The Forget-Me-Not Sonata

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘Oh yes!’ they replied. Alicia knew she hadn’t been very good, but if Father Christmas was like everyone else she had met, he would bring her presents all the same.

  ‘Well, don’t hang around, go and get pencils and paper and let’s do it now. There’s no time to waste,’ he instructed urgently. The two girls rushed off upstairs and Louis caught Audrey’s eye. She was looking at him tenderly. The way she should have been looking at Cecil. But she hadn’t looked at Cecil in that way for a long long time.

  Mercedes studied the black ball called Christmas pudding and knitted her thick eyebrows together. It didn’t look like anything she had ever seen before. It was heavy too. Like a cannon ball. Would do about as much damage as a cannon ball, she thought, dropping it onto the sideboard with a loud thud. Loro squawked in his cage, ‘Te quiero, te adoro, te amo . . .’ then tried as best he could to imitate a heavy pant. That was when Mercedes lost her temper. She could cope with Oscar’s declarations of love because they were touching.

  They reminded her of her youth when she had lain underneath the weighty body of a handsome sailor or the skinny one of a delivery boy, listening to their hollow promises, delivered with eyes closed between shallow breaths, and believing them. Now she listened to them but she didn’t believe; she was too old and too cynical for love. But there was nothing romantic or touching about the panting. It was too carnal, too bestial and this time Loro had gone too far.

  She strode purposefully over to the cage where Loro was hopping about in a state of post-coital exhaustion. ‘Ahhhhh . . .’ he gurgled.

  ‘Loro, I’ve had quite enough of you!’ she cried, opening the cage. ‘I’ll pluck you and cook you alive, you’ll see.’ Loro resisted as her brown hand reached in and grabbed him about his scrawny neck. Alicia’s mirror idea had worked for now his feathery coat was thick and glossy again. Not that Mercedes cared; she was going to get rid of him once and for all.

  There was a pot of boiling water on the stove and Mercedes dangled the terrified bird above it so that the steam engulfed him. He let out a strangled gasp, fixed her with eyes that reflected her own cruel expression and waited for death. But Mercedes was a soft-hearted woman underneath and was unable to inflict pain on another living creature, however exasperating. She dropped her shoulders in defeat and pulled him out of the steam. ‘You are an idiotic creature. It’s not right to punish you for being stupid. God created you that way. But what He was thinking at that moment, only He knows. Still, all God’s work is divine, even you.’ And she put him back in his cage where he shook out his feathers and sulked in the corner, trembling still.

  She returned to the black cannon ball and recalled Señora Forrester’s instructions. Tomorrow was Christmas and this was what they were going to eat for their pudding.

  Alicia and Leonora awoke at dawn to the delicious sensation of weighty stockings sitting expectantly on the end of their beds. Leonora sat up with Saggy Rabbit and dragged the large woollen stocking up to where she could have a better look at it. Stuffed with presents all neatly wrapped up in tissue paper, it was irresistible. Alicia emptied the whole lot onto the bed then proceeded to unwrap one. ‘You mustn’t open them now!’ Leonora exclaimed in horror. ‘We must open them on Mummy and Daddy’s bed.’

  ‘I’m only opening one,’ she replied, throwing the paper onto the floor. ‘A hair band.’ She screwed her nose up. ‘I think this would be more appropriate for you.’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Mummy could have done a little better than a hair band.’

  Leonora was disappointed that Alicia didn’t want to indulge in make-believe. She knew Father Christmas wasn’t real and that her father placed the stockings at the end of their beds before he retired after dinner. But the magic of the tradition enchanted her and she wished she was still small and didn’t know the truth. Alicia thought the whole event overrated. ‘I don’t know why they bother going through with the pretence, after all we’re not children any more,’ she complained.

  ‘Because it gives them pleasure,’ Leonora retaliated.

  ‘So we have to pretend we don’t know it’s them to give them pleasure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It seems very silly to me,’ she scoffed. ‘But I’ll do it for one reason only.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Because if we let on we know they might stop stockings altogether and I like presents.’

  ‘But not hair bands.’

