Relative Love (75 page)

‘You can help control that dog if you like,’ laughed Elizabeth, as Chloë, Roland and the puppy bounded into the kitchen, then clambered on to the sofa in a panting heap.

‘He’s so sweet,’ crooned Chloë, giggling as the puppy put his paws on to her lap and began delivering hungry licks to her chin.

‘He’s a little devil,’ said Pamela, whose initial sceptical reaction to Elizabeth’s ability to cope with him had mellowed considerably. The puppy was a dear thing and a fast learner. More importantly, John’s face lit up every time he caught sight of it, tugging Roland round the garden or sitting at the back door having slipped out of the barn. ‘Off the sofa. Off!’ She pushed the dog back on to the floor where he flopped with surprising obedience, his little barrel-body pumping with exhaustion.

‘You shouldn’t have called him Little Boots,’ declared Chloë. ‘It’s a silly name because he isn’t Boots’s
child
, is he? Not like this baby is going to be
ours
.’ She gave a proprietorial pat to Helen’s stomach, wanting both to underline the superiority of her good fortune and to quell the tremors of envy she felt about her cousin’s pet. The dog would always be there to play with, her mother had consoled her a little earlier, which meant she could enjoy him without having to do any of the boring or yukky things like walking and scooping up his mess. Chloë could see the sense of this but struggled still to
feel
it – although when the puppy had done a wee on the drawing-room carpet it had been fun to watch Roland all mad with worry, rushing secretly for a cloth, while she had laughed so much she’d had to have a wee herself. ‘We thought of
hundreds
of names for our baby,’ she continued, not looking at Roland, whom she knew was proud of his daft choice for the dog, ‘Fleur, Rachel, Lily, Harriet …’

‘Only girls’ names?’ put in Cassie, moving from the arm on to the sofa itself and bending down to pat the puppy.

‘That’s because —’ Chloë stopped, going bright pink and glancing frantically at her mother.

‘It’s a girl,’ said Helen quietly, after a pause. ‘It was
supposed
to be a secret.’ She pretended to look crossly at her daughter. ‘For a bit longer anyway. We’re calling her Genevieve.’

‘A girl … Genevieve … How lovely.’ Serena, who was modelling a set of decorative pastry leaves, gave a heavy sigh. A long slow moment followed, a moment so full of thoughts, on all their parts, about Tina that no one knew what to say. Serena understood what she had done – the injection of sadness into something so happy – and felt wretched, then resigned. I can’t help it, she thought, offering them a sad smile. I can’t help it. My past is their past. I can’t change how this feels, how they feel. The silence clung on, until Chloë, entranced by the fat leaves of dough slipping so expertly from her aunt’s slim fingers, wriggled off the sofa and ran to the table. ‘Can I eat some, Aunty Serena? Please?’ She picked up a scrap of pastry and squeezed it longingly.

Serena laughed, and relaxed at once. ‘It won’t taste very nice, my sweet, but by all means try. Better still, can you make me a little flower? To go in the middle of all these boring leaves?’

‘And we’d like you, Serena, and you, Elizabeth, to be her godmothers,’ blurted Helen, prompted to make the announcement, which she and Peter had planned together, by the sight of Serena, so mended and brave and kind, and Elizabeth, all pink-faced from the steam of the kettle. ‘No offence to you, Cassie, of course …’

‘Absolutely none taken,’ replied Cassie lightly, only the speed with which she patted Little Boots indicating otherwise. I’m just not the maternal kind, she thought, stroking the soft chocolate hair feverishly. I’m just not. I might die an old maid.

‘You’re my godmother, aren’t you?’ Roland reminded her softly.

‘Oh, darling, I am, aren’t I?’ Cassie hugged him hard. ‘Although I’m not very good at remembering, am I? I tell you what, though, I’m going to be the best from now on, you just wait and see. And if I’m not, I want you to tell me, okay?’

Roland nodded, but thought that this was an impossible demand, and wondered why his aunt should look so upset in making it. Grown-ups, as he and Polly had agreed many times, were complicated.

Discussions of names and godmotherly duties were in full flow when the telephone rang. Charlie was passing through the hall and got to it first. He arrived in the kitchen to announce, his face dead-pan, that Lucien Cartwright was on the phone wanting to speak to Elizabeth.

‘Lucien?’ Elizabeth froze, tea-towel slung over one shoulder, mug of tea in hand, with all eyes upon her.

‘Is that …?’ began Roland.

‘Yes, darling, it is. Thanks, Charlie.’ Elizabeth set down her mug and hurried from the room, the tea-towel flapping on her shoulder.

