‘I don’t need your permission to leave my son with my boyfriend,’ Melanie said defensively.
‘Of course not. It’s got nothing to do with me.’ He couldn’t even bear to ask the man’s name.
Silence.
The coffee in the bottom of his cup was cold and bitter.
‘Shall we go for a wander?’ Charlie asked. ‘Around the lake?’
*
They sat on a bench, watching the ducks as they circled the floating crumbs. Children, wrapped up so tightly in coats, scarves and dangling gloves they could barely see their own feet, waddled close to the water’s edge. Above them, the planes flying to Heathrow rigidly maintained their strict equidistance; a regular, never ending sequence of flights.
‘What could be nicer than sitting in Hyde Park on a crisp, cold February afternoon?’ said Charlie as a cyclist whizzed past in a blur of spokes. He was thinking of Addleston, and how nowhere was ever really at peace. Even in the middle of the countryside.
‘Apart from when there’s a bloody twenty one gun salute shattering the peace, you mean?’
‘Your face is positively blue with cold. Allow me.’ He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close until she was bundled up warm inside his coat. He could smell her skin, her hair, her deodorant.
She pulled away. ‘Don’t.’
It felt very much like a goodbye. The end of the line. Hardly a line even; more like a disused siding. He had a strong urge to get away. Maybe that was why they’d deliberately chosen an open air place to meet.
‘I would have met you for lunch,’ she said, ‘but I mustn’t be late.’
She didn’t need to explain. It was his freakiness that had attracted her in the first place and it was his freakiness that later put her off. She didn’t have the mettle for it; was looking for someone normal. He’d been an experiment that hadn’t worked out. In more ways than one. But friendship wasn’t enough for him. He was an all or nothing kind of guy.
‘Shall I call you, later?’ he asked.
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
The look on her face crucified him. Oh God, if only the cannons were still there, he could stand in front of them and be blasted to infinity.
‘Mel,’ he said, ‘why won’t you let me see Adam again?’
‘You know why,’ she said.
‘I know what you think, ’Charlie said, ‘you’ve spent long enough telling me. And if you want to continue to interpret it that way, I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to change. I won’t. I can’t.’
‘Yes,’ said Melanie, ‘that’s the problem.’
Chapter Twenty Six
The end of my beginning.
Astrid was sitting in her office, at the same desk where he’d picked over the bundles of letters all those weeks before. Nothing had changed. Not the huge desk, not the clutter, not the phone – yes, maybe the phone - not the filing cabinet, not the comfortably battered armchair, not the bookshelves, and not the woman. She hadn’t changed. At all. Which probably meant...,
‘Charlie,’ she said. ‘How lovely to see you.’
A blink of an eye, a brief disinterested turn of the head, a momentary distraction.
He’d barely sat down before she was off again. ‘Thank you for coming. Glad you’re here. I’ve got something to show you. Come on. Follow me.’
‘Why, where are we going?’
‘Wait and see. Although…,’ she was apprehensive. ‘At least, I hope you won’t mind what I’ve done. It will mean a lot to me if you approve.’
‘Of what?’
She led him out of the office and along the corridor towards the Library. Opening the door, she motioned him in.
‘We’re calling this room the Discovery Centre. It’s where the visitor gets an overview of the House and its history. It’s educational. Not everyone can plug in the way you do. The rest of us need help to relive the past.’
The glass fronted shelves of the Library were filled with hundreds of fake books, a common device once employed by wealthy gentleman to give off a learned impression. The secret ‘jib’ door leading to the servants’ passage was slightly ajar, but that wasn’t what Astrid wanted to show him. At his last visit the room had contained a single glass museum case marooned in the centre, and a highly polished table and chairs; a home for the visitors’ comments book. This time the room was filled with a set of matching display cabinets.
Amelia and Harry’s original letters had been allowed out for public consumption. The originals were laid flat beneath the glass while particularly emotive fragments from the correspondence had been reproduced and enlarged and now covered the walls of the adjacent ante-room.
