Cicely floated around the house in her floppy drawstring trousers with Marcel’s sky blue shirts flapping around her waist, reminding her of him each time she passed her image in the hall mirror. She helped Panazel and Florien in the garden, cutting hedges and picking apples, plums and blackberries until the storeroom was bursting with the gifts of autumn. She drove Audrey around the farm where the neighbouring farmer was finishing off the remains of the harvest with large green combines that resembled fierce beasts chomping their way through the linseed and spring oil seed rape. She told Audrey how the land belonged to her but since her husband’s death eight years before, Anthony Fitzherbert, who owned the large estate next door, had farmed it for her. ‘Farming makes little money these days, but it keeps me clothed and enables me to continue living here. I wouldn’t leave Holholly Grange for anything in the world,’ she had said. ‘Besides, it’s all I have left of Hugh.’ Cicely didn’t speak much about her late husband. Perhaps it didn’t seem appropriate with Marcel lurking upstairs in the attic. But everyone needs someone and Audrey imagined Marcel was good for her, even though it was quite obviously a physical attraction and not a meeting of minds.
Marcel emerged only for meals, which he often took back upstairs to his studio, silently placing the plate of food on a tray then disappearing without a word. Cicely didn’t seem to mind. Their relationship was a twilight one, because she always came down to breakfast looking rejuvenated and shiny, like Barley after a long walk in the woods. Her eyes shone and her cheeks glowed and her smile became brazen like the scent of love that followed her around the house to remind Audrey of what she had had and lost.
There seemed to be only one photograph of Louis and that was the one that sat on the piano and tugged at Audrey’s heart whenever she was able to gaze into it. But one day when she was searching for something to read she discovered a few tattered photograph albums on an old maple table in the library. Aware that her curiosity might be intrusive she took the risk of asking Cicely’s permission. To her relief Cicely was only too delighted to sit with her beside the fire and show them to her personally. ‘I imagine you want to see Cecil as a little boy?’ she asked, settling comfortably on the sofa.
‘Yes,’ Audrey lied, barely able to restrain her enthusiasm.
Cicely opened the book and slowly turned the pages. There were photographs of their parents, Cecil as a child, Cicely as a little girl and their home, which was large and forbidding like Colehurst House. Audrey bit her nails with impatience. She willed Cicely to move faster through the book. She made the right comments, sighing at Cecil in his christening dress, admiring Cicely’s animated face grinning out from a large black pram and marvelling at their mother’s cool elegance. And then they arrived at a black and white photograph of Louis. He must have been about six months old. How little he had changed.
He had the white blond hair and soft curvy body of a small baby and yet the expression of wonder and innocence in his large enquiring eyes was combined with that dreamy, faraway look that so set him apart from everyone else. He was already in a world of his own. So vulnerable, so new, so fragile and so easily hurt. Audrey’s heart remembered the grown man that she loved and then looked beneath to the child who still remained and who needed her. ‘What was Louis like as a little boy?’ she asked quietly. Cicely wasn’t surprised by her questions because she was asking about all the photographs. But she was hesitant because she felt guilty.
‘He was sweet,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘He really was. As a baby he was adorable.’
‘He looks it,’ Audrey replied, smiling tenderly at the picture. ‘He really hasn’t changed that much, has he?’
‘Yes, that was the problem.’
‘Problem?’
‘He had trouble learning. He was late to crawl, walk, talk. He’s never really grown up.’
‘I see.’ Audrey felt the palms of her hands grow moist with nervousness. She sensed Cicely was about to tell her the real reason Louis was different.
‘But he really was very sweet as a baby. I remember because I’m that much older than him. He was like a doll and I played with him, until he frustrated me. He had a temper.’ She chuckled nostalgically, then curled a stray piece of hair behind her ear. ‘I think he frustrated himself. He wanted to be more advanced than he was, as if he knew inside that he could do better but his limbs wouldn’t follow what his head ordered them to do. He grew so angry.’
‘Why was he like that when you and Cecil are so . . . so . . .?’
