The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  I would have cried if it hadn’t been wildly funny at the same time. I saw Mama’s mouth twitching but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me giggling.

  ‘Inigo’s package from Uncle Luke has arrived,’ Mama announced. ‘Photographs of this Ellis Presley. I don’t think it’s right that he should be sending him such things. It encourages this teenage wildness I keep reading about in the papers.

  ‘Elvis Presley,’ I corrected her. ‘And don’t you think Inigo deserves a bit of wildness, Mama? Gosh, I think we all do.’

  I shook my head and left her standing there in the hall holding a daffodil to her chest. Poor Mama, I thought. Like so many women of her generation, she was ill prepared for teenagers. She was still three years off forty, and looking back she was more beautiful at that time in her life than she was even on her wedding day. yet she had lost so much, suffered so much, that it had aged her very soul.

  Inigo came home from school the next day and ripped open the brown parcel that contained his yearned-for photographs. There were five pictures in all, and in four of them he was smiling —standing next to Uncle Luke and his friend Sam Phillips — even holding up a bottle of beer with Loretta. He had the most amazing hair, pale brown and shiny like a shampoo advertisement, and the most beautiful eyes that seemed to laugh into the camera, full of light and life. But the fifth image was different. He was on stage, and he had a guitar round his neck, and his legs stuck out at odd angles, and there was a sneer on his lips and just looking at that picture made me uncomfortable; there was something unsettling but thrilling about the fire in his eyes that made me feel as if he was staring right at me and might at any moment climb right out of the photograph and into the room to kiss me. Inigo put on the new record that Uncle Luke had sent him, and we ploughed our way through a bag of apples and studied Elvis as he sang.

  ‘I want to look like him,’ announced Inigo as the record came to an end. ‘I could look like him if I tried.’

  ‘Your hair’s wrong,’ I said.

  Inigo stood up and combed his hair forward, Ted-style, and slung his guitar round him and stood the way Elvis stood, his right leg cocked out in front of him. I giggled.

  ‘You look as if you’re in pain,’ I said.

  Inigo ignored me and struck a few chords of the song that Uncle Luke had first played us, Blue Moon of Kentucky, and I was forced to stop laughing, for he had the art of imitation perfected. At the end of the first verse, he swung around the room, jiving away as if possessed by the spirit of Sam Phillips’s recording studio, and I beat my hands on the surface of the dining-room table in time to his playing, and stamped my feet, and the sharp heels of my shoes made a terrific sound on the wooden floor. It took me all my life up to that moment to realise that without noise, Magna might as well have crumbled and fallen to dust. Without youth, the house was just a shell, a shadow. We might not have had the money to keep the house how it deserved to be kept, but we had the energy to fight its demise for all we were worth. Funnily enough, when Inigo stopped playing, there was a five-second silence followed by a deafening crash as an ugly purple vase and a vast stack of sheet music that had been balancing in an unhappy alliance atop the piano cascaded to the ground, hitting several untuned keys on the long journey floorwards. Giggling madly. Inigo and I scuttled around picking up pieces of broken glass and pages of Cole Porter and Beethoven.

  ‘I hope it wasn’t worth anything,’ I said, placing a shard of the vase inside last week’s Sunday Telegraph.

  ‘Probably was,’ said Inigo. ‘But it was hideous, so who cares?’

  Mama appeared five minutes later, her hands over her ears. ‘What was all that appalling racket?’ she cried. ‘My nerves are in shreds, children. And Penelope, Mary has just announced that you’ve been housing a rodent in your bedroom? Really. it’s no wonder this place is falling apart.’

  ‘She’s a guinea pig, Mama,’ said Inigo, in dignified tones.

  ‘And I won’t hear a word said against her,’ I added cheerfully. Marina the Rodent certainly continued to thrive in the confines of my bedroom. She really was the most amiable creature, who had grown accustomed to the sound of my voice. She made odd, purring sounds when she was hungry, and loud squeaking noises when she was afraid. Mary. though disapproving, had to confess that Marina was at least a clean pet, and I think she was secretly glad that she lived upstairs, and not anywhere near the kitchen. Mama was harder to convince.

  ‘She’s doing no one any harm, Mama,’ I said. ‘When the weather improves, she can move outside — I’ll get her a friend!’

  ‘I don’t want them breeding all over the estate, Penelope.’

  ‘They won’t breed! I’ll be sure to get another female!’

