A Place of Secrets (26 page)

No one was ever allowed to move anything. Betsy might bring in his food—that was all. She was not to clean. I alone was trusted to dust a little sometimes, but only if I replaced everything exactly as it was, he’d grumble, or else it might be lost irretrievably.

‘Father, you require more shelves,’ I sighed one day when he asked me to pick out a particular volume about opticks, and I was made to move twenty other books before I found it.

He looked around, blinking like an owl dazzled by daylight, as if he had never seen the room properly before. It was a dark narrow chamber at the back of the house, its aspect towards the stables. He’d chosen it when he was a boy, he had once told me, because no one else had any use for it. ‘What say you, Father, we locate a bigger room to make a library?’ I said excitedly, but he scowled.

‘And where would we do that?’ he replied, not possessing that kind of imagination, so I cast my mind about.

Later in the day, roaming the house, still thinking of the possibilities of this idea, I walked into a room I had hardly visited before. It was at the front of the Hall, looking out across the park. The room had no purpose, as far as I could see, beyond housing an elegant fireplace, a great wooden chest—empty—and a pedestal with a bust of Socrates upon it. In some ways it was no room at all, merely a sizeable anteroom where a certain class of visitor, an equerry with a message perhaps, might be ordered to await the master’s pleasure, and there was, I saw, a reason for its dismissal—one side of the room bowed out a little, whether to some practical purpose or as the result of some structural weakness I could not say.

Still, the marble floor with its oval patterning pleased me, and when I stepped over to the window my heart lifted to view the forest in the distance and, since the sun had moved away and the sky was cloudless, I was sure I could just see the folly peeping above the trees.

I turned and inspected the room once more, and suddenly saw in my mind a revelation of how it could be. This would be our library, and to solve the problem of the curved wall, it would be oval. Father must be informed at once.

The sound of a car on the gravel forecourt ripped Jude’s absorption like a knife slashing a picture. She’d imagined she’d been there in the eighteenth-century past, with Esther, seeing the room as it had been before it was a library. And, in turn, sharing
with the girl a vision of how it was now. What a curious fancy, she thought, aware of Chantal’s voice greeting the dogs.

Soon the door of the library opened. “Jude,” she cried, “I thought you’d be in here again. You do work hard, dear. Are you all right? Am I disturbing you?”

“Not at all,” Jude said warmly, her regret at the broken moment wiped out by the desire to share her new knowledge. “In
fact you’ve come at just the right moment.” She showed her Esther’s papers. “She’s describing how the library was made. It seems the whole thing was her idea.”

Chantal came and settled down beside Jude, who read what she’d already transcribed and stumbled through the next section of Esther’s writing to find out about the making of this extraordinary room.

My father took little persuasion once I explained the scheme, and my confidence quickly grew. By the following spring, in the year of 1774, the architect submitted his scheme for an oval room and the work commenced. Soon Starbrough Hall lay under siege to carts bearing sand and seasoned wood. Others drove away transporting heaps of rubble and dust. Half a dozen labourers arrived from the village, then a number of fine craftsmen, fresh from fashioning new buildings at Holkham Hall. These men all trampled grit down the corridors where Mr Corbett laid matting, and soon to breathe meant to choke on a chalky miasma. Betsy and I claimed we could taste dust in our food, but Mrs Godstone took umbrage at our complaints and Mr Corbett bid us hush.

It was the shouted orders and the hammering that drove out Father in the end. He took to living in the folly for days at a time, even sleeping in the tower room on a small mattress when he’d a mind. And so I was left alone to direct Mr Gibbons, the architect, a gentle man apparently with a daughter close to myself in years, who discussed matters with me in a grave and courteous manner. This pleased and surprised me. No one outside the house had ever treated me with such respect before, and I flowered under my new responsibilities. My father’s agent, on the other hand, the odious Trotwood, deliberately flouted any instructions I gave regarding his labourers, his intention being to humiliate me. And so in time I learned discretion, using Mr Gibbons or the foreman instead to convey my will to him.

