House of the Lost

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘For the moment we’d better focus on the immediate,’ said Helen, the tears drying on her cheeks. ‘On getting through the rest of this holiday, including, oh dear God, Nancy’s bonfire. It’ll be a nightmare, but it’ll have to be done. Can you do it?’

  Theo did not say he would have to focus on getting through the rest of his life. He managed to say, ‘Yes, I can do that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and without looking at Charmery, went out of the boathouse and back to the house.

  Only then did Charmery push back her hair and sit up straight to look at him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That isn’t what I intended to happen.’

  Theo had hoped the world would stop spinning when Helen went away, but Charmery’s words and her tone were sending it spinning in a different direction. She’s apologizing, he thought, and before he realized it, he said, ‘You knew.’

  ‘I knew Desmond wasn’t my father,’ she said.

  ‘How did you know?’ Theo made an angry gesture. ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ he said, ‘but tell me anyway.’

  ‘If you must have the sordid details,’ she said impatiently, ‘I found some old letters last year – mother was having a bedroom re-fitted and there was a massive clear-out going on. There was a big envelope at the top of an old wardrobe stuffed with ancient medical cards and hospital appointments and things, so I looked to see if there was anything interesting.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And there was a letter addressed to Desmond Kendal, dated way back – 1981 or 1982. It was confirmation of some tests.’

  ‘What kind of tests?’

  ‘Fertility tests,’ she said. ‘Only he wasn’t – wasn’t fertile, I mean. It was absolutely clear on that. Zero score. Sad, isn’t it? Some childhood illness, it said. But it was absolutely definite and clear. He could never father children, not ever. So I knew he wasn’t my father.’ She reached for his hand. ‘But honestly, Theo, I didn’t know the truth.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask Helen?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. At first I wondered if she’d had – what do you call it? – in vitro fertilization, but I don’t think that was very common or successful in the 1980s. So then I thought she might cry among all the paint-pots and stepladders and give me a lot of guffle about star-crossed love and doomed romances – like Brief Encounter or something equally nauseating. Massively embarrassing to hear one’s mother bang on about some torrid old love affair. I didn’t want to hear it. Lot of slop,’ said Charmery, on a sudden sob.

  ‘But did you guess the truth? Charm, tell me honestly.’

  She bent her head again. ‘I did think it might be your father,’ she said. ‘He sort of fitted the profile – he seems to have been very much part of the scene, and according to all the stories he was very charming.’

  ‘So I believe,’ said Theo in a hard voice.

  ‘I didn’t know for certain, though. Does it matter so terribly much? We could be really secret about it…’ She suddenly leaned over to kiss him, and Theo’s lips opened involuntarily and his body responded with the familiar hard longing. When she stopped kissing him, her eyes were wide and shining.

  ‘It’d be a really exciting secret to be lovers like this, wouldn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘It’s not exciting at all,’ said Theo. ‘It’s sick.’ But he remained where he was, and after a moment she slid her hand down between his legs. I’ll push her hand away in a minute, he thought. In just a minute… His emotions were in turmoil, but the familiar longing was already spreading through him like a fire. She doesn’t understand, he thought, but in the same heartbeat remembered how she had made him promise not to tell anyone about their love-making in the summer. ‘Not to my parents,’ she had said, and the memory of those words sent a spike of anger through Theo. Had she known the real truth all the time? Had she manipulated him, purely for the excitement of it. It’d be a really exciting secret to be lovers like this…

  He managed to say, ‘Charmery, we can’t turn our feelings off like flipping a switch, but we’ve got to try.’

  ‘Why? No one needs to know. As long as we keep it from my mother and Desmond.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’ Theo clung to the flicker of angry suspicion that Charmery could have known the truth and it gave him the strength to push her hand away. ‘We can’t do this, Charmery. Helen’s right. Not now. Not ever again.’

  A look he had never seen before came into her eyes. ‘What a hypocrite you are,’ she said. ‘So bloody moral and righteous when all the time, you’re bursting your skin to fuck me.’ She stood up. ‘Well, fuck you, brother dear, because you won’t get the chance to do it again.’

  Without looking at him, she half ran out of the boathouse. Theo sat for a long time, his mind a churning mass of raw agony. But within the agony the spikes of anger were still jabbing into him. He thought if anything were to drag him through this sick despair, it would be that anger. What if she really did know? She could have done. After she found the medical report on Desmond’s infertility, she’d have been tuned in for any clues about who her father really was. Maybe she came across a letter Helen had kept, or Helen had said something unguarded. Charmery was sharp enough, intuitive enough, to piece together any small fragments. But if Theo once believed this, he might start to hate her instead of loving her.

  He realized he was shivering as violently as if he had a high fever, and he managed to go back to the house and up to his bedroom. He pulled on a sweater and sat on the bed, wrapping his arms round his body in an attempt to bring some warmth back. Then he washed and got ready for Nancy’s bonfire. As he did so, he wondered how he could ever forget the sweet softness of Charmery’s lips and the helpless hard arousal between his legs when she kissed him. Even if he really did hate her now, he would go on wanting her for the rest of his life.