Mary Ellen’s diary and the decorated tea box in which it was found were housed in their own cabinet in one corner.
Astrid had done it. She’d produced a commercial display; packaged Amelia and Harry’s futile romance into museum language, palatable and accessible to the casual Addleston House visitor. A pair of art works hanging on the wall opposite the fire place caught his eye: the picture of Amelia from the First floor and the portrait of Harry from the Derbyshire house. They’d been brought together, side by side, in place of a genuine, real reunion.
‘When did all this happen?’
‘While we were in the States. It’s kept the staff busy for weeks.’
People skills. She’d flattered and cajoled the detractors so effectively they’d caved in and come over to her side. ‘You’ve changed your Toon,’ he said.
‘Oh very good. Nice one.’
He snapped his fingers at her. ‘What? This is good stuff! Off the top of my head. Totally original material.’
‘Actually,’ Astrid confessed, ‘Megs did most of it. We’re all set for the new season. Everyone’s happy.’
Except you, he detected. ‘Does The Big Boss like it?’
She was vague. ‘I promised him I’d tone down some of my excesses.’
Charlie leant over a cabinet containing Amelia’s letter from the summer house, and dutifully perused it, wondering what it was what she wanted him to say. After all, he’d known that it was always her intention to use the letters like this.
‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Of the display?’
‘Very nice, it’s a good story.’
‘Of course, one of the letters is missing,’ Astrid said, standing close by. ‘We’d recorded and catalogued each one, made copies, sent versions to the local library etc, before I realized the collection was incomplete. Although I kept that to myself…,’
‘I do have it,’ he said, guiltily ferreting around in his pocket. ‘I hid it from Mrs Toon. I couldn’t bear to give it up.’
He offered it for restitution but Astrid made no move to take it. ‘I realized that. Never mind. There’s something else I want to show you. Upstairs.’
He followed her out of the library, across the entrance hall, and up the Great stair. Wonderful to walk up and down.
They reached the top of the staircase and made their way towards the scene of their aborted tryst, but the Taffeta bedroom was not as he remembered it. The atmosphere had subtly changed, and not just because the spring sunshine flooded the white walls. Astrid bent down towards the skirting board and flicked a switch. A low, dull hum began to whirr, and a light eddy of dust whirled around his feet. A bright light shone against the bare wall and a ghostly image appeared. A woman dressed in Regency costume shimmered translucently against the paintwork. ‘What is that, a hologram?’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Listen.’
The woman began to speak, her voice coming from an audio speaker located in the corner of the room. ‘My name is Amelia Tunney, I am twenty three years old, it is 1820, and the new King, George IV is not yet crowned. In London, the people are excited at the prospect, but I am unaware of such matters. I live here in Addleston House, quite detached from all society. My husband Richard Tunney does not like me to have friends to visit; he does not like me to socialize with anyone. In truth, I am a very miserable
woman. If it weren’t for my oldest, closest friend Harry Bramall, I would be quite lost…’
Charlie turned to Astrid in some confusion. ‘You hired an actress?’
She crouched down again and switched off the projector. ‘There’s a sensor above the doorframe. It comes on each time someone enters the room. Come next door. We’ve restored the dressing room.’
The room’s layout was unfamiliar, it’s modest furniture recently acquired.
This time a different woman appeared, floating apparition-like against the wall. Part of her arm disappeared in the light from the window.
‘We decided to put Mary Ellen in here,’ said Astrid. ‘We’re assuming, like you, that she was Richard Tunney’s illegitimate daughter. Could have been fathered with a servant, or someone from the village - but in any case, he took her in, raised her as a gentlewoman of sorts, and kept her identity concealed. That’s why she doesn’t appear in the family tree.’
