‘I know some people have been put off by what happened back in the summer,’ said Beth Kennett, her fingers drumming the admissions lists in front of her. ‘But what can I do? We didn’t kill her.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Andrea Marsh, stacking a group of papers smartly together; the paper made a loud, sharp sound on the old wooden desk. She glanced up at her boss. ‘But numbers are down, and there has to be a reason. And I’m telling you, if we don’t sort it out soon—’ she tapped a folder in her in-tray significantly—‘you’ll be in real trouble.’
Beth sighed. ‘I know I will.’ She scratched her head and breathed in heavily. ‘Oh, dear. You’d think it’d make a difference, having this connection with the Mortmains, but no. Bookings are down nearly thirty per cent on last year. It’s the live-in people doing the music lessons and the cookery courses and all that, they’re the ones who bring in the revenue. And they’re down—’
‘Nearly forty per cent,’ Andrea said briskly. ‘I’m afraid, Miss Kennett, when times are hard people don’t want to learn about some emperor and some civilization that happened two thousand years ago. What’s the point?’ she finished, as if she was the last person in the world to have recently enjoyed a free Roman civilization course that was a perk of the job, and even less likely to have spent early June wandering round Rome hand in hand with someone gazing at statues.
‘There is a point, Andrea. Of course there’s a point.’ Beth gazed out of the leaded window, down the driveway, at the setting sky. It was a beautiful autumn evening, with a real chill in the air. Halloween was the following day, and the leaves in the park were at their most beautiful: terracotta red, citrus yellow, orange and green. Autumn had arrived gradually, the long summer’s nights had lasted well into September. They had sat outside to eat their sandwiches on the long grass until only a couple of weeks ago and it had seemed, after the long, hot summer, as if winter would never come. Tonight, she felt suddenly, it was just around the corner, and it was going to be long. She shivered.
‘Goose walk over your grave?’ Andrea said, standing up. ‘I’d better be off, you know. I’m meeting the committee at the Feathers in a bit. Don’t want to be late.’
She zipped up her salmon-pink quilted jacket, and pulled her grey-streaked dark hair out of the collar. Beth watched her.
‘You’ve a committee meeting? I thought it was all over with the water meadows, now Leonora’s er—gone.’
‘Au contraire,’ Andrea said grimly. ‘We don’t know where that Adam Smith is—Adam Mortmain, I suppose I should call him,’ she said, heavy disdain in her voice. ‘And as far as anyone knows, they’re still going ahead with the plan. They’re scheduled to start draining the land and building the foundations in January.’
‘But I thought—’ Beth looked surprised. ‘Wouldn’t he have pulled out of the whole thing?’
‘He’s getting two million off them,’ Andrea said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘That’s the problem.’
Beth said thoughtfully, ‘That’s such a shame. I always liked him so much.’
‘“Like” has nothing to do with it,’ Andrea said. ‘I used to like him too, we all did. Thought he’d had a rotten time of it, what with his mum, even before that when he was little, no dad, such a wiry, clever little thing he was. Always laughing, used to run around town like a puppy, he would.’ She gathered up some files and hugged them to her body. ‘Don’t mean he’s a decent person.’
‘So—where is he?’ Beth said, ignoring this. ‘Can you tell him what’s going on?’
‘Could if anyone knew where he was,’ Andrea said. ‘He’s vanished, and that Francesca vanished the same day. Most peculiar.’
‘The two of them?’
‘That’s right, and there’s Tess Tennant left all on her own in that house. I wonder what she makes of it all. If she knows where Adam is.’ She cleared her throat and wound her scarf around her neck. ‘She’ll be lonely now, you mark my words. I always thought she took that Francesca in too quickly. I never trusted her, you know? Little bit sly, I thought.’
‘Francesca helped you with the committee, didn’t she? She nearly got them to delay, till Mrs Mortmain steam-rollered it through.’ said Beth staunchly. ‘And Tess is a sensible girl.’
Andrea was in an unsentimental mood. She raised her eyebrows. ‘You think? I like her, don’t get me wrong, but she’s a bit…well, I wouldn’t have said anything before that trip to Rome, but she’s a bit flighty.’
