Secrets and shadows, p.10
Secrets and Shadows, page 10
‘Did,’ said Louisa, rather sadly. ‘We did. But we’ve just split up – my doing. I’d still like to be friends but I need to move on. Unfortunately he didn’t feel the same way and he was very upset. I feel terrible about him. He’s been my rock for years – and now I’ve chucked him.’
‘But you can’t base a relationship solely on gratitude.’ Marnie suddenly felt sorry for the glamorous Louisa. ‘Do you still have to go for check-ups and things for your health – even after ten years?’ she asked curiously, wondering what it must have been like to live under the threat of dying at such a young age; admiring Louisa’s head-on attitude to life. ‘Is that still a problem or are you completely in the clear now?’
But Louisa brushed this question aside. ‘Who’s ever completely in the clear about anything?’ she said breezily. ‘I’m fine and I’ve been very lucky. I do still have check-ups and it’s a great relief whenever it’s over for another year, but in between times I don’t let myself think about it. Medical history’s boring and I’ve had too much of it.’
From the expression on Louisa’s face Marnie guessed that this was not as easy as she made it out to be, but since she was the last person to probe for more information than anyone wanted to give she did not press her about it.
‘Let’s not talk about me any more.’ Louisa tossed a pebble into the pool below them and pulled her jersey on again although Marnie thought it was still pleasantly warm. ‘It’s your turn now. Tell me more about what happened in the West Indies. Something momentous obviously did happen.’
So Marnie told her about the strange events surrounding her mother’s terrifying illness, of how the old lady had rescued her and how they had formed an unlikely bond that still represented the strongest attachment Marnie had ever sustained for anyone. ‘Perhaps that’s just because we were separated so soon,’ she said bleakly. ‘Perhaps it wouldn’t have lasted if she’d known me better. I’m crap at keeping relationships going. I might have spoiled it.’
Just as she had when she read to the class, Marnie seemed to Louisa to enter an almost hypnotic state when she described the dark events that had taken place in her childhood. It was clearly a very vivid memory and they both became so completely absorbed in the telling of it that they lost all sense of time.
Earlier, when the sun had felt so hot, it had been easy for Louisa to be transported by Marnie’s storytelling and imagine herself on a Caribbean island, but as the afternoon wore on there started to be a chill in the air. A sharp breeze sent the cloud-shadows racing across the hills, so that it looked as if the dark patches of the still winter-dead bracken were on the move, dragged across the surface of the land like an outworn carpet. Further away, a few of the high peaks were still capped with snow and little pockets of white clung in the hollows below rocky outcrops: a reminder that spring could still withdraw its favours, thought Louisa.
Marnie sat up, and hugged her knees. She felt as disorientated as if she had returned from a long journey, or woken after a particularly vivid dream and was still in the half-world between two realities. She gazed out over the unfamiliar Perthshire woods and fields. Wind-flowers, the tiny white wood anemones which still starred the grass in shady places, danced in the breeze and clumps of primroses nestled in the mossy bank above the rushing burn – but she half expected to see larger, more exotic flowers and hear the roar of the ocean and the clattering of the wind in the palm trees.
‘So you never saw the old contessa again after you’d gone back to the States?’ asked Louisa.
‘Nope,’ answered Marnie sadly. ‘I never saw her again and it’s a big regret – but she kept her promise. She did write to me. She went back to Italy after we left St Matt’s. I had three letters from her after she got home. I’ve kept them all.’
