‘I see neither of you has a glass of champagne. Let me escort you into the garden. It’s the most splendid evening. Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy our drinks in the beauty of sunset?’
‘Oh, it would,’ said Hazel.
‘It certainly would,’ Laurel echoed.
Lord Hunt offered them each an arm. But as Laurel slipped her hand through his left she felt the first stirring of something deeply alarming and unpleasant: competitiveness. She glanced at Hazel and for a fleeting moment she wished her sister ill. With a shocked gasp she forced the feeling away. Hazel was smiling at the object of her most ardent desire, but as he turned to smile on Laurel, she too felt the beginnings of something of which she was too ashamed to even acknowledge. Both sisters turned their eyes sharply to the double doors that led into the wide corridor and through to the hall. They could never reveal to the other the degree of their passion for Ethelred; never. For the first time in their lives they harboured a secret they were unwilling to share.
Digby stood in the garden and gazed upon the castle with a gratifying sense of achievement, as if he had reconstructed it from the rubble with his own hands. It was the jewel in his family’s crown, the culmination of a lifelong desire. He looked back on the years he had struggled to make his fortune in South Africa and smiled with satisfaction at how far he had come and how high he had risen. A hearty pat on the back jolted him from his thoughts. He looked up to see Sir Ronald Rowan-Hampton’s red face beaming at him happily. ‘My dear Digby,’ Sir Ronald exclaimed. ‘What a triumph the castle is. Celia and Archie have done you credit. It’s a great success, a masterpiece, an example of courage in the face of adversity. You have raised it from the ashes and, my, what a palace it is. Fit for the King himself.’
‘I cannot take all the credit,’ he replied smoothly. ‘It is all Celia and her vision.’
‘Then she is a chip off the old block,’ said Sir Ronald. ‘She has your style and your sense of proportion. Isn’t it true that everything you do is larger than life, Digby?’ Sir Ronald gazed at the castle and shook his head. ‘It must have cost a small fortune.’
‘It cost a great fortune,’ said Digby, unabashed. ‘But it is worth every penny. This is Celia’s now and will be her son’s one day and his son’s after that, and so it will go on. She has not only rebuilt a castle but she has created a legacy that will long outlive her. I’m mightily proud of her.’ He privately wondered whether, now the project was complete, his daughter would grow bored of life here and hot foot it back to London. He was aware of her restless nature, because she had inherited it from him. He only hoped she was able to stifle it.
Grace stood in the French doors of the drawing room, watching her husband talking to Digby on the lawn. The guests were now beginning to make their way upstairs to dinner in the long gallery where Adeline had always held her dinners – except it wasn’t the same long gallery because Celia had chosen to design hers differently. For one the faces of Deverill ancestors did not watch them impassively from the walls as many of the paintings had been lost in the fire; Celia had bought paintings of other people’s ancestors, simply to fill the gaps. It would take years to build a collection – it had taken the Deverills over two hundred.
Grace thought of Michael Doyle. She always thought of Michael Doyle. He plagued her thoughts, tormented her and drove her to distraction. She thought she might go mad with lust and longing. Never before had a man made such a fool of her and yet, she couldn’t help her foolish behaviour. She had lost her pride that day at the fair for she had later followed him round the back of O’Donovan’s public house and thrown herself at him like a mad and wanton woman, trying all the tricks that would normally have ensured he lost control and became putty in her hand. But he had shaken her off. ‘I have sinned,’ he had told her.
‘You cannot blame yourself for things you did in the war. Lord knows I’ve done my share,’ she had replied.
‘No, you don’t understand. The things I’m ashamed of have nothing to do with war.’
‘Then with what?’
At that point he had turned away. ‘I’m sorry, Grace. I’ll speak no more about it.’ He had left her then, wondering what he had done that was so terrible, that he couldn’t ever speak of, that he couldn’t tell her. Now she gazed out onto the lawn at her husband and Digby as Kitty walked over to tell them to come in for dinner, and wondered again, what did he do and how could she find out? Surely, if she could get to the root of his guilt, she could figure a way to dig him out of it.
