The Empty House

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  She thought about divorce, but knew that she would never divorce Anthony, not simply because of the children, but because she was Virginia, and she could no more embark, voluntarily, upon such a course, than she could have flown to the moon.

  She was not happy, but what could be the good of broadcasting her failure, her disillusion, to the rest of the world? Anthony did not love her, had never loved her. But then she had never loved him. If he had married Virginia to get his hands on Kirkton, then she had married Anthony on the rebound, in an emotional state of extreme unhappiness, and in a desperate bid to avoid the London Season that her mother had planned for her, culminating in the final nightmare of a coming-out dance.

  She was not happy, but, to all intents and purposes, she had everything. A lovely house, a handsome husband, and the children. The children were worth everything. For them she would shore up her crumbling marriage, and for them she would create a world of security that they would never know again.

  Anthony had been with Liz that night he was killed. He had called in at the Old Manse for a drink on his way back from Relkirk and was invited to stay for supper.

  He rang Virginia.

  “Liz has got the Cannons staying. She wants me to eat here and make up a four for bridge. I’ll be home some time. Don’t wait up.”

  Liz’s cupboard with the whisky bottle stood open, as always. And as always Anthony helped himself liberally and with a generous hand. It was two o’clock before he started home, a black and starless night of pouring rain. It had been raining for days and the river was in spate. Afterwards the police came with tape measures and bits of chalk, and they measured the skid marks, and hung over the broken rail of the bridge and stared down into the muddy, swirling waters. And Virginia stood with them, in the drenching rain, and watched the divers go down, and there was a kindly sergeant who kept urging her to go back to the house, but she wouldn’t go because, for some reason, she had to be there, because he had been her husband and the father of her children.

  And she remembered what he had said, that night he told her about Kirkton. I’m just sorry that it had to happen when we were both so young.

  8

  The quiet night moved slowly past, the seconds, the minutes, the hours, measured by the ticking of Virginia’s wrist-watch which she had put on the table by her bed. Now, she reached out for it and saw that it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. She got out of bed, wrapped herself in the quilt and went to sit on the floor by the open window. It was the hour before dawn, dark and very still. She could hear, a mile or more away, the gentle movement, like breathing, of the sea. She could hear the soft shufflings and munchings of the Guernseys, grazing two or three fields distant; she could hear rustlings and whisperings and creepings from hedgerow and burrow, and the hooting of a night owl.

  She found that she was devilled by the memory of Liz. Liz had come to Anthony’s funeral wearing a face of grief and guilt so naked that instinctively one had turned away from it, not wanting to witness such pain. Soon afterwards her husband had taken her to the South of France for a holiday and Virginia had not seen her again.

  But now she knew that she must go back to Scotland and soon, if it was only to square things up with Liz. To convince Liz that no blame could ever be laid at her door, to make—as far as was humanly possible—friends with her again. She thought of returning to Kirkton and this time her imagination did not turn and run but took the journey quietly and without horror. Off the road it went, and down over the bridge and the river, and up the drive between the lush meadows of the park. It came to the curving sweep in front of the house, and went up the steps and in through the front door, and now there was no longer the old familiar sensation of loneliness, of being trapped. But simply a sadness that the lives of the people who had lived in this beautiful house had achieved no lasting cohesion, but had unravelled like a length of badly spun yarn, and finally shredded away.

  She would sell the house. Somewhere, some time, her subconscious had made the decision and now presented it to her conscious mind as a fait accompli. How much this phenomenon had to do with Eustace, Virginia could not at the moment comprehend. Later on, no doubt, it would all work itself out. For now the relief was enormous, like the shedding of a load carried too long, and she felt grateful, as though another person had stepped in and made the decision for her.

  She would sell Kirkton. Buy another house, a little house … somewhere. Again, later on, it would all work itself out. She would make a new home, new friends, create a garden, buy a puppy, a kitten, a canary in a cage. Find schools for the children, fill the holidays with pleasures she had previously been too diffident to attempt. She would learn to ski; they would go on skiing holidays together. She would build kites and mend bicycles, let Cara read all the books she ever wanted, and go to Nicholas’s sports days wearing the right sort of hat, and achieve marvellous things like winning the egg-and-spoon race.

  And it would happen because she would make it happen. There was no more Eustace, no more dreams, but other good things were constant. Like pride, and resolution, and the children. The children. And she smiled, knowing that, like the arrow on the compass for ever pointing north, whatever she did and however she behaved, she was always left, facing squarely in their direction.

  She was beginning to be cold. The first lightening of dawn was beginning to creep up into the sky. She got up off the floor, took a sleeping-pill and a glass of water and climbed back into bed. When she opened her eyes again the sun, high in the sky, was shining full in her face, and from downstairs came a terrible racket, a banging at the front door and a voice calling her name.

  “Virginia! It’s me. Alice! Wake up, or are you all dead?”

  Dazed with shock and sleep, Virginia stumbled out of bed, across the floor, and hung out of the window. “Alice! Stop making such a din. The children are asleep.”

