The Chandelier Ballroom (11 page)

No, she hadn’t known. No one had told her. Instantly the thought came of what her mother said she’d seen. But she’d described a woman. Even so, it brought a shudder, and as Jennifer left she rang Arnold. His secretary said he was out of his office for the rest of the day at a meeting.

On tenterhooks and unable to settle, she counted the hours until he’d arrive home, and the moment he walked in the door, weary but as cheerful as a cricket, before he could even kiss her cheek hello, she tackled him on what Jennifer Wainwright had told her.

‘Did you know?’ she burst out, gabbling in her pent-up anxiety. ‘I rang you but you were out. Your secretary said you’d be out of the office with clients all day. She put the phone down before I could tell her to let you know I’d rung. Obviously she didn’t or you’d have rung back.’

She didn’t much care for Gillian, his secretary. She had met her last Christmas at his office party and hadn’t liked the way she had hung around him the whole time. But at this moment her mind was not on his secretary.

‘I needed to talk to you so urgently,’ she complained now. ‘Did you know that the man who had this house before us was drowned in our very own pond?’

She hadn’t realised she’d not given him his usual homecoming kiss, having worked herself up into a stew for half a day, and instantly interpreted his surprise for one of concealment.

‘You already knew, didn’t you?’ she challenged as she saw him nibble uncertainly at his lower lip.

‘I should have told you, love. But you’d have got yourself into a state, just as you have now. How much did she tell you?’

Tears filled her eyes. ‘Everything! She told me everything! What everyone here believes. That it was suicide. She was surprised I didn’t know. But you knew. And you never told me. When were you told? Who told you?’

‘Hold on, love!’ He was attempting to soothe, moving to the cloak cupboard to hang up his coat. ‘It was that couple we met when we went across to the pub for a celebration drink when we first moved in, you remember.’

He was making a meal of his explanation, speaking far too casually.

‘All that time ago! And you never said a word. Why didn’t you tell me then?’ She was trembling, shaken by what she now realised were the true facts. Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘Why didn’t you tell me then?’

He was trying to calm her, his tone even, his hand held out towards her.

‘Darling, you’re letting your imagination run away with you,’ he began as she shrugged away from the outstretched arm. ‘People here just assumed it to have been suicide. Just talk, speculation. It’s what those in villages tend to do and you shouldn’t take any notice. The police concluded it was an accident and they should know. Anyway, it was a few years ago, all over and done with.’

But it wasn’t over and done with. How could she explain the strange feeling she got from that room, her eyes ever searching for what her mother had seen? He said she was letting her imagination run away with her after what she’d heard from that scaremongering Wainwright woman. But she wasn’t. Her mother had seen something, had sensed the same eeriness she felt about that room. They couldn’t both be wrong.

Maybe it was best to keep her views to herself, let him think she had taken his advice and put it behind her. She tried to tell herself she
was
imagining things, her fear based on pure rumour. But the room with its great chandelier remained disquieting. In fact, even to go through it to the conservatory would put her on edge. Not that she ever saw anything herself.

Was she just being foolish, yielding to a vivid imagination as Arnold had said? The rest of the house was charming and she loved it. It was just that room. She tried hard to tell herself that there was no logical reason for it, except for the seed Jennifer had sewn in her mind, and perhaps she
was
being overimaginative, but then there was her mother. Could two people get the same strange sensation from the same part of the house? Maybe she was being silly, for it was only her mother who had seen something strange, no one else. Yet that was no consolation, it was still there with her.

Their second anniversary saw their families down once more to celebrate, Arnold and his father taking time off from their office, Joyce’s father with his own business also able to get away.

This time her mother seemed not to notice anything odd about the room whose chandelier still took centre stage, even passing a remark that Arnold was right not to get rid of it.

‘It makes the room,’ she observed lightly as they went through to the conservatory for lunch rather than out to the patio, it being a cloudy day. Joyce felt nothing either. The big room was just fine and she vowed not to allow Jennifer Wainwright to scare her ever again.