‘Normal?’
Audrey jumped at the accusation with the ferocity of a protective mother. ‘Oh, I’d never say Louis was abnormal,’ she said hastily. ‘He’s extra normal. Extra ordinary. Gifted.’
‘Oh Audrey. You know so little about him,’ said Cicely suddenly, sighing heavily. ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that Isla loved him I wouldn’t tell you about him. But you’re family and I won’t be betraying him, I’m sure, by confiding in you.’
‘Go on.’ Audrey barely dared breathe.
‘Because, dear Audrey, Louis was born very prematurely. Dangerously prematurely. Mama nearly lost him and suffered terrible depression while he was in the hospital, while they were struggling to keep him alive. It was dreadful. The relief in the house when he was brought home was intoxicating. It was as if a black cloud had blown away leaving clear blue sky. That was until they realized that he had, in fact, been slightly damaged. But the effects were subtle. Not scars that we are all able to see and understand, but mental fragility that is harder to accept and even harder to treat.’
‘What do you mean?’ Audrey asked fearfully. Cicely continued as if attempting to justify their behaviour and while she spoke her voice rose in tone and texture until she sounded almost strangled with guilt.
‘He was a tormented little boy. He’d have these terrible screaming fits and there was nothing anyone could do to quieten him. He’d just scream and scream with his arms out like this,’ she extended her arms and waved them about. ‘It was as if he was in great pain. It was horrible. Papa, who was used to being in control of every situation, was bewildered. He simply couldn’t cope. So, as Louis grew into a little boy he stopped taking an interest in him. As if he wasn’t there. Mama was very attached to Louis at the beginning. She felt guilty because her body hadn’t held him for as long as it should have. She felt she had failed. But he was simply too difficult for anyone to handle. He rejected her. I’m guilty too,’ she said and her voice cracked. ‘I used to pretend that he was adopted. I used to tell everyone he wasn’t related to us, that Mama and Papa had adopted him. It was awful. I don’t know how I could have been so brutal. He didn’t seem to mind. He used to laugh. But he must have hated me for it. I was horrid to him. Cecil was always good to him though. But then, Cecil is a saint. I’m more selfish, I admit it. I have many regrets but I’m far too weak to do anything about them. Cecil, saint Cecil, put up with Louis long after we had all given up on him. It was only when he started to play Mama’s piano, as if he had played for years, as if he had had professional tuition, that he calmed down. I think suddenly discovering that he could communicate, that he was gifted at something, assuaged his frustration and the fits stopped. But then he was lost to us all because he’d just sit and play for hours and hours, shutting us all out, alone with the music. Music is his only love. Isla didn’t stand a chance, Audrey. Dear Louis, he’s a tormented spirit.’
‘But he’s all right now?’ said Audrey. She knew Cicely was wrong. He was capable of loving another human being. He loved her and music was the backbone to that love. It was what held them together. It was their means of understanding each other where words failed to express what they felt in their hearts.
‘He’s learned to live with it and he knows his limitations, I suppose. But he still can’t cope when things go wrong. He breaks down.’
‘He just needs to be loved,’ she said in a quiet voice.
‘But who will love him, Audrey? Who will invest that sort of time and effort in order to under
stand him? He shuts people out. No one can reach him. He’s miles away in dreamland and the older he gets the further away he goes. One day he’ll simply disappear altogether.’
That night Audrey lay awake in the darkness and cried. She cried for her daughters and she cried for Isla and she cried for Louis. She didn’t know for whom she cried the most.
Finally Leonora and Alicia returned to Holholly Grange for the weekend. Audrey embraced them both with excitement and yet her excitement was undermined by the knowledge that once they had returned to school she was to board a plane and fly back to Buenos Aires. She didn’t know how she was going to do it. But she was determined that their parting should not ruin the present moment which she intended to enjoy to the full.
