The Winter Folly

by Taylor, Lulu

  ‘Delicious! Your mama is a wonderful pastry cook.’ Alexandra bent down towards the girl. They both knew the routine but enjoyed it just the same. ‘But you know, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat all this on my own. I can hardly manage one of these rich pastries, let alone four. I think you should help me. Why don’t you take one?’

  ‘Thank you, madam,’ Tina said, eagerly plucking one out of the box. ‘May I have it now?’

  ‘Eat it before you go back. Then you can wash your hands here. Come onto the terrace and you can enjoy it outside.’

  They both went back to the warm scented outdoors. Summer was at its height and Alexandra could already sense the year on the turn. The freshness was leaving the air, the season of dust was beginning and then she would feel the plants starting to age around her, tiring of the great burst of energy they had expended since the spring. Tina munched happily on her sticky treat, licking her fingers as she went along. Alexandra watched her, enjoying the girl’s simple pleasure in the sweetness of the honey and the crisp layers of golden brown pastry. The sound of a horn blasting out below them somewhere made them both look towards the sea.

  ‘The ferry must be arriving,’ she said. It was invisible from where they were, approaching from the south and sliding into the harbour below the hills. But she always heard the horns as they announced the approach and departure of the great vessel.

  She had grown so used to the sound over the years that she barely noticed it now. That was, until the woman, Delilah, had come here. Now she realised that the horn was a harbinger of change and always had been. Growing deaf to it had been a mistake. Any day might bring a stranger here, one who intended to change her life in some way. She’d existed so long in this place untroubled by the outside world except on her terms – when she chose to read a newspaper or watch a television programme – that she’d begun to forget that it might still have an interest in her. In fact, that it certainly would one day or another. And so it had proved to be. The question was whether it was done with her now or not.

  She turned to the girl who was licking the last traces of honey off her fingers and from the corners of her mouth, like a cat might clean itself after eating. ‘Now, Tina, rinse your fingers, then you’d better be getting home. Thank your mother. Tell her to give me the month’s bill.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’ Tina was already on the steps to the kitchen. ‘Goodbye, and thank you.’

  ‘See you soon!’ Alexandra waved to her, knowing that it wouldn’t be Tina next time who came with the bread. It would be one of her brothers or sisters, taking turns to walk up to the English lady’s house and be given a cake.

  She went back to her salad and finished assembling it. She cut a slice of the fresh bread, covered the pastries with a towel against the marauding flies, and took her meal outside to the terrace as she usually did. She liked to eat her supper slowly, without reading or listening to the radio, absorbing the sounds and smells around her and savouring each mouthful. The years were moving so quickly now that it made sense to open her eyes as much as she could to every season, catching it and living it before it sailed past and was gone.

  The memory of that woman came back to her as it so often did. She had imagined that she would find it easy to shut Delilah out of her mind. After all, she’d had many years of practice closing herself off from what was happening beyond her immediate existence. Eventually, she’d even been able to stop herself returning home in dreams – except for those regular nightmares that still came to punish her – although occasionally she was unexpectedly ambushed. She would be in a perfectly normal dream and would turn to find John as a boy standing there, staring up at her with his huge grey eyes, demanding to know where she had gone, or she would realise she was standing at the door of Fort Stirling, with everyone expecting her to go inside and take over her old life. Sometimes she would see Nicky and he would be furious with her, or else blankly detached, happy with a new life that didn’t include her. Those dreams were almost unbearable, but at least they were easier than the nightmares.

  Still, she had assumed that her little tricks for forgetting would work as well as they had for years. And that was wrong. The vision of Delilah on the terrace, her face strained between anger, pity and confusion, was so strong she couldn’t shake it from her mind.

  Was I right to write that letter? she wondered, putting a sliver of creamy feta on her tongue and letting it melt there saltily. A picture came into her mind of John opening it, reading and then . . . what? It was hard to say as the image in her mind was of the boy John. He was so young in her imagination that she saw him stumbling over the big words, as he had when she’d heard him read from his storybooks, and bursting into tears with frustration at the end.