The apparition had begun to speak, ‘I am Mary Ellen Tunney. My father, Richard, owns this house. He is married to Amelia. I am a companion to her, I sit with her, and read with her, and sometimes we sew together. In the absence of any friends, we have come to rely on each other. My father gets me to spy on his young wife, and although I do not like to do it, I have no power to refuse him. I have no status of my own; he would disown me if I refused him or caused trouble. I must do as he asks, or suffer the consequences…’
Charlie examined the woman’s face – or rather the actress’s. She was a healthy, personable enough individual, but her hands were clasped rather nervously in front of her, and she kept looking over her shoulder as though someone in authority might be listening. She wasn’t meant to confide her secret to the stranger in her bedroom and she was anxious not to be judged.
‘I don’t recognize her,’ he said.
Astrid bent down to switch the machine off. ‘Mary Ellen’ fell silent. The room became plain and bare once more, an anonymous bedroom in a slumbering, disused house.
‘Well no…,’ she said, ‘it’s just an approximation. I promise you it seems more natural when the covers are off the furniture, when the house is awake, when visitors are thronging the rooms.’
‘Is there more?’
‘Plenty. When you’re ready.’
She took him back down the stairs and into the vacuum of the Chinese gallery. Leading him across the large, unused space to the farthest corner, she switched on a third projector. This time a man appeared, floating above the skirting board. Sitting at a desk writing, he was dark haired, wearing a billowing white shirt and open waistcoat, his shirt buttons undone at the neck.
‘I am Harry Bramall, a parliamentary reporter. I am a very busy man, I attend the House of Commons and the House of Lords on a regular basis, however, I am never so occupied that I forget my darling Amelia. I write to her incessantly, in the hope that one day she might send me a reply…’
A competent enough actor, he supposed, reasonably handsome but nowhere near as attractive as the real man. ‘That’s not right…,’
‘You hate it, don’t you? You think our digitally restored lovers are tacky, insulting, crass? We should have left well enough alone?’
Unable to deny it, he nodded. ‘All of the above.’
‘Granted, it takes some getting used to, but as far as kids are concerned they think they’re seeing a ghost! We’re bringing history to life as it were. Of course, Mrs Toon thinks it detracts from the stillness of the rooms, but Megs and Vicky gave it the thumbs up. Gordon’s not so keen, but that’s because he’d rather do all the talking himself -’
‘I’m not being a Luddite,’ he said. ‘What I mean is that he doesn’t sound like Harry ought to sound.’
Astrid switched off the machine. The Chinese gallery became still. ‘I know what you mean. When I first heard Amelia, upstairs,’ she gestured towards the ceiling, ‘it didn’t seem quite right to me, either.’
‘Her delivery doesn’t match yours,’ he said. ‘Only you could do her justice.’
‘And only you could play Harry.’
He didn’t say what they both knew, that they had brought the relationship to life. ‘Is that why you wanted me to see all this? You wanted my approval for it?’
‘I thought you might like to see what the point of it all was.’
He looked at her, not really understanding, discomposed by her very person – knowing that he was venturing back into the lion’s den to provoke a reaction in himself. Was it still there? She was undeniably the same woman. It was he that was causing the difficulties.
‘We have more holographic images below stairs. Servants and housemaids – all actors - describing the household, providing a bit of historical context. Would you like to see them?’
‘No. Not really.’ He was watching the blank wall where ‘Harry’ had recently been sitting.
‘Charlie,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do you believe in fate?’
‘What do you mean? Predestiny?’
‘Or do you believe in chance and choice?’
‘I don’t know. What are you getting at?’
Astrid took him back to the discovery room and opened a drawer in the bottom of one of the cabinets and removed a writing slope.
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m hoping you can tell me. This was found in an attic in France.’
Despite its lumpy, business-like construction; there was something intrinsically romantic about this box. Externally, it was in good condition, save for a small amount of wear on two corners. Decorated with a large oval inlay and elaborate gold clasp, he dated it nineteenth century. Inside, the main compartment contained three dried out ink bottles with silver lids screwed stiffly shut, and two empty blue-stained pen holders. The papers and notes folded in its base, however, sent a tingle of excitement right through to his finger ends. He undid each and every document with great care.