  Alice, foreshortened, turned up an astonished face. Her voice dropped to an exaggerated stage-whisper. “I’d begun to think you’d all passed out. It’s past ten. Come down and let me in!”

  Yawning, incapable, Virginia groped for her dressing-gown, pushed her feet into slippers and went downstairs, pausing at the open door of the children’s room on the way. To her surprise they were still asleep, undisturbed by Alice’s shouting. She thought, we must have been late last night. We must have been much later than I realized.

  She unlocked the door, to let in a flood of sunshine and Alice. Alice wore a crisp blue linen dress, a silk scarf over her head. As usual she was bright-skinned, clear-eyed, maddeningly awake.

  “Do you usually wake up at this hour?”

  “No, but…” Virginia swallowed a yawn. “… I couldn’t get to sleep last night. Eventually I took a pill. It must have knocked me out.”

  “And the children?”

  “I didn’t give them a pill, but they’re still asleep. We were late, we were out all day.” She yawned again, forced her eyes open. “How about some coffee?”

  Alice looked amused. “You certainly look as though you’ll need some. I tell you what. I’ll make it, you go and get yourself woken up, and put some clothes on. It’s no good talking to you when you’re in this state.” She laid her handbag on the table in a purposeful way. “I must say, this really isn’t too bad a little house, is it? And here’s the kitchen. A little poky, perhaps, but perfectly adequate…”

  Virginia ran a bath, got into it and washed her hair. Afterwards, she went upstairs, wrapped in a towel, and took clean clothes from the drawer, and a cotton dress, as yet unworn, from the wardrobe. She pushed her feet into sandals, combed her sleek wet hair into place, and feeling clean and strangely hungry, went back downstairs to Alice.

  She found her thoroughly organized, the kettle on the gas, the jug ready with the coffee, mugs laid out on the table.

  “Oh, there you are … we’re just about ready … I thought we’d have proper coffee; I get so fed up with this wishy-washy stuff, don’t you?”

  Virginia sat on th
e edge of the table. “When did you get back from London?”

  “Last night.”

  “How was it? Did you have fun?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t come here to talk about London.”

  “In that case, what brought you here at ten o’clock on a Monday morning?”

  “Curiosity,” said Alice. “Sheer, undiluted curiosity.”

  “About me?”

  “About Eustace Philips!”

  Virginia said, “I don’t understand.”

  “Mrs. Jilkes told me. I was scarcely in through the front door when I was hearing all about it. She said that Eustace had telephoned her while I was away to ask if anybody was getting Bosithick ready for you and the children. And she said I was in London, and he said not to bother, he’d see to it.”

  “Yes, that’s right … and he did too…”

  “But Virginia … You talked about Eustace, but you never told me that you’d met him again.”

  “Didn’t I?” Virginia frowned. “No, I didn’t, did I?”

  “But when did you meet him?”

  “That day I came out to see the cottage. Do you remember? I said I wouldn’t be back for lunch. And I went to the pub in Lanyon to buy cigarettes and I met him there.”

  “But why didn’t you say anything about it? Was there any particular reason that you didn’t want me to know?”

  “No.” She tried to remember. “But I suppose I just didn’t want to talk about him.” She smiled. “It wasn’t as though it had been such a friendly reunion. In fact, we had the most terrible row…”

  “But did you mean to meet him again?”

  “No. It just happened.”

  “And he remembered you? After all this time? But he’d only ever seen you that once at the barbecue.”

  “No,” said Virginia. “I did see him again.”

  “When?”

  “About a week after the barbecue. I met him in Porthkerris. We spent the afternoon together and he drove me back to Wheal House. You didn’t see him because you were out that day. But my mother was there. She knew about it.”

  “But why was it all kept such a secret?”

  “It wasn’t a secret, Alice. It was just that my mother didn’t like Eustace. I must say, he didn’t make much of an effort to impress her, and he was rude and the Land-Rover was covered with bits of straw and mud and manure … not my mother’s cup of tea at all. She treated the whole incident as though it were a sort of joke, but I knew that he had made her angry, and that she didn’t like him.”

  “But you could have talked to me about him. After all, it was I who introduced you to Eustace.”

  “I tried, but every time I started, my mother somehow broke into the conversation or changed the subject or interrupted in some way. And … you mustn’t forget this, Alice … you were her friend, not mine. I was just the little girl, out of the nursery. I never imagined for a moment that you’d take my side against hers.”

  “Was it a question of taking sides?”

  “It would have been. You know what a snob she was.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, but it was harmless.”

  “No, Alice, it wasn’t harmless. It was terribly dangerous. It affected everything she did. It deformed her.”

  “Virginia!” Alice was shocked.

  “That’s why we suddenly went back to London. You see, she knew, she guessed right away, that I was in love with Eustace.”

  The kettle boiled. Alice lifted it, and filled the coffee jug, and the kitchen was suffused with a delicious fresh smell. Alice drew a spoon gently across the surface of the coffee.

  “And were you?” she asked at last. “In love with Eustace?”

  “Of course I was. Wouldn’t you have been at seventeen?”