  ‘But, Mummy,’ he shouted, stamping his foot as he had when he was seven years old. ‘I want you to come back, don’t you understand?’

  Her heart twisted in pain at the image.

  ‘Stop it!’ she ordered herself out loud. ‘None of that, do you hear? What good will it do?’

  Since Delilah had come – my daughter-in-law, she reminded herself – some of the things she had always clung to as certainties had not seemed so immoveable as they once had. Her absolute conviction that she had done the only thing she could for her family began to shimmer and look hazy, like a mirage when one begins to get close and realise that it is something unsubstantial. She could not afford for that to happen. She had built her entire life and everything in it around her certain knowledge of what was right. While Delilah had been here, she had been as convinced of it as ever. It was only after she left that the doubts began to come.

  Perhaps it had been writing that letter. She hadn’t intended to leave anything for John, nothing to explain why things had turned out the way they had. Her promise to herself had been to take everything with her, good and bad. No complaining, no explaining. And yet she had found herself sitting down and writing that letter, then phoning around the hotels until she found the one where Delilah was staying so that she could deliver it there.

  It’s no good regretting it! she said to herself. You’ve done it now. It’s gone, she’s taken it back. He’ll have read it by now.

  Why did remembering the letter give her such a cold feeling? Perhaps it was because of how cold she had felt when she wrote it. She had thought herself back into the state of mind that had enabled her to leave home all those years ago. For the best, she had told herself. No other way. And that was how she had framed it: a letter with no apology and little explanation. I loved you, it said, but that was not enough. You won’t believe me but I did it for you. I suffered too. It was the only way. Your mother, Alexandra.

  How could she ever begin to write of the pain? It would take more paper than there was on the island and more hours than she probably had left to live. How could she convey the deadening despair of feeling herself at the mercy of a malevolent fate that had sent her into a cursed marriage that would taint all of them? If it were ever known, what would happen then? She shuddered to think of it. John would have lost his inheritance in one fell swoop, and been tainted by his parents’ disgrace.

  And Nicky . . . her heart twisted with the thought of him. The pain was still so acute that she had been even more successful at shutting him out of her mind than her children. What had she done to him? She’d had to save John’s right to the house, knowing how much it had mattered to Nicky to pass his legacy on to his son. Their marriage was over – it had to be over – but he didn’t have to suffer seeing John lose the family inheritance that mattered so much to him. And at least he didn’t have to live with the knowledge that he’d spent eight years in an incestuous union with his own sister. She could spare him that.

  It was hard to remember those dreadful hours when Nicky had gradually come to accept that she was going – forever. He’d pleaded with her, shouted and wept. He’d begged to know her reasons for leaving and she wouldn’t give them. He’d told her over and over that he forgave her for Elaine’s death and that leaving
him and John would only make things a hundred times worse.

  ‘Is it me?’ he’d asked, his voice cracking and his eyes full of anguish. ‘Is it me you hate?’

  ‘No,’ she’d said, knowing that if her heart were not already broken, this is when it would have shattered. ‘It’s not that. I can’t explain. You have to believe it’s for the best.’

  The truth had to remain concealed. It had already destroyed so much. She couldn’t let it continue its rampage, taking Nicky’s life and work, and John’s inheritance, with it. She could give him a future at least.

  ‘I want you to be happy,’ she said, ‘and that can’t be with me.’

  ‘Don’t you understand, Alex?’ Tears spilled out of his eyes. ‘I’ll be nothing without you. We’ll be lost if you go. Don’t leave me and John, I beg you. We need you. We love you.’