She looked at Louisa, speculatively, as though assessing her trustworthiness as a future friend. ‘She did more than write,’ she went on. ‘She left her diaries to me in her will. But they’ve only recently come into my possession so I’m still trying to piece her story together and learning things about her life. It’s real difficult because she obviously wasn’t a dedicated diarist and only wrote it spasmodically – and, as far as I can make out, quite randomly, for no obvious reason. She’ll start on something interesting and then just stop. Her writing’s also extremely hard to read, not to mention the fact that some of it’s in Italian. There appear to be huge gaps. It’s tantalising but up to now I haven’t wanted to let anyone else look at it. It may sound stupid but I’ve felt as if I’d be betraying a confidence, although I’m definitely going to need help. All the same, with what I have managed to make out, I get a feeling of what she must have been like. Headstrong, passionate – obviously capable of giving and inspiring great love. Courageous too – I think she had a tough time in the war. I guess she was pretty impossible to deal with if she didn’t want to cooperate. Surprisingly funny – her comments about other people are sharp and hilarious. I’m totally fascinated by her.’
‘When did she die?’ asked Louisa. ‘I imagined from what you said that she was quite old and ill when you met her.’
‘She was. Well . . . she was certainly ill and of course I thought she was ancient, though I don’t suppose she was more than seventy – old enough to a child, though. She died of cancer six months later. Apparently by then she knew she’d only gotten weeks left, but she went all the way out to the States to meet my father and talk to him about me, though I didn’t know anything about it at the time. Sadly I’d just gone back to England. She’d expected to see me, but we just missed. I’d have been heartbroken if I’d known at the time. My father tells me now that she made a great impression on him – he was quite smitten with her and thought she had real style and dignity – very imperious, very grande dame. He’s quite funny about her – my father’s a powerful, scary man himself, the president of a huge international company, and people don’t usually tear strips off him or cut him down below his considerable size. He says she left him in no doubt about what she thought of both him and my mother as parents. Imagine her doing that for a little girl she hardly knew – and a plain and rather disagreeable child at that!’
‘She obviously didn’t find you disagreeable,’ said Louisa, surprised to find tears pricking her eyes, aching for the lonely little girl Marnie must have been. ‘You clearly gave her something too – brought out some feeling of warmth at the end of her life that she thought she would never feel again. It can’t only have been a one-way thing.’
‘I hope not. What a comforting thing to say! Thank you for that.’ Marnie gave Louisa one of her fleeting, under-used smiles. ‘She told my father about the incident with Kenneth and her anxiety that dealing with such dark things might have been dangerous for me. I think she was probably right about that. I still get strange moments when I feel overwhelmed by something dark that I can’t explain but which I know is linked to that time. She must have rattled my father because when my mother sent me back to him he insisted on keeping me for quite a long period. It was one of the more stable episodes in my childhood – until his then marriage broke up and it was all change stations for everyone again.’
‘Does your mother know what you tried to do to her?’ asked Louisa curiously.
‘No. I asked my father about that. Apparently the Contessa made him promise not to tell my mom. She thought she’d be certain to use it against me if it suited her. Dad says the old lady had taken against my mother big time and was really scornful about her.’
‘What else do you know about her story?’
‘She wasn’t Italian by birth. She was born and brought up in Scotland – in the house on the loch that she told me so much about as we lay in her hammock. I think she had an idyllic childhood, or so it sounded to me as a little girl. Lots of freedom; lots of animals; lots of laughter, lots of love – all the things I’d always longed for. She obviously adored her elder brother. Then, when she was eighteen, she was sent out to Italy to learn about art and culture, and also, so she told me, to learn how to behave like a polite young lady instead of the unruly wildcat her mother said she was turning into. Apparently it didn’t work out as her family hoped. While she was there she met the love of her life, an Italian from an old aristocratic family, a landowner with estates in the south of Italy, whom she first of all ran away with – causing frightful scandal – and eventually married in the teeth of both families’ disapproval.’
‘Why did her family disapprove of the marriage so much? A landed count sounds rather a catch to me.’
‘Because he was fifteen years older than her; because he was a Roman Catholic and her family were Protestants. Worst of all because he was married and he left his Italian wife for her – big disgrace as you can imagine with both families furious and unforgiving. Obviously not much Christian charity on either side.’ Marnie paused.
‘And?’ prompted Louisa.