Summer melted into autumn. Still with no recurrence of that odd sensation in the room, slowly Joyce forgot about the episodes. Jennifer had never again made any mention of the suicide business. Anyway, so much was going on. They were entertaining much more these days, friends Arnold knew mostly, and family of course. Having holidayed in Italy for two weeks in September, she felt rejuvenated. She and Jennifer had become firm friends, there were WI outings to go on, but often just the two of them would drive off somewhere for the day in Jennifer’s car. The shortening autumn days and the fact that it was dark before Arnold came home from the office no longer bothered her. She had Jennifer now.

Autumn drifted into winter. A week before Christmas, Joyce was expected to attend Arnold’s father’s usual office party, as she had since becoming Arnold’s fiancée. She’d found it hard work then and it was still not her cup of tea, still uncomfortable talking with people she hardly knew, and as always she had dreaded this one.

Now she stood awkwardly to one side, the dregs of the same glass of champagne she had started with warming in her hand, aware that she would have to take another ready for the usual toasts. Those about her gathered in conversational groups, the talk seeming to be mostly of recent dire events – King Edward giving up the throne for that dreadful Mrs Simpson, the fascist Hitler threat in Germany and the Mosleyites in the East End, the great Crystal Palace fire, such a pity after all its prestigious years. They hardly noticed her, though Arnold’s father Howard and his wife did come over to talk to her for a while until called away. She felt isolated.

Arnold had once or twice come to see if she was all right. She had told him each time that she was fine and he had walked away after telling her she should mix a little, seeming to feel that his advice would do the trick. At the moment he seemed well occupied with his immediate staff, two young men and three young women, one of them apparently the copy typist, one very young girl who was probably a filing clerk, and the third one Arnold’s secretary Gillian. It was she to whom Arnold seemed to chat mostly, and from her corner Joyce eyed her cautiously.

Gillian Daniels was slender, in her twenties, maybe a year or two older than herself. In fact Joyce thought she had a rather mature look, fair hair permanently waved, the curls framing the heart-shaped face. She was extremely pretty, Joyce noted with a stab of jealousy, and very confident. The more she watched the way Arnold was talking to her, far nearer to her than he should be, laughing with her, touching her arm every now and again to convey some point or other, looking into her eyes or so it seemed, the more that jealousy mounted and with it a vague anger which she told herself was sheer annoyance at the immature way he was behaving. But deep inside, she knew it was anger. All the way home in their car, it simmered inside her until as they approached their own home Arnold made the mistake of glancing at her, frowning.

‘Are you all right, darling? You’re being very quiet.’

He’d been talking incessantly about how well the party had gone, how much it has cost and how successful it had been compared to other years, to which she had hardly responded until finally he too had gone quiet, concentrating on his driving.

Now he apparently needed to tackle her on her persistent silence. ‘Is something wrong, my sweet? Are you not feeling well? You’ve been very withdrawn all evening.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ she remarked in the classic statement used by all women when hurt.

‘I’m sure there is,’ he insisted, turning his eyes to the road. ‘I can feel it. I tried to bring you out, tried to get you talking to others. My parents even came over to talk to you, but you persisted in standing to one side on your own the whole evening. I don’t know what others must have thought.’

‘You know I’m not good at parties,’ she said simply.

It was cold. The smell of snow was in the air and all she wanted was to get home, enjoy a warming cup of Horlicks, go to bed and forget the evening.

‘I can’t pretend to be sociable when I’m not at ease. And I wasn’t.’

‘Why not?’

Joyce hesitated. How could she tell him why? What she had said was partly the truth, but seeing him nodding sagely at his secretary’s every word, laughing uproariously whenever the need called for it as though it had come from the lips of some great wit, had spoiled any interest she might have had in taking part in the small talk around her. She thought quickly. ‘I didn’t know anyone well enough to barge into their private conversations.’

