The Hardie Inheritance (8 page)

‘I was thinking last night,' he said. ‘I would very much like to take some photographs of your sculptures. An album. As a token of gratitude for your co-operation over the house. There won't be time during this visit. But if I might be allowed to return, in five or six weeks, say …?'

‘I'd like that very much indeed. How very kind. Tell me about some of these modernist sculptors.' She still could not think of her work as sculpture, and certainly not of herself as a sculptor, but that might be only because she had no mental picture of what a sculptor might be. In the course of an inadequate education her governess had told her about Michelangelo but had never been able to produce any illustrations of his work. Now she felt enraged by her own ignorance, and passionately interested in whatever her guest could tell her.

No longer did she feel regret at giving up her own work for a day, or guilt at not doing more to help her mother. This was the first time in her life that anyone had talked to her in such a way – willing to instruct without showing any condescension to such an unsophisticated listener. Ellis even taught her some of the techniques of photography, allowing her to take a few exposures herself. She had expected her heart and mind to be troubled by thoughts of Andy throughout the day, but instead discovered when evening came that she had not given him a thought since the Faradays arrived.

For the first time in many years, the evening meal was taken
in the dining room. Ellis had uncovered its mahogany furniture in preparation for the next day. Trish had already been given a high tea and put to bed, her father guaranteeing that she would feel no nervousness at finding herself alone in a strange room. ‘It happens too often, I'm afraid, and she's learned to treat it as an adventure. My housekeeper in our London flat is always willing to care for her when I have to travel, but I feel easier to have her in my sight.'

‘Your wife –?' asked Mrs Hardie.

Grace bit her lip in self-reproach. She ought to have mentioned to her mother in advance that Mr Faraday would not want to discuss his wife.

‘We're divorced,' Ellis told her.

‘Forgive me. I shouldn't … In such cases, I've heard, any child usually stays with the mother, so I thought …'

‘My wife was adjudged to be the guilty party.' Ellis raised his chin to show that he was resolved to make the situation plain. ‘In fact, though, the fault was mine. I had been inattentive, so it was hardly surprising that she looked for pleasure elsewhere. But the man she wished to marry had no desire to bring up someone else's child, so it seemed simpler for her to accept the blame in order that the custody of our daughter should be awarded to me. All past history now.'

Mrs Hardie hurried to make up for her tactlessness by asking her guest to describe some of the other houses which his father had designed, and the evening passed as pleasantly as the day. It was at a much later hour than usual that Grace made her way up the spiral stairs which led to her tower bedroom. Her mind was still on photography and architecture as she opened the door – which made the shock all the greater as she saw Andy standing inside the room.

‘Andy! What are you doing here? You shouldn't –'

‘I couldn't keep away.' He came towards her, his arms outstretched. ‘All day I've been waiting to see you again. Couldn't think of anything else.' Now he was almost touching her, and with half of her mind Grace wanted to feel herself
pulled into his arms. But the other half was stronger. She put up a hand to stop him.

‘No. It's not right. We mustn't.'

‘But last night–'

‘You took me by surprise last night. It was wonderful. And I was glad … It was a proper finish, in a way, to something that was untidy.' Grace knew that she was incapable of explaining exactly what she meant. Andy had disappeared from her life all those years ago in an unsatisfactory way. Had he been killed in the war, she would have grieved over his death but without feeling that her own inadequacy was somehow responsible for it. But the knowledge that he could have returned but was held in France by a wife and baby had been harder to bear. She had not, at their last parting, said a proper goodbye; but she could say it now. ‘You're married, Andy. It would be wrong.'

‘She'll never know.'

‘That doesn't make it less wrong. And anyway, think of it from my point of view. You'll be here for a week or two more, perhaps, and then you'll go back to France. I can't spend the rest of my life wondering when you're next coming to visit your mother – just hoping.' It was as the cock crowed that morning that Grace had realized that the decision must be her own. If she did what Andy wanted – whatever that might be – she was certain in the end to find herself not just lonely but guilty. Only by sending him away at once could she retain her self-respect, even though the price would be unhappiness.

