The Love Letter

by Fiona Walker

  The sunken lane climbed over the ridge that hid the sea from the main road and Legs blinked to adjust to the emerald dark as the familiar high-banked wooded tunnel enveloped her, still revealing nothing of the dramatic coastline ahead. She tucked the Honda into passing places as cars approached, tourists with sunburned noses who had spent the day in Farcombe, meandering along the steep, cobbled lanes of the fishing village, poddling along the harbour, visiting the craft shops and cafes, walking the cliff path to the beach at Fargoe Bay.

  To the left were the tall stone gate pillars of Farcombe Hall, topped with their rearing unicorns which the family had nicknamed Balios and Xanthus after the horses who drew Achilles’ chariot, guarding the high, wrought-iron gates. Despite its grandeur, this was not the main entrance to the estate, which was on the main coast road, with matching gatehouses shouldering a grand archway with a pinnacle in the shape of a huge-winged griffin.

  Legs couldn’t resist slowing as she passed, peering along the driveway, which curled away out of sight, its tall rhododendron hedges hiding all that lay beyond. The last time she’d been here, over a year ago, the fallen red and blue petals that carpeted the driveway had been turning mulchy brown, like boiled sweets caramelising in a pan; this year they were already just faint black liquorish strings running through the cobbles, pulped and rotted by the recent storms. The little sunken brook that ran in front of the gateposts was fierce as she’d ever known it. As small children, Daisy and Legs had floated folded paper message boats on it and sent them downstream, before hurtling along the lane on racing, chubby legs, pushing and shoving as they marked their crafts to see whose joined the river stream first before launching out to sea.

  Legs turned down the volume on the radio and opened the window, able to hear the stream bubble and smell the sappy tang of the wooded cliffs, cut through with sea salt. It was delicious.

  She put the car back in gear and hurried along the lane, passing the public car park on the right. Here the lane narrowed dramatically, with its peeling ‘Private Road’ sign declaring that it was the Farcombe Hall Estate, with no public access to the harbour or beach.

  Dropping through the trees to the river fork, Legs felt her stomach go weightless as though whizzing downward on a Ferris wheel. Then she took the familiar left bend, past more ‘Private – Farcombe Estate’ signs, and began to climb again, the sea glinting through the trees on her right. To her left, the woodland thinned again and the estate’s parkland stretched up, still coyly hiding its jewel.

  Another fork known as Gull Cross marked the point where the road threaded down through coastal heath and craggy stone outcrops to the private cove at Eascombe, a tunnel from which led directly to the main house. Steering away from the sea instead, Legs drove uphill on a bumpy unmade track, and into more woods, her own precious forest where every gnarled trunk was familiar, where she’d once played Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks with Daisy, hosting teddy bears’ picnics and making dens, and later conducted midnight ghost walks and camped in hammocks between the trees. Somewhere the two Barbie dolls were buried beneath one of the old rowans, along with a time capsule created by the Foulkes and North children as instructed by the Blue Peter team, containing various coins, newspaper cuttings, postcards, toy cars and a retaining brace that Legs had sneaked in and then claimed to have lost.

  Here in her enchanted wood, there were many trees with her initials carved in them – AN – some sharing hearts with FP, others proclaimed rather shamefully that she and DF ‘woz here’. There was one tree in particular that held a special secret, which meant she loved it more than any other, and couldn’t wait to lie in the deep hollow where its trunk divided into two outstretched arms.

  But first she raced on to Spywood Cottage, hidden deep within the darkness, along its own small pitted track that had wrecked many an axle of the Norths’ family cars. Once a gamekeeper’s cottage, the thatched cob dwelling was pretty enough to reduce first-time guests to tears with one glimpse at its higgledly-piggledy perfection over the five-barred gate, nestled in its own fairy glade clearing of bottle green grass, ferns, wild strawberries and wood anemones, with a cluster of oaks and rowans at the end of the garden, beyond which was a sheer drop to the North Devon coast. The sound of the waves crashing against the stony outcrops could be so loud in the cottage at times that they would have to raise their voices to be heard. When the children were little, Lucy had been terrified that they would fall to their deaths, but although a few games of truth or dare had led to some terrifying cliffhanger moments over the years, and many a ball had been accidentally kicked over the lip to spin fifty feet down onto the sharp rocks below, Spywood had proved a safe haven to all who stayed there, and they felt as though they had a secret fairytale cottage in a cloud.

