Rumours (19 page)

Lydia couldn't bear to acknowledge lapses in memory. They were so undignified. So troubling. She straightened the furrows across her forehead with a swipe of her hand. ‘Of course you did. Yes, of course. Very well. Show them in.'

Mrs Biggins returned to the hallway. ‘You may go in,' she said. Then she said to Stella, ‘Of course, I did pass on your message to Lady Lydia – when you phoned ahead and spoke to me the other day. That you'd
both
be coming.' She stared levelly at Stella but with complicity, not malice.

Thank you
, Stella mouthed and she straightened Will's hair, a lock of which was jumping straight upwards as if electrified.

‘Shadow,' Stella whispered to him and they entered the drawing room. ‘Don't forget.' She placed her hands on the handles of the double-height doors and pushed them open.

‘Good morning, Lady Lydia.' Stella liked to be formal when she first saw Lydia each visit.

‘Good morning, Miss Hutton.' Lydia was staring at Will, like a person scared of dogs but trying not to show it.

Will thought, I'm not to say a word. He thought, I'm to be a shadow. But then he thought, the Lady lady is staring at me. He thought, it's rude to royalty not to say hullo. It's the sort of thing that they used to chop your head off for, in the olden days.

So he kept his head down and raised his hand. Glanced up. Still being stared at.

‘Good morning,' Lydia said to him, an audible rasp to her voice.

‘Good morning, Your Ladyship,' said Will, stepping away from Stella to bow. ‘I am William Ewan Taylor-Hutton.'

Stella thought, oh, Jesus Christ, he's gone and double-barrelled his surname. Will Taylor, son of Charlie Taylor and Stella Hutton. His father's surname was the most he'd ever had from the man. Every time Stella wrote or spoke Will's surname, she felt the contradiction acutely – it was so present, so fixed, yet served only to exaggerate the distance Charlie had created. The total lack of presence, let alone any valid connection.

Lydia glanced at Stella, as if unsure as to whether the boy was taking the mickey or, worse, fibbing.

‘Commonly known as Will,' Will said, apologetically, stepping back just behind his mother, not daring to catch her eye. At least he'd saved his neck. No dungeon for him.

‘I see,' said Lydia. ‘And how old are you?'

‘I am seven and just over a half, Your Ladyship.'

She looked at him warily. ‘I see.'

‘Yes,' said Will, with a sage nod.

‘Come here!' Lydia barked. ‘Will!'

Watching Will walk over to Lady Lydia, Stella recalled how she had felt like Tess first meeting Mrs d'Urberville. Now it was like watching her son take the role of Pip, summoned by Miss Havisham. Thank God Lydia called him Will, not ‘boy'. Stella watched as Lydia stared down her aquiline nose and Will looked up at her in awe tinged with terror.

‘I'm normal size for my age,' he said, nervously.

‘Your hair is preposterous,' Lydia said and, taking him by the upper arm, she led him to the circular table on which a display of lilies and ferns was choking in a vase too small. Keeping a hand on him, she rooted through the stems for one in which the bloom was past its best. She removed it, snapped at a joint below the flower head and squeezed the gluey sap between her fingers. This she then smoothed onto the errant lock of Will's hair, patted it down, tugged it and then lay her hand there for a long moment.

‘That should do it,' she muttered, leaving the broken stem on the table and shooing Will back to his mother. She tapped her nose at Stella – as if she'd imparted an invaluable secret known only to the landed gentry.

‘The carriage house apartment,' she said, ‘and Clarence's place.'

‘Yes,' said Stella.

‘It is Art's day off. And I don't do those stairs any more. So I have asked Mr Fletcher to show you what you need to see.'

‘Mr Fletcher?' Stella wasn't sure whether she baulked or reddened or how visible either might have been.

‘Yes?' Lydia regarded her sternly. ‘You've met him. Xander.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Stella, ‘I know who he is. He was the one who accosted me in your garden.'

‘For which, I am sure, he has since apologized.'

Stella thought about him. Had he? Hardly.

Lydia looked at her watch. 9.14. She waited. 9.15. The doorbell clanged. Moments later, Mrs Biggins was showing Xander Fletcher into the room.

‘Miss Hutton,' he nodded at her. Then he clocked Will and the expression on his face, which he cast to and from the boy to Lydia, could only be described as aghast.

