Princess

by Alison Fraser

  Unable to see a way over the impenetrable wall the girl built round her at will, he left in silence, but with a head full of pointed, pointless riddles. He retrieved his copy of the will from the study desk, and for a long time pondered over the phrase—’the most suitable person so to do’—and was left still asking the question ‘Why me?’

  By no stretch of the imagination was he tailored for the role of guardian to any young girl, especially this one. He repeated the girl’s claim—’that’s why my beloved stepmother left you to me in her will’. Strangely put, and surely inverted: he was inheriting the girl if anything. The ‘beloved’ had also rung harsh and false, a curse, not a benediction, that made a nonsense of Mrs Baker’s references to her as sweet and shy, and his aunt’s labelling her retarded. A fierce demented intelligence had shone in that oddly beautiful face for a moment out of time, but, God help him, part of him wished he had not intruded into her twilight world to witness it. He no longer felt able to walk cleanly away.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DROPPING the paper-knife he had been shifting from hand to hand with an unaccustomed abstraction, Adam abruptly reached for the telephone and dialled a familiar number. He let it ring and released the breath he had been holding when his mother answered.

  ‘Are you back in London, dear? Did everything go all right?’ Nancy enquired pleasantly.

  ‘No to both questions,’ Adam replied forcibly. ‘Listen, Mother, I need you up here.’

  There was a pregnant silence as Mrs Carmichael assimilated Adam’s words and tone. It had been over fifteen years since her self-contained son had used the word ‘need’ to her.

  ‘In Yorkshire?’ she asked unnecessarily. ‘Why? What’s wrong, Adam?’

  ‘Calm down, Mother,’ Adam advised, quelling his annoyance at her worried question. Had his mother conveniently forgotten the existence of one Serena Jane Templeton? ‘The stepdaughter is proving a problem.’ He paused for reaction and when none came he muttered drily, ‘That surprise package was rather sprung on me, and I’m not sure how you expect me to handle it.’

  ‘The stepdaughter?’ Mrs Carmichael repeated the one phrase that still remained in her head, after having obliterated every other thought. ‘Serena?’

  ‘Is there more than one?’ Adam returned flippantly, and was instantly contrite as his mother’s breathing became discernibly shallower. Perhaps his mother had imagined Serena no longer living with her half-sister and it was a surprise to her too. ‘Yes, Mother, Serena Temple-ton... the second husband’s daughter.’

  ‘But, Adam, I don’t understand. Serena—she’s...’ the faint protest faded completely.

  ‘She’s what, Mother?’ Adam urged to what seemed like a dead line. ‘Are you still there?’ He wondered if he should try to reconnect the call.

  ‘Andrea, she told me that...’ his mother’s voice came back, but at half-strength, ‘...just can’t believe...’

  ‘You can’t believe what, Mother?’ Adam coaxed gently, now aware of the acute distress at the other end of the line, if not the reason for it. ‘Please start making sense, because precious little does round here!’

  There was another prolonged silence before Nancy Carmichael spoke again, ignoring his question but with a shade of her normal assurance as she promised to be in Yorkshire as soon as possible.

  His mother’s vagueness and anxiety did little to make Adam feel easier. Neither did Mr Alexander, arriving after lunch with some palliative literature on a prospective mental home—as if Adam’s choice was a foregone conclusion. The solicitor left with an ill-disguised air of satisfaction in spite of the younger man’s coldness; in a rare anger Adam tore the brochures up.

  And waited.

  His mother arrived an hour before dinner in a city taxi-cab with a full complement of suitcases—a complete turnabout from the woman who had declared herself not up to the trip only days before.

  Adam gave her a brief kiss on the cheek, before admonishing, ‘You should have telephoned. I’d have met you at the station—I’ve hired a car.’

  ‘There wasn’t time before I left London, dear.’ Nancy Carmichael recalled the rush that had preceded her journey and Adam noted the strain in her voice.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you decided to come. Do you want to freshen up before dinner?’

  ‘I’d like to see Serena first,’ she pressed, sinking down in a chair in the hallway.