  Legs parked on the main woodland track and let herself in through the boundary gate, knowing that her old Honda’s suspension would never take the cottage’s driveway. The ruts here were even deeper than she remembered, now filled with storm water, and it had clearly been used quite recently, although not by her mother’s little runabout. These deep gouges came from a big off-roader with tyres like boulders.

  Hurrying between the ruts because she wanted to get into the cottage to use the loo, Legs slowed in surprise as she noticed a bicycle propped up against one oak post of the porch. Again, the memories hit her as sharply as the sea air and cool breeze.

  Francis has always propped his bike there, day after day as he paid court to her each school holiday. The kick of déjà vu to her chest was breathtaking. This was a rusting sit-up-and-beg antique, not the garish yellow and purple mountain bike of which he had been so proud, but it made her stifle a nostalgic hiccup nonetheless. Then, as she ducked beneath the curtain of clematis overhanging the porch, she let out a gasp of surprise.

  There was a note on the door.

  I LOVE YOU.

  The latch was off, the door unlocked.

  Inside, all was as she remembered – the scrubbed pine table with its mismatched chairs, the threadbare sofas and rugs, the collected paraphernalia of tens of family holidays on the sills and shelves, driftwood and shells, bric-a-brac and bottles.

  There was a vase of sweetpeas on the table, along with two champagne glasses.

  Legs caught her breath, heart hammering. Still hesitating in the doorway, she saw another note pinned to the narrow stairs door. It was an arrow pointing upwards.

  Hardly able to breathe for excitement, she followed its point. As she creaked hurriedly up the old elm treads, she heard strains of music coming from the main bedroom. It was the bassoon solo from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

  Now on the top step, Legs froze with alarm as a cold splash of self-awareness drenched her senses. She was here to talk quietly to Francis about Gordon Lapis. She was with Conrad now. Any rapprochement should be calmly handled, with dignity on both sides. This was all wrong, surely?

  Yet her honest heart continued to race with hope, and her overheating body bubbled with anticipation. She no longer cared that she was sweaty and unwashed after her journey, and hadn’t had time to sport Magic Pants, fine perfume and make-up.

  She crossed through the landing room and burst into the furthest bedroom. The windows were all wide open, the long muslin curtains billowing in the wind, the scent of the sea as fresh as a wave’s spray.

  ‘Arghhh!’

  Hector Protheroe, a man she had once believed to be a king, and later thought of as her future father-in-law, was sitting naked on the bed playing his bassoon.

  With classic sangfroid, Hector didn’t play a dud note as he finished the refrain with a flourish, stretched back and reached for a towel to first dab his lips and then cover his long torso. For a man of over sixty, he had a great body, like a veteran tennis pro, all six foot four of it, lean, sinewy and tanned. Apart from a slight paunch in the middle and a soft dusting of white hairs on his chest, he could pass for Conrad’s age.

  ‘Good afternoon Allegra.’ His deep bass voice let out a bark of surpri
se. ‘We weren’t expecting you, were we?’

  Legs hid behind the door.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped.

  She heard a creaking of floorboards as he stood up. ‘Waiting for Lucy. She popped to Bude for champagne.’

  Legs was dumbfounded, trying to make sense of her mother playing hostess to a naked Hector Protheroe in the cottage. Was he a closet naturist, too?

  ‘Are you celebrating something?’

  ‘Every day is a celebration at the moment.’ Now wrapped in a jaunty, orchid-strewn silk kimono that was far too short, Hector and his bassoon joined her in the landing room, ducking beneath the low beams, his voice hushed with concern. ‘My dear, you do know, don’t you?’

  ‘Know what?’

  His faded blue eyes softened amid their tanned creases, and he studied her shocked face thoughtfully before steering her downstairs where it was less cramped and he could straighten up to his full six foot four and make an announcement that left Legs’ jaw hanging yet lower.

  ‘I’ve left Poppy.’