  ‘Don’t be silly. No two guinea pigs are ever the same sex. Even I remember that much from my school days.’

  This was to be one of the few issues on which Mama was proved to be entirely correct.

  On the day of Harry’s visit, Mama decided to spend the afternoon in Bath.

  ‘Do make sure you offer him a proper drink when he arrives, darling,’ she said. I was surprised that she was leaving me alone with him. It wasn’t like her to be so cavalier, but I supposed she felt that there was no danger of Harry falling for me, and even if he did, he was out of the question because he had no money. It was a thunderous afternoon and the house was hemmed in by heavy black clouds. Mama pulled on her headscarf and tightened it round her chin.

  ‘I’ll be back in time for supper,’ she said. ‘Do remember to feed Fido, and if the weather worsens, make sure he’s not left on his own. You know how thunder scares him.’

  And me, I thought.

  I was glad when Harry arrived, because the sky had grown so dark and fierce that I felt nervous alone. Magna did that to one, sometimes. It wasn’t so much the idea of ghosts that set one on edge, more the feeling of being trapped indoors for ever by the gathering storm outside — and fancy having a dog who couldn’t protect you from devilish weather, I thought crossly. As soon as the storm really began, Fido ran under the table in the dining room and wouldn’t come out again. I didn’t hear the doorbell at first as the rain had just started hammering against the windows in the hall, and I was singing at top volume to keep me dauntless. When at last I heard it ring out in the hall it frightened me half to death. I imagined myself opening the door to a ghoul or gorgon or some other fantastic creature, but to my relief, when I peered outside, just Harry was there. A little damp, and very magician-like in a long black overcoat, but just Harry all the same. His wicked eyes flashed bright against the blackness of the afternoon.

  ‘Perfect weather for a round of golf,’ he said, handing me a bunch of freesias.

  ‘Do come in,’ I said with a curtsy.

  The front door slammed behind us like something out of a horror film.

  ‘Cripes!’ said Harry. ‘This is really the way to see this place, isn’t it?’

  ‘I hate this weather.’ I shivered. ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’

  ‘How about a brandy and then up to the Long Gallery?’ said Harry at once.

  ‘Why do we have to go up there?’

  ‘Because you need to get over your silliness about it. And I’d like to stare out at the garden and the storm. I’ve got a couple of new tricks to try out.

  ‘Do you always get your own way?’

  ‘Not at all. Look at me and Marina.’

  I hesitated. ‘I don’t mind going up there if we take the gramophone.’

  ‘And that means listening to Johnnie Ray all ‘afternoon?’

  In the end, we concocted a funny sort of mid-afternoon snack to take up to the Long Gallery. I found a half-finished ham in the larder that we hacked into strips to eat with a loaf of bread and some of Mary’s homemade pickle. I put the lot on a tray along with the remains of a plum pudding and a couple of chocolate sandwich biscuits each. I boiled up some water for tea, and Harry produced a bottle of brandy from the back o
f his car. Mama would be horrified, I thought.

  When we got upstairs, the sky had turned from dark grey to a threatening, angry violet. The rain bashed violently against the windows and the wind tore at the walls. We stood at the top of the winding staircase that led up to the Long Gallery. This time Harry turned the key.

  ‘All aboard,’ he said, stepping inside.

  He was quite right. The yellow and indigo light of the storm clouds bouncing off the uneven wooden floor gave the room the lustre of a ghost ship far out at sea. Cautiously. I stepped in,’ and shivered. Harry plonked down the gramophone and I busied myself choosing a record to play. and a few moments later Johnnie’s voice filled the room — 1955 was doing its very best to chase away the fourteenth century.

  ‘Want to see something?’ asked Harry. He strode off down the middle of the room and came to a halt in front of the longest window.

  ‘A trick?’ I asked hopefully.

  Harry pulled out a black cloak and appeared to be concentrating very hard.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered, but the sound of the wind whistling over the walls stopped Harry from hearing me.

  ‘Come over here,’ he instructed. I slid over towards him. He was so good now that when he was performing he seemed to tower over me, Gandalf-like, despite his diminutive frame. ‘I’ve only tried this a couple of times,’ he admitted under his breath,’ ‘but I needed a room like this to pull it off properly.’

  ‘Pull what off?’ I whispered, scared of breaking the spell.

  Harry closed his eyes, and all of a sudden whipped the cloak away. ‘Fly!’ he cried. ‘Fly!’

