The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  Marnie got it now. Gabrielle. All hopes and dreams had been transferred to her sister. All the sins of the father heaped on the adopted daughter. The cuckoo in the nest.

  ‘Is that what you really think, Mum?’ Mum. The word didn’t fit properly in her mouth. It never had.

  ‘And I was right,’ screamed Judith. ‘You spoiled everything. You tried to alienate my family from me. We had the perfect school . . .’

  Marnie felt the heat of discomfort flare in her stomach. ‘I have to go.’ She couldn’t have that conversation. Not again.

  ‘You destroyed us. Gabrielle would have gone to Oxford or Cambridge, her teachers said so . . .’

  ‘Goodbye, Mum. My mobile number is the same if you need anything.’

  She opened the door and Judith’s voice followed her out, at a pitch that Marnie had never heard before.

  ‘I don’t need anything from you. Don’t ring me. And stay away from my daught—’

  Marnie shut the door behind her, slicing off her mother’s words. She didn’t even realise she was crying until she felt the itch of tears on her cheek.

  Marnie walked away from her mother’s house. She had never thought of it as home; even when she was a little girl it had always felt as if there was a plastic layer over everything that stopped her being part of the Salt family. She might have had their name, but she’d never been one of them.

  She was running away because she’d been a disappointment to herself. Possibly even more than she was to her mother. And that really was saying something.

  She opened the birthday card in the car. It wasn’t a daughter one with a gushy verse about how special she was, but a generic one with a drawing of a woman in a stylish hat and an impossible figure. Inside was blank except for one word, ‘Mum’, and a cross that followed it, so tiny it looked as if it had been written under duress.

  Marnie threw the card on the passenger seat and drove on.

  HISTORY OF WYCHWELL BY LIONEL TEMPLE

  with contributions by Lilian Dearman.

  There have been a few sightings of ghosts in the manor at Wychwell, none substantiated, except for one relatively new entity which has been spotted on a few occasions in the long upstairs gallery, as seen from outside. The ghost takes the shape of an orb of light which travels slowly from one side to the other. Due to the chemical compounds used to make the window glass, the orb appears in a pinkish-purple hue. As such, the ‘ghost’ has acquired the nickname ‘The Pink Lady’.

  Chapter 14

  There was a small welcoming committee when Marnie reached Little Raspberries: Lilian and a buxom lady with a tight greying hair bun and the fresh round face of a dairy maid. Lilian was sitting on the low wall in the sunshine, the other woman was cleaning the outside of the window. Lilian’s face was lit up with a broad smile and her arms were open wide to greet her. Marnie couldn’t ever remember anyone else being that happy to see her.

  ‘How wonderful you are here,’ she said, throwing her arms around Marnie. ‘Cilla, come and meet Marnie.’

  Marnie recognised the name: Lilian’s housekeeper. Cilla wiped her hands on her apron before bouncing over to shake Marnie’s hand with the reverence of someone meeting the Duchess of Cambridge.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Marnie,’ she said, and that delight showed in her big beaming smile.

  ‘Cilla has polished Little Raspberries from top to bottom for you,’ said Lilian. ‘And Herv has cut the grass.’

  ‘There was no need, really,’ said Marnie.

  ‘Well, it’s done,’ countered Lilian. ‘And you’re coming to lunch with me up at the manor, I insist. Zoe – that’s Cilla’s daughter – makes a wonderful sandwich. Leave the unpacking for later.’

  Marnie was peckish now, she had to admit. She’d intended to stop off at a café and have some breakfast but the altercation with her mother had wiped her appetite away. Instead she’d pulled in to a lay-by for ten minutes and sobbed her heart out. Then she’d cleaned her face with a wet wipe, freshened up her make-up and stuck on her stock ‘fuck ’em’ mask. It’d had a lot of use in the past few years.

  ‘I’m parked there,’ said Cilla, nodding towards the car across the lane. ‘I’ll run you both up.’

  So Marnie bowed to the order and together they took the very short journey through Wychwell, up Kytson Hill past Emelie’s cottage and along the rising winding road to the manor. Lilian chattered all the way, like an excited schoolgirl welcoming a French exchange student to whom she was desperate to show things. She more or less jumped out of the car to talk to the young man who was mowing the strip of lawn in front of the great house. Marnie recognised him as the fool at the fair. Cilla’s son Johnny.