As the months passed in this way, I noticed how Mrs Godstone and Mr Corbett changed towards me. They remained polite and kindly, but there grew an uneasy distance between us, and there came a time when I no longer ate with them, but with my father, or, if he were away, by my lone self in the great dining room, with Betsy to serve. Even Susan treated me differently, calling me Miss Esther as often as not, which wounded me. She’d not shared my bed for some years, for I was no longer a little girl with nightmares who needed comforting, but now she took to knocking before she entered my room. ‘You’re becoming a woman,’ she told me, when she helped me dress for dinner once. ‘Nay, a lady. I always knew … And a lovely one.’ All the old affection remained, I saw that in her eyes, but still, something important had changed. Father was treating me as the daughter of the house, and the household took their lead from him.

I felt the loneliness of it first when my old friend Matt began to touch his cap when he greeted me. We were shyer with one another, but then we were aware of becoming man and woman; at fourteen we could no longer play in the dirt as though we were children, nor did we wish to. He worked all the day with his father now, his daily clothes shabby where mine were fine and neat, his hands calloused, the nails ingrained with earth, while mine were clean and manicured. On high days and holidays I heard tell he met in the village square with other lads and they would drink too much ale and tease the wenches; our days of running off to the forest together were long gone and never mentioned. Sometimes this saddened me, for I longed for a friend of my own age.

By harvest time the main work on our new library was complete and the labourers slipped away to help on the farms. But there came a day late in September when the final details were complete. We stood, my father and I, admiring the rows of white-painted shelves and cupboards, the glass doors and the powder-blue painted ceiling. We remarked on the beautiful ornamentation picked out like white sugar piping, the sublime touch being a delicate oval centrepiece forged in plaster like a huge halo above our heads. We waited a week or two for the decoration to dry and the stink of lead paint to fade, then began the great task of transporting the contents of Father’s study into its new home.

He would allow none to assist us packing the crates of books and papers, and once they were carried to the library I was allowed only to unpack and make suggestion, not to arrange. Finally Mr Corbett, with Sam and Matt and Jan the coachman, carried in the heavy desk and chairs, the globe and the orrery, and all was complete. That first evening I found him there already engrossed in his charts, a merry fire crackling in the grate, his supper as usual forgotten on a tray. ‘Goodnight,’ I called, but he gave no sign of having heard. I smiled to myself and closed the door quietly.

“There’s no mention of this ceiling painting, is there?” Chantal pointed out. “I wonder when they did that?”

“Maybe Esther will tell us in due course.” Jude closed down her laptop again, remembering how, for a moment earlier, it had seemed as though she had been inside Esther’s mind, seeing the room as it had
been, and imparting to Esther the vision of how it was now. It had been a curious experience; she couldn’t explain it. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep for a short time and dreamed it.

There was still so much unanswered about Esther, but then she didn’t know all the questions. Yet gradually, like pieces in a great complex jigsaw puzzle for which she had no picture to guide her, different snippets
of information were coming together. Areas of detail were beginning to come into focus.

She glanced at her watch. It was half past twelve. She had a sudden mental picture of Euan arriving at Claire’s in a sports jacket and jeans, carrying a bottle of red wine. When she imagined him kissing her on both cheeks …

“Chantal,” she said quickly, “had you anything special planned for lunch?” Since both
of them had been left out of their families’ arrangements today, why shouldn’t they do something special and enjoy themselves?

“Not really,” Chantal replied. “I thought we might finish some leftovers.”

“In that case,” Jude said, “let me take you somewhere for lunch. I rather feel like it. Do you know anywhere that might take a last-minute booking?”

“The Green Man,” Chantal said promptly, her
eyes sparkling. “Yes, let’s go out for lunch.”

* * *

The pub Chantal recommended was able to squeeze them in at the last moment. It was only a couple of miles away, so not far for Jude to drive, a lovely old building with wooden beams, that hadn’t been too messed about by modern development. Their table was in the garden under a big canopy. They both ordered good old-fashioned Sunday roasts
and a bottle of rich, red Burgundy. “My treat,” Jude insisted. “It’s so kind of you all to have let me stay at the Hall for so long.”