  He returned to Cambridge and his final year, but when it came to the finals he did not get the prophesied double first. ‘A very near miss, apparently,’ said his tutor ruefully. ‘I suspect you’ve burned the candle at both ends these last few months.’

  ‘I have but it gave a lovely light,’ said Theo.

  ‘Don’t quote to the converted,’ said his tutor sharply. Then, relenting, he said, ‘I think it was more a matter of the mental energy going in other directions, wasn’t it? All those sketches for the Footlights for instance.’

  But Theo knew he had lost the double first because of Charmery. There were endless nights when he lay awake aching for her, and when he thought he heard her voice inside the rain pattering on the windows. On those nights he almost wished himself living in the Middle Ages so he could order an alchemist to conjure her up there and then, and he came very close to reaching for the phone, just to hear her voice. But if once he talked to her he would want to see her, and he was afraid of discovering he did not care that she was his sister.

  Despite what Helen had said, he wondered whether his mother had known or suspected the truth. She had never, for as long as he could remember, stayed at Fenn House for longer than was absolutely necessary. Was it because she knew Charmery was her husband’s love-child and could not bear to see her more than she had to? But if so, surely she would have hated Helen, and she never had. So it looked as if she had not known. Theo considered asking Petra, but knew he could not. If she really didn’t know it would tear her apart.

  But although he won the many fights not to phone Charmery, news of her filtered back to him in gossipy trickles. She left school the following year, and as Petra had prophesied, did not go on to university or seem interested in doing so. The family grapevine reported that she travelled quite a lot – there were two or three months in America, and six months in France, and then another six months in Switzerland. Theo guessed Helen had deliberately arranged this to keep Charmery out of his reach. The rest of the family viewed these travels with disfavour, even Aunt Emily, saying anybody would think Charmery was a debutante or an eighteenth-century fop taking the Grand Tour. Nancy thought it all very
extravagant and just hoped Desmond had enough money to fund all this gallivanting. Better if Charmery had trained for a proper job, said Nancy; Helen and Desmond should have insisted on it while the girl was still at school.

  ‘I don’t know what century Nancy lives in or how she copes with her sixth formers,’ observed Aunt Emily. ‘Parents haven’t been able to insist their children do anything for at least twenty years, even I know that.’

  Unexpectedly, it was Theo’s mother who said, ‘But nobody’s ever been able to insist that Charmery does anything she doesn’t want to do.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After Theo left Cambridge he avoided the family as much and as politely as possible. His absence was noticed and commented on, of course, and apparently became the subject of considerable conjecture. Opinions ranged from the possibility that he had become entangled with some disreputable adventuress who could not be introduced to anyone (Aunt Emily’s belief ), to speculation that he had taken to drink or drugs or both (Nancy), and the suggestion by a mild-mannered aunt on Helen’s side of the family that he might be contemplating a religious retreat from the world. According to Theo’s mother, who attended a fortieth birthday party for Lesley’s mother, this last idea caused much ribaldry among the bluffer uncles who said what about the vow of chastity, ho ho, and added that hell would freeze and pigs would fly before Theo would enter a monastery. Guff thought the absences might be due to Theo having been enlisted by the government to work in a secret capacity, and pointed out that Burgess and Maclean had been Cambridge men.

  ‘They were also double agents,’ said Nancy, tartly.

  ‘Yes, but Theo wouldn’t be a double agent.’

  ‘So there you are,’ said Petra, recounting all this to Theo. ‘You’re either in the hands of a gold-digger, you’re an alcoholic or a drug fiend, you’re about to become a monk or you’re James Bond.’

  ‘I’ve just had a bit too much of family,’ said Theo, hating himself for deceiving her.

  ‘A little of them goes a long way,’ agreed his mother, apparently accepting this with perfect equanimity.

  ‘But I expect I’ll wander back into the Kendal bosom at some point.’

  ‘I expect you will,’ she said, as if it was not important. ‘One usually does.’

  In time life became slightly more endurable. His Footlights’ sketches had caused a few ripples in the world that existed beyond Cambridge’s rarefied atmosphere, and some review work came in, along with the acceptance of a couple of articles for one of the heftier Sunday papers. In the wake of this was a modest commission for a series of four short radio plays.

  ‘And very good they were,’ said Guff, who had written to the BBC to praise the plays and had received a very nice reply from a young production assistant whom he intended to take out to lunch.

  The radio plays led to scripting work for a couple of TV documentaries, which was gratifying and enjoyable. None of it provided a huge amount of money, but for the moment there was enough on which to live and it was possible to view the financial future with a degree of optimism. With some trepidation, Theo embarked on a full-length novel, and after a few false starts and some rejections, his first novel was published when he was twenty-six. When he received the call saying it had been accepted, he found himself longing to tell Charmery, and to see her eyes glowing with admiration and delight for him. He tried not to mind when she did not so much as send him a note or even an email of congratulation.

  There were congratulations from other quarters though, because the book received considerable acclaim. ‘Dark,’ said the critics. ‘Dark and dense, and although not entirely comfortable to read, very compelling indeed.’ When it won a small, but prestigious award, they all said they had foreseen it, and began to talk about the Man Booker Prize as a future possibility.