At the end of dinner, when the coffee was being served, Bertie stood up and a hush fell over the guests. This was quite a different Bertie to the swaying drunkard who had announced to the family at his mother’s funeral that he was not only selling the castle but legitimizing his bastard son Jack. Now he was sober, fresh-faced, groomed and slim – dashing even. ‘Never before have we Deverills been so united,’ he said, then raised his glass. ‘To Celia and Archie.’ Everyone jumped to their feet and toasted the audacious young couple, then Digby gave a speech, thanking Bertie for his generosity of spirit and repeating, once again, the family motto, which, he explained, referred not only to the castle but to their family spirit. ‘Which lives in all of us,’ he said. Beatrice wiped her eye with her napkin. Harry smiled at Celia. Kitty looked lovingly at her father and Elspeth thought how fortuitous it was that neither Maud nor her older sister, Victoria, were here to sour the sweet feeling that encompassed their family. Suddenly, a loud snort punctured the silence. Augusta glared at her husband from the other side of the table. ‘Do me a favour, dear,’ she said to the lady sitting on his left. ‘Give him a sharp prod in the ribs, will you?’
Archie led Celia onto the dance floor where a jazz band, brought in from London, was playing. The Shrubs restrained themselves from squabbling over who danced first with Ethelred by both pretending to give way to the other: ‘No really, Laurel, you must go first.’ ‘No, Hazel, I insist. You must.’ At length Ethelred had tossed a coin and Hazel had won, much to the chagrin of Laurel who had to smile and act as if she didn’t care, which she did, very much. Boysie and Harry danced with their spouses, secretly longing to be rid of them and free to enjoy each other in one of the flamboyantly decorated bedrooms upstairs. Kitty threw herself into the music as she danced with her father while Robert looked on longingly for his stiff leg made dancing impossible. She tried to shake herself out of her gloom – her father was happy for Celia so why couldn’t she be? ‘Our daughters will grow up here as we did and enjoy all the things we enjoyed,’ Celia had said when Kitty had given birth to Florence. And she was right, history would indeed repeat itself and Florence would enjoy the castle just as she had done. So why did Kitty feel so bitter?
‘This is all marvellous,’ said Beatrice to Grace as they watched the dancing in front of the glittering mirrors.
‘Oh, it truly is,’ Grace agreed. ‘Celia said she would bring back the old days and so she has.’ Although both women knew that bringing back the past was never possible they were content to indulge in nostalgia and to secretly long for a time before the Great War when Ballinakelly summers had been so golden.
It was well after midnight when Boysie and Harry found themselves alone in the hall. The grand staircase beckoned them upstairs as if the banisters were malevolent demons whispering encouragement. Their heads were light with champagne bubbles, their hearts tender with nostalgia, their longing all the more acute on account of the impossibility of their affair and their weariness of living a life of secrecy and deceit. Without a word they stepped nimbly up the stairs. The rumbling of music, thumping feet and voices receded as they made their way down the long corridors, deeper and deeper into the depths of the castle. Celia had spent a lot of money installing electricity and Harry was quite unused to bright lights where once it had only been candlelight and oil lamps. The plumbing worked too, which was miraculous considering that once the water had to be brought up in buckets by the servants. Harry was wistful for those times and, as he passed the bedroo
m door where Kitty had discovered him in bed with Joseph the first footman, he had to steal himself not to lose control of his emotions.
Suddenly the castle meant more to him than his lost inheritance, it also represented his failures: what had he done with his life? He had married a woman he didn’t love and loved a man he couldn’t have. He drifted aimlessly in London, from his club to home and home to his club, and there was no purpose to the endless round of social obligations. His job in the City was so dull and monotonous that he sometimes found himself wishing he was back in the Army where at least he had had a purpose. It seemed that the fire had taken more than his home; it seemed to have taken his rudder too. As he walked through the castle he no longer recognized, he felt a great pain expanding in his chest. A longing for what he had lost and for the man he knew he could never be.
‘Boysie,’ he groaned.
Boysie turned round. ‘What is it, old boy?’
