The Dream House

by Rachel Hore

  She turned to the first page. The volume started in August, 1928. Kate tried to remember. It must be a month after the previous volume had left off – after Agnes had first met Harry, and Raven had left home.

  ‘Hi.’ Max appeared in the doorway, a sheaf of papers in one hand. ‘Do we have keys for the display case behind the door of the morning room?’ He had been helping Ursula as she listed the porcelain and the silver. Kate pushed the diary under the cushion and jumped up to go and search for further caches of keys.

  The rest of the day she had no time to do more than fit the red book into her handbag. Then, when she got back at tea-time to relieve Michelle, who had been looking after the children all day, she remembered that ages ago she had beaten the tourists and booked tickets to see the latest Harry Potter film at the tiny cinema in Southwold that evening.

  Daisy was dancing around in excitement. ‘We had a picnic with Coca Cola. And I lost my tooth, Mummy. The wobbly one. It finally finally came out without me doing anything. We’ve put it under my pillow already.’

  Michelle, who was picking up her little pink handbag to go home, put it down again and said, ‘And we found some treasure, didn’t we, Daisy? I almost forgot.’ Daisy nodded but stopped dancing and looked sheepish.

  Kate followed Michelle into the kitchen and saw her take something off the dresser. Something on a silver chain. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘My locket. Where on earth . . . ?’ She turned it over in her hands, blowing dust off the photograph, which was so faded she wouldn’t have taken it for Agnes, even now. Relief coursed through her. She looked up at Michelle who read her look of delight.

  ‘It is yours, then. Daisy said it was but I thought it might be the other Mrs Hutchinson’s.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘When Daisy’s tooth come out she went up and put it under her pillow straight away, but then she come down saying she had lost it, so I went up with her. We couldn’t see it, so I lifted the mattress and it had fallen down onto the wooden bit. Then I saw the necklace.’

  After Michelle had gone, Kate asked Daisy, ‘What was it doing in your bed then?’

  The little girl hung her head and said, ‘It was ages and ages ago, in your bedroom. I only wanted to look at it. You’re not cross, are you?’

  ‘Daisy, you must have known I was looking for it.’

  But Daisy merely made big round innocent eyes and shook her head. ‘It wasn’t really lost, was it? I mean, it was there all the time, but I forgot about it.’

  ‘I am a bit cross, actually, Daisy. It is something special of mine, and it’s to do with Aunt Agnes who’s died. You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place and you should certainly have given it back or said you’d had it.’

  ‘I knew you’d be cross, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you when I couldn’t find it,’ Daisy wailed, and Kate sighed heavily. She wasn’t really cross, just glad to have the locket back, especially now that she knew its origin – Harry had given it to Agnes. But why had it been torn in half? Suddenly she longed to stay at home and read the diary and find out, but she couldn’t disappoint the children. She felt so sorry for them at the moment. They hadn’t taken in what Simon’s absence actually meant. She supposed they would when she delivered them to their father in London, whenever that might be. She hadn’t heard anything since receiving his solicitor’s letter – probably he was too scared to ring. And he was right to feel scared; she was furious with him.

  It wasn’t until after ten that she hauled herself shivering out of the bath, where she’d lain thinking about Simon until the water had gone cold, and retired to bed to read.

  She was weary with grief, aching after the long day of shifting boxes and books. Her nose was blocked from the dust, while her head still jangled from the Harry Potter film with its whooshing magic brooms and nightmare encounters with celluloid evil spirits. But when the diary fell open halfway at a crumpled page and she read the first words scrawled there, she forgot everything else.

  I can hardly bear to consign my thoughts to paper, Agnes had written. The black ink on the white page is solid, undeniable. It makes what has happened to me real . . .

  Kate turned back to the first page and began to read.