Beth cleared her throat. ‘She handled the whole thing very well, I thought.’
‘Did you? Well, that’s good,’ Andrea said, in a voice that showed she didn’t mean it. ‘If you ask me, it’s a good thing Adam whatever-we’re-calling-him showed up when he did. We’d all still be there if it wasn’t for him lighting a fire under her to sort it all out. Going off with that Italian man—and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since, have we?’
‘I think she did very well,’ Beth said firmly. ‘You lot are a tricky bunch to control, especially when you’ve known her since she was born. It was very hard for her. See you tomorrow. Goodnight, Andrea.’
‘Anyway, goodnight,’ Andrea finished casually, as if Beth had not spoken. She paused in the doorway of the study. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Left alone in the darkening room, Beth gazed into space, thinking about nothing in particular, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock that stood by the door. There was a faint whirring sound in the distance, and she realized she’d been hearing it all day. She had the beginnings of a headache, she thought, rubbing her temples. She glanced over at the clock and began to shut down her laptop. Her eye wandered as she waited, idly wondering what the noise was. She stared at the Victorian portrait of Ivo Mortmain, which hung up over the fireplace. It was almost lifesize, the rugged-looking Ivo dressed in a ceremonial suit of armour, his expression remote and rather grand. Beth flipped the lid of the laptop down and stood up, clutching it in her arms. She looked up at the portrait again, and nearly cried out with recognition.
‘Of course,’ she said to herself, smiling at the Mortmain forebear. ‘You’re the spitting image of him. How can none of us have noticed before?’ She opened the office door. ‘Where are you?’ she said quietly. ‘I wonder where you are?’
‘Where who is?’ a voice behind her came.
Beth actually jumped into the air with shock, practically dropping her laptop. She gave a little scream and then turned around. ‘Tess!’ she cried with relief, for the corridor was dark, and Langford Hall had always been a bit Gothic, even in broad daylight with the lights on.
‘Sorry,’ said Tess, laughing, partly with shock, partly with anything else. ‘I left my glasses here—came back to pick them up. I’m sorry! Did I give you a fright?’
‘Something like that,’ Beth said.
‘Have you got everything?’ Tess asked, looking behind her. ‘Who were you just talking to?’
‘Oh…no one,’ Beth admitted. She looked at Tess’s face; she thought she was rather pale. ‘Did you get the glasses? Shall we go?’
‘Great,’ said Tess. ‘How nice, running into you like this.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Beth as they reached the great vestibule of the hall, a circular room in black and white with two vast staircases leading up each side. The residential students slept in a separate wing, and so the building was deserted. Beth fished around in her pocket for the keys; there was a housekeeper on the premises, but in the separate wing. At night, the old part of the house was locked up.
‘Funny to think she grew up here,’ Tess said, hugging herself as Beth unlocked the door.
‘Who?’
‘Leonora Mortmain,’ Tess said. ‘That she was a little girl, who grew up here. Weird, isn’t it. She probably played in the gardens—I can’t picture it, myself.’
‘She was never the kind of person you could imagine as a child,’ Beth said. They stared around them, at the empty hall. She pushed the front door open and the evening sunset hit their eyes. The
whirring noise she’d heard before grew louder. Beth blinked. ‘Yes, it’s strange to think she lived here. Overlooking the water meadows, too—you’d think they’d have meant something to her.’
Tess said quietly, ‘I know.’
‘What’s that noise, do you know?’ said Beth. Tess looked surprised.
‘What noise?’
Beth shushed her, and they walked down the drive in silence, under the gathering dusk.
‘Don’t know,’ said Tess eventually. ‘How weird.’
‘How’s the course going, then?’ Beth asked, after a pause. ‘Roman Civilization—you’ve taught it twice now, I think?’
‘Nearly,’ Tess said, smiling. She pulled a navy blue beret over her hair. ‘It’s cold, isn’t it? Tomorrow’s Friday, so it’s Catullus, then I’ll have done it twice. It’s been good. It’s a bit quiet—’ She trailed off.
‘How many in this class?’
