Читать книгу The Frozen Lake: A gripping novel of family and wartime secrets - Elizabeth Edmondson - Страница 22

Hal didn’t recognise the chauffeur.

He hadn’t expected the motor car to be the same one, but who was the man standing beside the gleaming Delage? What had become of Wilbur? He was a young man still, Hal’s contemporary, a partner in first boyish and then youthful forays up fells and into the old lead mines and out on the lake. And the uniform, no Grindley chauffeur had ever worn a uniform like this one except on the most formal occasions. Was Hal’s arrival at the railway station a formal occasion? He thought not. Yet here was this dark-jowled man with guileless brown eyes touching his hat and asking him in an accent that owed nothing to the north of England if he were Mr Henry Grindley.

And that gave him a jolt. No one had called him Henry for more than fifteen years, and not often before that; only headmasters and strangers. He had been Hal to everyone since he was a baby.

The chauffeur helped the porter load Hal’s luggage into the boot of the car. Then he opened the rear door for Hal, saluted, and took his place behind the steering wheel.

It felt odd, to be in these familiar surroundings but sitting in the back of a car behind straight grey-uniformed shoulders, instead of sitting beside Jerry Wilbur, or even pushing him over to take the wheel himself.

He leant forward. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Parsons, sir.’

It seemed unlikely, but Hal let it pass. ‘Where’s Wilbur?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘You do know who Wilbur is.’

Or was, had something happened to him and no one had bothered to say? Nanny would have written to him about it, she wrote him regular if indecipherable missives in a spidery hand. Recent letters, now he came to think of it, had mentioned Changes at the Hall. These Changes, he gathered, were not for the better, at least not according to Nanny. Since she was pure conservative from the starch on her cap to the tips of her sensible shoes, he hadn’t taken much notice of her grumbles. Peter’s new wife would be bound to make changes, new wives always did. He had had plenty of experience of new wives in America, where his friends of both sexes dipped in and out of marriages with astonishing ease.

‘I heard of Wilbur, yes. He drove cars before me.’

So Wilbur had left. Hal felt a moment of dismay; how many others of his friends would still be there? It hadn’t occurred to him, but fifteen odd years was a long time to expect everything to be the same. He had changed out of all recognition, so he couldn’t seriously think that at Grindley Hall everything would be just as it was. How childish, and how childish was his disappointment at not being greeted by Wilbur.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked the chauffeur.

‘Spain. I am from Spain.’

Best not to enquire further. The fellow might be a republican or a follower of General Franco, and Hal had no wish to pry or offend. Strange that he hadn’t opted to stay and fight for whichever side he favoured.

‘I have no sides in Spain,’ the man said, as though he had read Hal’s thoughts. ‘I have family, uncles, brothers fighting on both sides, this one hates priests, that one is all for Franco. So I leave. Is better, then at least my mother has one son left alive to bury her when she grows old and dies, one son who is not crazy in his head and fighting for crazy men.’

‘So now you work at Grindley Hall.’

The man gave an expressive shrug. One is lucky to have any work.’ He was silent for a moment and then burst out in an unexpected and infectious guffaw. ‘I feel at home. In Spain, my family fight each other. Here, in cold England, I find also that families fight each other.’

Hal didn’t want to know. He sat back in his seat, looking out into the dusk, and the Spaniard, probably regretting his outburst, stayed silent as he drove expertly along the wintry roads. It was a half-hour journey from the station, but it only seemed minutes before they were driving through the sweep gate to the Hall, the stone Grindley griffins perched on either side atop the gateposts. Hal had once suggested that a pair of lavatory seats would be a better emblem for the family; they hadn’t found this amusing. Grindleys as a whole resented any humour directed at the source of their wealth.

The drive was neater than he remembered, the gravel swept clear of snow and crunching loudly under the wide tyres. Hal looked up at the familiar façade of the house where he had been born, not sure if he felt pleasure or misery at seeing it again. The huge front door swung open as the car drew up, and a maid in formal black dress and starched pinny and cap came out to stand at the top of the steps.