‘They’ve yet to be shown to the public,’ said Astrid. ‘I wanted you to see them before I add them to the display.’
‘What are they?’
She helped spread them across the surface of the polished table like sheet music on top of a piano and then picked one out. ‘Read this one.’
He did as she asked.
‘My dearest one,
You cannot begin to comprehend my feelings. So much has been on my mind since I heard the extraordinary news. To think I could be such a fool! I had been waiting and waiting for word, expecting some message or letter every day, and had no idea that my hopes were in vain. Now, nothing will stop me from being with you, and releasing you from your cares. Forgive my stupidity, my love. I ought to have known you would not forsake me. And I should not have let you think that I could ever give you up. What could be more important to me, than you? It was always enough, and it was never enough - but now we will be together for always. Why, when I confronted you about your husband’s mistreatment, did you pretend otherwise? Why did I not comprehend the true picture? No matter. Now, I act! You need never fear Richard Tunney again. I am with you forever,
Harry’
What did he mean? Where was he? Where had he been?
‘Just before I came out to the States,’ Astrid said, ‘I received an email from a woman who owned a small hotel in Provence. She said she’d come across this box during a clear out, and the documents inside mentioned Addleston House. She was coming to England to visit relatives, and she said she’d drop it in to me at the same time. She was hoping we could shed some light…,’
Astrid picked up the next piece of fragile correspondence. And there she was again – Mary Ellen, her bold hand anxiously rampaging across the page. She read it to him:
My dearest Amelia,
My crimes against you have been great, my dear, I would not blame you if you tossed this letter into the fire and swore some oath against me. You were dealt harshly with by Tunney, and no court in the land would think otherwise, or castigate you for your actions. I do not seek forgiveness for all the wicked sorrow I caused y
ou, but hope that my latter actions have gone some way to repairing the grave injuries you have suffered. I hope you understand why I needed to do what I did. I will probably never see Tunney again, and thankfully neither will you. Take care, my dear, adieu!
Yours affectionately,
Mary Ellen’
It was dated 1821 – the same year she’d arrived in Peabody. Mary Ellen hadn’t fled her old life and forgotten Amelia after all. They’d been wrong to think she was selfish and unfeeling, that she had no conscience. Amelia was in fact, very much in the young woman’s mind.
Another letter written by Mary Ellen from a couple of years later, described the birth of her second son, and a further letter congratulated Amelia on the birth of her own child. Whose child? Richard’s?
But that wasn’t all the material the folder contained. A ‘Notice’ had been clipped from a newspaper:
Addleston House
To be sold at auction:
Part of the household furniture, card table, wardrobe and chamber furniture; harpsichord, a number of excellent prints, portraits, ladies articles including items of clothing and personal effects.
*
Whose belongings were these? Were they Amelia’s? Why would Tunney want to sell his wife’s furniture and clothing?
Also in the box were a number of small pencil sketches. Astrid laid them out on the table. ‘Wonderful, aren’t they? Who do you think the pictures are by? Who do you think they are?’
Charlie examined the fine, detailed work, the brisk, sharp lines – one, a picture of a handsome man, face on, and another of a respectable, older-looking man in a high collar – and he knew instinctively who the artist was.
‘This one,’ he said, pointing to the first, ‘is Harry. And this one,’ he indicated the gentleman in the collar, ‘is Richard Tunney.’
‘And the artist?’
‘Amelia of course.’
He looked again at Harry’s pose, his mouth tilted in the slightly amused expression he recognized. ‘Planning something,’ said Charlie, ‘thinking clever thoughts. Look at him!’
He was remembering Mrs Brownlow’s comments. ‘A sequence of deftly placed brushstrokes on a piece of canvas…’
Secrets of the Past Page 17