“No, we love having you,” Chantal cried. “Alexia says what an easy guest you are and, anyway, it makes sense, with you working so hard on the sale. You are not having much of a holiday at all.”

“Oh, I’m seeing plenty of Claire and Summer,” Jude replied. “Still,
I must speak to Alexia and Robert. I feel I ought to find somewhere else to stay. It’s very wearing to have guests.”

“Do speak to them, of course, but you’ll find they agree with me. You must not go, Jude.”

Jude laughed. “Well, it’s very kind of you all.” Their lunches arrived and they began to eat hungrily.

After a minute or two, Chantal asked, “How is the little girl? You said she was having
some bad dreams.”

“They’re still happening, I’m afraid,” Jude replied. She explained about the apparent coincidence of Summer knowing details of Esther’s story.

“That is so strange. But you must have told her about it. There’ll be an ordinary explanation. Especially, if, as you say, the doctor thinks she is behaving normally. Children of that age, they do have night terrors. I remember a time
when Robert used to cry out for me in the night, and I would sit with him. William did not like him to come into our bed. In the morning it would be me who was tired. Robert was completely fine.”

“Perhaps that’s all it is. Night terrors,” Jude said, but she knew she hadn’t told Summer all about Esther, that was one thing. And the nature of the dream was another. “But why would they have started
after Euan took her to the folly?”

Chantal shrugged. “Coincidence,” she said briskly. “Or perhaps there is something about the place that affected her imagination. So much has happened there. I believe these things can give an atmosphere.” Then she said, “This young man you speak of, Euan, forgive me asking but you are becoming friendly with him?”

Jude put down her knife and fork, at a loss
about what to say.

“No, I am intruding,” Chantal cried, waving her question away. “He is very
charmant
. I just thought … I am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jude said, taking a sip of wine. “He is lovely. But I think he is already taken. My sister got there first. And I can’t interfere.”

“He likes her?”

“I can’t tell,” Jude confessed. “It’s hardly something one can ask. I think it might be at that delicate
stage, you know, before anything starts, and I can’t just march in and…”

“Ah, so you do like him.” Chantal’s eyes sparkled wickedly.

“I find him … very attractive. As they say, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.”

Chantal gave a peal of delighted laughter, and several people turned to stare. She was very elegant and vivacious today, Jude thought.

“You see the problem,” Jude said. “What do I do?
What would you do? Woman to woman here, Chantal! Has anything like this happened to you?”

“I never had a sister, so this could never have happened, but relationships with your family, now those are important. No, you are right, you can’t just march in and take … You will have to wait, my dear, wait and see what happens. Perhaps you should think of going away, forgetting about him. That would
be the most honorable thing.”

“Would it?” Jude said feebly, feeling her energy drain away. Should she just go back to London and leave Claire and Euan to it? That was one code of behavior. “All’s fair in love and war,” was another. But suppose she did get together with Euan, what would that do to her relationship with her sister, and with Summer?

Euan was not some toy to be fought over. He had
his own feelings and opinions. Surely the most important question in all this was what Euan himself felt.

While she and Chantal finished their lunch, Chantal talking about her very formal upbringing in Paris and how different it was from the way the twins were being brought up, Jude turned the matter over in her mind.

“Thank you for a lovely meal,” Chantal said when they got up to go.

“And
thank you for everything you’ve done to help me,” Jude said and kissed her.

* * *

Jude spent what remained of the afternoon making notes on some ideas for the article she was to write for Beecham’s magazine. She had characters for her story now, an idea of how to present the whole sale. It was incredibly exciting. The lonely stargazer and the tower he’d built, the little girl he found and
trained to be his amanuensis, but who had her own mysterious tale to tell. What had happened to her and why hadn’t she inherited the house? It would be marvelous to be able to say that the Wickhams had contributed in some important way to contemporary knowledge of the stars, but from what Cecelia had said so far that wasn’t likely.