  On the strength of this Theo scraped together a deposit for a tiny sliver of a house on the northern outskirts of London, and tried not to think how he would be shackled to the building society for the next twenty-five years.

  But his new life was not so bad; there were agreeable contacts in the world of publishing and radio and newspapers, and there were a few girlfriends along the way, although he never viewed any of these relationships as serious. Once again this was because none of them were Charmery. He wondered if he would ever stop thinking about her and wanting her.

  And then, five years after that never-forgotten autumn afternoon at Fenn House, midway through an ordinary working morning in the little north London house, he answered a knock at the door and she was standing on the step.

  Theo’s emotions spun in wild confusion, but when she said, ‘I can come back later if this isn’t a good time. Of if you’re just going out?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Theo.

  She came into the comfortable untidy room which was strewn with his books, and sat down as easily as if they were back at Fenn or in her parents’ London house at Hampstead.

  ‘This isn’t quite as I visualized it,’ she said, looking about her. ‘But it’s nice.’

  ‘Did you visualize it?’ Theo could not take his eyes off her. He could not say any of the conventional things about whether she would like a drink, or what she was doing here. Half of him wanted to pull her against him and kiss her until they were both dizzy, but the other half kept replaying that autumn afternoon. ‘It’d be a really exciting secret to be lovers…,’ she had said.

  ‘Oh yes, I often visualized it,’ she said. ‘Masses of times.’ Her eyes went to the shelf with Theo’s book on it, and to the desk where the proofs of his second book were spread out. ‘You’re almost famous, aren’t you? The Times and the Independent are saying what a brilliant writer you are. I’ve read your book. It’s very good – I didn’t realize how good a writer you’d be. All those years ago, I mean.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m here because there’s some bad news,’ she said, ‘about my mother and Desmond. I wanted to be the one to tell you.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Well, it’s all frightfully traumatic,’ she said. ‘They were on the M25 – driving too fast as usual, you know what Desmond was like, and there was a pile-up.’

  ‘A crash? God, what happened?’

  ‘Oh, they’re both dead,’ she said. ‘Right out of it, completely gone.’ She shrugged and blinked several times, and if there had been a sudden glisten of tears, they vanished. ‘Terribly sad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Charm, I’m so sorry…’

  ‘Yes, well,’ she said, in a brittle uncaring voice.

  Theo waited, but when she did not say anything more, said, ‘I really am dreadfully sorry. Does that mean you’ll be in this country more now?’

  ‘Actually I’m often in this country,’ she said. ‘I always go to Fenn in the spring – didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But where I go now rather depends on you.’ She had been curled up in the armchair, like a luxurious Persian cat; now she came to perch on the arm of Theo’s chair. Her mouth was on his before he realized it and his lips opened involuntarily. She tasted sweet and warm and five years dissolved into nothing as Theo’s body responded with the familiar hard longing. When she stopped kissing him, her eyes were wide and shining. ‘So,’ she said, ‘it is still the same for you, as well. I wasn’t absolutely sure if it would be.’

  The beloved and familiar curve of her cheek and the scent of her hair were like tinder igniting a fire that had never quite died, and Theo wanted to make love to her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. But he fought down his emotions, and said, ‘Charmery, what’s going on? I’m truly sorry about Helen and Desmond, and I’ll do everything I can to help you through it. Practically and emotionally, and—’

  ‘Emotionally,’ she said, in a soft silken voice. ‘Ah yes. That’s the thing, isn’t it, Theo?’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Theo, but in a corner of his mind, he did understand.

  Charmery said, ‘Don’t be dens
e, darling. The two people who knew the truth about us are both dead. No one in the world knows. We can be together.’

  They looked at one another.

  ‘We can’t. Charmery, I’m sorry. I still love you just as much – I think I always will – but no.’

  She recoiled as if he had struck her. ‘I thought it would be all right,’ she said, and for a moment it was not the flippant tone she had used earlier; it was the uncertain voice of the real Charmery.

  ‘No,’ said Theo again.

  Her eyes darkened briefly, but then she sat up straighter. It was as if she had reached once again for the enamelled surface and the slightly bored flippancy.

  ‘Oh well, worth a shot. Quite a day for me – I’m not used to encountering rejection. But then you always hit a nerve with me that no one else has ever found since. I’d better go, hadn’t I?’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I think I do. Goodbye, Theo, darling. Maybe one day…’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘Or maybe not,’ she said, and went out, quickly and gracefully. There was nothing to show she had ever been in the house, except for a slight dent in a cushion and the faint drift of her scent. That, and the feeling that a knife had been plunged into an old wound that had just started to heal.

  Theo’s mother asked Theo to accompany her to the double funeral. ‘I know you haven’t had much to do with the family for a long time, but I’d like to have you there if you could bear it,’ she said.

  ‘Of course I could bear it.’

  ‘Helen was very kind to me when I came into this family,’ she said. ‘The Kendals didn’t really approve of me in those days.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, because they thought I was different. Or they wanted your father to marry somebody with a lot of money. I had no money at all, of course. But Helen was a good friend to me,’ said Petra. ‘I feel as if a large piece of my life has suddenly vanished.’