Some Old Lover's Ghost Read online

  Jossy realized, when she was eleven or so, that her father would not remarry. Having tea one day with a friend who lived in Ely, she overheard Marjorie’s mother say to another lady, ‘I told Marjorie to invite poor little Joscelin de Paveley. I knew Alicia, her mother. The father won’t marry again – I’ve heard that his wound won’t let him.’ Jossy had struggled to hear more, but Mrs Lyons’ voice had lowered to a whisper. Jossy was not at all surprised to hear that her father’s false leg prevented him from remarrying. It was to her a source of revolted fascination. The echo of his uneven step on the stone flags of the Hall was the sound of fear. She had overheard Cook say to Nana that the master’s leg had been blown off at the hip; once, stumbling clumsily in a passageway, she had touched her father’s false leg. It had repulsed her, a dead thing attached to a living body.

  Jossy had a tendency to be plump, and hair and eyes that she described to herself as mud-coloured. When she was fifteen, she began to rinse her hair with lemon juice and, in the many hours spent gazing into the mirror, almost succeeded in convincing herself that she was becoming fairer.

  When she was nineteen, Jossy left school. She’d had two tries at her school certificate, and had failed both, but then most of the girls at her school failed their school certificate. A holding pen for the dim daughters of the rich, her father called it. On the day she left school, Jossy expected something extraordinary to happen, some sort of acknowledgement that she was now a grown woman, a young lady. She would become suddenly beautiful. She would run the Hall with such smooth efficiency that even her father would be impressed. And she would meet, of course, the Gentleman.

  She spent hours imagining the Gentleman. He was tall, dark, fleet-footed. He drove a car and rode a horse with fearless competence. He had a mysterious, troubled past, and he cared for Jossy more than for anything in the world. They would meet in romantic circumstances: escaping from the noise and heat of a ball, she would wander into the garden, where he would catch sight of her. He would be momentarily struck off his guard by her beauty. They would dance alone, whirling down paths studded with daisies, the scent of lilies perfuming the air, and the only light the soft gleam of the moon …

  But nothing changed. Mrs Bradley and Cook continued to run the Hall, and Jossy’s hair, in spite of the lemon juice, remained a defiantly muddy brown. She attended dances and parties at her friends’ houses, but the boys were gauche and spotty and talked about cricket and motor cars. Nana still made Jossy’s dresses, which were not the sinuous clinging satin gowns pictured in the magazines that Jossy bought. Her days were divided between the nursery and the morning room and the garden, but without term-time to break up the tedium. Her outings were to church and to her cousin Kit, in the steward’s house. The days seemed very long. She kept her faith, though: she knew that he’d come. Two years after she had left school, Jossy de Paveley still waited for the Gentleman.

  I sat back from the word processor. I felt exhausted but exhilarated. Four pages. I had driven home from Oxfordshire and, not even bothering to take off my coat, I had written four pages. And it had been easy. I felt as though someone had slackened the rope around my neck, the rope that had been choking me for months.

  It was odd, though, that I had written it as a story. Rebecca Bennett usually wrote dispassionately, objectively, sifting the facts. Yet one can never be sure of the past, it twists and turns like the coloured facets of the crystal chandelier in Tilda Franklin’s garden room.

  Afterwards I went out to meet Charles Lightman. Over risotto and a bottle of Pinot Grigio, he talked about his latest idea.

  ‘Changing patterns of work – the death of the industrial revolution, darling. Showing how similar the lives of contemporary teleworkers are to their pre-industrial forebears.’ Charles gestured with his fork. ‘Craftsmen – they had spinner’s elbow or something, and hardly ever travelled more than a few miles from their homes.’ The fork stabbed the air again. ‘And now people have RSI and can only go anywhere if they can afford to run a car. Neat, eh, Rebecca?’

  I said, ‘What about the public schools? I thought you were going to—’

  ‘A bit tired, don’t you think, darling?’ Charles shrugged dismissively. ‘This would be so much more relevant.’

  I told him my news, and he frowned, placing Tilda’s name.

  ‘Saviour of widows and orphans—’

  ‘Just orphans.’

  ‘Is there enough meat in it for you?’

