The Tailor's Girl

by Fiona McIntosh

  He heard the door softly close. Distantly and without really caring, Alex realised Benjamin Levi had left him to his memories.

  30

  Penelope Aubrey-Finch brazenly pulled in to the kerb outside White’s Club in St James’s and honked the horn of the new car she was driving. Not only did she relish the looks of disapproval from club members that she was receiving, but she loved the sense of inhibition this two-seater prompted.

  ‘There you are, darling,’ she said as Alex finally emerged from the club’s glowing doorway into the night. ‘I thought you were going to stand me up. Sorry I’m late, but perhaps you can understand why?’

  He leaned over and pecked her cheek. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’ he said.

  She frowned but let his unreadable expression wait while she zipped the roadster into the traffic and gunned the engine. ‘Did you see the looks of consternation your stuffy fellow club members were giving me?’ She threw him an amused glance and waited a moment. ‘Oh, come on, Alex. Tell me off or tell me I look wonderful, but don’t just sit there like a sad sack.’ She cut him a sideways look as she honked at a cyclist. ‘Whatever is the matter with you, darling?’

  ‘Pen, do you mind awfully if we don’t go to Murray’s?’

  ‘Oh, Alex, why?’ Her tone bled disappointment.

  ‘I have a dreadful headache, actually, so jazz music is going to do me in, for sure . . . and . . . well, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Well, talk to me over dinner. We’ll go to The Ritz. I’m sure César will fit us in.’

  ‘Pen . . .’ He let out a low sigh.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ She hadn’t expected that. ‘Well, where shall I head for?’ she asked, looking perplexed.

  ‘Just drive . . . drive out of London, somewhere quiet.’

  They drove for twenty minutes in a taut silence and she was glad she hadn’t thrown the hood of the car back as she’d intended. A night on the brink of winter was asking for trouble in an open-topped car.

  ‘I don’t think I want to hear what you have to say,’ she said, puncturing the silence. ‘I’ve never seen you so gloomy or pensive.’

  He reached to turn on the heater, saying nothing.

  ‘It has to be bad news,’ she continued, ‘or why else would you be behaving so strangely?’

  He irritated her by keeping silent.

  ‘Shall I take the Brighton Road?’

  He nodded. ‘Whatever you like. I don’t care.’

  Yes, she suspected she knew what was coming. Pen swerved onto the main road that led directly to Sussex and hit the accelerator. Maybe she could be happy if he didn’t speak again tonight. She would drive them away from all of his problems.

  ‘Whose is it?’ he asked into the awkward moment, gesturing at the dashboard.

  ‘Well, I think it’s going to be mine.’

  ‘You’ve bought it?’

  ‘About to. It belongs to a friend of my father’s. He’s already moving on to his next purchase. Never thought he’d say yes to a sale, but he did.’

  Alex said nothing.

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  ‘It suits you, Pen.’

  ‘Yes, I think it does too. Fun but just a bit dangerous, eh?’

  ‘Well, that’s not how I’d describe you, but . . .’ He didn’t finish, staring out into the darkness roaring by them.

  ‘I can’t take this a moment longer,’ she said suddenly into their gloom and swung off the main road as they were passing by Crawley. Alex barely registered her change of direction. She drove without a plan until she could see parklands and headed that way.

  The night was frigidly cold out in the countryside and despite their scarves and warm overcoats, she knew the icy feeling in her body had nothing to do with the wintry night. She laughed into the awkward silence of the black moorland that reached beyond their vision.

  ‘What’s funny?’ he finally said.

  ‘Wynter by name, winter by nature.’

  Alex surprised her by getting out of the car and slamming the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘Alex? Alex!’ She followed him, struggling on her satin heels as they sank into the soft dirt. Pen pulled the fur coat closer, staring helplessly at the silhouette of the man she loved, standing alone and angry, it seemed. If not for the car headlights, she wouldn’t have been able to see him at all. ‘Darling, please. Let me help you with this. Whatever it is, we can face it and sort it out. You have to put off the wedding, right?’

