The Forget-Me-Not Sonata

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘Marcel,’ she exclaimed flamboyantly. ‘I want you to meet my sister-in-law who’s come all the way from the Argentine.’ Marcel was twenty-eight years old, olive-skinned with hazel eyes and thick dark hair that curled about his neck and ears. He spoke with a heavy French accent and smiled using only one side of his mouth. He wore a short artist’s apron with a pocket at the front filled with brushes, which gave him the appearance of a caricature. Not to mention a large, hooked nose that could distinguish between a good wine and a moderate one. All he lacked was a beret and a string of onions to complete the look.

  ‘Enchanté,’ he said in a low, husky voice, taking Audrey’s hand and kissing it slowly. Then he turned to Cicely who seemed to buckle at the knees and looking up at her from beneath his fringe he said, ‘Mon amour, if I am to create I need to eat. My body has run out of fuel and without fuel I cannot paint. My brush is dry, my imagination is ground to a halt. When will I see what is the cause of this delicious fragrance?’ Alicia giggled and showed him the dog bowl. He frowned at her, unamused, and put his hands in his hair and shook his head.

  ‘The chicken will be ready in quinze minutes, Marcel. Why don’t you join us for a little vin?’ Cicely replied, now almost dancing about the kitchen.

  ‘Oui, du vin,’ he said and flopped into a chair. Cicely rushed to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Sancerre.

  ‘Would you care for some too, Audrey?’

  ‘I’d love some, thank you,’ she replied, watching Marcel strike a Byronic pose, which he believed gave him a sultry air. He observed Cicely from under his heavy brow.

  ‘You know I met Marcel in Paris,’ she said and her cheeks flushed prettily. ‘He was painting in the street, imagine such a talent wasted like that? It killed me.’

  ‘Cicely is my patron. Without her I would not have survived,’ he said gravely, pouting his lips and shaking his head in order to insinuate that he had faced certain death.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she interjected and waved the glasses in the air. ‘He would have been spotted by someone. Talent such as his wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. But imagine how lucky I am that he chose to come here, to the middle of the Dorset countryside, to work?’

  ‘Shall we give the dogs their lunch?’ Leonora interrupted, bored of stirring the bowls.

  ‘Yes, yes, please do. Just put them outside the back door,’ she instructed vaguely without taking her eyes off her young lover.

  ‘What about Barley?’

  ‘I’ll pick him up from the vet after lunch so leave his on the freezer in the scullery.’ And she pointed to the back of the kitchen.

  ‘Cicely is my muse as well as my patron,’ continued Marcel as the dogs followed the twins outside. Cicely glanced at Audrey and smiled at her almost apologetically.

  ‘I can understand why,’ said Audrey truthfully. Cicely did indeed have a rare beauty.

  ‘She is a beguiling woman, n’est-ce pas?’ he said, taking the bottle and glasses from her shaking hands and grinning lustfully. Audrey watched the way he looked at her. His face was like a poem, his eyelids heavy with sentiment and admiration and Cicely was transformed into a young girl again. Her mouth could hide nothing of the passion that had set her heart aflame. Audrey was in no doubt that this was a very different Cicely to the one Cecil knew. Marcel and love had changed her as only love can.

  After lunch Marcel returned to his studio at the top of the house demanding total seclusion. ‘Disturbance gives me pain, as it did the great Michelangelo,’ he said melodramatically. So Audrey accompanied Cicely and the twins to the paddock at the end of the garden where the gypsies had set up camp. The garden was wild and overgrown with the last of the summer plants tumbling from the borders onto the lawn. Tall trees stood with dignity like wise old statesmen, watching over the manor and valley in which it nestled as they had done for centuries, poised ready for the cycle of nature to end and begin all over again in the spring. The sky was a delicate blue across which white and grey clouds glided like surf on the sea and a crisp breeze turned cold every time the sun disappeared. Audrey was struck once again by the beauty of the place and she suddenly began to understand why her companions aboard the Alcantara loved it so much. She watched her daughters hover by the fence picking blackberries from the hedgerows, surrounded by the mélange of dogs and wondered whether they would one day consider this rolling countryside home. The Argentine would perhaps pale into a tender memory, as the years would inevitably separate them from their childhood and condition them to this new world. There was no avoiding it.

