But Bernard survived the infection although it had, as the doctors had warned, taken its toll on his mind.
Generally uncommunicative, the boy spent those periods of calm he experienced playing with the dogs or sitting, quietly watching the world outside his windows. He was, however, susceptible to frequent periods of uncontrollable anger, when his nurses locked him in a large cupboard so that he could do no harm to himself or to others.
As the years passed Bernard’s unpredictability and lack of self-control did not diminish and he became less easy to manage.
He could not be sent away to school and so a series of tutors were hired to give him the rudiments of an education. Few stayed any length of time and he learned very little.
The one attempt William made to teach his son how to handle a shotgun ended in Bernard’s turning the gun towards his father and grinning while he pulled the trigger. William was alive only because he had placed just one cartridge in the gun and that had already been spent. From that day all the guns were locked away and the staff instructed never to let Bernard near one. William did, however, teach his son to ride a horse, though only on the most docile and aged mare in the stables. Whenever Bernard tricked a groom into letting him ride one of William’s hunters the horse always returned white with sweat and blown.
Bernard was twenty years old when the first of several irate fathers turned up at the back door of The Lodge to have a discussion with William.
William did his best to shield his wife from knowledge of their son’s taste for sexual activity, but he could not hide the succession of pregnant maids and it was her responsibility to talk to the housekeeper about paying them off and having them removed from The Lodge.
Bernard was not yet seventeen when he learned the power he held, not only over the girls in the household, but also over the poorer girls in Newport, and he took full advantage. He did not care whether the female was young or old, pretty or ugly, he just enjoyed using them and he wasn’t fussy whether they wanted to cooperate with him or not. He quickly learned that a few coins could overcome reluctance.
Such was his reputation that it was impossible for him to be introduced to the town’s more formal social events or to allow him to mix with local society, as would be the normal expectation of the heir to an estate such as The Lodge, and his parents grew increasingly concerned for the future of their son as he approached his twenty-first birthday.
*
William spent many hours trying not to dwell on the unfairness of life.
On many occasions he would find his way to the old chapel and would sit on the stone seat remembering the day he had sat there with Claude, anxiously awaiting the birth of his son.
So little they had known then of what was to come.
William grew to hate himself for thinking, as he always did, that it would have been better if Bernard had never been born or had succumbed to one of his many childhood illnesses.
Every time he visited the chapel he considered his father’s writings, hidden away in the tomb of the long-dead child. More than once, when in particularly black moods, he had pulled the door open and stood over Mary Lettice’s tomb, half-deciding to push the stone to one side and recover the diaries, but every time he could not do what Claude had expressly forbidden.
Over the years he made the decision that he would have to disobey Claude on one matter, he could not entrust the secrets of the families to his feeble-minded son. Reluctantly he accepted that the knowledge of the diaries’ existence and whereabouts would not be passed on to another generation.
No one would ever open the tomb and the bundle of papers Claude had hidden there would remain hidden.
No one would ever be led to investigate his suspicions that had grown in the years since Claude’s death; that the old man he had loved as an uncle and as a father-in-law was actually the Emperor Napoleon. William bitterly regretted his failure to ask the questions he had had on his mind during any of the hundreds of times he and Claude shared a brandy after dinner. There were so many ‘if onlys’. If only, William would tell himself, as he beat his hands against the chapel wall, he had had the courage to ask his uncle. If only Bernard had died there would be another son, bright and intelligent and questioning and inquisitive, a son who he could trust with the secret, a son who would be only in his middle age when he would open the tomb and read the secrets.
If only… If only… William knew they were the two most inadequate words in life.
*
In the summer of 1878 William was returning from one of his lonely walks in the woods when he felt hotter than he should and out of breath, so he sat down in the shade that the tree he had brought back from St Helena cast on the stone steps that led up to the front door of The Lodge. As he sat trying to catch his breath William could almost see the ghosts of Claude and Patience, and a young, carefree Josephine laughing and clapping with delight as he had planted it on his return, a rich man, from the Colonies.
The tree is reaching maturity, he thought. It is almost the size of its parent, the tree whose shade I enjoyed on the island of St Helena..
He had been so happy then, sitting under that tree. He had made his fortune, he had wealth independent of anything he would inherit from his uncle, he had a woman who he knew he would love, and whom he knew would love him, awaiting his return. He had dreamed of having sons, of teaching them to ride and to shoot and to manage the estate, he had even thought of buying Oakridge Court and joining the estates as Claude had told him his father had once hoped. He had imagined spending his years writing books that told the wondrous story of the age of the rocks that surrounded him on the Isle of Wight and beyond.
He had imagined that he and Josephine and their children would be happy.
As he sat under the shade of the tree with so many memories, he could not remember a time when his Josephine had smiled without care in her eyes and it seemed to him that the only person who was not worn through with worry in their household was Bernard, the cause of their grief.