‘Hullo,' Xander said quietly, his eyes scouring the boy's face as if checking for wounds.

‘I'm William Ewan Taylor-Hutton.'

‘I'm Xander Fletcher.' He smiled at the boy, relieved that he appeared unscathed and seemed relatively chirpy. He went over to Lydia to receive his instructions. But he glanced back to Stella and her boy, on whom Lydia's eyes remained fixed.

Will was pulling his ear, having just scratched the back of his head, rubbed his nose into the palm of his hand and quickly given a small cough. Currently he was doing peculiar arm movements as if performing some strange mime. Just then, Lydia and Xander noted he was aping his mother who had been rummaging in her bag, scratching her head, pulling her ear, rubbing her nose and leafing through papers on her clipboard.

‘What
are
you doing, child!' Lydia barked.

Stella sensed Will freeze. And then she noticed Xander freeze too.

‘I was …' Will stammered. ‘I was … My mum told me I had to be her shadow. So I was being her shadow.'

Lydia looked from the boy to his mother, both of them standing there trying desperately to pull a mask of nonchalance over their obvious discomfort. Lydia stared levelly at Stella, imagining all she'd said to Will, prepping him on their way here this morning. Don't touch! Don't speak unless you're spoken to! Don't fidget! Just be my shadow.

Almost eight. With his hair now lying nice and even. Fair and straight. Almost the same. A pretty face. But not the same – how could another face be anywhere near as beautiful? But wide eyed and button nosed and a bloom to the cheek – not dissimilar. Less cherubic. A little skinnier. And older, of course. By a few months.

‘I'm sorry, Your Ladyship,' Will said meekly, with a small bow.

‘I told him not to—'

Lydia swatted the air as if the two of them were intensely annoying. ‘Xander, show them what needs to be seen, would you.'

‘Thank you, Lady Lydia,' said Stella. ‘Shall I come back in, afterwards?'

‘No!' Lydia said, the thought of it apparently appalling her.

‘Thank you for having me, My Lady,' said William, backing out of the room as if unable to turn away from this terrifying aristocrat in her dreamlike surroundings.

Mrs Biggins was at the front door. She handed something to Will. It was an envelope made ingeniously out of a cloth napkin. She patted him on the head and then, just as Stella was passing, Mrs Biggins laid her hand fleetingly on her shoulder. By the time Stella looked round at her, she'd taken it away and was talking quietly to Xander.

‘What's in here!' Will whispered excitedly to his mother as soon as they were outside.

‘I don't know,' said Stella, glancing at Xander.

‘It's shortbread,' Xander told them while Mrs Biggins shut them out. Then he grinned at Will. ‘For sharing. No,' he smiled, ‘don't open it here – I'll show you where.'

Though Stella was familiar now with the house, with the look and smell of the place, the slightly dank feeling of some of the rooms, the dusty celestial light in others, outside was still a mystery. The distances between places so much greater in reality than her memory recalled. The walk from the house, across the drive, up the box-lined pathway to the garden, the route across the lawns to the lavish rhododendrons, in front of which Lord Fortescue gazed out. The expansive undulations of impeccably mown grass. The size of the pond, strewn with lilies. Lake – she would definitely put ‘lake' on the particulars. The long run of wall of the kitchen garden, plotted and pieced into obedient vegetable beds behind which was a forest of fruit canes and cages.

Xander led them a circuitous route from the domestic side of the exterior, through a wooded walk, to what had once been the busy stable block and was now occupied by the two doddery old boys, Art and Mr Tringle. Will walked on beside him, gazing in awe and pointing out everything around him, waiting for direction from Xander whether to go left or right or keep going. This wasn't a back garden, this was a whole county! Stella lagged behind, absorbed, trying to formulate descriptions that would do the place justice.

‘So,' said Xander to Will as they walked. ‘You're Will.'

‘I am,' said Will.

‘Must be boring to give up your Saturday to come and see an old crumbling house.'

‘No, it isn't. And it isn't a house – it's a palace.'

Xander smiled, looked about, realized how he'd grown up taking all this for granted in some ways.

‘The house my mum and I live in – it could fit into a cupboard at Longbridge Hall.'

My mum and I. It certainly made Stella more human.

‘Where do you live?'

‘Oh – in a town called Hertford. In my uncle's house. Not with him, though.'

