The Hiding Places

by Catherine Robertson

  ‘How did you two come to know each other?’ she asked Edward now.

  ‘When Sir Peregrine retired from the Foreign Office, he and Sunny moved back to Kingsfield and gave over the management of their affairs to my predecessor. I keep an eye on the family trust and am executor of Sunny’s will. Not that I expect to perform that duty; I’m quite convinced she’ll outlive me.’

  ‘Was Sir Peregrine knighted?’

  ‘No, he was a baronet. Due to the Days’ fortunes being much depleted, the family’s rather substantial seat was sold in the 1950s, so he did not inherit. Though I gather from Sunny’s description of its condition that that may have been a blessing.’ Edward smiled at her. ‘It would have been quite amusing had he been awarded his K, though, don’t you think? Turning Mr Day into a knight?’

  ‘More nonsense.’

  Sunny placed a tray of tea things and biscuits on the table, and took a chair. April noted her wrists, blue veins through papery, translucent skin, and revised Sunny’s age upwards from her original guess of early seventies. It was her clothes that made her look younger. Sunny had on a pair of linen palazzo pants in charcoal grey and a tunic-style jumper in fine silver wool, their stylish elegance undiminished by shortbread dust. Around her neck hung a necklace of large flat beaten-silver loops, and in her ears, just visible under the weight of the white bun, were diamond studs. Not quite the rivals of Irene’s ring, thought April, but sizeable enough.

  ‘I’ve always meant to ask,’ said Edward, as Sunny began to parcel out the teacups and side plates, ‘did you become Sunny when you married a Day, or was that just a happy coincidence?’

  ‘I was born Sybil Una Northcote,’ Sunny said. ‘I suppose it might have been worse. I might have been Frances Una.’

  ‘Or Rebecca Una.’ Edward held out his cup as Sunny poured. ‘Hermione Una would have been tricky after the Great War.’

  ‘My father was a major.’ Sunny set down the teapot. ‘He would have had more sense. Though, admittedly, he was never the same after the gassing. A wonder I was conceived at all, really. Shortbread?’

  ‘Need you ask?’ said Edward.

  April politely refused. It looked too delicious. Her mind engaged in a rapid mental calculation. If Sunny had been conceived after the first war, then she would be well past her seventies and into her eighties. Yes, those wrists and the neck could belong to an eighty-year-old, but look at her face! Rice-paper faint wrinkles, eyes still clear Wedgwood blue, skin only slightly sagging around excellent bones in a heart-shaped face. If she wore her hair like that when she was young, April thought, she would have looked like a Gainsborough.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Edward, ‘I also belong to the unwanted nicknames club.’

  ‘Are you known as Edward Bear?’

  ‘That I could have lived with. No mine was The Fifth.’

  ‘As in Edward the Fifth? One of the murdered princes in the tower?’

  ‘My middle initial is V. My classmates, who watched too many American crime dramas, thought it was hilarious to hold me down and ask me to plead.’

  ‘Bullies have always had a notorious disregard for grammar.’

  ‘What does the V stand for?’ April asked him.

  ‘My mother’s maiden name — Vere,’ said Edward. ‘I’m glad my parents chose not to hyphenate their surnames. I’d become exhausted less than halfway through spelling it for people.’

  ‘James’s nickname was Jam, of course,’ said Sunny.

  ‘James?’ said April.

  ‘James Potts. Jam-pot. He didn’t much care for it. His father insisted on calling the pair of us Sunny-Jim. In hindsight, one of his nicer jokes.’

  Edward, April noticed, was making a special effort not to catch her eye. The test was nigh, April thought. Time to stop up her ears with beeswax.

  The phone pealed. April breathed out again.

  ‘It’s probably Tilly,’ said Edward, ‘offering to do her duty to the W.I. by thoroughly reviewing any potentially objectionable material beforehand.’

  Sunny glanced at the carriage clock. ‘No, it’ll be Bertie, calling now that the children have gone to bed.’

  ‘Who’s Bertie?’ said April, when Sunny had picked up the phone in the kitchen. ‘And why does he send his children to bed in the afternoon?’

