Читать книгу Glittering Fortunes - Victoria Fox, Victoria Fox - Страница 10

CHARLIE LOMAX STOPPED at the stream to let his dogs drink. He wiped his dark brow, the material of his T-shirt damp with sweat and sticking across his shoulders. It was a scorching day, thick with heat, the only sounds the steady babble and the hounds’ lapping tongues as they attacked the water in loud, contented gulps.

He squinted up at Usherwood House. One hand was raised to counter the glare, and the skin where his sleeve drew back was pale compared with the tan on his forearms. The earthy, musty pocket of his underarm was a hot, secret shadow.

The dogs clambered to their feet for a vigorous shake, their fur releasing a shower of glittering drops. Comet, the setter, pricked his ears in anticipation of his master’s next move: tail bright, eyes alert. Retriever Sigmund panted happily.

Russet sunshine bounced off the stonework, drawing-room windows rippled in the haze. Charlie could picture its quiet interior, shafts of light seeping through dusky glass. A sheet of verdant lawn rolled up to the entrance, studded with flower beds that flaunted summer colour despite their neglect. Mottled figurines hid behind oaks like ghosts, a head or a hand missing, moss-covered and cool in the shade.

It was habit to see everything that was wrong with the place: the dappled paintwork, the peeling façade, and at the porch a stippled, stagnant fountain whose cherubic statuette sang a soundless, fossilised tune. But on days like today, lemon sunbeams bathing the house, the old monkey puzzle rising proud in the orchard and the flat grey sea beyond with its white horses flirting on the waves, it was possible to imagine an inch of its former glory. When Charlie would return for yearned-for ex-eats, the car pulling up alongside his mother’s classic Auburn, gravel crunching under the tyres and the smell of buttered crumpets soaking into the purple evening, those were the times he remembered. That was what Usherwood meant to him.

He climbed the ditch, put his fingers out so a soft, soggy muzzle came in curiosity to his touch, and with it the hot lick of an abrasive tongue.

Through the Usherwood doors the great hall echoed, high windows illuminating a mist of dust particles that drifted into the vaults. Above the sooty inglenook a portrait of Richmond and Beatrice was suspended, its frame a tarnished copper. The dogs skated muddy-pawed through to the library, tails thumping as they waited for Charlie to catch up.

‘Oh, you scamps!’ Barbara Bewlis-Teet, housekeeper since his parents’ day, came in from the kitchen. She shook her head at the dirt the dogs had brought with them. ‘Mr Lomax, you’d let those mutts rule the roost given half the chance!’

Charlie ran a hand through his raven hair. It had grown longish around his ears and he hadn’t shaved in a week, giving him a rugged, piratical appearance. His eyes were panther-black. The bridge of his nose had been split years before in a cricket match, and the residual scar made him look more fearsome than he was.

‘They’re all right.’ He pulled off his boots, thick with caked-on mud.

Affection made Barbara want to reach out and touch him, the boy she had once known—but she couldn’t, because Mr Lomax was untouchable.

How she wanted to rewrite the story whose beginning and end could be found in the landscapes of his face: the concentrated, permanent frown; the dark angle where his jaw met his neck; the fierce brushstrokes of his cheekbones. There was Charlie before the tragedy, a dimly recalled child with a clever smile and a skill for putting things together—cameras, watch mechanisms, telescopes—to see how they worked; and Charlie afterwards, wilted at the Harrow gates, at thirteen so young, too young, for the education that sometimes what was taken apart could never be reassembled. She had driven through the night to collect him in her Morris MINI, doing away with the nonsense of a chauffeured car. Cato had left for the South of France, done with his final year, a hard-boiled show-off whom nothing seemed to touch. Barbara wasn’t sure when Cato had returned to Usherwood, if he even had, to join the mourners and to console the younger brother who had needed him.

‘Tea’s ready,’ she said gently, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Shall I bring it through?’ It was four p.m. sharp and the time-worn set patiently waited, citrus steam rising from the delicate chipped cups Barbara still insisted on using; a splash of milk in a porcelain mug, a silver basin of sugar and a plate of powdery gingerbreads. So long as Mr Lomax cared about Usherwood’s standards, so must she.

‘I’ll be at my desk.’

‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘And shall I light a fire?’

‘No, I’ll manage.’

Barbara was used to his economy with words. He didn’t give himself away, not to just anyone. He was twenty-six this winter, and to all intents and purposes had removed himself from the world. He was a distant rock battered by storms, a locked door in a darkened corridor, a half remembered song.

