Bridesmaids Revisited (13 page)

“So that’s why he changed his name to Clifford Heath,” I said slowly, “but he also elected to keep at least part of his original name in coming up with one for his Memory Lanes holiday camps.”

“Could be he was sending a message that he’s got a long memory indeed.” Thora shrugged. “But on with the story, Ellie. Sophia told us that she met Hawthorn when she caught him scrumping for apples in the back garden. Said she saw his face looking down at her from the tree and she thought he was one of Pan’s people. She was seven and he was ten. I’m sure her parents had no idea that there was this
Wuthering Heights
business under their noses, until Hawthorn went to that reform place.

“She used to write him letters when we were at boarding school. Had one of the older girls who had permission to go into town post them for her. Rosemary, Jane, and I took over when we entered the fifth form a year ahead of Sophia. When she turned sixteen she was able to post the letters herself. All through those years Hawthorn wrote back, signing his letters ‘Your loving Aunt Betty.’ Because, as Sophia used to say earnestly: ‘almost everyone has an Aunt Betty.’ She was in many ways a very serious girl. The teachers called her ‘sensible.’ It was only in her painting that she revealed a wilder, more passionate side. Said Hawthorn was the only one who really understood the ideas she was trying to project. Our art teacher certainly didn’t. Called what Sophia did a lot of sploshing about with the paintbrush. Never gave her high marks. But somehow we three—Rosemary, Jane, and I—knew she was good even if we couldn’t put into words why.”

Thora paused. It was clear that she had got sidetracked somewhere down memory lane and Rosemary, who appeared to have nodded off, urged her to continue, which she did after taking a sip from the coffee cup she had set down on Amelia Chambers’s departure.

“Hawthorn returned to Knells the year before Sophia left school. Got a job in the photographer’s studio, the one now owned by Richard Barttle. He started out sweeping up and doing other odd jobs, but the plan, Sophia told us, was for him to establish himself in Knells as a young man who had outgrown his wild ways and was ready and eager to settle down. She naively hoped that this would encourage her parents to give their approval when she and Hawthorn broke the news that they wanted to become engaged.”

“And did he settle down?” I asked.

“When it came to work.” Thora settled back on the sofa. “Began taking photographs when there was a need on the owner’s half day off. Seemed to have a flair for it. There was quite a bit of talk about how good he was amongst the young people we played tennis with, when Jane and I came down to spend time with Rosemary while she was learning to be a dispenser at the chemist’s in Rilling. But it was hard to tell with the girls whether it was his talent they admired or his stunning good looks. He’d turned into quite a dish, as we used to say. What made him even more appealing to some girls was that wild untamed quality of his. ‘Like a fallen angel,’ I remember one of them saying. Not that any of our set would have gone out with him. They were all inclined to be snobby when it came right down to it and they knew their parents wouldn’t have had Hawthorn in the house. He had quickly gained a reputation, deserved or otherwise, as a seducer of sweet little virgins, to add to the one he already had as a ne’er-do-well. It got so that the local young men were afraid to take their sweethearts to him for the engagement photos. Because word was out that they fell in love with him while he was clicking the camera. Don’t doubt he took every opportunity offered him for a tryst in the hayloft of one of the abandoned barns.”

“Did you tell that to Sophia?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t have come as news to her,” replied Thora. “Said she didn’t expect Hawthorn to live like a monk while they were apart. He was young, only nineteen, this was the time for him to sow some wild oats. She was a strange girl in some ways. Passionately romantic and at the same time realistic. Maybe a lot of sixteen-year-olds are that way. All she asked of Hawthorn was that he be discreet and not get anyone pregnant. A fairly tall order in those days. But I don’t know that there was ever any talk about anyone having a baby by him.”

“Even so, if he really hoped to gain Sophia’s parents’ approval it might have been better if he’d chained himself up in the nearest abbey,” I said. It was difficult in listening to Thora’s recounting of events to fully accept the fact that she was talking about my grandmother.

“You’re right, of course, Ellie, but I’m not so sure it would have made any difference. Sophia hadn’t been home for a week after leaving boarding school when Reverend McNair called her into his study and told her William Fitzsimons had asked for her hand in marriage and there was to be no silly nonsense about refusing him.”