  ‘Bertie is her youngest son,’ said Edward. ‘He lives in Singapore.’

  ‘How many sons does she have?’

  ‘Four. And three daughters.’

  ‘Good grief.’

  Edward indicated a photograph on the sideboard, which showed a large family group out on a lawn, adults and children, all of varying ages. Most of them were blond. All were strikingly good-looking.

  ‘That’s them,’ he said. ‘They’re scattered all over the place. The nearest is a daughter in London, and there’s a son in Leicester. The youngest daughter lives in Ireland, in a travellers’ caravan mostly located, I believe, near Sligo. The remaining four are dotted around the globe.’

  What must it be like, April thought, to have so many children? To have had all that love and affection, noise and laughter for so many years?

  ‘Do they all get on?’ she asked, though it seemed impossible to her that they would not. Surely everyone understood how precious a family was?

  ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve spoken by telephone to Deborah, the daughter in London, but I’ve not met one of them in person.’

  ‘Why not? Don’t they visit?’

  ‘Not nearly often enough.’ Sunny was back. ‘The rotters.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said April, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘Of course you did. Other people’s lives are fascinating.’

  ‘Except mine, of course,’ said Edward, helping himself to another piece of shortbread.

  ‘That’s your own fault,’ said Sunny. ‘You know perfectly well you could fix that if you put your mind to it.’

  ‘And there’s the rub. How is Bertie?’

  ‘Oh, his usual dull self. I love him dearly, but the height of excitement for Bertie is a sudden spike in rubber futures. He took until age forty-five to gird himself up for marriage. He was only on the phone as long as he was because he’s sowing the seeds for why he won’t be able to visit me in December.’

  ‘For Christmas?’

  ‘No!’ Spots of pink lit her cheeks. ‘For my birthday! You’d think the rotten swine would see turning ninety as a meaningful event! But it seems everyone is too busy, too poor or too infirm to bestir themselves and come down here. At this rate, Dilly and I will be sharing a lone party horn and a Waitrose individual spotted dick.’

  ‘Now there’s a vision,’ said Edward.

  ‘You’re going to be — ninety?’ April could not keep the incredulity from her voice.

  ‘Not that anyone cares. Rotten swine.’

  ‘How old are your children?’ April’s amazement overrode her natural caution around this subject.

  ‘The eldest rotter is sixty-six, the youngest fifty-three. I was a late starter, due to the war.’

  ‘Grandchildren?’

  ‘Oh, Lor …’ Sunny’s lips moved silently as she tallied. ‘Sixteen, and, I think, seven greats. Every generation seems to pop out fewer and fewer. I suppose that’s the done thing, these days, being mindful of our eco-footprints and whatnot.’

  ‘I suspect the prospect of a collapsed uterus might also act as a deterrent,’ said Edward.

  ‘Pish and tosh. No stamina, that’s the problem. Look at Charlie, only sixty-six and on pills for all sorts of ailments. Unlike his father, who was fit as a fiddle right until the moment he dropped dead. Curse him, too, for not being here.’

  Sunny thrust out her hand towards the teapot, as if to slap it, but laid her palm only lightly on its side. ‘Tepid. I’ll make another.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Edward got to his feet and carried away the tray.

  April turned from watching him go and was unnerved to meet a direct blue gaze.

  ‘I gather you spent the night in
Kit’s cottage,’ said Sunny. ‘How did you find it?’

  April considered her answer. The truth was she’d spent most of the night awake. Even though her excuse, jet lag, seemed reasonable, she did not want to attract an accusation that she lacked the stamina for a sustained night’s rest.

  ‘The cottage was tidy and warm,’ said April. ‘The night was alternately dead quiet and startlingly loud. I heard owls, I think, quite close, and that barking cry they always play during night-time scenes on Midsomer Murders.’

  ‘Fox. Nothing else?’

  ‘I’m not sure. What sort of thing?’