Andy took no notice. Perhaps he thought that she wanted to be overruled, to be physically forced into a surrender which she could pretend was against her real wishes. Perhaps he was right! The shame of that thought spurred her to resist as he held her close, kissed her, pressed her back against the wall of the tower room, as yesterday he had pressed her against the boulder.

She was as tall as he was, and very nearly as strong. Strong enough, certainly, to show him that her struggle to escape
from his arms was more than a token. Pushing him off, she ran to the far side of the room and stood there, panting with the effort.

‘Don't you see, Andy, we've got no right. We'd never be able to meet again, if … Oh Andy, I do love you. You know that. I'm glad about yesterday. But it mustn't ever happen again. And we must both
know
that it won't. Please go away. Go away now.'

It was a battle of wills, and Grace's was the stronger. Andy's freckled face paled with disappointment: perhaps with anger as well. For a few moments he seemed to be struggling to speak. But as though recognizing that no argument would change her mind, he turned abruptly away and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Mrs Hardie remained unwilling to return to the house in which she had been brought up, but ten days after Rupert Beverley's first visit to Greystones, his chauffeur returned to collect Grace for her visit to Castlemere. The rush of the wind in her hair as the motor car sped along the narrow lanes was thrilling enough to someone whose usual speed was that of foot or bicycle; and her excitement increased as they turned off the road through an entrance guarded by two lodges and a pair of high wrought-iron gates painted in black and gold.

A choice of two drives presented itself almost immediately. The chauffeur took the steeper and narrower of the two, climbing up the side of a hill until they were brought to a halt by a figure on horseback.

‘Stand and deliver!' called Lord Rupert. Swinging himself off the horse, he tossed the reins to the chauffeur. ‘Welcome to Castlemere, Cousin Grace. You're to see it first from a distance. I forgot to tell you to wear sensible shoes' – he glanced down at her feet as he helped her down from the motor car – ‘but you have anyway. Jolly good. This way then. It's not far.'

Grace smiled to herself as she followed the bridlepath which her young host indicated. Only a few days earlier she had insisted in much the same way that Ellis Faraday should enjoy a view of Greystones from far enough away to appreciate the whole design of the building. But there was to be no other resemblance between the two occasions. As a little girl she had thought of Greystones as a palace; but Castlemere was a palace indeed.

Surrounded by a moat on which swans lazily floated, the house enclosed a courtyard spacious enough for half of it to be in sunshine even though the building was four storeys high. Around the central fountain a parterre was laid out in patterns outlined by box hedges and filled with herbs. At each corner of the house rose a turret whose grey slate roof was pitched as sharply as the point of a pencil. Grace, who had once spent six months in France, recognized the style even before she was given an explanation of it.

‘The family had a Tudor home near here, on the river,' Rupert told her. ‘This one's only about two hundred years old. The marquess of the time fell in love with a Frenchwoman. But she – the story goes – had heard terrible things about English houses. So my ancestor ordered a house to be built that was stone for stone the same as her father's. Monsieur le Due was so delighted when he saw the plans that he handed over not only his daughter but cratefuls of Louis Quinze furniture to make the rooms look right. I'll show you. Would you like to get back in the car now and I'll join you there.'

Riding his horse by a more direct route across the deer park, Rupert had already handed it over to a groom before the car arrived at the bridge which crossed the moat.

‘I expect you'll want to freshen up after the drive,' he said. ‘And then have a cool drink to get the dust out of your throat.' Inside the house a maid bobbed in curtsy to indicate that Grace should follow her upstairs. By the time she was shown down again a footman was pouring ice and lemonade into tall glasses.