‘Oh, my,’ said Pamela, raising her eyes to the ceiling, then hurriedly lowering them again at the thought of Peter and John going through goodness knows what in the bedroom upstairs. How far had they got? she wondered. Where was it all going to end?

‘Weird,’ remarked Ed, returning from his post at the music-room door and placing a foot on the back of his sister, sprawled invitingly on the floor.

‘Get off.’ Maisie hit the leg. ‘What’s weird?’

‘Aunt Elizabeth’s old husband calling her up, Lucien Cartwright, she’s on the phone to him now. Come and listen, if you don’t believe me.’

‘Lucien Cartwright? But he’s a journalist, isn’t he?’

Ed shrugged, his foot held threateningly over his sister again. ‘Is he?’

Maisie clambered to her feet, staring at her brother with a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. They all knew, of course, that their aunt had been married before. It was ancient knowledge, so ancient it was never asked about or discussed. Even to want to know the man’s name had never occurred to Maisie before. ‘How the hell did you know Aunt Elizabeth was married to someone called Lucien Cartwright?’

‘I heard Mum and Dad talking about it,’ Ed crowed, delighted to have surprised her. ‘And now he’s phoned her up. She’s in the hall, red as a beetroot. And I also know that Uncle Peter was having some heavy chat with Granddad upstairs and has just come down and asked Dad, Granny and Aunt Cassie to join them. And Aunt Elizabeth, too, if she ever gets off the phone.
Something
is going on, I tell you, something big.’

‘Where’s Clem?’

‘With Theo, I think. They were going up to the attic to look for army stuff for his school play.’ Ed, distracted by a swell of emptiness in the pit of his stomach, looked at his watch and groaned. ‘At this rate we’re
never
going to eat.’

‘Come on.’ Maisie crept to the door and peered round it like a spy. Her aunt had put down the phone and was walking – or, rather, drifting – upstairs, her eyes all staring like a sleepwalker’s. ‘Let’s go up to the attic and find the others – quick, before Mum asks us to do something in the kitchen.’ They waited until Elizabeth had floated out of sight, then scampered up the stairs after her.

Elizabeth hesitated at the door of her parents’ bedroom, wondering whether she should knock before going in. As children they had always knocked, fearful of intruding on some unthinkable act of intimacy. But that could hardly be the case these days, she reflected wryly, with her father looking every inch his eighty years and her mother creeping round him like a withered Florence Nightingale, tray of tea or soup at the ready. He was ill, she was sure of it, sure too that that was what this curious summons was about. She raised her knuckles to rap on the wood, then lowered her hand, tempted to flee back down the stairs. Life was good and she was in no mood for bad news. The conversation with Lucien was still ringing inside her head …

‘It’s me, Lucien.’

‘I know it’s you.’

‘The Ashley House fireworks weekend, is it? I remember it well.’

‘Some things never change.’

‘I met your son.’

‘I know you did, he told me.’

‘I was in Barham … I even saw you getting into the car with Serena and your father.’

She had laughed, incredulous. ‘So you came here to spy on us?’

It was his turn to laugh. ‘Not quite. I was there on business. It is, as they say, a long story. I might tell you one day … over a drink, maybe?’

‘Why?’ Elizabeth had gasped, baffled at his determination to collide their lives together, after so much time apart. ‘Why?’ she repeated.

Lucien sighed. ‘I don’t honestly know, Lizzy, except that I saw you that day, without having planned it, and I just thought … well, I just thought, I wish I still knew that woman. And the next thing I know I’m chatting to your son – God, he looks
so
like you – and he was all serious and suspicious but so polite —’ He broke off, then added, with some desperation, ‘If we met I could explain everything so much better.’

‘How do you know I’m
free
to meet you?’

Lucien chuckled. ‘Your boy told me quite a lot.’

‘Did he now?’ Elizabeth steeled herself to say what had to be said. She had forgotten what a nice voice Lucien had, his easy charm. ‘I don’t want to meet you,’ she said, ‘because there is no point. I’m fine now, very good in fact. I’m on my own. I’m happy. I have absolutely no desire to go
back
to anything —’

‘Christ, neither have I,’ he interrupted, laughing easily. ‘Who would want to go back? No, thanks. We were crap, to put it mildly. But what about meeting with a view to going
forwards
? What about that, eh? Or with a view to … nothing. Just to meet. See where we are, see
who
we are now. Where’s the harm in that?’