  As she neared them she could see through the trees into the field beyond where three brightly painted, old-fashioned caravans stood on the long grass with their doors flung wide open, steps leading from their dark interiors to the ground. A cluster of muscular cart horses grazed lazily in the sunshine and a line of washing hung from the back of one caravan to a crooked stick which they had obviously found in the wood. The girls climbed over the fence and ran up to stroke the horses who continued to eat as if they hadn’t noticed them. ‘What a lovely sight,’ mused Cicely, opening the gate. ‘I love having them here because they look so picturesque. Marcel says he’s going to paint them. Panazel’s very proud, though. He’d hate to think of himself as a picture on a chocolate box. One has to be tactful. But between you and me it really is a quaint sight, isn’t it?’ Audrey agreed and followed her across the paddock.

  ‘Mummy, isn’t he sweet!’ Leonora cried in delight, patting the horse’s neck. ‘Do you think we can ride him?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Panazel,’ said Cicely. ‘There’s a smaller one, a pony, but I imagine he’s taken him out for a ride.’

  ‘They’re going to be riding at Colehurst House,’ said Audrey, smiling back at Leonora who was angling for her mother’s attention.

  ‘Of course. Heavenly,’ Cicely exclaimed, sighing with nostalgia. ‘I used to spend the entire summer galloping across those hills when I was a child. They’re going to adore that school. If I had daughters I’d send them there too.’ Audrey wondered why she had never had children, she obviously liked them and her home was tailor-made for them. But Cicely seemed to harbour no bitterness and besides, she had her dogs who now circled the caravan and horses barking loudly. The horses continued to munch on the grass, lifting their heads up every now and then to survey the scene and nod away the flies. Then just when the twins were about to sneak a peek inside the caravans one of the horses neighed loudly and pricked his ears forward as Panazel and Florien emerged from the woods that lined the end of the field leading a small piebald pony whose back was laden with two large barrels of water. ‘He’s very handsome, don’t you think?’ Cicely hissed at Audrey.

  ‘Very,’ Audrey replied, watching them approach. Panazel was tall and strongly built with the rough, unkempt appearance of a man who has worked all his life with his hands and lived off the land. His skin was darkened by the outdoors and weathered by uncertainty as well as the years and he walked bowlegged at a slow pace, as if the days were long and life was long so there was no reason to hurry. His son, Florien, watched the strange people who waited for them by the caravans with suspicious eyes partly obscured behind a long black fringe. He was twelve years old and went to the school in the village when he remembered. He hated school and sat sulking at the back of the class dreaming of riding up on the hills and working with his father in Mrs Weatherby’s garden.

  ‘Good day to you, Mrs Weatherby,’ said Panazel, nodding his head in respect. Florien mumbled the same then stared at the twins with eyes the colour of bark. The twins stared back at him with curiosity; they had never seen a real gypsy boy before and he was more handsome than any of the boys they had met in the Argentine.

  ‘I’d like you to meet my sister-in-law who’s going to be living with me for a few weeks while her daughters settle into their new school. They’ve come all the way over from the Argentine.’ Panazel nodded at Audrey and Florien looked at the twins with more interest than ever. Although he didn’t know where the Arge
ntine was, he imagined it was somewhere very far away. He wondered whether they spoke English or French perhaps, he knew a bit of French from school. ‘This is Alicia and this is Leonora,’ continued Cicely, pointing at the girls. Florien was at once taken with Alicia whose beauty never failed to bewitch and Alicia, who recognized the look of admiration that had suddenly lit up his face, smiled at him self-confidently. ‘Alicia wants to watch you kill a chicken,’ said Cicely. Alicia looked at Panazel who frowned his disapproval. He thought it an odd request from someone so lovely.

  ‘When will you be eating chicken again, Mrs Weatherby?’ he asked, taken aback by the child’s lofty gaze as she continued to fix him with her pale eyes.