  April 1929

  Agnes waited in the front seat of the Bentley as Lister lifted their cases out of the boot and Jane Selcott struggled to unlock the door to Seddington House. Apart from the soft light burning over the porch, it was pitch black on this moonless night, and cloud cover denied even the pale comfort of stars. Never before, thought Agnes, had home seemed so unfamiliar, so unwelcoming. She winced and clasped a hand to her swollen abdomen as the child within gave a sudden squirm, scraping against her spine. Even Mrs Duncan had gone home for the night; the house had been shut up for most of the last six months, and the cook was living in semi-retirement with her ailing maiden sister in the village.

  Lister took the cases inside and Miss Selcott came back to the car to help Agnes out. The governess tried to take the girl’s arm going up the few steps to the house, but Agnes shook her off and, one hand pulling her coat round her against the chilly night breeze, she staggered up by herself.

  Lister refused to meet her eye as she stepped into the hall, as he had ever since meeting them off the last train just now, but his offer of hot milk was civil, though equally civilly refused.

  ‘I’ll go straight up to bed,’ said Agnes. ‘Bring my case up, please.’ She was exhausted by the journey, by the advanced stage of her pregnancy. Moreover, she felt queasy and on edge – her skin crawled.

  Halfway up the stairs she sank against the banister as another wave of tightness curled its way across her abdomen. It passed, leaving her breathless. Aware of the two servants watching her below, she recovered herself quickly and dragged herself up the remaining flight.

  Later, alone in her room, she threw off her travel-stained clothes, pulled a nightdress over her head and slipped into bed where she lay on her side, grateful to be sinking into the coolness, alone with her thoughts at last.

  The train journey with Miss Selcott had been an unpleasant interlude. Agnes’s father had been supposed to accompany them, but at the last moment some business crisis had presented itself, and Gerald had said he must stay; he would follow them down to Seddington as soon as he could.

  Miss Selcott had ordered the station porter to find them an empty compartment – no great task at this time in the evening – and as the train jolted and swayed its way down to Suffolk, Agnes bracing herself against each movement, the governess had pulled down the blinds and addressed her captive audience in a non-stop monologue.

  ‘Your father is so brave. I don’t know how he’s survived everything you and your brother have done to him. To say nothing of that good-for-nothing wife of his. After the terrible sufferings he had already been through, poor man, all he’s done for his children, just for you to throw it back in his face. And so shaming. I don’t know where he’s found the strength to raise his head in all this disgraceful, sordid affair.’ She opened her bag and, drawing out a handkerchief, dabbed at the corners of her eyes before replacing it in her bag and closing it with a disapproving click. ‘The sooner we get you down to that nursing home and finish your sorry part in the business, Miss, the better, if you ask me.’

  As if anybody did ask you, you shrivelled old cow, thought Agnes, but she couldn’t be bothered to say it. Since she had been forced by her father to spend so much time in Miss Selcott’s chaperonage over the last few months she’d learned that the only way she could survive it was by ignoring the tiresome woman. So now she said nothing, instead snapping open the window blind and wiping the condensation from the window so she could peer out on the dark countryside flashing past. If only she could shut out the preaching voice.

  Now, as she lay in the familiar darkness of her bedroom, memories of the last nine months crowded in.

  It had been on a warm afternoon in the middle of August that Agnes had pulled shut the door of Harry’s apartment a
nd started down the stairs. When she reached the first landing, the door there opened and the woman, Susan Herbert, holding a fat rasping pug dog, came out and leaned against the lintel.

  ‘Hello,’ said Agnes uncertainly, as the woman looked her up and down, coolly. The dog struggled in her arms, so she let it down and it waddled back into the flat.

  ‘I expect it doesn’t like the heat,’ Agnes said.

  Mrs Herbert ignored her comment and said instead, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Agnes Melton,’ said Agnes, a little taken aback by the woman’s rudeness.

  Mrs Herbert thought for a moment and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t know any Meltons,’ she said. Then, ‘Where are you from?’

  Agnes started to explain, but the woman cut her short, saying, as if to herself, ‘Just as I thought.’ To Agnes she said – was that a glint of sympathy in her eyes or was the woman just toying with her, ‘You’re very young, aren’t you? What can your mother be thinking of? It’s a shame someone doesn’t take you in hand.’ She looked up the staircase and listened a moment, whilst Agnes tried to frame a response. Then she looked directly at Agnes and said, cruelly, ‘He’s told you he’s married, hasn’t he?’