  Legs reeled back. So that was it. Her mother was providing sanctuary for Hector, who had finally left his troubled marriage of twenty years. There had been many occasions in the past when he’d threatened to do so, and his flirtations and affairs had been legend, but he’d never actually done the deed.

  Her first thought was for Francis. As a young boy with a stepmother he loathed, this was news he could only have dreamed of. Now, in adulthood, he might feel differently. How was he taking it?

  Only after she’d pondered this for a moment did a second thought strike her. Why was Hector naked, and why had he written I LOVE YOU on the door? He must have a mistress and be using Spywood to conduct his trysts. He was an incorrigible flirt, well known as a roué and a terror to barmaids at the Book Inn in Farcombe.

  ‘Lucy has been amazing,’ Hector was saying.

  Legs gasped in ever-dawning shock. With typical naivety and kindness, her mother was obviously providing a refuge for the lovers, and even catering for them. No wonder Lucy had been away so long watercolouring. She’d always had a soft spot for Hector and run errands for him, forever at his beck and call, the swine.

  ‘That’s such an abuse of friendship!’ Legs squeaked.

  Hector shook his head. ‘Au contraire, my dear Allegra, recevoir sans donner fait tourner l’amitié.’ He smiled benignly at her baffled face. ‘Receiving without giving turns the friendship.’

  ‘That’s as might be, but there was still no need to bring my mother into all this!’

  ‘She rather came of her own free will.’

  They were standing in the kitchen now, Hector’s bassoon still aloft, like a fertility symbol. Legs felt she should cast around for a phallic symbol of her own to even things up – the ornamental bedpan that hung from the wall, maybe, or one of the sausage-dog draft excluders? She could use a weapon if things got heated; Hector was hardly a threat in his flowery kimono, but his acid charm was such high grade uranium that he could flatten an ego with one barbed comment.

  She’d never enjoyed an easy relationship with the man who lived up to his name by being something of a hectoring bully and vociferous critic. A controversial, anti-establishment figure and notorious gambler with a knack for making money, friends and headlines easily, Hector Protheroe had famously launched the Commentator magazine in the seventies when he was fresh out of Cambridge, later selling it for a fat profit which enabled him to open the Fitzroy Club in the eighties, one of the first of the swathe of private members’ clubs that cashed in on London’s glitterati clique. But the main source of Hector’s considerable income came from Smile Media, a company at the cutting edge of mobile telecommunications, of cable and satellite and later digital broadcasting and publishing. ‘Spread the Smile’ had been one of the biggest advertising campaigns of the nineties, a catchphrase familiar to every Brit. Smile phones were, for a time, the ultimate in cool, along with Smile palmtops, laptops and Smile internet.

  The man behind renegade publishing, trendy nightclubs and multimedia communications might maintain that he was an ‘inspirer’, and he certainly had plenty of hippy attributes that made him appear laidback and easy-going, but Legs knew enough to appreciate that the retired entrepreneur, reformed gambler and passionate music lover could be a tyrant, albeit one with a positive spin. He’d certainly pushed his only son incredibly hard over the years, expecting nothing less than perfection. At times, the pressure on Francis had been almost unbearable, and Legs had often stood up to his father on her lover’s behalf, but that was where the famous Protheroe charm came in. Hector’s seductive charisma made him a difficult man to challenge. He could turn any conversation in his favour, twisting the argument to serve his purpose so that ultimately one was left not only feeling rather silly, but also hopelessly in his awe and debt. It was why he was so lethal in business, inspired such loyalty amongst friends, and was so totally irresistible to all who met him.

  Yet he was supremely selfish in his personal relationships, particularly with women. His third wife Poppy could be awkward and eccentric, but for two decades she had coped admirably with his rages, infidelity and self-absorption, and was his match intellectually. Hector self-confessedly relied upon his wife’s steely stoicism to keep him in check, crediting her with bringing his long-term gambling addiction under control, stemming his drinking and redirecting his energies into supporting the many altruistic causes that had earned him such an exemplary public reputation today. She’d also turned a blind eye to his many flirtations, which some in their inner circle put down to her incredibly short sight. Cast adrift from the marriage, he could cause havoc, and sideswipe poor, kind-hearted Lucy in his slipstream. Legs felt highly protective.