  ‘When we were children, we were strictly ordered to play only at the very edge of the woods. There was a rumour that an escaped criminal was living rough in there, though everyone was vague about his actual crime. Not that any crime would be worse than poaching in the eyes of Old Ted, the Potts’s gamekeeper. Not even murder. Ted was convinced the man existed; he hunted him for years. If he’d caught him, he would have shot him without hesitation.’

  ‘He never caught him, then, I assume?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure he really knew where to look.’

  ‘He’d be long dead now, though, wouldn’t he? The escaped criminal? If you were just a child at the time?’

  ‘Oh, probably.’

  Sunny’s tone became business-like. ‘Now, what do you intend to do with Empyrean, with the estate? You’re not going to sell it, are you?’

  April steeled herself. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have no need of it.’

  Sunny bristled, fierce as a fighting mongoose. ‘You do know that it will be sold to developers? They’ll carve it up and put horrible twee chalets on it, or skimpy fake barn conversions. They’ll cut down all the trees to jam on the greatest number of properties. They’ll asphalt the driveways, plant “easy-care” gardens full of nothing but scratchy, nasty grasses. Then they’ll gate the whole thing and pretend it’s “exclusive”.’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ said April. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She expected Sunny to renew the assault, but, to her surprise, the older woman’s shoulders sagged. The blue fire in her eyes went out.

  ‘I’ve no idea why I’m berating you. If James had been alive, he would have sold the place in a heartbeat.’

  April felt the usual tug of internal struggle. To ask Sunny about James would be to pull on a thread that might start to unravel everything. But to know why he, too, her long-dead relative, did not want the house — could that make her feel better? Easier?

  Edward had filled the teapot and was now turning it, three times clockwise, three times anticlockwise. A pointless waste of time, April had once been told. It made no difference to the tea at all.

  Asking about James — that should make no difference, either. If April did not let it.

  ‘Why would James have sold the house?’

  ‘Because it was a reminder of — absence, I suppose. Loss.’

  ‘How—’ April hesitated, and for more reasons than tact. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He died because he was a bloody idiot!’ Sunny pressed her fingertips to her mouth, as if remonstrating with it for its outburst.

  ‘A bloody fool,’ she said more calmly, and shook her head. ‘I miss him terribly, you know, even after how many years? Sixty? More? I loved that house when he was in it. That last visit, for his funeral, was so awful, I simply could not bear to go back.’

  Edward was by the table, tea tray in his hands. He placed it down carefully, without a word.

  April found herself filling the silence. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me about you and James.’

  CHAPTER 6

  late February

  ‘We met at James’s sixth birthday party,’ said Sunny. ‘All the children from the village and the local farms were invited, as well as children like me, from the better families. That sounds terribly snobbish, doesn’t it, but that’s how it was in those days.’

  ‘Everyone knowing their proper stations,’ said Edward. ‘Bless them.’

  ‘We glimpsed each other, of course, at church, and at the various village fairs and festivals. May Day, for example. Not that my mother took me to church very often. She had taken against God at an early age.’

  ‘What had God done to her?’ said April.

  ‘Made her a girl! She told me the day that she realised she could never be a soldier or an Arctic explorer was the day she banished God from her heart. If He had not loved her enough to acknowledge her true nature when selecting her gender, she simply could not love Him. She settled for second best by marrying a major who’d once been to Greenland. Much good that it did her.’

  ‘You said your father had been gassed?’ said Edward.

  ‘He had. Although I suspect he used it as an excuse; by all accounts, he’d begun retreating from the world well before the war. When he returned, he shut himself in his study and never came out. I wasn’t born until my mother was the ripe old age of twenty-six. As I said, it was a wonder I was conceived at all. I guarantee that she insisted my father impregnate her.’

  ‘The romance of it all,’ said Edward.

  ‘My mother was desperately lonely,’ said Sunny, her blue gaze severe. ‘She would snatch at any excuse to be with people, to be out of our horrid house. She took me anywhere and everywhere, right from when I was barely a few days old. I grew up used to being in the thick of things, used to laughter and noise and busy-ness all around me. It’s why I had so many children. I wanted ten, you know,’ she added. ‘So people would say: “Where is she going with ten children?” But Perry drew the line at seven. He said if I had one more, there’d be no problem finding a spare bed, because his would have just become permanently vacant.’