  ‘You’ve worked like a medicine on her,’ said Cilla, opening the car door for Marnie, because she had a dodgy child-lock, she explained. ‘I haven’t seen her that giddy for years.’

  ‘I have no idea why,’ said Marnie, with a soft smile. ‘But I’m glad if I have that effect on her.’ And she was. It wasn’t every day she went from zero to hero in two hours and if she were honest, her ego needed it.

  ‘And so am I,’ said Cilla, gently touching her arm and studying Marnie’s face. ‘For all her being the lady of the manor, she’s not had the happiest of lives. Are you related?’

  ‘Lord no,’ chuckled Marnie. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You’re not even some distant cousin?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Come on you two, stop gossiping,’ called Lilian.

  ‘You’ll see why I asked soon enough,’ said Cilla as she followed Marnie inside.

  The hallway was vast and oak panelled, a room from a bygone age. Marnie looked around for a suit of armour standing to attention and found two on sentry duty at the bottom of the wide staircase.

  ‘Wow,’ she said.

  ‘The east wing is new, the original burned down in a fire two hundred years ago. Attributed to Margaret Kytson of course, as is everything else that goes wrong here,’ explained Lilian.

  No sooner had she finished speaking than a block of plaster fell off the ceiling and landed at Marnie’s feet. She jumped back a step in shock.

  ‘The house likes you,’ laughed Lilian. ‘It’s making itself known to you. Say hello back, Marnie.’

  ‘Hello . . . manor house,’ said Marnie, feeling daft.

  ‘Come on. Let me show you something.’

  Lilian started walking up the staircase which registered her footsteps with satisfying creaks. Portraits hung on the wall, men in powdered wigs and military uniforms, women with ruffs and puffed crinolines.

  ‘Meet the family,’ said Lilian. ‘My father’s portrait is worth a lot of money but I refuse to have the old bastard hanging on my wall, so I replaced it with this – Rose Dearman, my great grandmother. My great grandfather brought her over from Ireland. It was thought she was a gypsy and he had her privately educated as a lady to pass muster.’ And Lilian, with a grand hand gesture, presented the portrait to Marnie. A woman in a long green dress with cat-green eyes and black hair piled high on her head. In her hand she held the most delicate shamrock, barely discernible. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, a faint smile of mischief dancing on her dark pink lips. At her feet looking up adoringly at her was a silver greyhound. Marnie did a double-take. The resemblance to herself couldn’t be denied, but surely Lilian didn’t think this was any more than coincidence?

  ‘Beautiful isn’t she?’ said Lilian. ‘None of us ever had her looks, alas.’

  ‘You have her green eyes, Lilian,’ said Marnie.

  ‘I’m the only one who did. Another reason for father to call me an anomaly. I wouldn’t have minded inheriting more of her qualities but the bloody awful Dearman genes dominated. Faulty stock and pig-ugly.’

  It was true that all the other subjects on the wall wouldn’t have won any beauty contests, even given the kind hand of the artists who must have had a nightmare trying to prettify the hideously fat ancestral couple with their big noses and thin lips.

>   They walked together along a galleried landing, the outer wall made up almost entirely of windows.

  ‘This is where people say they see the ghost,’ explained Lilian. ‘An orb of light travelling along here in the dead of night.’

  ‘Any idea who that ghost is?’ asked Marnie. She didn’t believe in them, but that didn’t prohibit her from enjoying a good story.

  ‘Could be anyone, although she is known as the Pink Lady,’ sniffed Lilian. ‘Although it’s only in the last thirty years or so that she’s made an appearance. Could be Father, though he’s more likely to be a poltergeist throwing things about and making his presence known. Mother would have been a wailing woman. And I can’t see Rachel returning here. She hated the bloody house. If she was haunting anywhere, it would be a casino in Monte Carlo. I reckon it must be Margaret Kytson. It’s the only answer.’ And she winked.

  Chuckling at that, Marnie followed Lilian around the upstairs, saw the priest hole where Percival Shanke had unsuccessfully hidden his confessor. Marnie, alone, went up the steps to the tower which afforded the most fantastic view of Wychwell and the thick wood that almost completely surrounded it. It was all very grand but awfully tired. The carpets were bare, there were spider cracks in the windows, rotted frames. It must have been freezing in winter in some of the rooms and it would have cost a fortune to light up all the fireplaces to counteract the chills.