  ‘She’s resting,’ Adam lied—the first thing that came into his head, for from their earlier conversation he had concluded that his mother was as much in the dark about some things as he had been, and right at that moment she did not look ready for any nasty shocks. ‘Perhaps later.’

  Mrs Baker’s appearance in the front hall precluded any further discussion, and after the housekeeper had guided them up to the room she had prepared, he instructed his mother to lie down for a while. It wasn’t until they were both seated at the dinner table that the matter which had brought Nancy north was broached.

  ‘Where is Serena?’ his mother queried anxiously, after the maid had served the first course. ‘I expected to see her at dinner.’

  She has her meals upstairs in splendid isolation,’ Adam commented with less than the tact he had intended to use, and his sour tone earned him a sharp glance from his mother.

  ‘How odd, Adam. If I didn’t know any better, I would say you and the girl have crossed swords and you’ve come off worse,’ she murmured thoughtfully, and with a thread of amusement asked, ‘Is she immune to your fatal charm?’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to come up here for a rundown on my character faults, Mother.’ Adam was not in the mood for humour, and when he eventually felt his way to enlightening his mother as to the current situation, he doubted she would be either. ‘Nor did I make any effort to charm the child.’

  ‘By my reckoning, Serena must be eighteen,’ Nancy reflected. ‘Hardly a child in this day and age.’

  ‘Well, she’s a child as far as I’m concerned,’ Adam responded stiffly, and took a long sip of the dry white wine, leaving his soup to grow cold.

  ‘She really has shaken you up.’ Nancy Carmichael was surprised at the change in her usually unruffled son. She loved him, but loathed the cool uncaring front he presented to the world. ‘It seems that Serena has fulfilled all her early promise to be somebody special.’

  Adam groaned inwardly. If special meant what Serena had become, then she was indeed special—but the reappearance of the maid with the main course deprived him off an opportunity to disillusion his mother. Undoubtedly anxious about ,the girl, yet his mother also seemed to be pleased about something.

  ‘Mother, I’m finding it difficult, to understand your attitude,’ Adam replied with heavy patience when they were alone again. ‘You persuade me to come up to the wilds of Yorkshire to attend your sister’s funeral, leaving me in ignorance of the girl’s existence and placing me in an extremely awkward situation...’

  ‘Actually I didn’t realise that Serena would be here,’ Nancy interrupted with a rueful grimace.

  ‘Where did you imagine she would be?’ Adam asked when a long pause followed the sober statement.

  ‘It’s not easy to say.’ Nancy fingered the fine string of pearls at her throat, betraying a return to nervousness. ‘After the report of the accident—you do know about the accident?’

  ‘Yes. Now,’ Adam replied tersely.

  ‘You were away at the time,’ she parried the implied criticism. ‘Well, anyway, I telephoned and invited Andrea to come to London for a rest and bring the child. We quarrelled rather badly—a misunderstanding.’ Nancy Carmichael was always ready to see the best side of anybody’s character. ‘She accused me of... of interfering in her life, and then stunned me with the news that... that Serena had died in hospital without regaining consciousness.’

  Adam’s frown deepened to incredulous shock. ‘Have I got this right? Andrea told you the girl was dead?’

  ‘Yes. I know I was at fault, but...’ Nancy stretched her hands out in a gesture
that sought understanding.

  ‘Mother, you’re not making sense again,’ Adam replied, pushing his plate away. ‘How can you be blamed for your sister’s incredible lie?’

  ‘Not for the lie as such,’ Nancy returned vaguely, ‘but I promised Graham I’d look out for her, if anything happened to him.’

  ‘Andrea?’ Adam was becoming increasingly lost by his mother’s confused narrative.

  ‘No, Serena.’ Nancy sensed her son’s exasperation. ‘I suppose I’d better tell you the whole story.’ Her reluctance was evident.’

  ‘Preferably from the beginning, if you can locate it.’ Adam softened the sarcasm with a smile, quite prepared to defer his own unpleasant news in the face of his mother’s obvious stress.

  ‘I am rambling a bit, aren’t I?’ Nancy said self-effacingly, returning the squeeze of his fingers. ‘It’s just that it’s all rather upsetting, and Andrea was my sister.’