Does he know the damage he has done? William thought of the girls whose reputations and lives had been ruined; of the times Bernard argued with his mother, reducing her to tears; of the grandchildren he would never know. And he thought of the looks his son passed in his direction, looks that seemed, in some way, triumphant and he decided that, yes, his son knew exactly what hurt he caused. He knew and he delighted in it.
William felt faint. He felt a tension in his chest which he could not control. He tried to focus his sight on the tree and with all the power left to him he made his eyes follow the outline of a leaf.
He tried to stand but found he could not. There was no strength in his legs and then, no will in his heart. This is what it is like to die, he thought, oddly pleased that the sun was shining.
William leant back on the stone steps and looked out at the patterns the shadows of the trees made on the lawn. He did not think of his son, or of his wife, or of Claude. He thought only of the warmth of the sun on his face.
He tried to keep his eyes open, to find that leaf one more time. But he could not.
He could hear, more sweetly and clearly than he ever had, the songs of the birds in the hot, still afternoon air. Such a sweet sound, he thought, but then that sound faded and there was nothing.
*
Josephine could not allow her grief at her husband’s sudden death to overwhelm her.
The considerable estate that had been William’s was, as she felt was right and proper, left to Bernard but it was obvious to her and to their lawyers that he had no understanding of what was required of him in the management of his wealth. Although he was always present at the meetings it was his mother who had to deal with the lawyers and the bankers as Bernard sat silently staring out of windows or talking manically about anything other than the matters in hand.
Up to this time in her life Josephine had had no need to be involved with money, her father and then her husband had never burdened her with any details. She knew the fami
ly was more than comfortable for funds but it was only on William’s death that she became aware of the true scale of their wealth. She understood enough to know that managing his inheritance would be a challenge for any man aware of the ways of the world, but she despaired that the decisions were now to be Bernard’s. Not only was there the portfolio of investments, there was the estate to manage, staff, money and legal affairs to deal with and she knew her son was incapable of doing anything with money other than spend it.
With neither father nor husband to help Josephine looked outside her immediate family for support. Her thoughts turned, for the first time since he had left Oakridge, to Henry Lacey. She felt sure he would come to her assistance. Surely, she thought, enough time has passed. Even if we could never be friends he must recognise the responsibility he had to his brother’s family.
She had her agent, Wickens, travel to London to seek out Sir Henry Lacey. He had not found it difficult, Sir Henry had been a prominent member of club society and a few simple enquiries gave Wickens all the information he could want.
“Sir Henry is dead, Madam, some two months since,” he reported on his return.
“That is unfortunate.” Josephine rubbed the pendant around her neck as she always did in times of worry. “So I have no kin in that direction.”
“Sir Henry had a wife, Lady Mary Lacey, and a son, now Sir Augustus. I saw neither. Sir Augustus was out of town and Lady Mary had guests in the house from the country.”
“So they do not know of William’s death?”
“I was allowed to speak to their butler who was the very personification of the word pomposity. He was an imperious man, who seemed to think I was mistaken in believing there was a connection at all, having never heard mention, in his long service with the family, of a William Lacey or of any Isle of Wight connection whatsoever. He threatened to have me thrown out of the house if I insisted that such a connection existed. I felt it prudent to leave, a scene would have been uncomfortable for everyone concerned.”
Josephine nodded her agreement that his retreat had been wise. “I will write to Sir Augustus. When he knows of his uncle’s death he will surely come to my assistance.”
Sitting at her writing desk, looking out over the gardens, she wrote many notes to Sir Augustus but found it impossible to put into words what she really wanted to say. Her husband was dead, his brother was dead; they had not spoken for many years but had been twins and were, as her father had told her, the two sides of the same coin, completely opposite but of equal value.
She wanted to tell Sir Augustus that she would like to be on friendly terms with her nephew and his mother. She wanted to say how much she could tell him about his father, his grandfather and his uncle. She wanted to say he had a cousin, Bernard. She wanted to say how much his assistance would be valued in dealing with the world now she had lost her husband.
But not one of her drafts seemed to her to be phrased satisfactorily so none was sent.
She could not know that, as she filled her waste basket with screwed-up versions of the letter she never completed, Sir Augustus was sitting in the station waiting room in York, reading his uncle’s obituary in The Times, and rejoicing that he had found the family he had been searching for.
*
In the months after her husband’s death Josephine despaired for herself and for her son.
She loved Bernard as only a mother can love a damaged and destructive man but she could not rely on him to deal with the fortune and the estate. And she was tired. The only way, she decided, was for Bernard to marry and then his wife’s father could take the responsibility from her shoulders.
It was not an easy task she had set herself as Bernard was not an attractive catch. His face was scarred from childhood illnesses, his temperament had been destroyed by the disease that had affected his brain and his reputation on the entire island was such that no caring parent would let their daughter near him. He did, however, have his fortune.