  Sunny touched two fingers to her mouth and placed a kiss on one of the silver-framed photos behind them, a portrait of a couple on their wedding day.

  ‘Dearest Perry. It was all bluff. He would have given me anything.’

  In the photo, black and white, the young Sunny wore a long-sleeved fitted dress in plain satin, all the lace concentrated in a veil that sat back on her head in a smooth cap, fastened by a ring of flowers just above the nape, and cascaded from there down to the ground. Sir Peregrine, April saw, was blond and squarely handsome. The pair of them had mouths slightly pursed and eyes bright and large, as if they had been scolded for misbehaviour, and were trying very hard not to laugh.

  ‘How attractive you both were,’ said April.

  ‘Were being the operative word,’ said Sunny. ‘Every time I look in a mirror these days, I am appalled anew.’

  ‘My mother’s greatest fear about ageing is that her eyesight will become too poor to spot the hairs sprouting from her chin,’ said Edward. ‘She’s made me promise to let her know the instant she begins to resemble Brian Blessed.’

  ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ said Sunny.

  ‘Merely making conversation.’

  ‘You’ve made me lose my place,’ Sunny accused. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘James’s birthday,’ said April. ‘Was it held at Empyrean?’

  ‘On the lawn. I was only five, six months younger than James, and I thought I had been transported to a magic kingdom. There were jugglers, sword swallowers and conjurers, pirates and fairy queens, miniature ponies to ride, performing dogs, and a bright green parrot that whistled “Camptown Races”. There were presents for every child, a bag of sweets and a toy; mine was a celluloid Kewpie doll, the first shop-bought doll I’d ever owned. Tables covered with white cloth were laden with more food than I had ever seen in my life, everything fancy and delicious, and we could eat as much as we liked. There were machines spilling out ice cream and candyfloss. I recall there was also a brass band, but it was impossible to hear over the cacophony of children, who had all gone completely feral, a swirling stampede of miniature savages. The moment my mother let go of my hand, I was away, running fast as I could to join them.’

 
‘Quite a party,’ said Edward. ‘Mr Potts spared no expense.’

  ‘James was his only son, his golden boy,’ said Sunny. ‘That and the fact the Pottses had only recently moved into Empyrean. Lewis Potts wanted to make his mark. He wanted to show everyone what he was made of. He knew that families like mine considered him nothing but a jumped-up barrow boy. He also knew that most of us were on our uppers, and the prospect of a lavishly catered-for party would be irresistible. The gentry might harrumph about him behind one hand, but the other would be reaching, without hesitation, for a glass of his Pommery 1904.’

  ‘Is that why he invited all the local children?’ said April. ‘To force the posh people to hobnob with rat catchers and corn chandlers?’

  ‘Less a warrior against class distinction than an almighty show-off. Lewis Potts thrived in the limelight. He positively glittered in it.’

  ‘How did he make so much money?’ April said.

  ‘He patented a stain remover,’ said Edward, ‘one particularly effective at taking ink off fabric. However, I think its success was less to do with how well it worked and more to do with Lewis Potts’s consummate salesmanship. “Potts for Blots” was his slogan and everyone knew it. Just as Henry Ford dreamed of a Model T in every American garage, Lew Potts wanted his bottles in every British cleaning cupboard. I’d say he almost achieved it. He was a champion huckster.’

  ‘He was certainly charming,’ said Sunny. ‘But there was a whiff of the barbarian about him. It was said that when you shook hands with Lewis Potts, you always had the uneasy feeling that you’d committed to more than you intended.’

  ‘And James was his only son,’ said April. She felt a pang of empathy. All Lewis Potts’s money could not protect his boy.

  ‘His only child.’ Sunny compressed her lips. ‘Cora Potts’s reproductive capacity was merely one of the ways in which she fell short of her husband’s expectations.’

  ‘You didn’t like him much, did you? James’s father?’ said April.

  ‘Not much, no.’

  ‘Did James?’