  The waiter poured coffee. I frowned. ‘I think so. Though it all seems so long ago …’

  ‘Well … Ellen Wilkinson …’ Charles added, rather pompously, ‘The task of the biographer is to make his subject relevant to the present day.’

  ‘Her subject,’ I said automatically. I remembered the urgency with which I had written Jossy’s story, how the words had flowed from fingertip to keyboard, but now my relief was tinged with anxiety. Perhaps my recovery was only temporary. Perhaps the next time I tried to write, the paralysis would return.

  ‘And …?’ Charles coaxed me.

  ‘And I’ve never written about a living person before. Ellen Wilkinson died in 1947.’

  He shrugged. ‘Some of the women in Sisters of the Moon were still alive.’

  ‘Yes.’ I spiralled cream into my coffee. ‘It’s also that she’s good.’

  Writing the life story of such a pillar of the community would be time-consuming, and it would also be frustrating. Tilda herself had admitted her fondness for privacy – from what avenues of her life would she shut me off? She had been old and fragile, yet I had sensed the strength beneath the brittle exterior. She had travelled from the workhouse to that weathered, beautiful building that I had visited today. A weak person could not have done that. Her strength both fascinated me and intimidated me.

  ‘The dullness of saints.’ Charles’s voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘Why Satan’s the most interesting character in Paradise Lost.’

  ‘All those rescued orphans … all the blobby little scrawls she’s framed and put on her walls … they cut her off from me. How could I ever get through to her, Charles?’

  I thought that Tilda’s goodness and beauty was like an armour. It diminished me, and made her untouchable. I’d look at her, and her armour would shine back, and I’d doubt my own reflection.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Charles lazily, ‘you’ll discover something juicy. A gorgeously clanking skeleton in the cupboard. Wouldn’t that be something?’

  I spent the weekend with Jane. On Sunday we wrapped the boys up well, and went for a long walk in the countryside. There were aconites like yellow stars in the hedgerows, and puddles for Jack and Lawrie to splash in. Walking, Jane told me about the tedium of jumble sales and the exhaustion of interrupted nights, and I told her about Tilda. Go and see her again, talk to her a bit more, she said, very sensibly. You’ve nothing to lose.

  So on Monday morning I telephoned Tilda, and on Tuesday I drove again to The Red House. We sat in the upstairs drawing room, by the fire. The room had originally been a solar: a large, semicircular window looked out over the front garden and caught what sun there was. Heat gathered in the room; surreptitiously I slipped off my waistcoat and rolled up my sleeves. The old always feel the cold.

  But Tilda’s mood had altered since the previous week. She was fractious and difficult, evading my questions or giving incomplete answers. She had become suddenly more frail, so that her skin had the absolute pallor of old age. Outside the wind flung fragments of branch and leaf, remnants of a storm. The howl of the wind, the snap of twig against window pane, seemed to increase her nervousness. I mentioned Jossy’s name, and Sarah Greenlees’s, but she was monosyllabic, unforthcoming. Tilda’s lack of response would, in a person who lacked her uprightness and grace, have been positively rude. I was aware of both anger and frustration. The biography had been her idea, after all, and not mine.

  In an attempt to save a wasted day, I persuaded Tilda to let me see the photograph album again. I turned the pages for her and she
glanced at them disinterestedly. One photograph in particular caught my eye – a man and a child, both strikingly good-looking. I was about to ask Tilda their names when she started and said, ‘Isn’t that someone coming up the path? Will you tell me who it is, my dear?’

  I rose and looked out of the window, down to where the path was squeezed by the towering box topiaries. ‘A man … fair hair – tallish. Young.’

  I heard Tilda whisper, ‘Patrick,’ and for the first time that day, she smiled. I remembered that on my previous visit she had mentioned a grandson called Patrick.

  ‘Patrick,’ said Tilda, when her visitor opened the door of the solar, ‘why didn’t you tell me you were coming? You could have had lunch.’

  He hugged her. ‘It was a spur of the moment thing. I’d a client to see in Oxford.’

  Tilda turned to me. ‘Let me introduce you to Miss Bennett. Rebecca, this is my grandson, Patrick Franklin.’