‘Ah,' said Xander, pointing out a buzzard.

‘I can't wait to eat the shortbread,' said Will.

‘Me too,' said Xander. ‘Not long now.'

Stella caught up with them and Will scampered ahead.

‘Good week?' Xander asked as they walked, because silence seemed to clash with such a beautiful day.

‘Ish,' said Stella, thinking how relieved she'd been to leave the office yesterday, dirty looks striking her between the shoulder blades resulting in a stiff neck and a headache that still lingered. ‘You?'

‘Fine,' said Xander. She asked politely what he did and where he did it. Then she told him about Lydia and the plant sap and Will's hair and the dowager's asperity.

‘God,' said Xander, ‘how could I have forgotten about the
glump
.' He ran his hand over his head, as if he might find vestiges of it there. ‘That's what she calls it – glump.'

‘Is she really a dragon – or is it just her manner?' Stella stopped, her question was sincere. ‘It's just so difficult to tell.'

Xander looked at her. He could say the former, or the latter. Neither were untrue. ‘She doesn't like boys,' he said. Stella looked down as if guilt-stricken for exposing her son. ‘You should have left him at home. Couldn't your husband have looked after him?'

‘I – don't have a husband.' She paused. ‘I'm divorced.' It was the first time she'd qualified her new status. A direct answer to an acceptable question.

‘Oh,' said Xander. He found himself wondering whether his question suddenly seemed intrusive and hostile. ‘Sorry.'

‘That's OK.'

‘I didn't mean to—'

‘It's
fine
,' Stella stressed, slightly snappish. She continued, calmer. ‘I didn't realize bringing Will could be a problem. I should have asked first.'

‘Sorry – that was a bit sharp of me,' said Xander. ‘It's just I know what Lydia can be like.'

‘Did she like you when you were a boy?' Stella asked, thinking how Lydia appeared to like no one.

Xander broadened his shoulders and snorted a little through his nose. ‘Not at first,' he said.

‘What is it with boys?'

He shouldn't really be going into all of this. He should be taking Stella only to the stable yard and on to Clarence's. But he glanced at Will, holding the package of shortbread so carefully, like a ring bearer and his cushion. ‘Edward,' Xander said quietly, turning to face Stella. ‘Her son. Who died.'

Stella suddenly remembered Lydia saying she
had
a son, past tense. ‘How old?'

‘Just seven.'

‘Oh, dear God.' She paused. ‘Did you know him?'

Xander shook his head. ‘Before my time.'

‘How?'

‘Leukaemia.'

‘Just too terrible.'

‘Yes.'

‘But you grew up here?'

‘I did.'

‘Did she terrorize you?' Stella said it gently, not wanting to offend. And actually, her son appeared to be unscathed and seemed rather in awe of Her Ladyship.

Xander acknowledged her tone. ‘Pretty much,' he said. ‘But I was very – close – with Lydia's daughter, Verity, in our childhood. And that was important to Lydia. Useful, you could say.'

‘Sounds very Charles Dickens,' Stella said.

Xander thought about it. ‘You know something? It was.'

‘Very Pip and Estella.'

‘No, not like that at all. Verity was – different.' Xander called ahead to Will. Left! Through there! Straight on and through the archway! ‘Is your name short for Estella?'

‘No. Just Stella.'

They were at the top end of the stable yard, passing under the clock tower, Art and Mr Tringle's quarters on the left. On the right, the three sets of old arched double doors of the coach house in the French grey of the Longbridge estate. The paint flaking and brittle, like tired old horses in need of a groom. Xander walked ahead to the side of the building where exterior stone steps led up steeply to a small grey door at the top. The metal banister bent in some places, rusted in others and occasionally missing all together.

‘Up here?' Stella said. Will and Xander looked at her as if she was a little dim.

‘Can I unwrap the shortbread now?' Will asked.

‘Almost,' Xander laughed.

He had a key in his pocket. He unlocked the door and it creaked open. He let Will in first. Held the door open for Stella next. She had to squeeze by, not anticipating how narrow it was. Had she, she would have turned away from him, gone in with her back to his body. But she didn't think. A hair's breadth between them, close enough for her to notice the few dark hairs on his chest at the opening of his shirt, close enough for him to detect the fragrance of her shampoo.