Charity

by Lesley Pearse

  Holly bushes bright with berries. Christmas roses holding their white heads up to be admired. It was a breathtakingly beautiful house and garden. But why couldn’t she feel happy about owning it? Was it because her brother had been prepared to kill for it?

  The wording on the coat of arms above the front door seemed even more ominous than it had on her first visit here so long ago.

  FEARE HIS GLORIOUS AND FEAREFUL NAME. THE LORD THY GOD. HONOUR THE KING. In some peculiar way it seemed to sum up all those pompous Pennycuicks, even though it dated from centuries before they had owned the Priory.

  The sound of the front door opening prevented further musing. Margaret, plump and comfortable in a navy overall and a clean white pinny, was beaming a welcome at them, her hands already reaching out to tousle James’s hair.

  ‘Oh it’s lovely to see you all,’ she said, emanating warmth and a smell of homemade shortbread. ‘Come on in, it’s getting parky. I’ve got a big fire going in the drawing room and all the beds are aired.’

  Only Prue had been here in the months since Toby’s death, but she had reported back that Margaret was doing a great job and Tom was making himself useful doing everything from planting spring bulbs to carrying out maintenance work. But now they were inside, Charity could see Margaret had gone beyond the role of caretaker. The Priory smelt of lavender polish, everything gleamed and shone. The Persian rug had been cleaned; even the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs was working, its brass face shining like a mirror.

  ‘Doesn’t it look wonderful?’ Prue strode into the drawing room, flung her coat down on the first chair she came to and ran to the fire at the far end, holding out her hands to warm them at the blaze.

  Prue looked pretty today in a pink fluffy jumper and toning plaid maxiskirt, blonde hair loose on her shoulders.

  ‘It certainly does.’ Charity dumped her coat on her sister’s and joined her at the fire. Like the hall, the drawing room had been lovingly cared for, and she noted the settees’ dark blue loose covers.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m cheeky making the new covers.’ Margaret blushed, catching Charity’s surprise as she picked up the abandoned coats. ‘But the colonel bought the material a year ago because they looked so shabby and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste.’

  ‘They’re lovely,’ Charity said enthusiastically. She had heard from James that this room had been redecorated a couple of years earlier, but she had never expected anything so stylish. The pitch-pine walls were painted pale yellow and the old dark curtains had been replaced by sumptuous blue and yellow drapes. ‘Of course we don’t think it’s cheeky. It was very clever of you. I half expected to find this room draped in dustsheets. We certainly didn’t expect it to look so welcoming.’

  After Rob’s flat, this room seemed absurdly large and the thought of the heating bills alarmed her.

  ‘I don’t keep dustsheets on anywhere downstairs,’ Margaret said, flicking her apron over a highly polished chiffonier. ‘I was afraid we’d be burgled if I did. I turn the lights on at night and draw the curtains. I like to think it fools people into thinking we’ve got a houseful.’

  ‘But it makes so much work for you.’ Prue’s tone was uncharacteristically appreciative. ‘You shouldn’t do so much.’

  ‘I like to keep it nice.’ Margaret smiled with pleasure. ‘Besides there’s nothing to it when there’s no one to mess things up. Now I’ll just pop out and see if the kettle’s boiled. I’ve made a chocolate cake too, that was Toby’s favourite.’

  Prue looked at Charity as the door closed behind the older woman, and pursed her lips.

  ‘She half expects him to come back one day. She still thinks the police got it all wrong.’

  ‘It’s nice to have someone that thinks of him fondly.’ Charity turned her back to the fire. Like Prue, she was still wearing the smart clothes they thought appropriate for the solicitor’s benefit and her navy blue suit was none too warm. ‘We’re so lucky to have someone so trustworthy and loyal.’

  ‘Don’t you just love it here?’ James flung himself down in an armchair, looking around him with a slightly smug expression on his face. ‘To think all this belongs to us now!’