Hal didn’t recognise her either, nor the smart uniform. Hall maids in his day were a comfortable lot, duly clad in morning or afternoon uniform, but never looking as pressed and trim as this young lady. She looked straight through Hal and told the driver to take the car around to the back and unload the gentleman’s luggage straight away.

‘Mrs Grindley is upstairs resting before dinner,’ she told Hal as she followed him into the black-and-white chequered hall. ‘Mr Grindley will be home at half past six. Tea has been served in the drawing room, Mr and Mrs Roger Grindley are there, they have just arrived. It is this way.’

‘Thank you, I know where it is,’ Hal said. He crossed the hall and opened the fine white panelled door into the drawing room. He stopped inside the doorway, looking around in surprise. There had been something different about the hall, although he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Now it came to him, where were all the stuffed animals?

The drawing room ran from the front to the back of one side of the house, a long, wide room with windows leading on to a terrace. Gone were the heavy damasks, the patterned carpet, the heavy armchairs and sofas; gone most noticeably were the stuffed bear with a tray in its paws, several noble stags’ heads, the pair of stoats glaring at each other from two branches, a bewildered owl, and the fox with his head turned as though politely surprised to find the hounds upon him.

The parquet floor gleamed at his feet. Fine Persian rugs were placed here and there. Two deep sofas with plain dark pink covers faced each other across the fireplace, other chairs were in lighter shades of raspberry and looked thoroughly uncomfortable.

‘Good God,’ he said before he could stop himself. ‘Interior design comes to Grindley Hall? I don’t believe it.’

His remark was greeted by a peal of laughter and he looked over to the sofa, where a tall, fair woman, still laughing, was standing up and holding out her hands. ‘Hal, my dear! How distinguished you look, I don’t think I would have recognised you.’

‘Angela,’ he said, kissing her warmly on both cheeks. He was shocked to see the lines around her eyes. How old was she? Late forties, must be, but it wasn’t merely years that had added a strained look to eyes and mouth. If he were any judge, that was tension, not age. Well, being married to Roger would hardly be a bed of roses.

‘Good to see you, Hal,’ said his brother.

Roger hadn’t changed, Hal thought as they shook hands. He was heavier, but had the height to carry it off, so didn’t yet look portly. The main difference was in his air of success and prosperity; that was what advancement in the law had done for him. He dimly remembered a line in one of Nanny’s letters.

‘Aren’t you a KC now, Roger?’

Roger nodded, a satisfied look on his wide, handsome face. ‘I took silk more than five years ago. I thought Peter would have told you.’

‘I travel about so much,’ said Hal apologetically. He should have written, of course he should, only he never did write to his brothers. And of course becoming a KC was a great step for a lawyer, but it had seemed of no great importance in his theatrical world far across the Atlantic.

A much younger woman than Angela, but with the same fair complexion, had been standing by the window.

‘You can’t be Cecy!’

‘I am. Hello, Uncle Hal.’

‘Good heavens, Cecy. You were all legs and pigtails last time I saw you.’

There was a silence. Angela broke it with a polite enquiry about his voyage – what a time of year to brave the Bay of Biscay – had it been very rough – had he been staying in London, Peter had said his ship was due two days ago – had anyone shown him to his room?

‘I didn’t give the maid a chance to,’ Hal said. ‘What happened to Wilbur, Roger?’

‘Wilbur? Oh, the chauffeur. He went into the army, I believe. Eve found this present man, he’s some sort of foreigner, I shouldn’t care to have him in my employ, he looks rather a ruffian. However, Eve says he’s cheap and drives very well. Peter leaves all the staff side to her. You’ll find quite a few changes. Bound to, after so long.’

Silence again. It occurred to Hal that the stiffness of the atmosphere was not caused by his arrival. The tea tray stood untouched on a low table beside the fireplace. Whatever Roger’s family had been doing, it wasn’t taking a welcome cup of tea after a long drive. He could see that Cecy was eager to leave the room, she was sliding unobtrusively round behind the sofas towards the door.

‘Where are you going, Cecy?’ her father asked in a cold voice.

