The Day of the Storm
Page 20
Joss said, “You’d better tell us about it.”
* * *
We ended up in the kitchen, around the table.
“After Rebecca had gone, Eliot went down to the studio and came back with that portrait of Sophia. The one we looked for, Joss. The one we never found.”
I said, “I don’t understand.”
Joss explained. “Pettifer knew Sophia was my grandmother, but no one else did. No one else remembered her. It was all too long ago. Grenville wanted it to stay that way.”
“But why was there only one picture of Sophia with a face? There must have been dozens Grenville painted of her. What happened to all of them?”
There was a pause while Joss and Pettifer looked at each other. Then it was Pettifer’s turn to explain, which he did with much tact.
“It was old Mrs Bayliss. She was jealous of Sophia … not because she had any notion of the truth … but because Sophia was part of the Commander’s other life, the life Mrs Bayliss didn’t have no time for.”
“You mean his painting.”
“She would never have anything to do with Sophia, more than a frosty good morning if she happened to meet her in the town. And the Commander knew this, and he didn’t want to upset her, so he let all the pictures of Sophia go … all except for the one you found. We knew it was somewhere around. Joss and I spent a day looking for it, but we never turned it up.”
“What were you going to do with it if you found it?”
“Nothing. We just didn’t want anyone else to find it.”
“I don’t see why it was so important.”
Joss said, “Grenville didn’t want anyone to know about what happened between him and Sophia. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of it, because he’d loved her very much. And after he’s dead, it won’t matter any longer, he doesn’t give a damn who knows then. But he’s proud, and he’s lived his life according to a certain set of standards. We probably think they’re old-fashioned, but they’re still his own. Does that make sense to you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Young people now,” said Pettifer heavily, “talk about a permissive society as though it were something they’d invented. But it’s not new. It’s been going on since the beginning of time, only in the Commander’s day it was handled with a little more discretion.”
We accepted this meekly. Then Joss said, “We seem to have gone off at a tangent. Pettifer was telling us about Eliot.”
Pettifer collected himself. “Yes, well. So down to the drawing room Eliot went, and stormed in, with me behind him, went straight to the mantelpiece, and dumped it up there, alongside the other picture. The Commander never said a word, just watched him. And Eliot said, ‘What’s that got to do with Joss Gardner?’ Then the Commander told him. Told him everything. Very quiet and very dignified. And Mrs Roger was there too, and she just about threw a fit. She said all these years the Commander had deceived them, letting Eliot believe that he was his only grandson, and he’d get Boscarva when the Commander died. The Commander said he’d never said anything of the sort, that it was all surmise, that they’d simply been counting their chickens before they were hatched. Then Eliot said, very cold, ‘Perhaps now we can know what your plans are?’ but the Commander said that his plans were his own business, and quite right he was too.”
This little bit of championship was accompanied by Pettifer’s fist coming down with a thump on the kitchen table.
“So what did Eliot do?”
“Eliot said in that case he was going to wash his hands of the whole lot of us … meaning the family, of course … and that he had plans of his own and he was thankful to be shed of us. And with that he collected a few papers and a brief-case and put on his coat and whistled up his dog and walked out of the house. Heard his car go up the lane and that was the end of him.”
“Where’s he gone?”
“To High Cross, I suppose.”
“And Mollie?”
“She was in tears … trying to stop him doing anything stupid, she said. Begging him to stay. Turning on the Commander, saying it was all his fault. But of course, there wasn’t anything she could do to stop Eliot. There’s nothing you can do to stop a grown man walking out of the house, not even if you do happen to be his mother.”
I was torn with sorrow and sympathy for Mollie.
“Where is she now?”
“Up in her room.” He added gruffly, “I made her a little tea tray, took it up to her, found her sitting at her dressing-table like something carved out of stone.”
I was glad I had not been here. It all sounded very dramatic. I stood up. Poor Mollie. “I’ll go up and talk to her.”
“And I—” said Joss—“will go and see Grenville.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in a moment or two.”
Joss smiled. “We’ll wait,” he promised.
I found Mollie, white-faced and tear-stained, still sitting in front of her frilled dressing-table. (This was in character. Even the deepest excesses of grief would not cause Mollie to fling herself across any bed. It might crease the covers.) As I came into the room, she looked up, and her reflection was caught three times over in her triple mirror; for the first time ever, I thought that she looked her age.
I said, “Are you all right?”
She looked down, balling a sodden handkerchief in her fingers. I went to her side. “Pettifer told me. I’m so very sorry.”
“It’s all so desperately unfair. Grenville’s always disliked Eliot, resented him in some extraordinary way. And of course, now we know why. He was always trying to run Eliot’s life, come between Eliot and me. Whatever I did for Eliot was always wrong.”