  For Prue the last few months had seen one upheaval after another. After the funeral she had gone home to find a letter asking her to resign from her teaching job, and Tim demanding a divorce. Tim used the excuse that he could no longer bear the shame of being married to a Stratton, but in fact Prue discovered he was having an affair with a pianist in Leatherhead. Of the two bombshells Prue seemed more devastated by her loss of job; but almost immediately she applied for a place on a probation officers’ course in Reading.

  Prue said she was happier, and she looked it. She’d lost a few pounds, abandoned her frumpy clothes for fashionable ones and she was sharing a flat with a girl who was as giggly and wild as Rita used to be.

  For Charity, the last few months had been a time of great peace and happiness. Although she went back to her flat to tidy up, she hadn’t stayed one night there since Toby’s funeral. Now it had been sold, her furniture stored in one of Rob’s spare bedrooms until they could find a house in Hampstead.

  Rita had bought the agency, and they celebrated the occasion by throwing a party for all the clients and employees, old and new. Charity hadn’t even attempted to find a job. There had been a week in a private hospital while she had plastic surgery on her face and she was enjoying time spent cooking for Rob, and reading all the books she’d missed over the last ten years. The operation had been a great success; only a slight discoloration of her skin reminded her of how it had been, and that was easily covered with makeup. Her curls were gone, cut off soon after leaving the hospital, leaving her hair in a sleek bob, much the way it had been when she first moved in with Dorothy and Rita.

  The old businesslike Charity had vanished with her curls. She was a girl again, enjoying life as she never had before. She and Rob were getting married in January and going to Switzerland for a honeymoon, and sometimes she was so overwhelmed by happiness she half expected to wake up and find it was all a dream.

  Rob was everything she had ever hoped for, and more. He made her laugh till her sides ached, they made love so often it was indecent, but it was the peace inside her she appreciated most.

  No more anxiety, no sense of foreboding. She woke every morning with joyful anticipation, taking pleasure in everything from making breakfast to ironing Rob’s shirts. When the phone rang it meant a friend wanting a chat, not a problem. All the letters she wrote were to people she cared for, nights out were for fun, not business disguised as pleasure. Sometimes Charity went out to Colney Hatch hospital to visit some of Rob’s patients who had no one, and when she saw Rob’s affection and care for some of these sad old people, it brought home to her his selfless dedication.

  James had gone back to school in September, and somehow managed to rise above the pointed questions and raised eyebrows. He was still intent on getting into University to study medicine and he and Rob had become firm friends.

  To Charity’s further delight, Dorothy had married George. The pair of them were still very mysterious about how they had met; even their wedding took place in secret. But Charity felt they were ideally suited. George was rich enough with his big house in Essex and Dorothy was happy playing the gracious hostess to George’s flashy friends. Everything was settled and comfortable now – except what to do about Studley.

  It couldn’t be sold unless all three Strattons were in complete agreement. Furthermore, until James was twenty-one, there were trustees who had to be consulted about any plans or alterations that affected the estate. But even though in theory they could stall any decisions until James came of age, in practice someone had to take the reins.

  Margaret joined them rather nervously for tea. This was Charity’s suggestion, as she felt they ought to discover if Margaret and Tom had future plans and thought that an informal discussion would clear the air.

  But Margaret was of the old
school: she thought her employers should tell her what they wanted.

  ‘We’ll stay for as long as you want us to,’ she said, looking decidedly uncomfortable to be seated on the settee next to James. She had wheeled in a trolley loaded with china, cake and sandwiches and didn’t feel right about watching Prue pass it all round. ‘You just tell us what you want.’

  ‘But Margaret,’ Charity said gently. ‘We have no right to order your life. We’re so grateful for everything you’ve done here, the anxiety you’ve saved us. But we don’t want you both to stay on just to please us, if you’d rather be home in your own house.’

  It was clear that Margaret had grown attached to Studley and enjoyed her position of trust. But she was nearly sixty, Tom older still, and Charity felt that the longer they stayed, the more difficult it would be for them to adjust to going back to their own home.