“But that’s archaic!” I protested.

Thora bit her lip as she nodded. “That was Sophia’s reaction. There were some terrible rows between her and both parents—Mrs. McNair was all for the idea, she thought William was absolutely splendid, saw him making a big name for himself in the church. His plan to go out as a missionary to the Belgian Congo would be the first step in getting himself noticed. She believed he’d end up as Archbishop of Canterbury. And William was ambitious. Undoubtedly it was the main reason he wanted to marry Sophia, although she was a pretty girl. A little plump but it suited her. Her eyes were what one first noticed—a lovely shade of gray, very like yours, Ellie, and she had masses of long hair, usually worn the way you are wearing yours now.” Thora paused before adding: “Rosemary was here all the while the rumpus was going on.”

“It must have been difficult to see a friend so unhappy and feel helpless to do anything about it.” I was leaning forward on my footstool, wondering if I should suggest another round of coffee, but decided that wasn’t the drink required. They all looked as though they could have done with a good stiff brandy.

“The situation wore me down to the point where I was ready to throw up my training in Rilling and move away.” Rosemary still sat with her eyes closed behind her octagonal glasses. “Sophia was kept shut up for weeks after being shouted at by Uncle Hugo for being a willful, unnatural daughter. Of course, when William was present she was made to come down and be pleasant. Then out of the blue she quietened down and said she would marry him. The engagement was announced in
The Telegraph
and Aunt Agatha immediately began plans for the wedding that was to take place a couple of weeks before William was due out in the Belgian Congo. Thora, Jane, and I were to be bridesmaids.”

“So that’s why Mother called you that.”

“She must have got it from her father.” Rosemary had clearly decided to take over from Thora in finishing the story. “Afterwards William always referred to us by that collective name. He did so with one of his sneers. In fact we never performed the role of bridesmaids for Sophia. But we were in the house trying on our frocks that Sunday afternoon, a week before the wedding, when Uncle Hugo was found dead of a heart attack in his study. And of course that altered everything. The ceremony was scaled down to a bare-bones affair and ...”

“Yes?” I prompted.

“Sophia’s plans for running off with Hawthorn at the final hour were scratched.”

“She had that planned all along, from when she meekly agreed to marry William?”

“She was, as we have indicated, a girl with a strong practical streak,” Jane broke in before Rosemary could speak. “They would need money and the more Hawthorn saved from his job the longer they could manage until they found other work somewhere else. We weren’t in on the secret. Sophia kept Rosemary, Thora, and me in the dark until she broke down on the evening of Reverend McNair’s death. She was really a very decent girl, who had been jostled around by forces too strong for her. She blamed herself for her father’s heart attack.”

“Saw it as retribution,” Thora broke in just as Jane had done moments before.

“And she agreed to marry William.” I felt a little sick. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to spend a wedding night with a man I loathed. And Sophia had loathed him. I was certain of it. As had my mother loathed and feared him in the years that followed. They had been there on that day when she brought me to this house, those shadows that unfurl out of the subconscious to blur the present with the past when misery is never properly laid to rest.

“The wedding went forward on the day planned in a simple ceremony in the vestry. No bridesmaids. No guests.” Rosemary was tapping the arm of her chair. “Only Richard Barttle as the best man and Aunt Agatha in attendance. Uncle Hugo’s funeral had taken place the previous day. There wasn’t even a proper wedding breakfast, according to what Edna has told us, just tea and sandwiches before Sophia and William left to catch their train. We hoped Sophia would write but she never did, not even to tell us the baby had been born. And shortly after that she was dead, killed driving her car into a tree, something she surely had no business doing, because she had never had a license in England and had always said she was afraid of learning to drive.”

“And how did Hawthorn react to Sophia’s marriage?”

“He went around spewing talk of revenge.”

“Against the entire village, or specifically against the woman who loved and left him?” I was looking at all three women. “Is Sir Clifford Heath intent on tearing down Knells and replacing it with a Memory Lanes holiday camp to get back at those who symbolize the rejection that made him an outcast as a boy? Or is he out to bury all memories of Sophia under the rubble?”

“That, Ellie,” said Rosemary, “is what we think Sophia wants you to find out.”