Alicia was so ashamed by the punishment dealt to her for riding Mr Snow bareback that she didn’t mention it and neither did Leonora. She had suffered a terrible humiliation. She wouldn’t even tell Mercedes, in whom she usually confided everything. Instead she went through all her teachers imitating each one with the perception of a professional mimic. They lingered in the kitchen by the Aga laughing at Alicia as she pranced up and down as if on a stage, while the dogs lay scattered about the floor on their beanbags.
To Audrey’s surprise Marcel appeared for lunch and instead of taking his food upstairs on a tray he sat at the table observing those around him as if attempting to draw inspiration. He smouldered in the corner like a hero in a bad romantic novel, brooding and sulking for effect, smoking a cigarette he had rolled himself. Cicely was transformed once again into a flighty girl and flitted about the room making a greater effort with the leg of lamb while the twins barely noticed that he was there and certainly didn’t care. Marcel’s presence was quiet and watchful and Audrey couldn’t fail to see that he was watching her. Not with the eyes of a lover, not the way he looked at Cicely, but knowingly. As if he knew her secret. As if she knew he knew and it was now their secret. She felt uncomfortable. Marcel hid himself up in the attic and yet everything seemed to reach him. He had heard her piano playing when she had believed she had been alone, he had deliberately found her there in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep. Who’s to say he hadn’t been there in the shadows too when she had spent those precious moments with Louis’ photograph? She caught his eye and frowned but he continued to blow smoke into the air, gazing at her with the eyes of an artist studying the object of his creation.
In the afternoon they took the dogs for a long walk armed with large bowls for blackberry picking. The hedgerows were brimming with fruit and the trees in the orchard were heavy with apples and plums. The air was warm and sunshine bathed the hills in a golden autumn light reminding them all of summer and how beautiful England looked when the weather was fine. Audrey thought of Colonel Blythe and how wrong he was. It didn’t always rain in England. She watched Alicia run with the dogs while Leonora hung behind with her arm linked through hers, as if she wanted to hold on to her mother for as long as possible before they were parted once again. They walked back through the field where the gypsies camped to find Panazel and Masha lying out on the grass with their two children. Alicia rushed up to Leonora and tugged at her sleeve. ‘Don’t mention the chicken, whatever you do,’ she hissed.
‘Of course not,’ Leonora replied. ‘But be kind,’ she added. Alicia scrunched up her nose. Kind was a word like nice, it was dull and in her opinion should be erased from the English language. Audrey noticed that the dogs, usually keen to bark at the horses, now kept their distance, sitting in an uneasy pack a few hundred yards away.
‘Hello, Florien,’ Alicia shouted at the sullen boy who was now scrambling to his feet along with the rest of his family.
‘Oh, goodness me, please don’t all get up,’ Cicely insisted, waving her arms about as if she were instructing the pack of dogs to sit. ‘There are so many blackberries in the woods, I hope you’re exploiting the crop, Panazel.’
‘We’ve helped ourselves to all the land can offer, thank you, Mrs Weatherby,’ he replied, putting his cap back on.
‘Ah, Ravena, you haven’t met Alicia and Leonora, my nieces. They’re living with me now and will be helping Panazel and Florien in the garden during the holidays. There’s so much to be done.’
‘I’ll enjoy telling their fortunes,’ she replied, exhibiting a crooked set of teeth.
‘Yes please,’ Alicia cried enthusiastically. ‘Am I to marry someone very rich?’
‘Alicia!’ Audrey rebuked, ashamed at her daughter’s bad manners.
‘Oh, why not,’ Cicely said and laughed. ‘She read mine once, it’s great fun. Here, let me pay you for it.’ She thrust her hand into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out two half crowns. ‘I’ll cross your palm with silver.’
‘Goodie!’ Alicia squeaked excitedly. ‘Why don’t you have a go too, Leo?’ But Leonora shook her head and looked up at her mother.
‘Leonora’s like me. We’re a bit nervous of fortune tellers,’ Audrey said, squeezing her daughter’s hand as she threaded her fingers through hers.