  ‘Look, Mother, if there are any skeletons in the family closet, then as a fully-paid up member I have the right to hear about them,’ he coaxed lightly.

  In a rush, Nancy continued, ‘Well, as you know, Andrea was many years younger than me. My father married her mother just before the second war. I was in the Wrens when he was killed in an air-raid. Andrea was only eighteen months old when she and her mother were evacuated to Yorkshire. They never returned to London—Clara, my stepmother, couldn’t stand the noise of the city any more, even after the bombs had stopped.’

  Adam supposed this family history was leading somewhere, although quite where he couldn’t see.

  ‘And?’ he prompted.

  ‘We lost touch, I’m afraid, and then about seven years ago, when we ran into each other in London, I invited her to stay for a while—I hoped we might develop a closer relationship, even after all those years of silence,’ Nancy murmured quietly, her tone giving the impression that things had not turned out as planned. ‘We met Graham at a garden party—such a nice man! He’d just come back from Italy with his little girl. His wife had died a few years earlier and he felt he owed Serena a better upbringing than he could provide in a small fishing village. Like most artists he tended to be forgetful of worldly things and Serena had begun to run a little wild. Not that she wasn’t a very lovable child,’ Nancy hastened to emphasise, ‘always asking questions and sparklingly alive, although not at all precocious.’

  Serena, as a young child, had certainly impressed people favourably. Adam wondered what his mother would make of the pathetic creature she had become.

  ‘And so they fell in love and got married?’ he suggested with more than a touch of sardonicism.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Nancy appeared remote, involved in the past. ‘They did get on well, and Andrea could be most pleasant and charming. The child needed a stable home and a mother, and Andrea seemed both willing and able to fit the role perfectly. Graham was looking for security for the child, and to a certain extent for himself. Not financial, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Adam mocked. Graham Templeton hadn’t exactly lost out by it all. ‘This house is a far cry from the traditional artist’s garret,’ he pointed out dryly. ‘A very practical arrangement.’

  ‘I don’t think you yourself are a great believer in romantic love, so you can hardly blame him,’ Nancy defended. She had liked Graham Templeton and his young daughter. ‘He was in his late forties at the time and he thought he was acting for the best—an arrangement that would suit them all.’

  ‘Only it didn’t work out that way,’ Adam mused as a certain painting came to mind.

  ‘I... I don’t know,’ she said with a distinct hesitation.

  ‘ “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil,”’ he softly taunted his mother’s philosophy.

  ‘Who can tell what goes on inside a marriage?’ Nancy evaded his searching gaze and concentrated on neatly folding her linen napkin.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’ he asked accusingly.

  ‘Well, you were abroad most of that time, and you’ve never really shown any interest in family gossip,’ she parried.

  And his mother hated discussing the unpleasant—a virtue in most cases, but it made it more difficult for Adam in the current circumstances.

  ‘Shall we move to the lounge for coffee?’ he suggested. ‘I have some news for you.’

  Later, when the coffee had been poured, Adam remarked conversationally, ‘I found some paintings of Templeton’s in a studio at the back of the house. There’s a rather good portrait of Andrea.’

  For good, Nancy read pleasant to look at, and affirmed, ‘Yes, she was a very good-looking woman. She took after our father.’ She tilted her head to one side and looked consideringly at Adam before continuing, ‘You have a likeness to him too—around the eyes.’

  ‘I can’t say I’d noticed,’ Adam said uninterestedly.

  ‘Perhaps Andrea had, that time you met, remember. And that’s why she wanted you to have the house,’ Nancy said thoughtfully.

  ‘Sentimental rubbish, Mother,’ Adam derided without any real maliciousness, and then realising just what his mother had said, he pressed, ‘You knew that I was to inherit her estate?’

  ‘I suspected so, yes,’ Nancy confirmed, and when her son sighed heavily she admitted, ‘I suppose I should have told you, but her letter was a little strange. She was ill, but she didn’t want to see me, and if anything happened to her, she would like you to take care of her personal effects.’ Her expression clouded over with the remembered hurt.