  ‘I’ve brewed the tea,’ Cilla’s voice shouted up towards them.

  ‘Oh, come on, Marnie. We’ve been summoned,’ said Lilian, walking down the staircase holding on to the beautifully carved bannister. ‘I’ll show you the rest of the house after we’ve eaten.’

  They walked through an old library where the smell of lavender polish hung heavily in the air, then into a snug with heavy black velvet drapes and mahogany panelling to all the walls. They passed through into a long dining room with a table that must have seated thirty people, Marnie guessed. Doors there led into a bright conservatory, a sharp contrast for the eyes after all that darkness.

  ‘This is my favourite part of the house,’ said Lilian, leading Marnie over to the round table placed near the window and set for two. ‘You can probably see why.’

  The view from the window was that of a small lake. The garden it graced wasn’t a typical manor layout with symmetry and order, but was wild and beautiful. She could see a small square building in the distance and what looked like a short jetty.

  ‘That’s the boathouse,’ said Lilian. ‘I used to take a boat out on the lake and just drift off to sleep in it. I always felt safe in the middle of the water’ – she sighed as if visited by a happy memory – ‘away from my bastard father and my psychopathic sister. Come and eat.’

  The table was not laid with a couple of simple sandwiches, as Marnie had expected, but a buffet lunch fit for the King of Tonga. To coin a phrase relevant to the moment, Lilian’s housekeeper really had pushed the boat out.

  ‘My mother was barred from taking a boat out after trying to capsize it and drown my father,’ said Lilian with a nonchalance that suggested this was nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘I didn’t notice a portrait of her on the wall, or did I miss it?’ asked Marnie, choosing a cucumber sandwich and marvelling, at first bite, how Zoe Oldroyd had managed to make such a simple concept so delicious.

  ‘There is no portrait,’ said Lilian. ‘Mother was transparent. Even for the weakest watercolours. No substance to her at all. Her happiest years here were when she was locked up in the tower.’

  ‘Good lord.’

  ‘She was having an affair with her psychiatrist. We always believed the banging and thrashing noises were her having electro-convulsive treatment.’ Lilian laughed. ‘Which I suppose she was. It’s all in the book. I told Lionel to spare us no blushes. It’s not for public consumption anyway, thank God.’

  ‘I haven’t got that far,’ said Marnie, trying not to spit crumbs. ‘I’m at puritan times.’

  ‘Ah yes, James Sutton Dearman. Made Bacchus look like a vestal virgin. Used to organise county orgies. The Lemon Villa was his personal whorehouse. Secretly, behind closed doors of course. Outwardly his tongue was so far up Cromwell’s arse he could taste his toothpaste. My family have always been so very good at obsequiousness.’

  It was such a beautiful tranquil setting in the sunlit room looking out at the lake that Marnie temporarily forgot her life was in such a mess. She and Lilian munched on the tiny sandwich triangles and pastries without saying anything and the silence was as warm and comfortable as the buttered crumpets.

  Conversation started up again when Cilla, beaming with pride, brought in a pink nest of meringue, filled with cream and fat raspberries.

  ‘I’ll get too used to this,’ said Marnie. ‘I’ll be up here every day for this treatment.’

  ‘Oh do, you’d be very welcome,’ urged Lilian.

  ‘I’d be as fat as a house.’

  A very big girl. Her mother’s voice came from nowhere, booming in her ear, and as if Lilian had heard it too she asked about her.

  ‘What was your mother’s opinion about you moving to the back of beyond?’

  ‘Funny, I was just thinking about her. Not much actually. She thinks I’m a fool, although there’s nothing new there.’

  ‘Well you aren’t,’ said Lilian firmly. ‘You’re a big girl and entitled to live your life as you see fit.’ Her face assumed a quizzical look at Marnie’s ensuing smile. Marnie wondered if she was psychic.

  ‘I’ve packed in my job in Leeds and from Monday morning I’m going to be making cheesecakes three times a week for the Tea Lady in Skipperstone. I’m the jewel in the crown of my mother’s disappointment,’ announced Marnie, as Lilian crunched her knife into the meringue.