‘My parents asked me to present their apologies,' her host explained. ‘I specially chose a day when I knew they'd be at the races so that I could show you the house as though it were mine. If they'd been at home, we'd have had to waste hours in polite family chat. My mother's a great one for family trees. She would have explained to you exactly who your ancestors were, without stopping to consider that you might know already. So what I thought was, an hour looking round inside, a glass of champagne before luncheon, and a walk round the
outer gardens – the ones outside the moat – afterwards. Then a rest, if you need one, before tea. But tell me first what most interests you. I mean, pictures, furniture, silver, china, that kind of thing. We've got special collections that could take a day each to study, but I don't want to bore you.'

‘There's too much to take in,' said Grace ruefully. ‘I'd just like to get a general impression of the house itself, and the rooms in it. Not looking in too much detail at individual items. Except perhaps family portraits: that would be interesting. And do you have any statues?' It was Ellis Faraday's claim that she was a sculptor which had made her curious to study what sculptors in other centuries had produced.

‘Hundreds. Italian copies of Roman copies of Greek originals, mostly. They're in the gardens and the orangery, so we'll see them in the afternoon session. Right then, off we go. We'll start at the top.'

Doors opened silently in front of them as they made their way to the stone-flagged hall from which rose a double spiral staircase of extraordinary elegance and complexity. Grace felt her fingers twitching as she tried to work out its construction as though she were about to copy it in clay. But all her concentration was needed to keep up with her companion's flow of information.

‘Some oddities, you'll find, in the way things are arranged. Beverleys never throw anything away. So of course they kept all the furniture and panelling and such from the Tudor house. Just tucked it away on the top floor of the new building to make way for the French stuff. There can't be many places where something that looks like a French chateau has an Elizabethan long gallery, I don't imagine. Now, let me introduce you to the family.'

The panelled walls were covered with portraits, of every period from the sixteenth century to the present day. Rupert took them in order, giving brief biographies of those who were particularly distinguished or profligate and identifying others merely by their number in the line: the third earl, the seventh
marquess. Grace felt no great interest in them as individuals until they arrived at Rupert's great-grandfather – and her own.

He had been painted late in life. Grace stared at the heavy, expressionless face. She had met him only once, when she was a baby: the occasion had been described to her, but she had no memory of it. This large, white-haired gentleman had picked her from her cot and listened in dismay to the wheezing of her asthmatic chest, before giving orders that she should be moved at once from marshy Oxford to one of the hills which surrounded the city. According to her mother, he had saved her life. It seemed wrong that she should not remember him – wrong, too, that he should have been portrayed here with no sign of sympathy or affection in his expression.

‘Nobody smiles,' she exclaimed in surprise. ‘All these portraits, and not a smile amongst them.'

‘It wouldn't be properly dignified, would it? And I suppose it's difficult holding a smile for as long as it takes to paint it. I mean, smiling alters the whole shape of the face, doesn't it?' He turned towards her, grinning in different, ridiculous ways until they were both laughing.

Next to the old marquess hung a portrait of a young woman. Tall and slender, she was wearing what in the eighteen-sixties must have been fancy dress, making the picture look like a Gainsborough – except that her hair was not powdered, but hung in golden ringlets. Her eyes were blue, her lips were rosy, her complexion fair. ‘What a beauty!' exclaimed Grace: and Rupert answered, ‘Your grandmother.'

Grace stared at the portrait for a long time without speaking.

‘My mother was beautiful in just the same way when she was young,' she said at last. ‘Indeed, I remember her very much like that when I was a small girl and she had had six children. It's always seemed unfair that I should inherit nothing from her or my grandmother except my height.' Grace's hair was black and straight. Her eyes were dark, her skin almost white. Although she was as slim as her mother had been, or the young woman in the portrait, it was a straighter slimness, lacking the
curves which seemed essential to feminine grace. To prevent her cousin from feeling forced to produce a polite compliment, she turned hastily to another of the paintings. ‘This looks more modern.'