After what had happened, how could it be different?

‘Very well,’ she said softly. ‘Will that be all?’

‘Yes,’ Mr Lomax replied, ‘that’s all.’

It was cool in the library; cellar draughts seeping through the floorboards, the damp in the walls making everything chill despite the heat of the day. Charlie dragged on a frayed Guernsey and lit the flames. His hands were broad and work-roughened, the flesh stained and splintered, chapped by outdoor grind. Sparks burst and crackled and he spread his fingers to warm them in the orange, spitting glow.

He settled at the morning’s post. Red warnings glared through envelopes, demands for payment and threatened court action. Sigmund padded over and absent-mindedly Charlie scratched the retriever’s head. The dog put both paws on his lap, resting his chops and gazing up at his master forlornly.

The books told a sorry story. Usherwood was in dire straits and despite Charlie’s initiatives—selling off his mother’s art collection; opening the outbuildings; renting the south field as a campsite—it scarcely touched the sides. Each cheque was engulfed by a rising tide of demands. The drive needed resurfacing, the greenhouse was suffering a leak, the roof in the old maid’s lodgings begged a restoration, the arch on the chapel was collapsing … He couldn’t keep up. Maintaining the occupied quarters was bad enough. They’d had neither heating nor hot water for over a month, and Charlie had taken to bathing early morning in the bitter spinney stream.

Of course he was meant to be rich. This was a mansion, after all—palatial, exquisite, the finest example of Jacobean architecture in the West Country—and its inhabitant aristocracy, heir to great fortune. But the upkeep had sapped every penny of that fortune. Huge chambers slept unused, locked away, spaces once bright and vital now relegated to the graveyard. Piece by piece the house was shutting down. It reminded Charlie of a night when he was eight, camping in the trunk of the withered oak with a blanket up by his ears. The house had seemed an advent calendar of golden windows, his father passing through to extinguish one light at a time until nothing was left but the stain of dark upon dark, the shell of a house sliced out of the night.

Amid a nest of paperwork, a red blinking caught his attention.

One message pending:

‘Can’t stop, old bean,’ came a familiar, hated voice. ‘Susanna’s been hankering after a taste of the Cornish Riviera and you know me—never one to disappoint a lady. We arrive tomorrow. Tidy the place up, won’t you? Oh, and do spare us by getting those rotten hounds on a leash; Susanna won’t like them a bit.’ He was about to ring off, before a parting: ‘Tell the girls to whip up something nice. Susanna wants British; you know the thing. Tarts. Shortbread.’

The line went dead.

Charlie listened to it a second time before hitting delete. His knuckles cracked.

Cato Lomax.

Movie star, icon, Casanova—but the world didn’t know him as Charlie did. His Cato was narcissistic, decadent, reckless, wicked; the grubby-palmed boy who had terrorised him, pushing him from the apple tree so he knocked his front teeth grey, dunking his head in the glacial lake one vicious winter, bolting him in the stuffy leather trunk they had taken to Harrow and feeding in a sack of crawling beetles, trapping him in the secret passage that ran between the pantry and the sword room …

And then, when they were adults, taking from him the one thing Charlie could never forgive him for. People said it hadn’t been Cato’s fault, but Charlie knew better.

Acid clutched his heart when he thought of that furious, thundery night … Cato’s tail lights disappearing down the Usherwood drive, rain slashing the windows, a red torch bleeding into darkness …

The very last time he had seen her.

The manslaughter charge had been dropped. Nothing more said about it. That was what money could do—it could buy justice, as rotten and corrupt as it came.

But by Charlie’s judgement, his brother could never be forgiven.

Whenever he read about Cato in the papers, posing with a new actress girlfriend, he swallowed fury like a knot of wire. Despite it all Cato still imagined himself to be emperor of Usherwood. By virtue of his age the true and righteous Lord Lomax, winging in whenever it suited to boast his heritage to a Plasticine army of Americans. Cato had no clue about the place or what it needed; all he cared for was his reputation and the social currency Usherwood awarded. Being gentry wasn’t about playing polo and hanging pheasants; it was about a birthright that had been passed through generations, this wounded house that Charlie toiled for night and day because he felt it in his soul, his true devotion and his true belonging.

He went to the window and released the catch, grounding himself against the approaching storm.

That was it, then: the prodigal son returned.

Cato’s imminent arrival slid over the surrounding hills like an army on the mount. The air outside was fragrant. A cabbage white fluttered on to the sill, twitching its wings. Somewhere in the grounds a nightingale sang.