  It was almost more than she could stand to witness his grief but she could not be moved. She longed for things to be different but she knew their secret now, and she had to sacrifice herself to keep it. At last, in bewildered pain, he’d had to give in and accept her terms. The agony of leaving John had felt like tearing her heart out. It had only been bearable because she believed wholeheartedly that she was doing what was right for him. Losing Nicky had been like cutting off half of herself and trying to live without it. But for them, there truly was no other way. She could not embrace him as a wife again. She couldn’t kiss him and think of making love to him. That was over forever, no matter how much her wicked self might yearn for him. She’d woken up from dreams of indescribable pleasure, where they had met again and he’d kissed her, stripped her naked and made intense and extraordinary love to her. She’d woken shaking and crying out as she’d shuddered around him, pulling him deeper into her, desperate to possess him again. She’d lie back on her pillows, panting at the vividness of her physical experience, still in the grip of the aftermath of her climax, but as the pleasure of being with him waned, she became sickened by her own desires. She knew who he was and yet she still wanted him, and that made her worse than she had been before. She’d spent most of her life now fighting against her deep need to have him again. It was her life’s challenge to subdue that desire and accept it as base and evil. It was not the pure love that made John and Elaine but a perverted thing that tainted her children after all.

  She got up and took her dishes back into the house. Tonight would be a night like most others. She might go up to the church for the late mass, where she often went to get comfort and strength. Or she might sit here as night fell, listening to the night sounds and reading by candlelight until it was time to sleep. Since Delilah had come she hadn’t been able to read so well. Images of Nicky kept floating into her mind. He was sick now; he had begun to lose his memories. The images of her life as it had once been were disappearing. While they lived in Nicky’s mind, they had a kind of three-dimensional quality, a roundness that came from existing in two memories simultaneously. Now they were melting away from him, they were turning flat and unreal in her own head. Could she trust that she recalled everything as it was? And then . . . she remembered what Delilah had said. ‘When you vanished, Elaine vanished too’ – or words to that effect. Their daughter had lived on after death in their hearts and minds. But now that Nicky was forgetting, there was no one left to bring Elaine to life with their memories. She couldn’t be resurrected. And when Alexandra died, Elaine would finally be snuffed out completely. She’d join the hordes of the past who now had no one to remember them as they were. They had faded to names and then beyond that to something even less defined. Elaine was too young and fresh to become one of them, wasn’t she? Didn’t she deserve to live on a little longer?

  I don’t know why you insist on thinking this way! she rebuked herself. What can you do about it now? It’s far too late! What’s done is done.

  And yet she couldn’t help wondering about Delilah going back to Fort Stirling and taking the news of their meeting back to John. How had he taken it? She could only imagine him feeling hatred, anger and bitterness. And who could blame him?

  On impulse she went to her bedroom, climbing the wooden staircase to the second floor of the house. By her bed was a small cabinet and she opened the door and took out an old book of poetry. Inside the cover was a folded piece of torn newspaper. She unfolded and smoothed it out. It showed a wedding party, a groom and his elegant bride, the gawky young best man, the father of the groom standing beside the mother of the bride in all their finery. It was the only picture she had of John as an adult, taken at his first wedding and printed in the paper on some society page. She put out a finger and touched his face, trying to imagine it mobile, speaking, frowning, crying. What had he said when his wife had broken the news that his mother was still alive and continuing, with every day that passed, to abandon him?

  ‘Oh, John,’ she said, sitting down on the worn rug that covered the stone floor. ‘You will never understand. I can never tell you why.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Delilah could barely speak on the way back to Fort Stirling from the old people’s home. The vicar, sensing her turmoil, did not try to talk to her as he drove her through the village and up the hill towards the house. She knew, at last. The secret that Alexandra had decided to take with her to the grave was now in Delilah’s possession. It was a terrible, life-destroying secret, except for one thing. It wasn’t true. All she could think was that she had to get this lie out into the open and rob it of its potency.

  As the house appeared in front of her, she was struck anew by what had happened here all those years ago.