  There was a silence. Agnes felt the blood suddenly pound in her veins. She opened her mouth but no sound came.

  ‘No, I can see he hasn’t. Wretched man. Yes, married. Of course, they’re separated, but she won’t be able to divorce him. There’s no hope of that. They’re Roman Catholics. The families would be appalled.’

  Agnes still couldn’t bring herself to speak. It couldn’t be true. Susan Herbert was playing with her.

  ‘You’re lying,’ she whispered. ‘You’re just jealous. You’re lying.’

  A look halfway between contempt and pity crossed the other woman’s face. ‘Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘Poor thing. I’m sorry for you. But men are all the same, you see. Pity you’ve had to learn the hard way.’

  And with that, she went inside her flat and closed the door.

  Slowly, dazed, Agnes made her way downstairs and out of the street door, out into the sunshine. For a long time – she didn’t know how long – she walked, past lines of white terraces, through the gardens of the squares, now fading in the late-summer heat, wondering how complete joy could turn to utter desolation in one cruel stroke. Finally, she sat down on a bench in a garden where children played in the care of gossiping nannies, and cried.

  After the storm came calm and false hope’s false dawn. She would go back and see Harry, ask him if what that horrible woman said was true. Perhaps it wasn’t. Harry loved her, she believed that as strongly as ever. Surely he would have told her something as important as that – that he was married, that he could never marry Agnes. Or perhaps there was something they could do?

  And so she retraced her footsteps.

  But there was no answer this time when she rang Harry’s bell, and after waiting for a moment, she thought she saw a shadow at a window in the first-floor flat and a curtain fluttered, so she slipped away.

  When Jeanette let her into the flat in Queen’s Square, the mantel clock was chiming six and no one was home. This, however, was par for the course these days. Agnes had hardly seen Raven since his angry departure nearly six weeks before, but she knew Vanessa saw him regularly – she was too absorbed in her own affair to realise how regularly. Her stepmother assured her that Raven was happy. He had found a place at his friend Tom’s newspaper, part devilling in the office, part writing pieces on routine matters that the regular journalists were too busy or too bored to cover. He was staying with a wealthy artist friend. Once or twice he and Agnes had met, but always in busy cafés or at crowded parties, and they had avoided the subject of Raven’s quarrel with their father. Raven seemed to have changed; he was caught up with his work, his writing, his new friends. He hardly saw Freddy any more, he said. Their paths had just diverged. Agnes thought sadly that she, too, had been left behind in his slipstream.

  Jeanette saw at once that Agnes was distraught. She sat her down in the empty drawing room and went to make her some tea.

  ‘Madame Melton, she waited for you but then she must go out,’ the maid explained. ‘She is worried, very worried. You must telephone her chez son amie Madame Marshall now to say you are safe.’

  Agnes’s father hadn’t returned from work when Agnes went to bed that night after an early supper. She lay all night, it seemed, tossing and turning until by the morning she was running a temperature.

  Her father woke her, bursting into her room at nine o’clock. He had received a letter in the morning’s post from a Mrs Susan Herbert making certain allegations about his daughter’s morals. Did Agnes realize what she had done?

  It was a week before Agnes, confined to the flat by her father, received a letter from Harry brought in by Jeanette who clearly thought that Agnes’s affaire de coeur was the most exciting and romantic thing to have happened for a long while. Although she was too careful of her job to assist the star-cross’d lovers to actually meet, she was happy to deliver this letter.

  It confirmed the findings that Agnes’s father had already revealed to her. Harry confessed that he had married the youngest daughter of a neighbouring Catholic family in Cambridgeshire five years before. He had met Laura at a hunt ball and fallen for her quiet dark beauty, her air of mystery. But after the marriage he had realized there was something damaged about her. Her mystery veiled not dark passions beneath, but a heart that was locked up. She could not seem to give of herself, and a man as passionate and creative as him desperately needed a soulmate to whom he could open up. He had been deeply unhappy.