‘Ten,’ Tess said. Beth sighed, and Tess shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know, though. Perhaps it’s just not as popular as it was. I don’t think it’s the school, Beth. All the cookery classes seem to be quite full, and that really random stuff I never understand why anyone would want to do a course in, like shrubs and potting, or Victorian architecture—well, they’re full to bursting.’
‘You get to play with things, that’s the difference,’ Beth said, smiling.
‘You know what I mean, though?’ Tess said anxiously.
‘Sort of. All the numbers are down across the board, trust me. Perhaps it’s just—’ She trailed off. ‘Oh.’
‘Perhaps it’s just me? Or perhaps it’s just no one wants to do Classics any more?’ Tess said lightly. ‘Or perhaps it’s a combination of the two.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Beth said uncomfortably. ‘I’m very glad we hired you.’ Tess put her hand on Beth’s arm.
‘Hey, it’s OK,’ she said. She gave a mock grimace, but her heart-shaped face was pale in the gloom.
‘Have you found a new flatmate?’ Beth said, changing the subject.
‘No, not yet,’ Tess said, her voice uneasy. ‘I need to though—Francesca paid nearly two months’ rent but even so it’s already run out. I haven’t—’ She trailed off. ‘Yep, I definitely need to. Seems like a long time ago.’
‘What does?’
‘Her leaving, I mean. The summer—’ Tess stopped, and fiddled with the buckle of her boot. ‘It all seems a long time ago.’ They were under one of the spreading beech trees and Beth could not see her expression in the darkness. ‘All of it.’
‘Are you missing that Italian chap?’ Beth said, kindly. ‘What was his name?’
That Italian chap. ‘Peter,’ Tess said. ‘He’s—only half Italian. Yes, I am, rather.’
Beth peered at her. ‘Wasn’t it just a summer thing? Holiday romance?’
‘Er—’ Tess didn’t know what to say. ‘No, it was—’ Was she right? Probably she was…it hadn’t occurred to her while she was there that it was a holiday romance, born out of a time and place. Here in the damp English autumn chill, she wasn’t so sure.
Beth bit her lip. ‘Sorry, am I being really tactless? I am, aren’t I.’
‘No, no,’ Tess hastened to assure her. ‘I’ve been thinking all along it’s something with a future, and perhaps I have to accept it’s not.’ She didn’t quite believe she was saying it, though.
Beth stared at her, clearly at a loss. ‘Oh, I see.’ Tess wondered if Beth was thinking she was over-doing it a bit, and an awkward silence fell, only broken when Beth said,
‘Good grief, what’s that?’
A car was screeching up the driveway, the headlights flashing. Someone jumped out.
‘Who on earth is that?’ Beth said. ‘Andrea? Andrea, is that you?’
Out of a battered white Golf flew Andrea Marsh, waving her arms at the two girls. ‘Look!’ she cried, running towards the wall at the edge of the house that divided the formal garden from the side of the valley. ‘Look! It’s started! It’s bloody started!’
‘What has?’ Tess cried, following her.
Andrea’s eyes were wild, she pulled her hand rapidly over her shoulder, as if swatting a fly. ‘Come!’ she called out. ‘Look!’
They followed her to the low wall, and looked out. It was getting dark and, down at the bottom of the valley, it was darker still. But they could still make out a swarm of vehicles on the grass amongst the yellow and orange trees.
‘What are they?’ breathed Beth, over Tess’s shoulder.
‘Diggers,’ said Andrea grimly. ‘Look.’
The whirring sound that had been bothering Beth all day now revealed itself to be the churning of a tractor, cutting up the earth on one side of the thin footbridge. Beth shook her head grimly. ‘My God, that’s what it was.’
‘You heard it?’ Tess said. She was deathly pale.
‘Yep, all day.’ Beth nodded. ‘Did you know—’
‘No,’ said Tess, staring down at the water meadows. ‘No idea. I haven’t heard from him…since he left.’
‘The little tinker,’ Andrea said, her voice dripping with venom. ‘That bloody little bastard. It’s dishonest, that’s what it is. Greedy.’
‘There must be a reason for it,’ Tess said quietly.