‘Upstairs. To dress. My frock needs pressing, I’ll have to ask the maid to do it for me. She won’t know which one I’m wearing tonight.’ With that she made a positive dash for the door and was gone.

‘Children,’ Roger said grumpily. ‘You never married, I suppose, Hal.’

‘No,’ Hal said.

‘They’re the very devil. One minute all dimples and not much of a nuisance to anyone, and the next causing no end of trouble. I’ll see you at dinner, then,’ he added, making for the door.

‘What’s Cecy up to?’ Hal asked Angela, who had sat down again. She picked up a glossy magazine and began to flick through the pages. ‘Has my niece taken up with some undesirable man?’

‘That would be simple,’ Angela said. ‘Unsuitable boyfriends are child’s play compared to a career as far as Roger is concerned.’

‘Career?’

‘Don’t ask. Medicine, I’m afraid.’

‘Cecy’s doing medical training? Training to be a doctor, not a nurse? Sorry, no need to ask, not with her being your daughter. Good for her.’

‘I agree with you, but Roger never liked the idea, and he knows that Peter will have a go at him about it, he thinks it’s rather lax.’

‘This is Peter as head of the family, I take it?’

‘It’s a role he plays more and more.’ She put the magazine back on the table and stood up. ‘I really do have to go and dress.’

‘Tell me one thing,’ said Hal. ‘What happened to the menagerie?’

‘The menagerie?’

‘The stuffed creatures.’

‘Oh, the stoats and those poor, sad-eyed deer. Eve doesn’t care to have dead animals around her. So down they came and out they went. I couldn’t approve more. There was a wicked-looking ferret that had come to roost in the downstairs cloakroom. When I told Peter it was playing havoc with his bowels, he wouldn’t speak to me for a week. I was quite right, however. He used to disappear in there for hours with a pipe and the paper. No longer, and he’s lost that costive look he had.’

Hal held the door open for her. As they crossed the hall, the front door flew open and a red-faced schoolgirl in a thick navy overcoat stumped in, a satchel hanging off her shoulder, a hockey stick in one hand and a bicycle pump in the other. She was yelling as she came in, shouting out to Simon to jolly well come down right now and apologize for swiping her pump, the one that worked, and replacing it with his duff one, a foul trick to play on her, she finished with a triumphant roar.

She stopped, drew breath, saw them standing there and bounded towards them. ‘Aunt Angela, you’re here. Has Cecy come with you? I’m so late, all because I had a flat tyre and rotten Simon switched the pumps.’ She stared at Hal with undisguised interest.

‘This is your Uncle Hal, Ursula.’

Hal looked at the girl with more attention. So this was Peter’s youngest. Of course she was, he thought with a sudden pang. Of course she was: now that the redness of her face was fading, he could see the likeness. ‘You’re very like Delia,’ he said.

A blast of icy air at his back as the front door opened and shut again, and he turned to see his oldest brother regarding him with cold eyes as he pulled off his leather gloves.

‘That’s a name we don’t ever mention in this house,’ Peter said curtly. ‘Ursula, what are you doing hanging around in your school clothes? Go upstairs and change at once.’ He turned to Angela. ‘Ha. Roger’s here, I take it?’

‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Hal? You haven’t seen him for nearly sixteen years.’

From Peter’s expression, he could quite happily have gone another sixteen years without seeing his youngest brother.

‘You’re looking very well,’ he said, smoothing back his fast-retreating hair with his hand as he eyed Hal’s hair, short but undeniably thick.

‘So are you, Peter. I’m glad to see you again.’ Which Hal was, despite his brother’s aura of barely controlled ferocity.

‘I’ve made it an absolute rule,’ Peter was saying in a loud voice, ‘that we do not under any circumstances talk about Delia, especially not in front of the children. As far as they are concerned, she might as well be dead. She is forbidden to have any contact with them, with the full consent of the court, I may add. They know how wicked she has been and have no wish at all to have anything to do with her. It shouldn’t be necessary for me to explain this to you, anyone with a modicum of tact … Well, I dare say it’s all very different in America.’