  ‘One wrong, lots more to go. What’s the time? Can’t we go in now and wake them up? It’s light outside.’

  It was six in the morning. Dawn had already broken, painting the sky with streaks of golden honey and the trees were alive with birds making the most of the cool morning air before the heat and the humidity of midsummer grew too intense and sent them deep into the branches to seek shade among the leaves. Audrey lay beside her husband having asked him to return in order to put on a show of togetherness for the children. Cecil was grateful to find himself invited back into the marital bed, hoping that once the twins returned to school the habit would have been established and he would be permitted to stay. Audrey knew in her heart that the children would have thought nothing of it had they found their father sleeping in his dressing room. He had often slept there and she could always have made the excuse that his snoring kept her awake. No, the real reason she had asked him back was that she needed to prevent her own nocturnal wanderings. She couldn’t risk being caught with Louis by the children but she wasn’t strong enough to resist him. With Cecil in her bed there was no chance of escaping down the corridor. She lamented her lack of willpower, but this was the only way. Once more Cecil was seized with doubt. Had he once again misjudged his wife?

  Louis had been incandescent with rage when Audrey had told him that Cecil would be returning to her bed while the children were at home. He had disappeared to Gaitano’s ranch for the day to vent his anger riding out across the pampa. Not because he envisaged nights without her, but because he envisaged nights where his brother replaced him in her arms and he couldn’t tolerate what he saw as a hideous betrayal. Either the fresh country air or Gaitano’s piano had assuaged his fury for he had returned that evening with his wide smile and twinkling eyes conveying once again his hope. Audrey loved him and that was all that mattered. But he too lay awake as dawn illuminated the empty space in his bed where she used to lie and he wondered how long it would be before they were free to love each other in the open.

  Audrey’s mind was somewhere beyond the realms of time and space when it was brought back to her room with a jolt. There was a gentle knocking at the door and then it opened to reveal two small faces aglow with excitement. The gloom of finding herself in her own bed lifted when she saw her daughters and her heart flooded with joy. She sat up and beckoned them in. Cecil groaned as the twins climbed into the space between them, pulling their stockings onto their knees, uniting them in their duties as parents in a way that nothing else could. Leonora placed Saggy Rabbit carefully on the eiderdown before pulling out the first gift. Alicia poured the contents of the stocking over her father and tore at the wrapping with impatient fingers. Cecil closed his eyes and slept through his hangover while Audrey commented softly on each present, relishing every moment, aware that soon the holidays would be over and she’d be without them again.

  Christmas lunch involved the whole family. Henry and Rose arrived with armfuls of gifts to place beneath Audrey’s tree that the twins had decorated with painted stars they had made in art class at school. Aunt Edna came with them, her chins wobbling with humour in spite of the anxiety that curdled her blood each time she saw Audrey and Louis glancing wistfully at each other across the room. Aunt Hilda must have forced Nelly to come for her face was paler than usual and her eyes red from crying. She sulked from the moment she stepped into the house, barely able to look at Louis without tears brimming in her eyes. Albert stood by the piano smoking cigarettes while Louis sat between the twins playing Christmas carols all together with
six hands. The younger brothers, George and Edward, lay on their backs in the sunshine discussing girls and football for their parents’ and aunts’ conversations on the terrace bored them.

  ‘I am looking forward to your sister’s Christmas pudding,’ said Aunt Edna to Cecil, passing a greedy tongue over thick lips.

  ‘So am I,’ he replied. ‘It’ll make me feel very nostalgic for home.’

  ‘You should have seen Mercedes’ face when I showed her how to cook it,’ said Audrey, laughing. ‘I don’t think she’d ever seen anything like it in all her life.’

  ‘At least she didn’t have to cook it from scratch,’ Aunt Edna continued, her mouth watering at the thought of lunch.

  ‘She’d have made a total mess of it, I’m sure,’ Aunt Hilda interjected sourly.

  ‘It’ll be delicious,’ Audrey reassured them. ‘Leonora brought it all the way over from England in her luggage. It’s the heaviest pudding you’ve ever seen. Poor girl.’