I knelt beside her, and put my arm around her, “I really believe he meant it for the best. Can’t you try to believe that too?”
“I don’t even know where he’s gone. He wouldn’t tell me. He never said goodbye.”
I realized that she was a great deal more worried about Eliot’s abrupt departure than she was about the evening’s revelations concerning Joss. This was just as well. I could comfort her about Eliot. There was not a mortal thing I could do about Joss.
“I think,” I said, “that Eliot may have gone to Birmingham.”
She looked at me in horror. “Birmingham?”
“There was a man there who wanted to give him a job. Eliot told me. It was to do with second-hand cars. He seemed to think that it might be quite interesting.”
“But I can’t go and live in Birmingham.”
“Oh, Mollie, you don’t have to. Eliot can live on his own. Let him go. Give him the chance of making something of his life.”
“But we’ve always been together.”
“Then perhaps it’s time to start living apart. You’ve got your house at High Cross, your garden up there, your friends…”
“I can’t leave Boscarva. I can’t leave Andrea. I can’t leave Grenville.”
“Yes, you can. And I think Andrea should go back to London, to her own parents. You’ve done all you can for her, and she’s miserable here. That’s why all this happened, because she was unhappy and lonely. And as for Grenville, I’ll stay with him.”
* * *
I came downstairs at last, carrying the tea tray. I took it into the kitchen and put it on the table. Pettifer, sitting there, looked up at me over the edge of his evening paper.
“How is she?” he asked.
“All right now. She’s agreed that Andrea should go home, back to London. And then she’s going back to High Cross.”
“That’s what she’s always wanted. And you?”
“I’m staying here. If that’s all right with you.”
A chill gleam of satisfaction crossed Pettifer’s face, the nearest he could get to a look of delight. There was no need for me to say more. We understood each other.
Pettifer turned his paper. “They’re in the drawing room—” he told me—“waiting for you,” and he settled down to the racing page.
I went and found them, backed by the two portrait
s of Sophia in her white dress, Joss standing by the fire, and Grenville deep in his chair. They both looked up as I came in, the long-legged young man with his villainous black eye, and the old one, too tired to pull himself to his feet. I went towards them, the two people I loved most.
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TITLES BY ROSAMUNDE PILCHER
SLEEPING TIGER
ANOTHER VIEW
SNOW IN APRIL
THE END OF SUMMER
THE EMPTY HOUSE
THE DAY OF THE STORM
UNDER GEMINI
WILD MOUNTAIN THYME
VOICES IN SUMMER
THE BLUE BEDROOM AND OTHER STORIES
THE CAROUSEL
THE SHELL SEEKERS
SEPTEMBER
FLOWERS IN THE RAIN AND OTHER STORIES
COMING HOME
WINTER SOLSTICE
ENTER THE ENCHANTING WORLD OF ROSAMUNDE PILCHER …
PRAISE FOR COMING HOME …
“Rosamunde Pilcher’s most satisfying story since The Shell Seekers.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Captivating … The best sort of book to come home to … Readers will undoubtedly hope Pilcher comes home to the typewriter again soon.”
—New York Daily News
…FOR SEPTEMBER …
“A dance of life!”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Her characters inhabit your daily life … [a] rich story to get lost in … the sort of novel so many seek to imitate and fail. I’d call Pilcher a Jane Austen for our time.”
—Cosmopolitan
…FOR THE BLUE BEDROOM AND OTHER STORIES …
“Breathtaking … A book you will want to keep, to read and re-read!”
—Grand Rapids Press
…FOR THE CAROUSEL …
“Delightful … It exudes comfort as it entertains.”
—Publishers Weekly
…FOR VOICES IN SUMMER
“I don’t know where Rosamunde Pilcher has been all my life—but now that I’ve found her, I’m not going to let her go.”
—The New York Times
ROSAMUNDE PILCHER has had a long and distinguished career as a novelist and short-story writer, but it was her phenomenally successful novel The Shell Seekers that captured the hearts of all who read it and won her international recognition as one of the most-loved storytellers of our time. The Shell Seekers was followed by September and then by Coming Home and Winter Solstice, which were also immediately embraced by Mrs. Pilcher’s devoted readers to become worldwide bestsellers. She lives in Perthshire, Scotland, with her husband, Graham, and their dachshund, Daisy.
THE DAY OF THE STORM
Copyright © 1975 by Rosamunde Pilcher.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 0-312-96130-8
EAN: 80312-96130-5
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition published 1975
Dell paperback edition / May 1989
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / February 1997
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 9781466825024
First eBook edition: February 2013