  We shook hands. ‘I had a postcard from Dad this morning,’ said Patrick to Tilda. ‘From Ulan Bator.’

  Tilda sniffed. ‘Joshua courts unnecessary danger. He always has.’

  ‘It runs in the family.’ Patrick Franklin was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. Not client-visiting clothes, I thought.

  ‘Ask Joan if she will make us tea, won’t you, Patrick? Or have you not eaten? I’m sure that Joan would make you an omelette.’

  I said quickly, ‘I could have a word with your housekeeper on my way out, Tilda.’

  She turned to me. ‘But you mustn’t go yet, Rebecca. We’ve hardly started.’

  I had to stifle my impatience. ‘You and Patrick will want to talk—’

  ‘Patrick and I have plenty of time to talk. It would be quite ridiculous for you to rush back to London already. Such a waste of a journey.’

  But after tea, Tilda fell asleep, her mouth neatly closed, her eyes flickering behind her lids as she dreamed. Patrick Franklin tucked a rug over her, and turned to me.

  ‘She’ll snooze for ten minutes or so. It’s so damned hot in here, I really must escape for a while. Has my grandmother shown you the garden yet, Rebecca?’

  The garden of The Red House, which I had glimpsed through the conservatory windows on my previous visit, had been an enticing tangle of paths and overgrown trees. I followed Patrick outside. It had stopped raining, but there was a dampness in the air, and the tug of the wind.

  Patrick spoke as we descended the steps of the terrace. ‘Tilda told me that you’re a writer.’

  ‘I’ve written a biography of Ellen Wilkinson.’

  ‘Just the one?’

  ‘And a television programme.’

  ‘Oh yes, the mental asylums. Are you a journalist?’

  When I shook my head he seemed relieved. ‘The Ellen Wilkinson biography was an expansion of my MA thesis,’ I explained. ‘I’ve written several articles for History Today.’ My achievements sounded thin and unimpressive. I didn’t mention my A level tutoring: it would have sounded pathetic.

  We walked beneath dripping trees, beside crimson and lime-stemmed dogwoods. Crocuses shot purple and gold heads through the soil. The winding brick paths led us to a small, circular clearing made of a whorl of moss-covered bricks. A stone nymph, bruised with lichen, stood on a plinth in the centre of the circle.

  ‘Fancy Tilda agreeing that her biography should be written.’ Patrick’s palm rested on the nymph’s head. ‘I never thought she would. Various publishers have tried to persuade her over the years, you know. She’s sent them all away with fleas in their ears.’

  I made my position clear. ‘Nothing’s definite yet. Tilda would like me to write it, but I’m not sure.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a big commitment. I’d have to be certain that I’m the right person to do it.’

  Patrick’s eyes were bluer than Tilda’s. A small smile twisted the corner of his mouth. ‘Tilda seems to think you’ll do it. Though to be honest, I’d be relieved if you turned her down. I tried to persuade her to give up the idea, but she can be as stubborn as hell.’

  Angrily, I wondered if that explained Tilda’s altered attitude today. Because of her meddling grandson, she was having second thoughts. ‘Why don’t you want her to? Because of me? Because I’m not sufficiently illustrious?’ I knew I sounded sarcastic.

  Again, that lopsided grin. ‘Oh no. I should think you’re as good as anyone. Better than most, perhaps.’

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I was sure it wasn’t a compliment. ‘Then …?’

  ‘Tilda is old and frail. She thinks she isn’t, but she is. I’m afraid that it’ll be too much for her. Digging up the past – reliving it. She’s had a hard life, in many ways.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve come today? To warn me off?’

  His eyes, as he glanced at me, were cold. ‘I came here to check you out.’ His bluntness was unnerving. He began to walk back to the house, and I followed him, half running to keep up with his fast, lengthy stride.

  ‘Hell of a hard job, too, I should imagine.’ The words were flung over his shoulder, whipped away by the wind. ‘My grandmother isn’t always the most forthcoming of people.’

  There’ll be other sources. Journals … newspaper articles … family …’

  He laughed. ‘Now there’s a challenge.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I scuttled along the path, trying to catch up with him.