  I was right, she thought, feeling as though a mist inside her mind had finally cleared. Alex said she could have survived the house if she’d had Nicky’s love. Her father destroyed that for her. He made it impossible for her to have that love. Delilah felt as though she could see it all now: Alexandra thinking that she could no longer live with Nicky as his wife, and the grief of losing him as well as Elaine would have been too much to stand.

  And yet, she wondered, her mind playing over the pieces of the puzzle and re-examining them, why did she leave John behind? Couldn’t she have taken him with her? Perhaps she couldn’t do that to Nicky. Maybe she gave John to Nicky, and renounced him for herself. After all, she felt such terrible guilt about Elaine’s death – she told me that on Patmos. She might have felt that after taking his daughter, she couldn’t take his son as well.

  It made a kind of sad sense. What a terrible trap Alex must have been in. No wonder she felt the only answer was something as extreme as trying to wipe herself out. But . . . Delilah remembered the portrait of Alexandra in the hall. Once a Stirling, always a Stirling. There was no way to be entirely erased.

  I want to make it right, she said to herself determinedly. She thought about how disastrous her attempts had been so far. She had increased Alex’s sense of guilt, estranged her husband and made herself miserable enough to wonder about leaving her marriage. Wasn’t it madness to go on? She should have listened to Grey, and left everything alone. Perhaps I should just get out of John’s life and stop meddling.

  The knowledge rushed in on her, like a blinding revelation. No. She knew she mustn’t do that. Alex had thought the same. She’d thought life would be easier for everyone if she hid the truth, if she vanished. She decided to leave it all alone – and look what pain it caused. Perhaps if she’d stayed, Emily would have told her years ago that the old man had lied to her, and she could have been restored to her husband and her child. When she left, she only made all their misery certain.

  As Fort Stirling loomed huge above her, Delilah thought, I won’t do that. I can’t let it all go on. I don’t care what happens afterwards, it’s better than letting this lie carry on poisoning everyone’s life.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the vicar asked kindly, as he brought the car to a halt in front of the house. ‘You’re awfully quiet.’

  ‘What? Oh – yes, fine, thanks. Thanks for the lift.’ She barely registered him beyond the
thoughts pouring through her mind. She opened the back door and let Mungo out onto the gravel. ‘Goodbye, Vicar.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Stirling. I hope you sort everything out.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll try.’ She managed a smile as he set off back up the drive, then she ran up the steps and into the house, Mungo at her heels. ‘John! John!’ she called. ‘Where are you?’

  She ran to the estate office, knocked on the door and flung it open, but it was empty, the desk scattered with papers and ledger books. In the kitchen, she found Janey at work. Mungo trotted to his bed by the range and curled himself into it. ‘Have you seen John?’ she asked breathlessly.

  Janey looked up. ‘He went out a little while ago. I think he was going over to the coach house to visit his father. He’s been spending quite a bit of time there lately.’

  ‘Thanks, Janey.’ Delilah dashed out of the back door. She walked briskly along the gravel path, the red-brick wall of the kitchen garden ahead of her. It was early afternoon and the air was distinctly humid as if there was a storm not far off. Insects buzzed furiously around her as if working hard before the rain arrived. She wondered what she would say to John and how she would break down the barriers between them and make him listen to her.

  The old wooden door into the kitchen garden opened and, to her surprise, Ben appeared in the doorway, fresh and vital in jeans and a red T-shirt, his light brown hair spiked. He saw her at once and a broad smile illuminated his face. ‘Delilah!’

  Her heart sank. She didn’t want this to happen now. She was desperate to get to John. ‘Hi, Ben, you’re back. How are you? Where did you go?’

  ‘I took an impulse trip to Cornwall to see some fantastic gardens there. It was great. Really inspiring. I can’t wait to tell you all about it.’ He had been walking towards her and now he was close, his body radiating an animal energy that made the air around him buzz. ‘Sorry I didn’t let you know where I was,’ he said in a low, intimate tone. ‘I wondered if you’d miss me. I thought it might be fun to surprise you in person.’