‘There’s a lot more divorce over there, certainly.’

Peter winced at the word. ‘That will lead to their downfall. It’s monstrous what women get away with these days, it goes against nature and against every finer feeling. These so-called modern women are no more nor less than whores. Excuse me, Angela, it’s not a word I should use in front of you.’

‘It’s not a word you should use of your ex-wife,’ Angela said under her breath as she stepped past Peter and made for the stairs.

Hal wasn’t too sure about Peter’s finer feelings, and he was deeply shocked to hear his former sister-in-law spoken of in such harsh terms. He held his tongue. He was here because of the frozen lake, nothing more, and he would avoid quarrelling with either of his brothers if he could help it.

He thought about his two brothers as he followed the maid up the elegant staircase. Why had Angela, with her intelligence and caustic wit, ever married Roger? He had been good-looking, that had had something to do with it, and perhaps the growing career at the bar had seemed to promise brains and a certain worldliness. More astonishing was that ultra-conventional Roger should have fallen in love with a woman doctor, of all people. Roger as a young man, and no doubt to this day, resented women having the vote. He had never made any secret of his views.

Perhaps Angela had thought it would be possible to continue practising as a doctor once she was married, and perhaps it had gone against the grain to give up her medical work, even though she had all the help she needed in the house and nursery. She must have known that after those years away, it would be next to impossible to pick up the threads of a medical career. Let alone deal with Roger’s hostility.

Hal knew all about how Roger got his way, not through forcefulness like Peter, but through persistent nastiness. Faced with her husband’s bad temper and rudeness about her place in society, home, and likely incompetence if she went back into her profession, Angela had no doubt chosen the quieter course.

Only Cecy had then broken out; that was certainly one in the eye for Roger and he would naturally look upon it as a betrayal.

One of the maids will look after you, sir, since you haven’t brought a man with you,’ said the maid as she showed him into the Red Room. ‘Dinner is at eight-thirty, drinks are served in the drawing room from eight o’clock.’

He had half hoped they would put him in his old room, up on the attic floor with windows looking out behind the parapet, but the maid led the way to the Red Room, on the first floor. It had always been a guest room, but, when he was last here, a guest room with the patina of age and wear upon it. Now the paintwork gleamed, and the room had a spick and span, chintzy appearance. Rose-patterned wallpaper matched coverlet and chairs and cushions and the rug beside the bed. He pulled a face, remembering the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of old furniture and faded red damask curtains, and the assortment of china animals above the fireplace.

He picked up one of the thick towels on the washstand, one cream, one green, and went out to find an empty bathroom.

‘I was wondering when you’d find time to pop up and see me,’ said Nanny.

Hal, who liked to soak in a tub, had rushed his bath and dressed in a great hurry before springing up the stairs two at a time to reach Nanny’s domain. ‘You wouldn’t want me to come up here covered in smuts from the train,’ he said, bending down to give her a hug. She wasn’t a small woman, but he felt now as though he towered over her, surely she hadn’t been as bent as that when he went away?

‘Fifteen years and more, it’s been, and that’s a long time at my age, and my bones aren’t as strong as they should be,’ she told him. ‘I tell the doctor my bones can do what they want as long as I keep my wits, and so far I have. And you’ll have been leaning out of the train window to have smuts on you, how often have I told you not to do that? There was a man lost his head going into a tunnel, who’s to say it won’t happen again? Now sit down, there’s ten minutes before you have to be downstairs, and it won’t do to be late, for Mrs Grindley, as we must call her, although it sticks in my throat, gets in a temper if people are late. She gets into a temper about almost everything, you’ll notice that for yourself soon enough. Don’t be taken in, she’s got a will of iron, all the prettiness is like the army lads who go about with twigs in their helmets.’

‘Camouflage.’

‘I know what it’s called, Master Smart,’ she said swiftly.

He had to smile at the old nursery nickname. Peter had been Master Temper and Roger, Master Nastytongue whenever Nanny was displeased with them.