  ‘So where are you living?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘You have plenty of houses. Isn’t it a bit selfish to squeeze in here?’

  He barked with laughter.

  Legs wanted to snap at him that he’d have to move out now that she was here (as she rather hoped her mother would, too, to clear the way for long chats with Francis), but her bladder was fit to burst now and so she was forced to retreat to the bathroom and regroup.

  There were definite signs of male occupation here – an extra toothbrush, aftershave, a beard trimmer and some enormous slippers which appeared to have been stepped out of as a bath was stepped into and then abandoned beneath the antique towel rail.

  For the first time, Legs began to wonder what her father made of all this.

  Just then she heard a car engine coming along on the wood track. With relief, she washed her hands, splashing cool water on her face and then unbolting the door, determined to sort out this nonsense.

  The bassoon was back in its stand by the chaise longue, and the front door was wide open, meaning Hector was braving the elements in his kimono in welcome. Legs dashed in his wake.

  Hector had made it almost as far as the car, from which Lucy was only just emerging. His frantic hand gestures and facial expressions were not enough to alert her to danger.

  ‘Hector, my lionheart!’ She threw out her arms in embrace, imagining that he was rushing to greet her with amorous impatience. ‘I have bought oysters for passion, and ice cream that we can eat from one another’s most intimate love cups.’

  At that moment, Lucy North caught sight of her younger daughter gaping at her over the swinging gate.

  ‘Ah.’ Lucy’s smile turned from joyous to mortified, but all teeth remained on show in a brave attempt at a bluff.

  Legs barely recognised her own mother. That wild peppery hair had been bobbed and bleached a flattering ash blonde, the jolly, freckled face disguised with lots of smoky eyeliner and red lipstick, and she was wearing a wraparound dress that revealed her waist for the first time in over a decade and showed a lot of leg. She looked sensational, but to Legs it was like staring at a stranger.

  Her phone started to ring. She wanted to ignore it, but it was playing ‘Teenage Kicks’, the song she’d assign
ed to Francis, added to which Hector was suddenly all over her like a rash.

  ‘What network are you on?’ he demanded as she delved into her pocket to retrieve it. ‘There’s never a signal here.’

  ‘Virgin,’ she admitted, making him reel back in shock as she mentioned Smile Media’s business arch-nemesis.

  She answered the call, stepping behind a tree in a hopeless quest for privacy.

  The signal was in fact so poor that the line was barely holding together. Francis sounded like he was speaking from a tin on a three-mile string.

  ‘How much do you know about this?’ she demanded furiously.

  ‘I knew … should ha … warned you.’ Despite the interference, hearing his voice was like a warm breath in her ear, his bass tone was softer and lighter than his father’s, still tinged with American top notes, but the timbre strikingly similar. ‘You’ve just caught … together?’

  ‘Not exactly in flagrante, but flagrant enough.’

  ‘We must talk. I’ll meet you … the Lookout … ten min …’ The line went dead.

  Face flaming, she swept past her still-smiling mother and headed for her car. ‘I’ll book into the pub.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming back?’ Lucy called, voice shaking.

  ‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow when we’ve all calmed down enough to talk. Enjoy your oysters.’ I hope they choke Hector, she added with unspoken venom.

  It was only once she was behind the wheel and emerging from woods to sunlight that she started to sob, overwhelmed by what she’d just witnessed. She drove back to the Gull Cross fork and swerved blindly down the lane towards the bay. At the point where the track started to snake down through the coastal heath, she braked hard and then cut the engine. The Honda was left parked at a jaunty angle with the bonnet crammed in a gorse bush.

  The sea wind whipped away her tears as soon as she got out, and the panic subsided. Francis would make sense of it all. He always did.

  Chapter 6

  The path up to the Lookout was massively overgrown these days, sometimes barely passable. Legs kept losing it completely and having to retrace her steps. Mostly she navigated from instinct. Beyond the trees, almost cut into the cliff side, was a narrow stone ledge that ran deep within the gorse and heather, virtually a gully at times, uneven and precarious.