool around,’ he said. ‘It amuses people ‒ it amuses me.’

  ‘Do you ever do anything seriously?’

  ‘Not much. Why should I?’ He looked around the room, examining all the people in turn as she had done before dinner. He had placed his glass of brandy on the piano. ‘There are enough serious people around, don’t you think? They can afford a few clowns.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re a clown. That would be a serious business, too.’

  ‘Clever, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, not clever. It isn’t the thing to be clever.’

  He patted the long piano seat, and shifted to make room for her. ‘Judy says you’re clever, and it’s nonsense to want to hide it. Sit down and talk about it.’

  ‘You try to hide being clever yourself. You just said so.’

  ‘Did I? Well … well.’ She sat beside him as he had indicated. Vaguely she was aware that Lloyd had risen and come to stand behind them. ‘Do you ever play anything ‒ dare I say it ‒ serious?’

  ‘Like Beethoven and all that stuff? Used to, a bit. It isn’t the done thing for an English schoolboy, you know. Not unless you go to one of the choir schools and make music your whole life. I never felt like that. I just ‪… I just fell into jazz because it sounded right for me. I could play around with things, make them up as I went. But I remember a bit …’ With ease, and no apparent effort to remember, he went into the opening bars of ‘Für Elise’. The way he played it, so simply, those opening bars m
ight have been a continuation of his light jazz style, the haunting, maddening little rhythm was something he made mockingly his own. Then suddenly Nicole couldn’t stand it. She was remembering once again the night she had been at Lucky Nolan’s, the story Anna had told her. ‘I played “Für Elise” ‒ it begins so gently, and I didn’t want people to hear.’ The pain and shock Nicole had believed was deadened and almost gone returned. Would she never get that night out of her mind? She put her hand on Richard’s wrist. ‘Would you mind? Not that, I’m sorry …’