For eight years Josephine shouldered the burden of responsibility for the estate and for her son as no family could be persuaded to accept Bernard as a husband. She did what she could to attract good families with eligible daughters to visit as, with his fortune and his close family connections to a baronet, he should have been considered a catch. But the disadvantages of his appearance and of his character proved impossible to overcome.
Nine years after his father’s death, as his mother was despairing that she would ever have her son’s future settled, he found a wife by his own efforts.
Bernard was in a public house near the docks in Newport when he got into conversation with a man who had come from South Wales on a collier. After several jars of ale they were getting on famously.
Owen Evans was quick to see an opportunity for his own advancement in Bernard’s obvious difficulties. His landlord, now going by the name of Hugh Llewellyn de Burgh, had five daughters, all of whom were reaching maturity without hope of marriage and none of whom was attractive or in any way interesting to men.
“You want a wife?” he had asked Bernard bluntly.
“I do.”
“One who is… willing?” The two men nudged each other, the lascivious smirk on Bernard’s face anticipating pleasures with which he was well acquainted. “I think I can help you there.”
David Hughes had been a sheep farmer in the border lands of South Wales when, in the early part of the century, coal had been discovered on his land. He had become a mine owner and with the wealth that brought him he had become a banker, changing his family name to the more prestigious de Burgh. Within thirty years, when his son, Hugh, inherited the de Burgh businesses they encompassed farming, banking, mining, the developing steel industry and property.
Hugh de Burgh owned the streets of terraced houses in the villages that lined the valleys the miners he employed lived in and the meagre wages he paid them were recouped in the rent they paid him and the purchases they made in the shops he owned.
Although Hugh had raged against the fact that he had had no son to pass his empire to he had not for one moment thought that any of his daughters might have enough strength of intellect and vision to take over from him. “No woman can run a business,” he had said. “No man worth the name would take orders from a woman.” It was frustrating for his eldest daughter, Catherine, who was allowed no hope of inheriting control of the businesses despite knowing she could manage them better than her father ever had.
“Marry, then your husband can take over,” Hugh had said, and Catherine decided to marry a weak man who could not stop her doing as she wished.
Hugh de Burgh gave Owen Evans a cottage, several hundred acres of second-class land and fifty sovereigns when Catherine was introduced into the Lacey family.
*
Catherine first visited The Lodge in the summer of 1886 and within minutes of meeting Bernard had come to the conclusion that he was not only short of stature and of worse-than-average looks, but that his mind was not fully developed. In the limited opportunities given her before the decision to accept his offer was to be made she looked for a single redeeming feature in his personality but found none.
He was, for her, the ideal husband.
Once married to Bernard she would be free to do exactly as she liked not only with her father’s businesses but also with her husband’s considerable fortune.
As Josephine showed them the extent of the estate that was Bernard’s to control Catherine calculated that the advantages of the position she would hold and the status she would acquire would far outweigh the distaste of having to accept the man as her lover.
She had been aware, all her life, that however much money her family had, however many families were dependent on them for their livelihood, the de Burghs were considered upstarts by all in Monmouth society. They knew the name de Burgh was an affectation. Here, on the Isle of Wight, as the wife of Bernard Lacey, cousin to a baronet, she would have respect, a position in society and she would be asked to all the best occasions, perh
aps even Royal ones with the Queen’s residence no more than fifteen miles away.
She would allow her husband access to her body only as often as was required to provide an heir. Perhaps, she told herself as she followed Josephine through the well-tended gardens and allowed herself to admire the view over the ridge towards the sea, she would have to allow two sons, in case one inherited the weaknesses of his father.
*
Josephine disliked Catherine de Burgh on sight but knew she had no option but to accept the situation. She was nearly seventy years old and for too long had shouldered burdens she should never have been called upon to carry.
She did not attend the wedding. She had no wish to leave the island so she spent the days before Bernard and his bride returned to The Lodge preparing the household for its new chatelaine.
She had her belongings moved from the bedroom that had been hers since her marriage to a smaller one on the floor above. She talked to all the staff, one by one, impressing on them that, upon her return, all questions regarding the running of the house should be addressed to Mrs Bernard Lacey.
She found the change in her circumstances unbearably depressing.
*
On the first day Catherine and Bernard returned to The Lodge after their marriage the tone was set on the relationship between Bernard’s wife and his mother.
“I understand from Bernard that there is family jewellery.” Catherine spoke without looking at her mother-in-law as the two women sat in the orangery taking tea while Bernard was in the town.
“I beg your pardon?” Josephine was unprepared for the question and had no answer.
“Jewellery.” Catherine’s tone was impatient, showing no respect for the older woman. “Bernard says there is family jewellery which should now be mine.”
A Set of Lies Page 27