  ‘Well, on that note, shall we eat?’ Cecil suggested and Audrey nodded.

  ‘Come on, boys, time to eat,’ she shouted to her brothers, then poked her head around the door to tell the pianists. Louis looked up and smiled at her affectionately. His eyes seemed to be saying, ‘I wish we were alone out there on the pampa,’ and she put her head on one side and smiled back. But her heart was already being pulled in two directions.

  They all sat around the long table that Mercedes had prepared beneath the trees in the far corner of the garden. The heat was as oppressive as Hilda’s ill humour and Nelly’s unrequited love, but if anyone noticed they didn’t show it, but dug into the Christmas turkey with enthusiasm. Audrey rested her eyes on her daughters. Leonora sat next to Aunt Edna and her grandfather, watched closely by Saggy Rabbit who peeped out from behind the water jug. Alicia was holding forth about herself, entertaining Albert with her stories that got more and more outrageous as he encouraged her with his hearty belly laughs. Audrey felt her heart inflate with love as she watched them, and then Leonora glanced at her and her little face flowered into a wide smile, the smile of a child who knows beyond any shadow of doubt that she has her mother’s unconditional love.

  Cecil watched his wife. He always watched her for she was the sole focus of his existence. Like a perfect apple at the very top of the tree, Audrey remained out of reach and unattainable. She belonged to him in name only. He remembered that evening on the beach in Uruguay when she had agreed to be his wife, tainted now with hindsight, for he asked himself over and over again, had she ever loved him? He drained his glass and reached for the wine bottle.

  Then Mercedes walked up the lawn with a large silver dish. ‘Ah, the Christmas pudding!’ Aunt Edna exclaimed, rubbing her soft hands together in anticipation of Cicely’s famous dessert, brandy butter and cream.

  ‘Indeed, what a treat,’ Henry agreed. ‘And you brought it all the way over from England, you clever girl,’ he said to Leonora.

  ‘I helped her carry it,’ Alicia interjected, keen to share the praise.

  ‘And you’re clever too,’ said Rose, turning to watch the maid shuffle across the grass. When she reached them they all stared at the tray in horror. There lay the Christmas pudding, not in the tidy round ball they had all expected, but in crumbs.

  ‘Good God, what have you done with it?’ Aunt Hilda gasped for Audrey was too surprised to speak. Mercedes, who rarely blushed, turned the colour of the cherry that lay among the rubble. She frowned and shook her head.

  ‘Señora,’ she said, turning to Audrey. ‘I did everything you told me to. Then as I was putting it on the tray I noticed a glint of metal. Well, I can’t have one of the children choking on a piece of metal so I carefully dug it out with a knife. It was a coin. A coin of all things! In a pudding! Then I saw another, then another. In the end I had to pull the whole pudding apart, there were twenty coins. Twenty coins, imagináte! How they got in there is nobody’s business.’

  At that explanation Louis exploded into laughter. He laughed so much that he had to hold his stomach and bend over. Alicia and Leonora laughed too until everyone except Aunt Hilda and Nelly joined in the merriment. Mercedes watched them all as if they were creatures from a different planet.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Mercedes,’ Audrey reassured her, biting her lip in an effort to control herself. When Mercedes sulked she could sulk for days. ‘It’ll taste the same. Aunt Edna, why don’t you help yourself?’

  Chapter 25

  The Christmas holidays dwindled from weeks into days until the twins’ return to England was no longer a vague date on the horizon but a fixed day branded on their minds. They enjoyed long rides in the early morning, before the midday heat compelled them to seek comfort in the cool blue water of the swimming pool and played tennis in the evenings with the other children who moved around the Club in a pack. Leonora looked on them enviously, knowing that she and her sister were going to spend the Easter holiday and the English summer holiday with Aunt Cicely in England. She couldn’t talk to Alicia about her fears because her sister longed to return to school and didn’t seem to miss their parents at all. Her heart was surely made of stone.

  While the twins took part in gymkhanas, fêtes and tournaments at the Club, Audrey’s snatched moments alone with Louis were few and fleeting. Their hopes simmered in their hearts, quietly, unobtrusively until they reached boiling point and could be ignored no longer.