‘And her diaries weren’t all she left me,’ said Marnie. ‘It’s unbelievable really but she left me . . . nearly everything. Everything that was hers to leave, that is. I believe there were estates in Calabria and an apartment in Rome and those had to go to a nephew of her husband’s. You can’t imagine the shock when my father told me all this only a few months ago. He broke it to me about her death at the time of course and was very sweet to me because I was extremely upset – but he never said a word then about inheriting money. I remember it vividly. I suppose everyone probably remembers the first time someone’s death really touches them personally. The Contessa made him my trustee together with an Italian lawyer and swore him to secrecy. She left it up to him to decide exactly when I should be told but suggested it should be after my twenty-fifth birthday. She thought I ought to have more experience of life before I got control of what is a serious amount of money.’
Louisa gazed at her. So Giles had been right: Marnie had indeed inherited a fortune. ‘What was in the parcel she gave you when she said goodbye to you? The first clue?’
‘Two things. There was a little silver photograph frame with two faded black and white pictures in it: one is of a little girl of about six wearing a caped coat and leggings and standing with her arm round an enormous shaggy dog – a Scottish deer hound I should think, very Walter Scott, very Landseer – and on the back in faded ink is written Lucy-Anne with Archer, 1920. She’s standing by a great door with some sort of crest or something carved in stone over the top. The second picture is of a house – a tower – on the edge of some water – a tower with an imposing arched doorway – the same door, I guess. It looks like a castle really. The other present was this – look.’
Marnie fished inside her jersey and pulled out a gold locket on a fine chain. It was engraved with the initials L.A.D.G. She pulled the chain over her head and opened the locket to reveal a miniature head-and-shoulders portrait of a little girl – obviously the same child as in the photograph – a little girl in a white lace dress; a beautiful child with brilliant blue eyes and long, red hair held back from her face by a bow tied on the top of her head. ‘I always wear it,’ Marnie said. ‘It gives me a link with her because she showed it to me one time when I went to visit her in her room. You don’t know how much I long to be able to thank her for what she’s done for me . . . and I don’t mean just the money. She had no reason to care for me, but for the first time in my life I felt someone liked me and valued me just for myself. I said this morning that it only takes one person to change your outlook. She changed mine.’
‘You must have given her something special too,’ insisted Louisa. ‘She’d never have done all that if you hadn’t made a huge impression on her. She must have loved you – and from what you say it doesn’t sound as if she was used to loving children, only her Italian husband. Didn’t they have any family of their own?’
‘There was a little boy who died. I think he only lived for a few hours. Anyway, apparently she couldn’t have any more. Her diaries of that period make heartbreaking reading. But there’s no doubt her husband, Carlos, adored her and it was a great, great love for both of them that lasted all their lives. I can’t imagine that sort of love. Apparently he died unexpectedly of a heart attack a few months before I met her and she couldn’t cope with life without him at all.’
‘Like Sir Henry Wotton’s lines about the death of Lady Morton,’ said Louisa. ‘I remember crying over that when I was at school. I used to think it was the shortest and most romantic poem in the English language:
‘He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him: liked it not, and died.’
‘Yes,’ said Marnie. ‘I’ve never heard that before, but just like that. That says it all.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Gee – look at the time! I’ve wittered on about myself most of the afternoon and it’s half of four already! It’s gotten a bit chilly. What an egomaniac you must think me . . . I do apologise. Thank you for listening to me but you should have stopped me.’
‘No way!’ said Louisa. ‘I want to know more, but we’ll have to dash now if we want to grab a cup of tea before we start the next session at five. You can’t leave me in suspense for long, though. Will you promise to let me have the next exciting instalment soon?’
‘Okay,’ said Marnie, ‘but only if you tell me more about your story too.’
‘Hmm – perhaps,’ said Louisa, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘But mine’s not nearly so interesting. Come on then. We’d better hurry.’
They hurtled down the twisty path by the burn, slithering and sliding on the loose stones at high risk of twisting ankles, but both finding it a release after the intensity of exploring the past.