  ‘Such as an eighteen-year-old child,’ he uttered aloud.

  ‘I’m so looking forward to seeing her again,’ Nancy enthused. ‘Despite the shock of your news, I’m dying to find out all about her.’

  ‘Well, she’s special, just as you imagined,’ he said grimly.

  He set his coffee cup firmly down on the table but was conscious that he was now deferring the unpleasant as he asked, ‘So why did Andrea lie to you about the girl?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Nancy shrugged. ‘Does any of it really matter now?’

  ‘Mustn’t speak ill of the dead, eh?’ he chivvied before rising to cross over to the drinks cabinet, and pouring them both a brandy. ‘Well, it just might be relevant when we come to decide what’s to be done about Serena.’

  ‘Was she frightfully dependent on Andrea?’ his mother asked anxiously as she took the glass Adam was holding out to her.

  ‘You could say that,’ he muttered, resuming his seat and finishing his brandy in one gulp. But just as he was reaching the conclusion that there was no way to dress up the truth, his mother gave a decisive nod and started outlining plans in a gentle monotone.

  ‘The way I see it, there are two things we could do, but it’s really up to Serena. When she’s feeling a little better, that is. She can come back to London with me. I’d like that, myself, and she could do the debutante scene for a year until she meets someone suitable. Or she could go to a finishing school—perhaps that would be better.’

  Adam’s laughter cut rudely into her suggestions, and it earned him a look of total disdain from his mother. Why must he always treat every matter with such careless levity?

  ‘Really, Adam, I hoped you could at least take this seriously—it is another person’s future we’re discussing!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother, my laughter was ironic rather than humorous,’ he excused himself, his mouth now a straight line. ‘I’m certain the girl upstairs wouldn’t welcome or be welcomed in a finishing school for young ladies.’

  ‘Why? She’s not...’ Nancy searched for the most delicate word and finished with, ‘fast, is she?’

  ‘No, Serena is definitely a virgin,’ he replied, making no concession to conversational niceties. ‘She looks about fourteen and it’s highly unlikely she’s had any contact with the opposite sex.’ It was coming out badly, but he had to say it now he had started. ‘She’s autistic,’ he finished, settling for the most clinical word he could find.

  ‘Autistic?’ Nancy echoed in
her bafflement.

  ‘Autistic, withdrawn, bats in the belfry. I don’t know the exact diagnosis,’ he expanded brutally.

  ‘How can you say a thing like that?’ Nancy glared at her son lounging with apparent casualness, his long legs Stretched out in front of him. ‘Is this one of your cruel, sophisticated jokes, because if it is...’

  ‘You malign me, Mother,’ Adam interrupted briskly, getting through to her with an unequivocal, ‘No, this is no joke. I wish it was. Since the accident, the girl has become increasingly morose, verging on the autistic.’ An image of the girl staring at rather than through her window came to mind, as he added, ‘She’s cut off from reality, absorbed in her own thought processes. I got a few words out of her, none of them making much sense.’

  ‘Oh, dear God!’ Nancy groaned her reaction, closing her eyes as though she could shut out what he was telling her. ‘I should have checked, should have sensed Andrea was lying.’

  Adam moved to the empty sofa space next to his mother and put a comforting arm around her, but his tone was firm.

  ‘Mother, there’s absolutely no reason for you to take any guilt for the girl’s condition on yourself. The accident left her unhinged; it’s that simple.’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ Nancy moaned, shaking her head distressfully from side to side, ‘but I promised Graham, and I let him down.’

  ‘Why did Templeton ask you to look out for the girl?’ Adam asked quietly, needing to test a nagging doubt. ‘Did the relationship between Andrea and her stepdaughter deteriorate when they were under the same roof?’

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that,’ Nancy denied at once. ‘I’m sure Graham simply wanted me to help Andrea if anything happened to him. She wasn’t used to children, you see.’ She paused reflectively before continuing, ‘Perhaps Andrea resented the idea of interference after the tragedy, but she was always very kind to Serena. A bit over-anxious at times, but that was understandable. She so much wanted Serena to accept her almost as a mother.’