  ‘We’ll stay until you’ve decided what you’re going to do.’ Margaret tossed the ball back neatly to their court. ‘Now I’ve made a roast for you all for dinner, and I’d better go and see to it.’

  Once Margaret had bustled out with the tea trolley, Prue looked enquiringly at Charity.

  ‘Surely you’d need her to stay on when you move in?’

  The question was one Charity had been expecting all day. Not so much about Margaret, but about Charity moving in. Neither Prue nor James had even considered that she wouldn’t want to live here. In their minds was a rosy picture, rather like the one she’d painted for them as small children. Charity would be the mother figure; they would come home at weekends and holidays.

  It was deliciously warm in the drawing room, the huge log fire casting flickering shadows on the ceiling as darkness descended outside. Silver photograph frames, polished antique furniture and the comfort of feather cushions beneath them almost seduced them into forgetting the reality of what living here really meant.

  ‘But I’m going to marry Rob in January,’ Charity reminded her sister. ‘We want a house in Hampstead.’

  Charity’s ambitions were humble ones: a family home with a garden, and a husband who came home each night. She wanted to spend her days being a wife and mother. Not once in the past six months had she felt tempted to start another business and she doubted she ever would.

  ‘Rob could open a private practice here,’ Prue said with all her old sniffiness.

  Charity looked from Prue to James. Although there had been no comment from him yet, the look of extreme contentment on his face suggested it hadn’t crossed his mind that she and Rob had no heart for being caretakers until he came of age.

  ‘We don’t want this kind of life,’ Charity said. ‘Rob and I want a home that is just ours, and Rob’s too committed to his work at Colney Hatch to give it up.’

  ‘It will be a different story when he sees Studley,’ said Prue. ‘I bet he won’t want to be a shrink in a nuthouse then.’

  ‘Don’t you dare demean Rob’s valuable work, or use that word,’ Charity retorted angrily. ‘As for his thoughts on Studley, you seem to forget he was brought up with this kind of grandeur, and he has no taste for it again.’

  Prue blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,’ she said hastily.

  ‘I know you two love this place, but I don’t,’ Charity went on, calmed by the apology. ‘Quite honestly it holds nothing but bad memories for me.’

  Prue’s jaw dropped.

  ‘But I thought…’ she paused, as if unable to find the right words. ‘Surely this is all anyone could want?’

  Charity knew what was going on in Prue’s head. She saw Charity and Rob dressing for dinner, helping themselves to bottles from the wine cellar, a life that was a social whirl, to which Prue would be invited each weekend.

  ‘Not me.’ Charity shrugged. She wanted cosiness, cooking meals for Rob herself, a home where everything was chosen by them, not a museum to display and boast about. ‘You live in it if it’s what you want.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! It’s too big and anyway I’ve got a career,’ Prue shot back. ‘James can’t live here, he’s got years of medical school and stuff ahead of him. You’re the one who said we should all stick together. If you lived here we could.’

  Charity took a deep breath. She knew exactly what her sister was getting at and it felt very much like emotional blackmail.

  ‘All of us have lives of our own now. That’s the way it should be too. Rob’s and my house will always be open to either of you, but we intend to start a family as soon as possible.’

  Prue’s flat face seemed to close up, eyes narrowing and two red spots of indignation appearing on her cheeks.

  ‘But what will happen to this place if you don’t come here?’ James spoke up at last. Always the peacemaker, he was trying to find a middle way. He had grown another couple of inches since the funeral and despite his rather unkempt hair there was new maturity in his face. ‘It’s silly letting it lie empty, or just letting Margaret and Tom look after it for no one.’

  ‘Do you dream of living here one day?’ Charity asked him. He looked so much like Toby she often expected him to react in the same way. ‘Do you imagine living here with a wife and children?’

  ‘Give us a chance, Chas!’ he retorted. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Even after medical school I’ll have to be a junior houseman in hospital and work for a while in a general practice with other doctors. I could be thirty before I’m free to work from here.’

  ‘Are you saying you want Rob and me to sit it out here until then, putting all our dreams on hold?’

  James looked sheepish.

  ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ he said quickly. ‘But I can’t possibly take responsibility now.’

  ‘So it’s down to you, Prue,’ Charity said, turning back to her sister. Prue was sitting very stiffly, bristling with indignation. ‘You work in Reading, you could easily commute. Do you think you might marry again, have children here?’

  ‘I’m settled now. I like living in the town.’ Prue’s face grew flushed and she picked distractedly at the bottom of her sweater.

  ‘As I see it, there’s only one choice then,’ Charity said. ‘To sell it and forget about it.’

  ‘But we can’t do that. It’s been in the family for four generations.’ Prue jumped out of her seat, eyes blazing. ‘Uncle Stephen would turn in his grave, and Grandfather.’

  A presence had crept into the room. Charity felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She was reminded sharply that Stephen had been murdered in the room next door and she could almost hear the sound of his wheelchair, see his fat, florid face glowering at her.

  ‘Why should we carry on their selfish traditions?’ she snapped back, determined not to be undermined by ghosts. ‘What do we owe them?’

  ‘He left it to us, isn’t that enough?’ Prue scowled. Flouncing across the room she leaned one elbow on the mantelpiece.

  Charity surveyed her sister dispassionately. The events of the past year had changed Prue in many ways, but today she was behaving much as she had in her teens, so full of her own importance she couldn’t think of anyone else.

  James was watching both his sisters with a slightly bemused expression. Toby would’ve thrown in more fuel to turn it into a battle. James preferred to sit back and observe silently.

  ‘If Uncle Stephen hadn’t filled Toby’s head with grand ideas, he might not be dead now,’ Charity reminded them both. ‘Do you think I want my children to grow up in a place where people will tell them how one uncle murdered another?’

  As she spoke the hasty words, she realised that this was her best reason for wanting to be free of this place. There was poison in every brick, however lovely it looked. A long line of conniving, arrogant men here had manipulated their way through life, stifled their women, treated their children with utter disregard.

  ‘I thought we’d agreed never to mention that again?’ James piped up, a little nervous now sparks were flying.

  ‘Other people will always mention it here,’ Charity sai
d gently, a little ashamed that once again she had allowed Prue to provoke her. ‘If you two decide you want to hang on to it, that’s up to you. But I want no part in it.’

  ‘I bet you’ll want the money, though,’ Prue sniped, turning her back on Charity.

  ‘How dare you?’ Charity snapped, jumping up from her seat, on the point of slapping her sister. ‘I’ve never wanted a thing from this estate and well you know it.’

  ‘But it’s different now,’ Prue sneered. ‘Bet you won’t give your share away!’

  Leaving the room was the only dignified thing for Charity to do. She ran upstairs, cheeks flushed with anger, sorely tempted to phone Rob and ask him to come later and collect her.

  But as she opened the door of the bedroom Margaret had prepared for her, anger vanished. A fire had been lit, even though it was hardly necessary now central heating had been put in, and the warmth was soothing. This was where she’d spent her first night in Studley. The twin beds with high carved headboards, the matching wardrobe and dressing-table were just the same, but Margaret had woven a little magic here too.

  It had been redecorated and now had flower-sprigged walls and pale pink curtains. The beds were covered in old patchwork quilts made by her grandmother, and the room was carpeted.

  Charity drew the curtains, turned on the bedside lamp and flopped down on one of the beds, smiling at the little feminine touches. A couple of framed embroidered samplers made by her own mother, a vase of Michaelmas daisies and a row of garish paperbacks were intended to make it feel homely.

  But it wasn’t homely. She wanted to live in a place where she could slop around in her dressing-gown all day if she chose.

  ‘Imagine wanting a cup of tea at two in the morning,’ she murmured, shuddering at the thought of going alone along all those dark passages. ‘Even using the toilet here takes courage!’

  She took off her suit and pulled jeans and a sweater out of the bag Margaret had thoughtfully brought up. Prue probably had fanciful ideas about dressing for dinner, but Charity intended to be comfortable if further arguments were on the cards tonight.