“It sounds rather a tall order.” I got out of my chair and paced around the room, a habit I had picked up from Ben, who had worn out two rooms of parquet flooring before he had been at Merlin’s Court a month.

“I’m sure it does, dear,” replied Jane soothingly. “And believe me, Rosemary, Thora, and I resisted the notion of involving you when Hope first suggested it. But she has been so insistent that Sophia is calling out to you from beyond the grave and that the message she wishes to impart concerns Sir Clifford and his plans to visit his vengeance upon Knells. So after much thought, and some disagreements amongst ourselves, it was agreed that Rosemary would write to you.”

“Providing just enough of a tease to get me here.”

“You’re cross, Ellie,” said Thora from the sofa. “Quite frankly, I don’t blame you one bit. You haven’t heard a word from us in years. We weren’t there at your mother’s funeral or afterwards to offer a helping hand to you or your father in your bereavement. And now here we are, caps in hand. There aren’t any satisfactory excuses to be made, which is why Rosemary—even though she is the one who finally wrote to you—felt it was an impertinence to involve you.”

While adjusting a brass candlestick on the mantelpiece—straightening things was my response to tension—I kept my back to all three women. “Had you simply written to let me know about Sir Clifford and his plans for Knells, I might not have cared too much one way or the other.”

“Oh, dear!” Jane sounded like a schoolgirl caught putting a frog in the headmistress’s bed. “I do see what you are getting at: You think we’ve brought Hope into this as a ruse to lure you into thinking it’s Sophia who’s asking for your help, not virtual strangers. But I assure you, Ellie, we didn’t cook this up. From her first visit on, Hope convinced us she sensed our beloved Sophia’s presence and her desperation to make contact with you.”

“And it never occurred to you she might be a fraud?” I returned to my footstool.

“Of course it did.” Rosemary sat scrutinizing the rearranged landscape painting and candlestick through half-closed eyes. “Or I should say I had very strong suspicions that the woman was playing some sort of game for her own dubious ends. Thora and Jane swallowed every word as if it were an elixir from the gods. Being the guileless women they are, they couldn’t think of any possible motive for her popping up out of the blue at a time when I am making difficulties for Sir Clifford.”

“You think Hope may be working for him?”

“The thought occurred.” Rosemary stirred in her seat but did not get up. “All that wild black and orange hair—and those impossibly green eyes. No one has eyes that color unless they wear contact lenses. She could have made herself over so that we would more readily buy into the possibility that she was able to commune with the dead. But when it comes right down to it, Ellie, I don’t believe Hawthorn ... or I should I say, Sir Clifford, would stoop to playing silly games.”

“He’s been dipping into his nasty bag of tricks for years,” I countered, “buying up the villagers’ properties a cottage at a time, just as if it were a game of Monopoly, until he could sweep the board. Do the other residents know he is Hawthorn Lane?”

“No,” said Rosemary. “We didn’t know until that visit to London.”

“And when you balked at selling he could have come up with this scheme of dragging me into the picture.”

“It’s possible.” Jane looked from me to Rosemary and back again. “But somehow it seems more the sort of thing a woman might do. Most men don’t have that kind of imagination, do they? And Hawthorn was always so intensely masculine. Besides I don’t see how such a ruse would work to his advantage. Reflect upon it. If Hope were to fake a trance and claim Sophia was instructing her to urge Rosemary to sell Sir Clifford the Old Rectory as a means of righting old wrongs, we would immediately smell a rat.”

“I know what you are thinking.” Thora studied my face intently. “He could be picturing us as three silly old women, as gullible as God makes them. But somehow I don’t think so, especially in Rosemary’s case. She was always the brainy one out of all of us, including Sophia. And even though Hawthorn didn’t give her more than five minutes of his time when she went to see him in London a few weeks ago, he must have realized she is still a woman to be reckoned with.”

“That’s neither here nor there.” Rosemary crossed the room to stand in front of the landscape painting which she tapped with a finger until it was once more slightly crooked, before moving over to the mantelpiece to realign the candlestick. “Whatever the cause, Hope is now part of the equation. And it is as much your right, Ellie, as it is ours to determine whether to believe her or not.”