  He swung around and strode back to the car. ‘Yes,’ he said, sounding resigned, his voice uncharacteristically tight. She feared him now because whatever he had to say she sensed was going to cause pain.

  And it was only now in the light with him facing her properly that Pen could see his cheek was damaged, his eye swollen. ‘Heavens! Alex, what happened?’

  He touched his cheek and nodded ruefully. ‘I found my memory, Pen. This is part of it.’

  She shook her head, frightened by what his admission meant.

  ‘Listen,’ she soothed, changing her tone to placatory. ‘I can tell you’re upset and something has happened, but I don’t mind that we have to put off the wedding. These things happen. You’re a man of business, leading a huge empire, and these are challenging times. I understand that and I’m not ever going to make life difficult for you, Alex. We can put off the wedding. Summer’s fine with me – or, darling, let’s just forget the whole bloody thing and elope.’

  He cut her a dangerous look but she couldn’t interpret the meaning and pushed on.

  ‘I mean it. Let’s elope, Alex. Forget all the society stuff, forget the pomp and noise and ceremony. I don’t even care about wearing a fabulous gown. Let’s just forget Eden Valentine exists and —’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, sounding choked.

  She blinked. She was screaming to the heavens silently in her mind but to Alex she stood composed and found a calm voice.

  ‘What can’t you do?’ she dared.

  He shook his head hopelessly and his voice sounded broken. ‘All of it, Pen. I can’t elope. I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t love you the way you want me to and the way you really should be loved because you are so adorable. You deserve so much better. I cannot marry you.’

  She hated that even in this ugly moment of rejection her heart melted for whatever suffering was driving him to do this. She could hear it, see how much it anguished him, but still he was prepared to hurt her in the most spectacular fashion. Pen’s body began to shiver with the shock. She couldn’t feel anything except the cut of his words and how they were making her bleed.

  ‘Why, Alex, why?’

  ‘You said forget Eden Valentine.’

  She shook her head, bamboozled. ‘What’s lovely Eden got to do with this?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ she repeated and it forced him to explain.

  ‘I remembered tonight something so important, so terrible, yet amazing at the same time that I can barely breathe.’

  Still she waited, leaning dangerously close over an imaginary cliff where she could see herself staring into the beckoning abyss.

  ‘You see, Pen,’ he began, hesitating as the words caught in his throat.

  ‘Just say it, Alex,’ she said, dully.

  ‘I’m already married.’

  The words were like blunted clubs as they battered her.

  ‘I found out an hour ago. A lawyer came to see me at the club and let’s just say he found a shortcut for opening up the memories that have been shrouded.’

  Pen couldn’t give a fig about his memory returning, only the name of the person it had delivered to him.

  ‘And this person you’re married to is alive?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied bleakly. ‘I believe we may even have a child.’

  ‘In England?’

  ‘In London.’

  Her sob exploded from her throat and it came out sounding like a
retch.

  ‘Do I know her?’ she managed to ask.

  He looked down.

  Anger finally snapped. And it was all the anger and frustration that she’d shored up over the years, since her youth, when she’d watched Alex carouse and date women older than herself, and then through to university. And just when it looked like he would return home she lost him to the army and then to the war . . . yet not for a single beat of her heart had she accepted Alex was gone. It was her love, her optimism, her obsession, that had brought him home. Now all that fury infused her and she growled like a wounded animal. ‘I said —’

  ‘Her name,’ he cut back, barely able to contain his own anger, an emotion she’d not seen before, ‘is Eden Valentine.’

  It took several horrible moments for the words to make sense.

  ‘My Eden?’ she finally whispered, her body rigid.

  ‘My Eden,’ he countered in a broken voice, all the rage gone. ‘Forgive me,’ he said in such an affectionate tone it hurt her even more to feel its gentleness, like a caress. ‘This is not your fault. I am angry at the situation – losing her, finding you, hurting you both by loving you both. Pen, she married a man who had no memory, not even of his name. When asked to choose a name, he chose Tom, perhaps an echo of the father he couldn’t remember. They became Mr and Mrs Valentine, who lived in a cottage on the edge of Epping Forest.’