  ‘Some of us are rather peripatetic. And we’re a big family, if you include all the adopted and fostered children. And everyone is so … opinionated.’

  I thought that he was being intentionally irritating. His eyes met mine, challenging me. He was quite disgustingly good-looking. I was aware of his proximity, and of a tingle of excitement – I’d had a similar feeling when I started work on Sisters of the Moon … a similar feeling when I’d first met Toby. Cross with myself, I pushed through the briars and old man’s beard, showering Patrick with raindrops.

  Tilda was awake when we returned to the solar. The photograph album was open in front of her.

  ‘Rebecca, this is Daragh,’ she said, as though introducing us. She indicated the snapshot I had earlier noticed, of the dark-haired man and the child. Daragh’s hair was dark, raggedly cut, and his deep-set, slightly tilted eyes laughed at me through the years. His features were an unusual mix of innocence and rapaciousness.

  ‘You must understand, dear,’ said Tilda hesitantly, ‘that there are things I don’t know. Things I can only guess at. Some of Daragh’s story … Jossy’s … But I have had forty years to think of what might have happened … what probably happened …’

  I said gently, ‘All I can do is to gather up the pieces, fit them together, make a pattern. But some of it will inevitably be guesswork.’

  Tilda nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes.’ And then, more firmly, ‘Patrick, you must leave us in peace. The scullery tap drips. There are washers in the cupboard beneath.’

  She had become brisk and organizing again, though I noted an air of bravado about her, as if she had resolved some inner battle and come at last to a resolution. I swallowed my annoyance with her grandson, and tried to return myself to the past.

  She said, ‘I want to tell you how Sarah and I came to live in the Fens. I didn’t know then, of course, that I was related to the de Paveleys. Sarah never spoke to me about my father, and I never asked her – one didn’t, in those days. One respected one’s elders. Anyway, Aunt Sarah told me that she had rented a cottage in Southam.’

  Southam, I remembered, was the Fenland village where the de Paveleys lived.

  Tilda looked troubled. ‘You must remember, Rebecca, that Sarah had two reasons for hating Edward de Paveley. He had taken both her sister and her home.’

  ‘Yet she went back. She went back to a place where she might see him every day.’

  ‘He was ailing by then. Like many men of his generation, Edward de Paveley never really recovered from the war. And the Hall was over a mile away from the village.’ Tilda began to leaf th
rough the pages of the photograph album, and then she paused and frowned. ‘Sarah changed when we came to live in Southam. She’d always been different – unconventional – but when we moved into Long Cottage she became reclusive. She refused to mix with the other villagers. I know why now, of course, but I didn’t then.’ She stopped at a page. ‘There,’ she said, sliding the album along the table to me. ‘That’s our cottage.’

  The black and white photograph showed me a small, low building, brick-built, thatched with reed.

  ‘It was a farmhouse once, but much of the land had been sold off. There was still almost an acre of ground, though. I thought it was wonderful. In the spring, when the blossom blew from the apple trees, it looked like snow.’

  I pictured Tilda, light-haired and grey-eyed, her skin clear and unlined, dressed in one of those drop-waisted frocks girls wore between the wars. ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I was seventeen. Sarah and I went to Southam towards the end of 1931.’

  There was a knock at the door. Patrick peered round the jamb. I looked down at my notebook.

  ‘I’ve fixed the tap,’ he said, ‘and Joan’s sent up coffee.’

  Tilda watched him lovingly as he carried the tray into the room and placed it on the table. When I glanced at my watch I saw that it was already four o’clock. I had arranged to go to a friend’s for supper at six.

  I refused coffee, and took my leave. Tilda said, ‘I shall tell you about Daragh next time.’

  I felt Patrick looking at me, but I evaded his eyes. I knew, though, that I had made my decision. Sentences were already forming in my head; I longed to sit and write. Tilda’s story had entrapped me, weaving itself around me as finely and invisibly as the chains of gossamer that bound the box trees in The Red House’s garden.

  When I climbed inside my car, the grey plastic interior, the lights and switches and the jumble of crisp packets and fruit juice cartons, jarred me. They seemed to be from another world, or another time.