  “But you married Anthony Keile.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I … I married him.”

  “Were you happy?”

  “I was lonely…”

  “But, Virginia, I always thought … I mean, your mother always said … I thought you were so happy,” Alice finished, hopeless with confusion.

  “No. But it wasn’t all Anthony’s fault. It was my fault, too.”

  “Did Lady Keile know this?”

  “No.” Nor did she know the circumstances of Anthony’s death. Nor did she know about Liz. Nor was she ever going to. “Why should she know? She used to come and stay with us, but never for more than a week at a time. It wasn’t difficult to foster the illusion of an idyllically happy marriage. It was the least we could do for her…”

  “I’m surprised Nanny never said anything.”

  “Nanny never saw anything she didn’t want to see. And to her, Anthony was perfection.”

  “It can’t have been easy.”

  “No. but like I said, it wasn’t all Anthony’s fault.”

  “And Eustace?”

  “Alice, I was seventeen; a little girl, waiting for someone to come and buy her a ice-cream.”

  “But not now…” said Alice.

  “No. Now I’m twenty-seven and the mother of two children. And I’m not waiting for ice-creams any longer.”

  “You mean, he has nothing to give you.”

  “And he needs nothing from me. He’s self-sufficient. He has his own life. He has Penfolda.”

  “Have you discussed this with him?”

  “Oh, Alice…”

  “You obviously haven’t. So how can you be so certain?”

  “Because all those years ago, he said he’d phone me. He said that he wanted me to come out to Penfolda for tea or something, to meet his mother again. And I was going to borrow your car and drive myself out here. But you see, he never telephoned. I waited, but he never telephoned. And before there was time to find out why, or do anything about it, I’d been whisked back to London by my mother.”

  Alice said, “And how do you know he never telephoned?” She was beginning to sound impatient.

  “Because he never did.”

  “Perhaps your mother took the call.”

  “I asked her. And she said there’d never been any telephone call.”

  “But, Virginia, she was perfectly capable of taking a call and never telling you about it. Specially if she didn’t like the young man. Surely you realized that.”

  Her voice was brisk and practical. Virginia stared, scarcely able to believe her ears. That Alice should say such things about Rowena Parsons—Alice of all people, her mother’s oldest friend. Alice, coming out with a dark truth that Virginia had never had the courage to find out for herself. She remembered her mother’s face, smiling across the railway carriage, the laughing protest. “Darling! What an accusation. Of course not. You surely didn’t think…”

  And Virginia had believed her. She said at last, helplessly, “I thought she was telling me the truth. I didn’t think she was capable of lying.”

  “Let’s say she was a determined person. And you were her only child. She always had great ambitions for you.”

  “You knew this. You knew this about her and yet she was still your friend.”

  “Friends aren’t people you particularly like for any special reason. You just like people because they’re your friends.”

  “But if she was lying, then Eustace must have thought that I didn’t want to see him again. All these years he’s been thinking I simply let him down.”

  “But he wrote you a letter,” said Alice.

  “A letter?”

  “Oh, Virginia, don’t be so dense. That letter that came for you. The day before you went back to London.” Virginia continued to stare blankly. “I know there was a letter. It came by the afternoon post, and it was on the table in the hall and I thought ‘How nice’ because you didn’t get many letters. And then I went off to do something or other and when I came back the letter had gone. I presumed you’d taken it.”

  A letter. Virginia saw the letter. Imagined the envelope as white, the writing very black, addressed to her. Miss Virginia Parsons. Lyi
ng unattended and vulnerable upon that round table that still stood in the centre of the hall at Wheal House. She saw her mother come out of the drawing-room, perhaps on her way upstairs, pause to inspect the afternoon’s mail. She was wearing the raspberry-red suit with the white silk shirt, and when she put out her hand to pick up the letter, her nails were painted the same raspberry-red, and her heavy gold charm bracelet made a jingling sound, like bells.

  She saw her frown at the writing, the black masculine writing, inspect the postmark, hesitate for perhaps a second, and then slip the envelope into the pocket of her jacket and carry on with what she was doing, unperturbed, as though nothing had happened.

  She said, “Alice, I never got that letter.”

  “But it was there!”

  “Don’t you see? Mother must have taken it. Destroyed it. She would, you know. She would say, ‘It’s all for Virginia’s sake. For Virginia’s own good.’”

  Illusions were gone for ever, the veil torn away. She could look back with a cool, objective regard and see her mother the way she had really been, not merely snobbish and determined, but devious too. In some odd way, this was a relief. It had taken some effort, all these years, to sustain the legend of an irreproachable parent, even though Virginia had been deceiving nobody but herself. Now, remembered, she seemed much more human.

  Alice was looking upset, as though already regretting any mention of the letter.

  “Perhaps it wasn’t from Eustace.”

  “It was.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if it had been from anyone else, then she would have given it back to me, with some excuse or other about opening it by mistake.”

  “But we don’t know what was in the letter.”

  Virginia got off the table. “No. But I’m going to find out. Now. Will you stay here till the children wake up? Will you tell them I shan’t be long?”