They arrived back at the house laughing and breathless and Isobel, who was pouring out tea and dispensing home-made biscuits in the kitchen, thought she had never seen such a change in a short space of time as that which had occurred in Marnie. A testament to the curative powers of laughter and friendship, she thought, and sent a grateful, approving look in Louisa’s direction. ‘Well, you both look full of good Scottish fresh air,’ she said, smiling a welcome to them. ‘Come and stoke yourselves up before you start work again.’
All nine participants of the course had reassembled ready for the next session, and all except Stanley were looking forward to it. Win, like various other people, had put her name down for a tutorial with Catherine and had been allotted the first session at three o’clock that afternoon. In the teeth of her husband’s discouragement she had taken several little pieces that she had secretly written over the years to show Catherine, and half an hour later had emerged in a glow of excitement at the encouragement she’d received. This she had unwisely shared with her husband and his ungenerous scorn and grumpiness had nearly taken her breath away, used as she was to disparagement from that quarter. But if Stanley expected his wife to give up the idea of writing and stick to warming slippers and making Victoria sponge cakes he had seriously under-rated her. She had quietly but firmly refused to be put off and had disappeared into the garden with pen and notebook to work on some of Catherine’s suggestions, leaving her husband at a loose end with no one to bore or bully.
Morwenna and Joyce had taken Bunty with them and gone by car to explore the small town of Blairalder, where Bunty, succumbing to an acute attack of Highland fever with alarming results, had bought herself an outfit in gaudy Royal Stuart tartan, complete with matching tamo’-shanter and, as Joyce had muttered to Morwenna, enough tins of Edinburgh rock to rot the teeth of all her relations for years to come.
Christopher had gone down to the loch in pursuit of solitude but found the Colonel had got there before him. Christopher thought that once he would have had no compunction in shaking him off, but the Colonel hailed the younger man with such genuine friendliness that he had neither the heart nor the bad manners to turn down the suggestion that they should go round the loch together. Before they were halfway round Christopher’s leg started to play up, but he would have died rather than admit he would like to turn back. If, by the end of the afternoon, he felt he knew a great deal about the Colonel’s regiment he was equally relieved not to be questioned about his own history.
They were all sitting in the kitchen, some at the big round table, some on the cosily squashy sofas and chairs at the far end of the room, fortifying themselves with mugs of tea and finding the brownies and shortbread that Morag, the Glendrochatt cook, had produced irresistible, when Giles came in holding the hand of a small boy.
‘Hi, everyone,’ said Giles. ‘Look what we’ve got! How’s that for a productive afternoon’s work? Show them, Rory.’
The small boy rushed over to Isobel waving a minute brown trout, all of ten centimetres long, by the tail. ‘I catched it all by myself,’ he told her excitedly, and then added modestly: ‘. . . well almost.’
‘How wonderful, darling!’ Isobel sounded suitably impressed. ‘Shall we ask Sheena to cook it for your tea?’
The small boy nodded enthusiastically, and then overcome to be the focus of so many people’s attention, placed his catch carefully on the shortbread plate, climbed on to Isobel’s knee and stuck his fishy thumb in his mouth.
Louisa thought he was the most sensationally good-looking little boy she had ever seen and was just about to say to Isobel ‘So this is Lorna’s son?’ when she was struck by something which froze the words in her mouth and left her gaping like a fish herself. At this moment Bunty, lured by the presence of a child like a falcon to a day-old chick, swooped from the other side of the room and crouched by Isobel’s chair, demanding to be told the full story of Rory’s battle with Leviathan. It was easy to see why she had devoted her life to children because in no time at all she had him telling her the whole saga, from the delicious digging up of wriggly worms for bait to the dangling of the rod over the pool in the burn, the ginormous tug on the line, the crucial skill of the strike and finally the landing of the monster. Isobel couldn’t help thinking that Bunty, dealing with an actual child, was much more attractive than Bunty trying to treat everyone she met as if they were one, and thought perhaps she should revise her opinion of her.