Alicia followed Ravena up the steps into the caravan. She was tall and slim and her hair fell out of her headscarf and reached down to her waist. If it wasn’t for her teeth and the sallow quality of her skin she would have been a beauty. She indicated a small round table with two chairs and Alicia wasted no time, but pulled one out and sat blinking up at the gypsy with enthusiasm. ‘Do you have a crystal ball?’
Ravena shook her head. ‘No, I can’t afford one,’ she stated. ‘I read palms. Besides, my grandmother taught me and she didn’t need a crystal ball.’
‘Well, here it is,’ she said, thrusting her hand onto the table. ‘What can you see? Am I going to be rich and happy?’ Ravena picked up the child’s hand and studied it carefully. Alicia watched her face as she ran her eyes over every line and crease. She breathed deeply and Alicia noticed her eyelids glistening with sweat. It was hot. Hotter in the small caravan than outside where the air was warm but fresh. The caravan was quite airless and the gypsy’s silence caused Alicia to sweat too, but with impatience. Finally, Ravena sighed heavily and placed her hand over the child’s palm. ‘Well?’ Alicia asked. ‘You must see something.’
‘You are very blessed,’ she said at last. ‘You not only have great beauty but talent as well. It is up to you how you use those gifts. You will either be rich and happy or . . .’ she hesitated. Alicia encouraged her by leaning forward.
‘Or?’
Ravena pulled a resigned smile and shook her head. ‘No, you shall be rich and happy. You’ll marry a very wealthy man who you’ll love very deeply. You’ll live in this country and your children will be English. You’ll have four children and they will all be as beautiful and gifted as you.’
‘Really?’ Alicia gasped happily. ‘I must tell Mummy.
‘I’m going to be rich and happy and have four children!’ Alicia cried, clambering down the steps. ‘You should have a go, Leo. She’s really good.’ But Leonora still hung back reluctant to know her future in case it wasn’t what she wished for. As they all walked off towards the gate, the dogs leapt up and trotted after them, sniffing the ground and cocking their legs.
‘Dear Ravena, I doubt she’s ever got anything right,’ Cicely said to Audrey, winking at her. ‘At least her lies are nice lies. I’d hate to think of her frightening people.’
‘Well, someone here’s very happy, so it was worth two half crowns,’ Audrey replied and laughed.
‘Well?’ said Masha, turning to her daughter. Ravena sighed and shrugged her shoulders.
‘I had to pretend,’ she confessed.
‘Again?’ said her mother, shaking her head in disapproval. ‘Your grandmother would tremble in her grave if she knew how you’re abusing your gift.’
‘I couldn’t tell her what I saw. Like with Mrs Weatherby, I couldn’t reveal what lies ahead. Some things are better not knowing.’
‘You’ll lose your ability.’
‘Perhaps I should give up and pick plums with Dad
and Florien instead of looking into people’s futures.’
‘Don’t be a ninny. It’s what you’re good at. You should just have courage, that’s all. After all, we are the masters of our destinies, nothing is set in stone. You could have steered her in a better direction.’
‘There was no point. That child is already way off course,’ she said gravely and shook her head. ‘I’m going for a ride. I feel depressed.’ And she wandered off to untie the pony, reflecting on Alicia’s dark nature.
It was well past midnight when Leonora and Saggy Rabbit padded down the corridor to her mother’s room. She held a candle that fought against an icy draught entering through one of the rickety old windows. She was afraid to turn on the light for Cicely hated to waste electricity. Shuddering with cold she lingered a moment at her mother’s door. She knew she was meant to be a big girl and Alicia would certainly tease her in the morning – she already teased her about carrying ‘that smelly rabbit’ around with her everywhere. But she yearned for her mother’s warm embrace, for the security of lying close to her and for the comfort of having her to herself like she had always done as a small child.
She knocked and then turned the knob. She heard the rustling of sheets as Audrey turned over and sat up. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, dreading for a moment that it might be Marcel, spying on her again. But then she saw her little girl’s pale face illuminated in the golden flame of the candle and smiled tenderly. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, shuffling over to make room.
The Forget-Me-Not Sonata Page 26