To which, because Charlie was signalling over the banisters for her to join the gathering upstairs, Elizabeth had said that she wasn’t sure and maybe and if he gave her his number again she would think about it. Maybe. Yes, in other words, thought Elizabeth now, closing her palm round the cool brass of the door handle. Yes, because I am better – different – and because his voice had sounded so warm and familiar and because, as Lucien had said, where, after all, would be the harm? With which thought she blinked herself back to the present, patted her jeans pocket, where the number was safely stowed, and opened the bedroom door.

Given the size of Ashley House, it was, on the face of it, an odd place for the family to assemble. Like a deathbed scene, Cassie decided, but not like one at all because her father was dressed in green cords and a brown jumper and standing by the window, and Charlie was the one lounging on the main bit of the bed. Her mother was perched on the edge of her bedroom chair, nervously fingering her bun, while she and Elizabeth sat side by side on the
chaise-longue
next to the dressing-table. Peter had planted himself in the middle of them all on the dressing-table stool, a king on a small throne, leaning forward in a very unkingly way, with his legs apart and his elbows resting on his knees.

‘Would someone mind telling me what’s going on?’ demanded Elizabeth, to whom courage came more easily these days.

‘Dad?’ Peter swivelled on the stool to look at his father.

John, who had been studying the dusky violet outlines of the garden and fields, turned his head slowly.

He’s dying, thought Cassie suddenly, biting her lower lip as she watched the slow turn of his head, seeing not the soft tufts of grey hair, but the curvature of the skull beneath. He’s dying and we’re all to be told about it. Even Mum. She glanced across the room, noting the look of rapt concern on Pamela’s face, as blank and terrified as the rest of them. Only Peter, his chin now resting on the tips of his fingers, his eyes moving quickly from face to face, looked remotely composed, though it was the concrete composure of someone holding something in rather than having let it out. Her father was clearing his throat. Cassie, aware of Elizabeth’s hand resting close to hers on the soft blue velvet of the
chaise-longue
, shifted her arm until their fingers were touching. Elizabeth responded at once, slipping her hand over Cassie’s and squeezing hard. She had big hands for a woman, muscled from all her years of piano-playing, and Cassie felt better for their protection. I hope she treads carefully with Lucien, she thought suddenly. I hope he doesn’t hurt her.

John, having wrested his eyes from the view, tugged at his cuffs, cleared his throat again, and found that there was nothing left to do but speak. ‘I thought I had one thing to tell you all, but it seems …’ he hesitated, looking from Peter to Charlie ‘… it seems that I have two. The situation, as situations often are, is more complicated than I had envisaged. Complicated and better.’ He cleared his throat once more. ‘I asked Peter up here to inform him, as the eldest and prime inheritor …’ He paused to cough yet again, though the bubble in his throat, fuelled as it was by emotion, still refused to clear. ‘… to tell him that, courtesy of the recent hurricane in Florida, I have lost an enormous sum of money, so enormous that apart from this house I will have nothing to bequeath to you all. Which means that to pay its own inheritance tax Ashley House will almost certainly have to be sold.’ He waited, letting these words sink in, his heart swelling with shame at their muted gasps and crestfallen faces. ‘That tax paid, you would each receive about three hundred thousand pounds.’ John hesitated. ‘But Ashley House would be lost to the family for ever. The second thing I have to tell you is that upon receipt of this appalling news Peter informed me this afternoon that he had already decided that Charlie and Serena should be the ones to live here after your mother’s and my death, and that so fixed is he upon this as the
right
course for the future that he will, if necessary, use his own funds, which are more considerable than I could possibly have imagined, to settle the tax bill, should that need arise.’ John was compelled to stop by the tears now rolling freely down his cheeks.

‘Oh, John.’ Pamela, looking as small and fragile as a little girl, crept to his side and slipped her arms round his waist. Charlie had sat up and was clutching a pillow to his chest. ‘Peter … no … not with all this … I couldn’t, it wouldn’t be right.’

‘I have made a lot of money,’ said Peter simply, casting his eyes round the room. ‘Helen and I do not want to live here. Ashley House is at the core of this family. I am prepared to do anything –
anything
…’ He repeated the word very slowly, giving equal emphasis to its three syllables. ‘… to keep it that way.’ He felt giddy – elated – by the implications of his words. The spark of generosity, or whatever it was, that had been ignited by the decision over Helen’s pregnancy – the decision to go with the flow of the needs of his own family – had become a raging fire. It was liberating, he had discovered, to have such power at his fingertips, to be in a position to save them all. ‘Charlie and Serena
should
live here, I have never been more certain of anything. Although,’ he added, smiling, ‘I hope we’ll all be able to visit from time to time …’