  Three white doves, feathers ruffled and thoroughly confused, flapped wildly into the air. One of them flew up to the top of the room and perched on top of a portrait of Capability Brown. Harry opened his eyes.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Needs work.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ I cried. ‘Get them out of here, for goodness’ sake! Where did they come from? Oh no, they’re not from the pigeon house, are they? Mama will go stark, staring mad if anything happens to any of her birds!’ I was genuinely irritated at the same time as being unwillingly knocked out by the beauty of the trick. Harry moved with such fluidity, such style, when he was performing that it was impossible not to watch in excitement.

  ‘They’re not your mother’s birds,’ said Harry, gathering up his cloak and folding it neatly. ‘But I thought I could leave them here for now. She won’t mind, will she? Tell her they’re a present from me,’ to thank her for her — her hospitality.’

  ‘Hospital will be the word if we don’t get them out of here fast. Mama will kill me for this. We shouldn’t even be up here in the first place—’

  ‘They add to the atmosphere, don’t you think?’ interjected Harry, removing a white feather from my hair.

  ‘Oh, it’s very Noah’s Ark. Perhaps we should invite a couple of the sheep up here too?’ I snapped.

  Harry said nothing but gave a low whistle and all three of the doves flew towards him.

  ‘You’ll be calming the storm next.

  Harry grinned. ‘I’ve been rehearsing with these three for quite some time,’ he said.

  ‘How did you get them here?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘Magic,’ said Harry automatically.

  I chose not to ask any more. ‘Well, you can keep them up here until we’ve finished our picnic,’ I conceded, ‘as you seem to have such astonishing control over them.’

  ‘Picnic!’ said Harry. ‘We need a rug for that.’ He pulled off his overcoat and spread it out for us to sit on and we tucked into the ham and pickle. ‘Do you think we’re the latest in a long line of people who’ve sat up here during a storm and felt as though the house was going to fall down?’

  ‘Probably. I know my father used to — to sit up here,’ I said without thinking. Blast. I didn’t think that I had wanted to talk about Papa.

  ‘He did?’ asked Harry, taking a slug of brandy from the bottle. ‘He — he was afraid of his father, so he used the Long Gallery as a sort of refuge. It was always his dream to captain a ship and he used to pretend he was in charge of the Cutty Sark.’

  ‘Isn’t it odd?’ said Harry. ‘You have a house as staggering as this at your disposal, but you still dream of getting out of the place. It just goes to show, doesn’t it? You can’t always get what you want. Shall we have a cigarette?’

  ‘I’d rather have your chocolate biscuit,’ I confessed.

  Harry lay flat on the floor and smoked. ‘Lie down,’ he instructed me. ‘You can feel the storm shaking the ship.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to jump on you,’ said Harry archly.

  I blushed.

  The elements raged around us and when we closed our eyes we really weren’t at Magna at all, but somewhere way out in the Atlantic.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ Harry demanded.

  ‘A story?’

  ‘Yes. Go on. You want to be a writer, don’t you?’

  It was another challenge. With our heads resting on Harry’s coat, our feet were almost touching. Something hung in the air between us, something so delicate that anything other than lying as still as statues and whispering felt like a threat to it. What was it? I didn’t know. I breathed in the now familiar scent of Harry’s cologne mixed with the sweetness of the brandy from his breath.

  ‘You smell nice,’ I admitted.

  ‘It’s Dior Pour Homme,’ he whispered in a mock-romantic French accent. ‘Isn’t it just the thing pour snaring les femmes?’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘Tell me about your Great-Aunt Sarah,’ said Harry, and he was whispering so softly now that I could hardly hear him. ‘The one who painted the watercolour you all detest so much.’

  ‘All right,’ I replied, and at that moment Johnnie started to sing ‘Walking My Baby Back’ Home’ and I sighed with the loveliness of his voice.

  ‘She was quite barking,’ I began, ‘and apparently a great wit. She frightened people rather because she had a loud voice and a limp from falling off her pony aged seven. She wanted very badly to be a great painter. Apparently. she fell madly in love with her art teacher, a redhead called Lindsay Saunders, and decided that the only way to win her heart was to——’

  ‘What?’ interrupted Harry. ‘Her heart?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Aunt Sarah was one of — you know, one of those women who — who prefer the company of women.’

  ‘How thrilling,’ said Harry. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this story.