‘Which of them have you seen?’ Her knuckles might look too big for her hands and her hair might be grey and wispy, but her voice was low and sure – and those pale blue eyes were as keen as ever.

‘Angela, and two rather delightful nieces.’

‘Cecy and Ursula. She’s a little minx, that one.’

‘Ursula? She does resemble her mother, doesn’t she?’

‘More’s the pity. It doesn’t make her life any easier, let me tell you. What about your brothers?’

‘Oh, I’ve seen both of them, and left Peter in a rage because I mentioned Delia’s name, and Roger fretting over having a clever daughter.’

‘Fancy Cecy going to be a doctor.’

‘She, too, takes after her mother.’

‘I don’t hold with lady doctors. Never have and never will. Still, there are those who prefer it, and who’s to say they’re not entitled to their choice the same as I am?’

‘Well, Nanny, if there’s a war they’ll need all the doctors they can get.’

‘There isn’t going to be another war. And don’t go suggesting there will be one, or Mr Peter will be in even more of a rage. He won’t have any warmongering talk at the Hall, those are his very words.’

It was typical of Peter to issue an edict like that. Would he be taking the same line at work? Hal doubted it. War brought fat contracts, and Peter wouldn’t be last in line for those.

‘Mr Peter says he trusts the Germans to keep the Bolshies under control,’ said Nanny, clear approval in her voice; she detested Those Reds, as she called them.

‘Daddy’s got it all wrong,’ said a clear young voice from the door. ‘Hello, Nanny. Can you do my frock up for me?’

Ursula came into the room, one hand behind her holding a rather shapeless green dress together. ‘Hello again, Uncle Hal. I thought you’d be here, reporting to Nanny. She’ll want to know every single thing you’ve done since you last saw her.’

‘That could take some time, I suppose,’ Hal said.

‘You mind your tongue, Ursula.’ Nanny fastened the last of the buttons and Ursula straightened herself.

‘Five minutes to tell me the news,’ Nanny said. And then, to Hal, ‘I don’t get about so much these days. Ursula acts as my eyes and ears.’

‘Well, Nanny, the ice is bearing,’ said Ursula, sitting down on a pouffe that gave out a whistling sound as she sank into it. ‘That’s the most important thing. There’ll be skating all across the lake before the weekend’s out, that’s what they say.’

Hal propped himself against a tallboy, too big for the room, an item of furniture that he guessed Nanny had appropriated from some other part of the house. Ursula had Delia’s colouring as well as her mother’s features and voice: hair the colour of a copper scuttle, intense blue eyes in a pale face. She even had Delia’s hands, he noticed, as she tucked a lock of her straight hair behind an ear.

He couldn’t keep up with her flow of news. The people she was talking about were strangers for the most part. Until she told Nanny the news from Wyncrag. ‘Perdy’s back, she got back from school last night. Late for dinner, and Lady Richardson ripping her up, saying she shouldn’t be out in a car with Edwin. Her brother, I ask you, why not?’

‘Lady Richardson has her reasons,’ Nanny said. ‘Has Alix arrived yet?’

‘Oh, yes, she came by train, the same train you must have come on today, Uncle Hal. If she’d waited a day, you could have travelled up together. Although you might not have recognised her after all this time. She’s looking fearfully smart, apparently, Nanny. Lady R’s as stiff as a poker with her, and Perdy’s already in trouble.’

‘What has Perdy done?’ Nanny asked.

‘Grown.’

‘Do enlighten me,’ he said. ‘Who is Perdy?’

‘Perdita Richardson,’ Nanny said. ‘Since your time. You should remember, I told you all about her in my letters. Helena’s youngest, born just before Helena and Isabel were killed in America. In a car smash, such a terrible tragedy. You do remember that, surely? It wasn’t long after you’d gone away.’

‘Yes.’ He had written to Lady Richardson, and had received a brief, terse letter thanking him for his condolences. ‘She must have been shattered, losing her son so soon before, and then her daughter-in-law.’

Nanny’s face took on a tight, thin-lipped look, one he remembered so well from his childhood, the face that said, ‘So far and no further; not another word do I have to say upon this subject.’