  ‘How wonderful,’ said Lilian, ignoring the latter part of the sentence. ‘How enterprising and smart of you. I bet your sister wouldn’t have spotted such an opportunity and dived straight into it like you did.’ She delivered a crumbly triangle of dessert to the plate that Marnie was holding up.

  ‘What should I do about rent, Lilian?’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk such nonsense.’

  ‘I don’t expect to live here for free.’

  ‘I won’t hear of such talk. La la la. You’re my guest. No one pays rent in Little Raspberries. It’s the law. Cream?’

  A conversation for another time, Marnie decided, not wanting to throw Lilian’s kind hospitality back in her face. ‘Why not.’

  ‘I gather that the delicious Mr Fox is no more,’ said Lilian, tilting the cream jug over Marnie’s meringue.

  ‘He was married, Lilian. Very married,’ said Marnie, wondering why it was so easy to talk to Lilian, why she could give so much away – even sober now – and not feel judged. ‘His wife stormed into my office and she was pregnant with their fourth child. She attacked me in front of the people I work with. I felt so ashamed, I had to get away fast. Then she drove to my house the next day and smashed up my neighbour’s car and her front windows thinking they were mine. My mother always said that I was the sort of person who attracted trouble like a magnet. I think she was right abou—’

  There was a cough from behind them and Marnie’s head shot round.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt you.’ A young woman was standing in the open doorway holding a coffee pot. The girl with the red hair who was the mead-distributing wench on the day of the fair. Zoe, Cilla’s daughter.

  ‘Just leave it here, dear, and we’ll pour it ourselves,’ said Lilian. ‘Please close the door on your way out, Zoe.’

  Zoe rushed in, said a very quick hello to Marnie, and rushed out again.

  ‘She’s a lovely girl,’ said Lilian dropping her head close to Marnie’s to add, ‘but hasn’t the finesse of her mother. Anyway, you were saying . . .’

  ‘I couldn’t go back in to work, not after what happened. And I didn’t want to stay in that house.’

  ‘Understandable,’ said Lilian, nodding. ‘You never did settle there, did you? And
what did Mr Fox have to say – the bastard?’

  ‘He didn’t ring, he wouldn’t answer my calls either. I can’t believe I was such an idiot.’ She poured the coffee into the fine china cups that bore the Dearman coat of arms and their family motto: Aurum Potestas Est. She recognised it from the book that Lilian had given her about the village.

  ‘I had a torrid affair in my twenties,’ said Lilian. ‘George Purcell and I were the talk of the vale. George was married, too. We were going to run away together but when it came to it . . . chicken-livered—’ Lilian huffed, unable to find a word strong enough to describe her lover’s perfidy. ‘Oh, Marnie, talk is a very cheap currency for sex. The heart does get more discerning for the breaking, my dear, but it did take me a long time to get over George Purcell.’ Lilian’s smile spread upwards, touching her lovely green eyes and made her look so much younger than her years.

  ‘I’m not sure my heart has learned any lessons,’ said Marnie. ‘I fall from one disastrous relationship straight into the other. But,’ and she clapped her hands together, ‘no more.’

  Outside the zuzz of a petrol strimmer starting up punctured the summer stillness and Herv Gunnarsen came into view from stage left. His hair was loosened, falling past his shoulders. He looked like some sort of gardening lion.

  ‘Ah, now there is a man,’ said Lilian, with a sage note in her voice. ‘I think most of the women in Wychwell wish they were thirty years younger. Although youth obviously does not guarantee his affection.’

  She meant Ruby Sweetman, of course.

  ‘Yes, he’s quite a looker,’ replied Marnie. In fact, Herv Gunnarsen was too bloody handsome for his own good, even if he was far from her usual slim, suited, dark-haired, executive, dickhead type. Not every handsome man was a git, she knew, but – without exception so far – the ones who made her own pupils dilate seemed to be. She certainly wasn’t going to hop from a Justin frying pan into a Herv fire.

  Herv had stopped the strimmer to rotate his shoulder. A very muscular shoulder, it had to be said. Marnie wondered if he was aware he had an audience and was doing his best Diet Coke-break-man impression.