Harry couldn’t put into words the sense of desolation he felt. Instead, he took Boysie’s hand and retreated back the way they had come, eventually stopping outside the bedroom Celia had allocated him. Without a word he pulled his lover into the darkness inside and closed the door behind them. ‘This is madness,’ Boysie protested, but he was too giddy with champagne to resist Harry’s insistent mouth kissing his.
Suddenly the light went on. They swung round in surprise to see Charlotte sitting up in the four poster bed, her face white against the pink of her nightdress and her mouth open in a silent gasp. They stared at each other in horror. As the bubbles evaporated and Boysie and Harry were swiftly shocked into sobriety there was a part of Harry that experienced a profound sense of relief.
High up at the top of the western tower Adeline and Hubert looked out into the starlit sky. The moon was almost full, encircled by a halo of silver mist, its eerie light throwing sharp shadows across the lawn below. ‘Do you remember those Summer Balls of our youth, Hubert?’ Adeline asked. ‘Of course people came in their fine carriages back then, with men in livery driving the horses. I remember the sound of hooves on the drive as they all drew up,’ she reflected. ‘Now the guests arrive in motor cars. How times have changed.’ She looked at Hubert and smiled wistfully. ‘We lived well, didn’t we?’
Hubert turned to his wife and his face was cast in shadow like the back of the moon. ‘But are we destined to remain here for . . .’ He hesitated because he could barely utter so terrifying a word. ‘For eternity, Adeline? Is that what our destiny is now? Our lives were as short as a blink on the eye of time, but the eye . . . how long is the eye, Adeline?’
She put her hand against his cheek and tried to look positive. ‘The curse will be broken,’ she said firmly. ‘I promise you.’
A voice interrupted from the armchair. ‘That’s as likely as them putting men on the moon.’ It was Barton Deverill, grumpier than ever.
Adeline ignored him. His bitterness was infectious and bringing Hubert’s spirits down. ‘Don’t listen to him, my darling. He’s a sour old man with a heavy conscience.’
‘You know nothing of my conscience, woman,’ Barton growled.
‘I sense it,’ Adeline retorted. He was really trying her patience.
‘All you sense is the near two hundred and fifty years I’ve been rotting in this place.’
‘You can’t rot if you don’t have a body, Barton,’ she told him briskly, turning back to her husband. ‘I promise you, my darling, I’ll get you out of this place. I will stay with you for as long as you are here and then we will move on, together. All of us.’
Barton laughed cynically from his armchair. ‘So help you God.’
Chapter 14
Digby sat at the breakfast table tucking into a large plate of scrambled eggs on toast, crispy bacon and fried tomatoes garnished with chives. The ball had been a great success and even though he had had little to do with the organization of the event itself, he had had a significant amount to do with the building of the castle. Having initially shied away from a project he had believed both financially suicidal and conceptually foolhardy, he had eventually succumbed to the allure of recapturing the past and inveigled his way into the plans by way of large and frequent cheques. After all, hadn’t those summers at Castle Deverill been the most enchanted weeks of his life? How he had envied Bertie and Rupert for growing up in this magical place. He had felt like a poor relation. Now his grandchildren would grow up here and he could live vicariously through them. Deverill Rising was one thing, Castle Deverill quite another: the history, the prestige, the sheer wonder of the place. He shovelled a forkful of food into his mouth and chewed with relish. Beatrice, who could read her husband’s mind, smiled at him from the other end of the table.
He was enjoying his cup of tea and reading the Irish Times when Celia flew into the room. ‘Papa, last night was a triumph! I didn’t sleep a wink!’
‘It was a great success, my dear. You should be very proud of yourself,’ he said, lifting his eyes momentarily off the page to savour his daughter’s beaming face. ‘You were the most gracious hostess.’
‘Everyone admired the castle!’ she gushed. ‘Everyone complimented the decoration.’
‘And everyone admired you,’ her mother added with a smile.
‘Oh, Mama, if I was any happier I would burst,’ she said. ‘Truly, I have never been so full of joy.’
‘I think you’re still full of champagne,’ said Digby dryly, turning the page.
‘In which case, you must put something else into your stomach,’ said Beatrice.
Celia went to the antique walnut sideboard, bought at auction at Christie’s with the help of Boysie, who worked there, and helped herself to scrambled eggs and tomatoes.