  Cicely shrugged, ‘Well, I hadn’t thought, really. I suppose we could have another for lunch tomorrow, we do have trillions of chickens, don’t we, Panazel?’

  ‘There’s no shortage of chickens,’ he said and chuckled.

  ‘Why doesn’t Florien take the girls and show them around the farm. There’s so much to see and this is their first time in England.’ Florien looked as if he had just been asked to recite his nine times table and blushed to the roots of his shiny black hair.

  ‘Can we ride these horses?’ Alicia asked and Florien’s cheeks drained of his embarrassment for at least they all spoke the same language. He wasn’t very good at French.

  ‘If you like,’ Panazel replied, ‘but it’ll have to be this evening for I’ve got work to do.’ Cicely liked the sound of that, there was so much that needed doing just to keep the place ticking over.

  ‘Florien, I’d like to see inside your caravan,’ Alicia demanded and Audrey flinched at her daughter’s commanding tone. But Florien gazed upon her with more admiration than ever and strode towards the steps indicating with a nod that she follow. Leonora was used to being passed over but she tagged along as she always did, out of habit as well as necessity.

  Audrey and Cicely wandered back across the field towards the gardens, the dogs puffing at their heels. Audrey was longing to ask after Louis. She hadn’t stopped thinking about him since she had set foot in England. She felt his presence everywhere and was reminded of him each time she looked at his sister. Finally, her opportunity came when she was shown into the drawing room for a grand piano stood collecting dust in the corner beneath large black and white photographs in silver frames. Hungrily she passed her eyes over the pictures until Louis’ face smiled out at her. And his smile held within it all his hopes and dreams, longings and disappointments, which she recognized and understood. She wanted to run her fingers over it and remember him the way he was when they had danced over the cobbled streets of Palermo in the summer of their love. So taken was she that she barely heard a word Cicely was saying.

  ‘I gather you play the piano most beautifully,’ Cicely said, sitting down on the club fender with her two Alsatians flopping onto the carpet at her feet. Audrey wrenched her thoughts away from the photograph and sighed.

  ‘Not that well, I’m afraid,’ she replied vaguely, staring into his features as if he were trying to communicate with her through the still, silent medium of the picture.

  ‘Cecil is full of admiration. He can’t play a note, not like Louis,’ she said and her voice trailed off. Audrey went pale. She turned slowly and saw that Cicely’s eyes were fixed on her with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy. She didn’t know what to say. She had no idea how much Cicely knew. She waited with a suspended heart for Cicely to give her a clue as to where this conversation was leading. Her sister-in-law gazed at her steadily then tilted her head to one side. ‘I’m so terribly sorry about your sister. I know it was a good many years ago now, but I know what it’s like to lose someone, you never forget and you never really heal, you just push on because you have to.’ Cicely pulled a thin smile and blinked away the image of her late husband that had nudged its way to the front of her mind.

  ‘Thank you, Cicely,’ Audrey replied in a quiet voice. Then feeling exposed standing up she went and sat on one of the sofas, folding her arms in front of her defensively.

  ‘Cecil told me how special she was and Louis . . .’ Audrey raised her eyes and frowned. Cicely took care to choose the right words. ‘And Louis . . . suffered a broken heart.’

  ‘Louis just disappeared,’ said Audrey. Aware that her voice had thinned she coughed and added more steadily, ‘One moment he was there, the next he was gone.’ Then she focused her eyes on the carpet and bit the inside of her cheek.