‘Even so,’ he persisted, making her fingers screw up, ‘you could have made an effort, or … well … anything …’

He let his voice trail off as he swung the car into the drive and she was glad he said no more about it as they got ready for bed, though he too had become unusually quiet. Hardly saying goodnight as they slipped beneath the warm covers, he didn’t even kiss her before turning over, his back to her.

The moment his head touched the pillows, his breathing grew regular and deep. She continued to lie awake watching the shadows of trees being cast upon the cream-coloured walls by a frosty moon that every now and again escaped the fast-moving, snow-laden clouds.

Like some bad dream her mind churned over what had seemed to her his excessive friendliness towards his pretty secretary. Finally she did drop off, sleep proving a healer so that by morning she was already scolding herself for her foolishness. Arnold was true as any husband could be, kind and generous and he loved her. She had been the one at fault.

By Christmas Day, their third in this house, she had put it out of her mind completely, her thoughts taken up by both their parents spending Christmas Day with them, Arnold’s parents going on to their son Howard and his family for Boxing Day, taking Douglas and his wife and children with them, which was a relief to her.

She had dreaded the children coming but could not really object without appearing petty. Fortunately they were put to bed early, to her intense relief, wearied by their energetic excitement over their toys, she having to move all breakables discreetly out of reach.

The evening saw her mother-in-law, quite a decent pianist though her touch was a little on the heavy side, entertaining them with a few nocturnes and etudes, a good deal slower than Chopin had ever intended. Arnold’s father recited an endless string of Kipling poems in his rich baritone. Worn out trying to be sociable, she was glad to finally go to bed, the women going up earlier than the men, leaving them downstairs to talk into the small hours, smoking and discussing business and the world situation.

Friday saw her own parents depart, giving her and Arnold the weekend to themselves to quietly unwind, the radiogram playing, her own worries and suspicions fading like summer-warmed clouds. They were spending the New Year alone too, she having insisted and Arnold apparently only too happy to go along with her, making her feel that 1937 would find them at one with each other even if the rest of the world seemed in turmoil.

The disconcerting feelings she’d had about parts of her house during the year seemed to have faded too. If her mother still had such feelings she had not once mentioned them at Christmas, so probably it had all been imagined, her mother putting ideas into her head by reading something into it that wasn’t there.

She looked forward to spring and all the things they would do together, swimming again once the pool was cleared of winter’s ravages, the tennis court rid of moss that had grown during the cold weather. She would spend time overseeing the pruning of the trees that obscured the lovely long views of countryside and having the drooping stems of climbing roses retrained. She would replant the kitchen garden and tend the shrubs lining the driveway. Yes, she couldn’t wait for spring.

At that moment she could never have foreseen that this coming year would change her life forever.

It was wonderful to feel the spring air again, balmy and full of life, all the bad news that was in the world going over her head with the arrival of bright long days. In January Arnold took her to Sadler’s Wells to see
Giselle
danced by Margot Fonteyn, her debut replacing the famous Alicia Markova. Joyce found herself virtually in tears at Fonteyn’s heart-breaking depiction of a girl going slowly mad, to die for love of her prince, young Robert Helpmann, rising from her grave an ethereal spirit, so much so that it tore a wavering sob from Joyce’s lips. If I lost Arnold’s love, came the overwhelming thought, I’d go mad. I think I would die too.

So enthralled was she with the rendering by the graceful new prima ballerina, who seemed to float rather than dance as if not made of flesh and blood at all, that the very thought of losing Arnold became only too real. Though the magic lingered long after they’d left the theatre, the dismal feeling that had gripped her during the performance did eventually fade.

She told Jennifer Wainwright all about it when they met over coffee, going into such detail that Jennifer finally had to disguise a yawn.

‘I’m afraid I’m not that interested in ballet and opera,’ she said, apologetically patting her lips. ‘Now a comedy film or a good thriller … I’m more James Cagney, Gary Cooper or Bob Hope.’

Fancy not liking ballet! Jennifer was a philistine! But Joyce forgave her. One thing she was grateful for was that she had never again mentioned that suicide, though from time to time it still haunted Joyce, just a little.