A moment later Harry wandered in, ashen-faced with bloodshot eyes beneath which purple shadows shone like bruises. ‘Somebody had a wild night,’ said Celia with a chuckle, but Harry barely managed a smile.
‘Good morning,’ he said, trying hard to be jovial. ‘I’m afraid I am a little worse for wear.’
‘Darling, come and sit down and have a cup of tea and some toast. You’ll feel much better with something in your stomach,’ said Beatrice. ‘You do look pale,’ she added as he pulled out the chair beside her. She patted his hand with her podgy, bejewelled one and smiled sympathetically. ‘I suppose one must deduce that a hangover is the result of a highly successful party,’ she said softly.
‘Quite,’ Harry agreed, reflecting quietly on the unsuccessful way it had ended.
It wasn’t long before Boysie appeared with Deirdre. The two of them looked as bright and fresh as if they had enjoyed an early night and a brisk morning walk. ‘What a delightful party, Celia,’ said Boysie, sitting beside her. ‘Only two bores on the guest list and I managed to avoid both!’
‘Oh, do tell me who they are and I’ll make sure I sit you between them next year,’ said Celia.
‘I couldn’t possibly be so indiscreet,’ Boysie replied with a smile. He caught Harry’s eye, but swiftly turned away. ‘Can I help you to some breakfast, darling?’ he asked Deirdre. As Boysie went to the sideboard, Charlotte wandered into the room, her face as white as a duck’s egg. Beatrice looked from Charlotte to Harry and realized that their pallor had nothing to do with a hangover.
After breakfast Harry managed to talk to Boysie alone. They stood on the terrace in the warm summer sunshine while a small army of servants cleared away the debris from the night before. Boysie lit a cigarette. Harry stood with his shoulders hunched and his hands buried in his trouser pockets. ‘Did you want to get caught, Harry?’ he asked and Harry recoiled from the hard tone of Boysie’s voice.
‘No . . . I mean, of course not.’ But he wasn’t so sure.
‘Damned foolish to stumble in on your wife like that. She looks none too pleased about it this morning.’
‘She won’t say anything,’ he said quickly.
‘She’d better not.’
‘She’s not speaking to me, though.’
‘That’s no surprise. It�
�s one thing betraying your wife with another woman but quite another with a man. Poor girl. She looked as if she’d been shot in the heart.’
‘She had been, I suppose,’ said Harry. He sighed and rubbed his chin. ‘What a God-awful mess.’
Boysie looked at him and his expression softened. ‘What are you going to do, old boy?’
‘Nothing,’ said Harry.
‘Nothing?’
‘There’s nothing I can do. I’ll wait to see what she wants to do.’
‘See you kicked from here to eternity, I should imagine.’ Boysie chuckled and flicked ash onto the York stone at his feet.
‘I hope not,’ said Harry. He swallowed nervously. ‘I’m hoping she’ll understand.’
‘Celia would understand but Charlotte is not Celia. She’s a sheep, Harry. Sheep follow the crowd and I’m afraid the crowd don’t think very highly of homosexuality. You had better hope, no, you had better pray that she doesn’t tell her family.’ He dragged on his cigarette. ‘Come on, let’s go and find Celia.’ But Harry knew that Celia would be no help at all. Suddenly, he felt an overwhelming desire to talk to Kitty.
‘I’m going to take a walk, old boy. I think some exercise will do me good.’ And he set off across the gardens in the direction of the White House.
Kitty was sitting on the lawn with two-year-old Florence making daisy chains when Harry appeared at the foot of the drive, red-faced from his brisk walk. He strode through the gate and walked up the hill to meet her. ‘Harry!’ she shouted and waved. ‘What a lovely surprise.’ Harry took off his straw hat and sat down in the shade of the apple tree that sheltered the little girl from the sun. ‘Splendid party last night, wasn’t it,’ she said, but her eyes betrayed her struggle to find anything positive about the newly completed castle.
‘You’re finding it hard too?’ he asked.
‘Very,’ she conceded. ‘I feel terrible admitting that, but I know I can speak plainly to you.’
Daughters of Castle Deverill Page 19