  There was no chance of a divorce. Laura had already borne Harry a child – a daughter – and both families had closed ranks around mother and child. The whole matter was never to be mentioned outside the family. But Harry was in disgrace.

  I can never forgive myself for becoming involved with you, my love, because I have hurt you so much, yet I cannot regret our love, Harry wrote. You are so natural, so impulsive and your love for me shone out of your eyes. I could not but respond in full. I adore you. You are the other half of my soul. I will always love you. I am not a whole person without you. But your father has made it plain to me that I should not see you and, thanks to La Herbert, my family threaten to ruin me if I bring further scandal by trying to force an end to my marriage. Shame, trouble and poverty are all I am ever able to offer you. Next to these the shining joy of my love would surely tarnish, corrode, grow worthless.

  If Agnes had received this letter only a week before, she would have been demented with grief, but by now, some steel had entered her soul. She knew Harry was right. She could not breach her ties with family, she could not endure public humiliation. Nor would she bring down misery upon Harry himself. She was only seventeen, she had no mother to show her how to behave and she was lost.

  She took off the locket that she always wore and opened it. A photograph of herself in the front half now faced the little portrait of Harry. She held one half in each hand and, closing her eyes against the tears, twisted the two halves until the hinge gave way. The half with her picture she wrapped in a little silk square. Then she took some paper and wrote the following:

  I believe that you love me, truly, fully, and for us that must be enough. When you look on this locket, may you dream of me. When I look on your picture, may I dream of you. May God go with you always.

  Then she placed the silk package and the note in an envelope for Jeanette to deliver.

  Two weeks later, Agnes began to suffer from bouts of nausea. After she fainted in the street, Gerald called a doctor. The baby was due in May.

  Agnes must have slept, because the next thing she knew, an iron hand was squeezing her abdomen. As the pain receded, she heard the clock in the hall chime two. She manoeuvred herself in the bed until she could turn on the light and there came a hot rush of liquid between her legs. The next contraction gripped her and she gasped in pain. When she lifted the
blankets she screamed. Her nightgown and sheets were soaked with blood and water.

  A door across the corridor opened. Miss Selcott came into the room, her hair bundled up in a ridiculous nightcap. She was still tying her voluminous dressing-gown. Taking in what was happening, she rushed over to the bed and grabbed the corner of the blankets from Agnes, who gasped again as the next contraction took hold.

  ‘You’ve started then?’ Miss Selcott said briskly, glimpsing the soaked sheets. ‘I’d better get some more linen.’

  ‘It’s early,’ whispered Agnes in terror. ‘Surely it shouldn’t come for another month.’

  ‘We’ll just have to manage. We’ll wait till morning, then I’ll send Lister for the doctor.’

  ‘Get the doctor now!’ Agnes pleaded and panted through another wave of pain. The contractions were growing in strength and frequency, but she was learning to breathe through them.

  ‘It’s too soon for the doctor, girl! First babies always take a long time. That’s what my mother said. Two days she was in labour with me. All the doctor will do is take one look at you and go away again.’

  ‘I want a doctor. Or somebody! Not you!’ Agnes cried out.

  ‘I’ll go and find Lister,’ sighed Miss Selcott. ‘But you can’t expect it not to hurt. You should have thought of that before you went to the bad, Miss.’

  ‘Just bring the doctor!’ And Miss Selcott vanished.

  And so Agnes entered a place filled with pain where time had no meaning. As the hours passed and the room gradually lightened, she fell into a half-doze from which each contraction wrenched her. Her half-waking dreams were filled with ghoulish figures – Gerald, Raven, Harry, Vanessa – all shouting at her and wailing.

  She hadn’t seen Raven and Vanessa since September, not since that terrible day when Gerald arrived home unexpectedly early on Jeanette’s afternoon off to discover his wife and his son entwined in the marital bed, all unaware that Agnes, too, was asleep in her own room.