  Pen recalled now how Eden had spoken with such tenderness about the husband she called Tom. Pen covered her mouth to stop her cries but her eyes welled with tears, turning Alex into a watery silhouette.

  He nodded. ‘We didn’t have a lot but we had our dreams and we were on our way. Eden was pregnant when I . . .’ He shook his head, cleared his throat. ‘I went to the salon today!’ he groaned. ‘I didn’t see her.’

  ‘She mentioned you this afternoon,’ Pen said finally, just above a whisper. ‘She said she was sorry she missed you.’ She allowed the sickening feeling of deadness to give way as pins and needles of fresh dawning tingled through her body. Her fiancé was the father of Eden’s child . . .

  He gave a sound of a man being tortured, twisting away. ‘My fault. This is all my fault! Oh, Pen . . .’

  Penelope Aubrey-Finch felt her fleeting glimpse at the joyous chorus and the vision of Alex Wynter naked in her arms surrender to a vision of Eden Valentine wearing the bridal gown she’d made for her. A pulse of agony chased the numbness out and flashed through her body and she was sure she could hear fabric being torn.

  This is what heartbreak feels like, she thought abstractly, as though it wasn’t happening to her.

  ‘Well, we can’t have you committing bigamy.’ It came out hard and toneless. ‘Are you going to divorce her, Alex?’

  His confused expression deepened into dismay. She knew him too well and she knew she had lost him fully now.

  ‘I love her, Pen. I love her like you love me. It’s not healthy, it’s certainly not wise, but you can’t help it and neither can I. I just didn’t know it.’

  ‘Neither does she, I can assure you. But she talks about Tom all the time, asked me to raise my glass to him when we were on the Orient Express because that’s what she and Tom had always planned to do. Now I understand why you wanted to take me.’ She gave a mirthless laugh that was harsh and uncharacteristically sneering. ‘I could wish now that you had died in Ypres. I’m not sure how to live with the notion that you love someone else.’

  He reached for her but she staggered back towards the car.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t love you, Pen.’

  She sucked in a long, cold breath of despair and wrestled her heels out of the soggy ground, trying to climb back into the car. Finally slamming the door, she watched Alex’s shoulders slump and he unhappily began to approach but she couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the nearness of him; didn’t want to see his broken expression again; couldn’t live with his pity. She didn’t want his gentle voice in her mind any more or to see his fingers touch the dial on the heater or adjust his scarf. She had dreamed of those fingers on her, in her . . . She didn’t want this new world – loveless and bleak again without Alex in it. And the notion of Alex with Eden Valentine, the real Mrs Wynter, was like poison rushing through her blood. Viscous and toxic, it moved with dangerous intent through her veins, infecting every fibre with its pain.

  As Alex reached for the doorhandle, she pressed the ignition, grateful that Freddy Bateman’s promise that his car always started the first time was true. She swung the vehicle around and would have hit Alex if he hadn’t leapt away. Pen wasn’t sure what she was doing and she knew to leave Alex here, alone on the dark fringe of the moors, was cruel, but she had no room in her heart because her heart felt dead.

  _______________

  Alex watched Pen spin the car dangerously away from him, sliding on the roadside gravel and screeching onto the main road. He could hear the roar of her engine as it growled, straining to reach a higher speed on the Brighton Road.

  He let go of a long, painful breath. He’d hurt her terribly, but he knew now he would have caused her far more pain in years to come.

  Stiff with cold, Alex walked to the local garage and paid someone to drive him to Ardingly. Within two hours he had come full circle and found himself sitting on the stump staring at Larksfell, trying to make some sense of his life. The house was quiet. It was only his mother at home, as he understood it, but suddenly lights began to go on in the house and he could see shadows moving around. Alex stood, only now realising how numb his backside had become, his bruised face stinging from the cold.

  He moved gingerly, opting for one of the many side doors, but it seemed Bramson had already locked up for the night. He walked around to the back, tapping on the window of the parlour where old Mrs Dear was filling a kettle.

  ‘What are you still doing up, Dearie?’ he said affectionately, giving her a hug.