  ‘It hasn’t a very happy ending,’ I said. ‘Her art mistress went off to India to study out there and married some important ambassador or other. Poor Aunt Sarah never quite recovered from the shock of her departure. She married a man called Sir John Holland who knew all about her past and refused to let her paint. She was broken after that, having lost her only joy in life. In the end, her bad leg grew worse and worse. She had terrible arthritis and died rather young.

  ‘Tragic,’ said Harry with feeling. ‘You must hang on to her painting and never mock her interpretation of the lake again.’

  ‘I always thought she sounded rather nice,” I said, ‘although I never knew her. She was too tall, like me, and freckled and blonde.’

  ‘And not very good at painting,’ said Harry lightly. ‘and funny? And oddly beautiful?’

  I said nothing but listened to us both breathing. Outside, the hail rained against the window and the clouds had turned black again and I shivered — half with cold, half with something else. Then that precious, unnamed thing that had grown heavier and heavier around us was broken when one of the birds landed on my chest and I shrieked with shock. Harry sat up and laughed.

  ‘I think she wants the last of the bread,’ he said.

  The mood changed after that and oddly enough,’ so did the weather. The storm passed,’ the rain stopped and a blast of late afternoon sunlight caught us by surprise. Johnnie sang on, and Harry drank a glass of br
andy and imitated Johnnie singing, which was really very funny. and we argued a bit about jazz. Then he showed me three or four new tricks and tried to teach me a simple sleight-of-hand thingy with the ace of hearts that I couldn’t quite pull off We didn’t venture back downstairs until it was nearly dark and the doves were starting to look as though a night up in the eaves of the Long Gallery would be rather nice. Fido started to pace a bit and I realised he should have been fed an hour ago.

  ‘I should really be going,’ said Harry.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay for supper?’

  ‘Oh, no. I told Loopy I’d be with him by seven.

  ‘It won’t take you long to get to Ashton St Giles,’ I said, ‘as long as there aren’t too many branches across the roads.’

  ‘Should I mention you to Isobel?’ asked Harry. I had to drag my mind into gear to think who he was talking about.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said in horror. ‘She didn’t like me one bit. We had to be partners in dance class and I was always the man and used to stand on her pretty little toes.

  ‘I wish I’d gone to Sherborne Girls,’ said Harry wistfully. ‘Come on,’ let’s get the birds settled before you go,’ I said. Half an hour and several white feathers later, we said goodbye and Harry climbed into his car. He wound down the window.

  ‘I loved this afternoon,’ he said suddenly. ‘and are you in any way over your hatred of the Long Gallery?’

  I grinned. ‘Oh, I think so.’ I paused. ‘Thanks to you and your ridiculous magic.’

  ‘See you at the Ritz then.’

  ‘Oh help, yes. At the Ritz.’

  It wasn’t until after Mama had returned from Bath, soaked through but delighted because she had found a beautiful set of (overpriced) candlesticks for the dining-room table, that I realised Harry and I had not discussed Marina once.

  Chapter 14

  SOMEBODY STOLE HIS GAL

  The first week in March began with a fit of squally showers and sudden bursts of blinding sunshine, as the last dregs of the cold winter drifted away for another year. I left the window in my bedroom open during the day. and found the first disorientated honey bee of 1955 lurching around my bedside table like a drunk. I lay about the house in my denims, pretending to write essays while flicking through the new magazines and longing for money to spend on clothes. I listened to Johnnie and thought about Harry more than I ever imagined I would, and it disturbed me. Sometimes he was impossible to picture in my mind; other times his face would come- to me clearly and I would think, with great relief, oh, it’s all right! I don’t find him attractive after all! He wasn’t good looking like Rocky, yet I couldn’t push aside our night on deck in the Long Gallery. I found myself wondering whether he had thought about it since, or whether Marina had occupied his every waking consideration. I spent hours in front of the mirror trying on outfits for the dinner at the Ritz, with disastrous results. I had neither Charlotte’s creative flair nor Mama’s penchant for immaculate tailoring, and whatever I wore looked dull rather than demure. For all that I didn’t want to attend the dinner, there was no way that I wanted to look half-baked, though I wasn’t sure exactly who I was trying to impress. I telephoned Charlotte several times, but always seemed to catch her when she had just finished a particularly gruelling session with Aunt Clare, and as a member of that elite proportion of the population who never needed to question whether they looked right as long as they looked arresting, Charlotte had little time for my dilemmas.