  ‘He went to Mexico. God knows what he did for all those years. Cecil wrote to me and told me. It didn’t surprise me, Louis has always been a very sensitive man, and fragile. Well, I’m sure you know. Then he arrived here one day last spring. Out of the blue. Not a letter or a telegram to warn us that he was turning up.’ Her eyes narrowed as her sight misted and she spoke in a very soft voice. ‘He looked older. Much older, as if he had been robbed of his youth. You have to remember that Cecil and I are a good deal older than him. He was always the baby and in my memory he always will be. There’s still something very childlike about Louis.’ Audrey felt a wave of regret debilitate her suddenly and struggled to compose herself. But Cicely continued oblivious of the torment her words inflicted. ‘Louis has always been unpredictable but he’s never been secretive. If Cecil hadn’t told me about Isla I’d never have known what was torturing him. He didn’t confide in me, in fact, he never spoke about it, even after all these years. He seemed so cut up, still. I tried to prise it out of him. I thought it would be better to let it all out rather than bottle it up. But he just played this maddening melody over and over on the piano. It’s so out of tune, it made my ears throb. Only Chip, my sausage dog, could bear it. He’d sit at his feet watching the pedals move up and down transfixed.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Audrey asked, hoping that Cicely hadn’t noticed the desperate tone in her voice.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m afraid I asked him to leave.’ Cicely pursed her lips regretfully and played with a strand of greying hair that had come away from the clip. ‘He was just hanging around moping, playing the piano and taking off on long long walks. He’s a grown up, he can’t just sit around doing nothing expecting his family to support him. I don’t know what he was doing in South America. I think he was teaching music or something because he seemed to have earned a living. I told him to find himself a job around here. I knew he wouldn’t go to our parents for help so I didn’t dare suggest it.’ She was trying to justify why she hadn’t done more for him. ‘I housed him and fed him for a few months then one day he packed his bags and left. I swear I could still hum that tune . . . how did it go?’ Audrey froze as Cicely began to hum tonelessly the tune Louis had composed for her.

  Then suddenly the tears were spilling down her cheeks and she was wiping them away, but she was unable to disguise her misery and Cicely stopped humming and reached out her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Audrey, I didn’t mean to upset you. It must be hard hearing about Louis. He must be your last link with Isla.’

  Audrey shook her head and sniffed, sweeping a hand across her face. ‘I’m sorry. I’m fine, really. It’s just that I haven’t seen Louis since Isla died. I would so love to see him.’

  ‘And I would give anything to find him. He left, you see, without a word and none of us have heard from him or seen him since. I feel so guilty. I just turfed him out.’ Then she added sheepishly, ‘He didn’t get on with Marcel.’

  ‘He seemed to rub everyone up the wrong way in Hurlingham. But I saw him differently. I understood him.’

  ‘Isla must have been very special. Louis has never lost his heart to anyone before and I doubt he will ever love like that again. He must have connected with her in a way we just can’t imagine. She must have been a very compassionate woman.’ Audrey was so overcome she could no longer speak.

  Cicely suddenly looked at her watch and gasped. ‘Barley! I’ve forgotten to fetch him from the vet’s. You don’t mind being left here, do you?’ she asked, jumping to her feet. Audrey shook her head. In fact, that was j
ust what she needed, some time alone to digest all that she had been told. Cicely smiled apologetically then rushed out of the room with her Alsatians, leaving a light smell of tuberose in the air and a heavy sense of relief. Audrey waited until she had heard the front door slam and then walked over to the piano.

  Looking once again into the face of the man she had never stopped loving she was suddenly suffocated by a tremendous feeling of loneliness. She traced her eyes slowly over his features, caressing them and loving them with her tears as if he were dead and she were mourning him. He may just as well have been dead for she didn’t know whether she’d ever see him again. Life was short and she had let him go. Besides, how could she explain to him that she had married his brother? If his heart was broken now such news would certainly splinter it and then what? As his sister had said, he was fragile. She cursed her own lack of courage.

  Gripped by an overwhelming desire to vent her grief she sat down on the piano stool and positioned her trembling fingers over the keys. She was aware that Louis had sat on the same seat and touched the same notes only months before and her senses sharpened as she could almost feel his presence and smell his skin. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She hadn’t played it for years, not that tune, not their tune. But she was alone in the house and her desire to do so was too strong to withstand. Her fingers glided across the keys as if they had been eternally programmed to play that piece. With the familiar, haunting sound of ‘The Forget-Me-Not Sonata’ she felt the pressure lift from her spirit and her heart inflate with hope. She didn’t notice a little brown sausage dog wander in and lie beneath the piano to watch the pedals move up and down, nor did she know that at the very top of the house Marcel heard the echo of her music and paused his paintbrush to listen.