  ‘Oh, Master Lex, thank goodness you’re back, Sir. Something terrible’s afoot upstairs.’

  He frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mr Bramson took a call from the police, I gather. They’re on their way here now.’

  ‘Police . . .’ he murmured. Alex nodded at Mrs Dear, who was too disturbed to mention his swollen eye, and he hurried off through the bowels of Larksfell to take the steps two at a time, racing up to the ground floor.

  He arrived via the servants’ entrance to appear in the lobby where his mother and Bramson talked anxiously with pinched expressions.

  ‘Lex! Oh, thank heavens!’ His mother began to weep.

  Alex moved to her. ‘Mother. Whatever is it?’

  ‘I thought you were part of it,’ she warbled, quickly composing herself. ‘Bramson . . .’

  The butler cleared his throat, blinking. ‘Master Lex, there’s been a terrible accident. It’s . . . well, it’s Miss Aubrey-Finch.’

  ‘Pen,’ he uttered, his fears gathering. ‘Is she all right?’ His mouth was parched.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Bramson said. ‘The police couldn’t tell us. They’re on their way here now.’

  Alex couldn’t swallow for the tightness in his throat. His mind began to race ahead. ‘What about her parents? Are they still in Rome?’

  ‘Yes. Back at the end of the week,’ Cecily bleated. ‘The police called us because of you.’

  Alex rubbed his face in fear of the truth and loathing for his part in it. It felt like a deepening nightmare. ‘So we don’t know anything?’

  ‘A car accident is all we know, Sir,’ Bramson said. ‘Mrs Wynter, let’s sit you down by the fire. Mrs Dear has put the kettle on. Should I fetch some ice, Master Alex?’ Bramson nodded at Alex’s bruising but Alex shook his head.

  They drifted into the sitting room. ‘I’ll do it, Bramson,’ Alex said, reaching for the poker and coaxing the embers in the fireplace back to life. It felt easier to be busy.

  ‘We’d all gone to bed,’ his mother stammered. ‘Look at me, in my nightgown!’

  Alex remembered what a state Pen had dr
iven off in, the speed at which she had hit the Brighton Road, in a motor car she was unfamiliar with, and he felt his pulse quicken with dread that it was his fault. ‘Mother, while we wait for word, I have something to tell you.’

  She eyed him and there wasn’t much tenderness in her look now that she knew he was safe. ‘I’ve gathered as much, seeing as you’re dressed for dinner and you were meant to be in London with Penny. Did you two have a fight? Is that why you have a black eye?’

  He resisted touching where it was sore. ‘That wasn’t Pen.’ He groaned and held his head, sickened by what he needed to say; what he’d already said to a beautiful young woman who was now potentially physically as much as emotionally hurt by his decisions. ‘What a mess. Let me just talk and you can pass your judgement later.’

  Tea came and then grew cold, untouched, as Cecily Wynter listened to the traumatic tale her son recounted, and when his words dried up and she turned to stare sightlessly at the flames, seeing only the blur of orange while her thoughts clattered with sorrow for every­one in his story, they heard a car arrive on the gravel.

  Alex stood, helped his mother up and awaited the police. They heard voices and finally Bramson showed them in. Two men in plain clothes and one in uniform arrived wearing solemn expressions, hats in hand.

  ‘Evening, gentlemen,’ Alex greeted, his tone sombre.

  ‘Mr Wynter, Mrs Wynter,’ the eldest said. ‘I’m Inspector Philips.’

  They both nodded as he introduced the other pair, but Alex barely heard their names, and though it seemed churlish not to even offer a cup of tea at least on this cold night, he only wanted to hear that Pen was safe. He took the lead after the introductions were finished. ‘Is Miss Aubrey-Finch hurt, Inspector Philips? She was driving a new car for the first time today,’ Alex said.

  The men shared an awkward glance. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Sir, to have to tell you that Miss Aubrey-Finch had a car accident tonight and has died from her injuries.’

  The room turned so still that Alex could no longer hear the crackle and spit of the fire. He was unable to take a breath as he repeated in his mind what the policeman had just said and was un­aware that his mother had slipped away from his side to sit down.