‘Name me one,’ said Andrea flatly, looking over into the valley again. High up in the trees at the edge of the estate, the rooks called, bleakly. Andrea jangled her car keys in her hand. ‘I have to get back,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to tell Ron…And the others.’ She turned to Tess. ‘You give me one reason why he’d do this.’
‘I can’t,’ said Tess, and Beth looked at her face, miserable in the gathering gloom. ‘Oh, dear. It’s awful.’ Beth patted her on the arm.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
One of the effects of Francesca’s departure and Adam’s disappearance was that Tess wasn’t sleeping. She wasn’t tired out. As autumn arrived, hers became a sedentary life, and she was glad of the shortening of days, the excuse to stay in; it was embarrassing, this excess of sunlight, it showed up her paltry existence even more. It showed her that her life back in Langford was…reduced. Small. In the late long summer’s evenings, she would sit, full of melancholy, on the sofa, watching TV, leaning on the large A4-sized hardback Guide to Langford to eat her supper, as light poured in through the windows, as birds sang in the hedgerows and the sound of people laughing and having fun echoed around her, down the small lane, in the nooks and crannies of the town.
With autumn came an endless mist that descended on the town and wouldn’t shift, and rain and wind, and log fires and darkness and, finally, an excuse to stay in. She made endless hearty meals, casseroles rich with sage and chestnuts, roasted chickens dripping with garlic and thyme, thick onion and potato soups. She couldn’t stop eating, like an animal preparing for hibernation. She listened to the radio, she read voraciously, she prepared for class, arranged her books and other possessions, to cover the absence of her flatmate, or her loneliness, or the fact that she missed her flatmate, or her oldest friend, or her summer romance…the trouble is, she didn’t know whom she missed the most.
Time and again, she got out Leonora Mortmain’s slim book of poetry, turning the volume over and over in her hands, wondering why the old lady had kept it with her all these years. She read the poems, or tried to re-read them; it was years since she’d actually read in Latin that which she didn’t have to teach on a course, and it was much more taxing than she remembered. Some of the poems were underlined; some had markings by them. Asterisks, mostly. And then at night, she tried to sleep, but she couldn’t.
It should have worried her. It bothered her vaguely, that a whole weekend could go by, and she could stay inside for nearly all of it, holed up on the sofa, chatting to Meena, her parents and Stephanie on the phone, only venturing out to get the paper and to buy more milk. She avoided her fellow townspeople unless she had to have contact with them. They were starting up the Sav
e the Water Meadows Campaign again, with renewed vigour; she ought to go along to a meeting. The bridge had been torn down, the land was fenced off already—it was all underway, and still she couldn’t quite believe it would happen.
The rain fell, the leaves turned to mulch, the skies clouded over, and autumn came, shrouding the town in fog, and Tess carried on cooking, eating, sitting—and then going up to bed, and turning things over in her mind again, blinking at the ceiling, trying not to be scared by the noises outside, the screams from a creature in the claws of another, the cats fighting, the birds caught by the foxes. She was mentally, but not physically, exhausted.
At the start of the new term at college, Tess was assigned new classes—the same week-long or term-long courses on a variety of subjects—and she was also, to her pleasure, teaching the Latin A level class, which took place over one year and was six hours a week. They were an interesting bunch, more committed than her previous students, women who’d been at home with children and wanted to go back to their studies, people who’d retired and wanted to accomplish something, a retired company director who loved sword-and-sandal epics and had always promised himself he’d learn Latin when he retired, even a priest who needed Latin before he took up a post in London and, most bizarrely of all, a librettist who was writing an opera about a gladiator in ancient Rome.
It gave Tess something of a start, she knew, to realize that this was the autumn term of a course that would last till the following summer—and that she was the one teaching it. They wanted her to sign a new contract. The lease on the cottage would be up in January, too, she had to renew it. She supposed she was staying in Langford. That was her life now. The summer was long over. She should be looking to the future, not sleepwalking through her life. She needed several things to happen. She needed to find a flatmate now. She needed to put all the events of the summer behind her,and concentrate on her life here—and her life with Peter, starting again at Christmas, and how she could possibly reconcile the two. And then things started happening.
I Remember You Page 36