  Louis strode purposefully into Audrey’s bedroom. Cecil was at work and the house was empty for Mercedes took a siesta in the afternoon and emerged from her memories only at teatime. Audrey was putting away the clothes that Mercedes had washed, her thoughts deep in an imaginary future where she and Louis and the twins were one happy family together in the land of make-believe. She thought Louis had gone out for the day and was surprised when his ardent face appeared around her door.

  ‘I thought you were at Gaitano’s,’ she said as he drew her into his arms.

  ‘I came back early. We need to talk and we never seem to have more than minutes these days.’ Then his voice cracked and his face turned grey. ‘Audrey, I can’t go on like this any more.’

  She gave a sad smile and ran her fingers across the frown that had dug trenches into his forehead. ‘I know, Louis. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Let’s run away together. Once the twins have gone to England. We’ll join them there. Start a life together, you, me and the girls. Then you won’t miss them any more and you won’t miss me either.’ She hesitated.

  ‘I can’t break it to Cecil,’ she said. ‘I’ll write a note, explain everything in writing. I’ve never been very good at communicating with him. I can’t bear to see his hurt face. In spite of our differences, I’m very fond of him. I just don’t love him like I love you.’

  ‘We’ll take a plane and sort everything out once we’ve arrived in England.’ Then when he saw her face shadow with doubt he added firmly, ‘You can’t go on living your life for other people. One day your parents will be dead and you’ll be left with Cecil and the remains of a sense of duty that will no longer matter.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to leave your children, my love. I would never ask that of you, or want to. They are the most important people in your life and I understand that. They should never have been sent away in the first place.’ Audrey thought of leaving the country she had grown up in and considered home, but then before she could miss it she remembered that feeling of freedom she had felt on the Alcantara, gazing out onto the horizon of endless possibilities.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she confessed, resting her head against his chest. ‘I love you and am prepared to give everything up for you. But I’m still afraid.’

  ‘I know,’ he whispered, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead. ‘I’m frightened too.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Yes, frightened of losing you again.’

  ‘Oh, Louis,’ she sighed. ‘You’ll never lose me now, I promise.’

  They pla
nned their trip and cast their dreams across the waters to England but neither dared think beyond for beyond lay a mist of uncertainty.

  As if Aunt Edna sensed their plans she arranged to meet her niece for tea at the Club while the twins rode out across the plains with their Uncle Albert and his girlfriend, Susan. Audrey suspected nothing of her aunt’s intentions and greeted her warmly. But Edna noticed the strain behind the smile and was determined to get to the bottom of it once and for all.

  ‘So the twins fly to England in a few days,’ she said, pouring them both a cup of tea. ‘I shall miss them very much.’

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ Audrey replied sadly. ‘They won’t be home for a year. A year is a long, long time to be away from home and one’s family.’

  ‘All for a good education,’ Edna sniffed disapprovingly.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s worth it. But I’ll spend more time in England with Cicely. Perhaps I’ll get a place of my own.’ She hesitated, taking care to choose the right words. ‘I don’t want to be a burden to Cicely.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not a burden, my dear. And besides, England is not your home.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. But it’s where my children will be. I want it to be a home for them. In time they’ll feel more at home there than here, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Leonora is a charming little girl. She’s very dear. I’m immensely fond of her.’

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Audrey agreed proudly. ‘She hasn’t her sister’s advantages . . .’

  ‘Or her nature, thank the Lord. One Alicia is bad enough,’ Edna interjected warily. ‘She’s a little too beautiful for her own good.’

  ‘She is very beautiful, isn’t she?’

  ‘But Leonora’s got the nicer nature.’ For a moment Audrey looked offended and Edna remembered that a mother’s love is often blind. Audrey was unaware of Alicia’s narcissism, or at least, she didn’t want to know. ‘Alicia’s a joy, of course,’ she continued diplomatically, she wasn’t here to talk about the children. ‘I see they’ve bonded with Louis.’ At the mention of his name the apples of Audrey’s cheeks shone crimson. She lowered her eyes and played with her scone.