The House of Vandekar (42 page)

‘Don't expect me to say what a shame,' he said. ‘Do you really give a shit about people like that? Who the hell knows who's who or cares any more? You're you. That's what matters. So you're a Vandekar or you're not a Vandekar … What that old cow said doesn't count. Why don't you stick two fingers up and take your own name back and forget the whole thing? Put it behind you, darling.'

‘I can't,' she said. ‘I tried. I changed my name, I ran away, but it never really worked. It's not what my aunt said. I've learned to live with that. It may be true, it doesn't really matter now.'

‘Then what is it?' he asked her.

‘Come back to the house,' she said.

They went up to the first floor, to the long connecting corridor.

‘Down here,' Nancy said, and turned away from their room.

Every room had a name: ‘Print Room' was on the door in a little gilt cartouche. Nancy tried the handle – it was open. She went in and a maid looked up and said, ‘Oh, good afternoon, madam, I'm just getting the room ready …' She was smoothing the bedcover down and a pile of used linen was heaped in one corner. ‘Please have a look round, I won't be a minute.' The staff were used to guests inspecting other rooms. It was part of the hotel service. ‘It's such a pretty room, isn't it?' She had a pleasant smile.

‘Very pretty,' Nancy said.

David wasn't interested in the decoration. At first he thought the massed prints covering the walls were wallpaper.

The girl gathered her burden of dirty linen and left them, leaving the door open. ‘If you wouldn't mind closing it when you leave,' she said. ‘The new guests are coming around teatime, I think.'

Nancy said, ‘Thank you.'

David came close to her. ‘You're as white as a sheet,' he said. ‘What is it?'

‘I was sleeping here that night,' she said. ‘I'd had tonsilitis and my grandmother moved me downstairs from the nursery. She didn't want the little ones to catch it. This was a guest room. I remember feeling very grown up and grand sleeping in here. She used to come in and read to me or play cards. I'd fallen asleep reading. Something woke me, David. I don't know what it was, but suddenly I was awake and the light was still on. It's so clear, I can feel it all coming back as if it had just happened.'

‘What happened?' he prompted.

She didn't notice the question. ‘I don't know what made me get up. It must have been a noise. It was very late, I remember thinking that. I opened that door there, David. It's a heavy door but I opened it and I looked out. Like this.' She moved across the room and opened the door into the corridor.

‘I heard the clock downstairs strike two,' she said. ‘I was frightened. I'd never been awake in the middle of the night before. And then I saw my mother. It wasn't lit like it is now. The lights were kept low and only a few were switched on.'

‘You saw your mother? What was she doing?'

‘She was walking down the corridor towards me. She had an odd look on her face. A guilty look, but excited somehow … It was horrible. I'd never seen anyone look like that. And then I heard something. I heard a man's voice. I was terrified she'd see me, she was so close, then I heard this voice. “Diana – in here, darling.”

‘I opened the door a crack just as she passed. I saw her but she couldn't see me. She was wearing a floating sort of negligee. I was only a child, David, but I knew that whatever she was doing it was wrong and I wasn't supposed to see. I didn't dare to shut the door in case it made a noise. I was frozen, crouching down, peering through the crack. I couldn't see where she went or who had called her. Not my father, I knew that. It wasn't his voice, and their room was the opposite end of the house.

‘But she wasn't alone. Someone else was out there, watching her. I saw them. I saw them in the shadows, creeping after her.' She stopped and shivered.

‘Who was it?' David asked.

‘That's what's so terrible,' she said at last. ‘I don't know. I just saw this shadow moving, and that's all I can remember. It passed by my door just as she did, but I couldn't see. It was semi-dark, my mother was easy to see because she was wearing white … I don't know whether it was a man or a woman who followed her. I think I was so frightened I shut my eyes …'

She closed the door and leaned against it. ‘She was found dead the next morning.'

‘Christ,' he muttered.

‘Dead,' Nancy repeated. ‘David, whoever was watching her, tracking her down the corridor, I knew they meant something evil, something that was going to hurt her. That's what made me so frightened, that sense of danger … I shut the door at last and went back to bed. I never told anyone. But I've dreamed of it. It's been a nightmare all through my life, and I couldn't ever tell anyone what I saw.'

‘How did she die?'

‘An overdose. Sleeping pills. That's what the inquest said. Of course, I didn't find that out until years later. Suicide, while the balance of her mind was disturbed. But she didn't kill herself. Not after a night spent with whoever the man was. She was killed, and I saw the murderer.'

‘Christ,' he said again. ‘What a trauma for a kid. How old were you?'

‘I was eight,' Nancy answered. ‘I didn't understand what was happening at the time. Grandmother made sure of that. The children stayed upstairs in the nursery – we had a nanny and a governess. Anyone mentioning a word about it would have been sacked on the spot. I heard someone say that but it didn't make sense to me. I never saw a newspaper and the radio was taken away. To be repaired, they said. But I knew something terrible had happened – children feel atmosphere. I remember I was very restless and nervy. My cousins were sent back to London. People seemed to go round on tiptoe. The house was full of whispers, full of fear. I can feel it now. But there was nobody to ask. Just Grandmother coming upstairs every day, making a fuss of me, taking me out for rides on the little pony she gave me. I told you about that … having me down to tea with her alone. And all the time she looked so strange, as if she were holding herself together. I could feel the anger in her and it scared me. I knew it wasn't meant for me, but I was still frightened. Things happened when she was angry and everyone was scared of that.'

‘Your mother,' he said, ‘didn't you know she was dead?'

‘No, not till Grandmother told me. She was often away, and so was my father. I didn't see them for days or weeks sometimes. They lived their own lives. It was different for children then.'

‘What did she say?' he asked. ‘What did she tell you?' He was trying to visualize the world in which she had grown up, where it was possible to hide a mother's death from her child.

‘She took me on her knee,' Nancy said slowly. ‘She never usually did that sort of thing. But she held out her arms and said, “Come here Nancy, come and sit on my lap. There. Now you've got to be a brave girl. Will you be a brave girl?” And I said, “Yes, Grandmother,” and felt myself starting to cry because I was so frightened. And she held me, David, and rocked me in her arms.

‘“Your Mummy's gone to Heaven,” she said. “There, try not to cry. Be brave like you promised. She's gone to Heaven and she's very happy, so you mustn't be sad, Nancy.” I can hear her voice, just as if she was saying it now. And then I said, “Where's Daddy? Has he gone to Heaven too?” And there was that tight look round her mouth. “No darling, he's here. He's just tired and the doctor said he should stay very quiet and rest. So you won't see him for a while. But he sends you his love and a big kiss.” She adored him. He was very good-looking. I've got the old newspaper cuttings of his wedding to my mother. They were both young and glamorous. Mother was nineteen, he was twenty-one. I've got the other cuttings too. “Vandekar heir's wife found dead.”'

David put his arm round her. ‘I want to see them. I want to read them with you. Then we'll burn them. That's a promise.'

She didn't seem to hear. ‘My grandfather didn't like me,' she said. ‘He would visit my cousins and talk to the nanny about them, and pat them or ask Ben, the little boy, how his lessons were getting on, but he didn't take any notice of me.'

David said, ‘Is that why you never mention him? It's always her – she's the one you talk about …'

‘He didn't like me,' Nancy repeated. ‘I heard my grandmother say to him once at Christmas, when I was very little. “Hugo, you shouldn't make it so damned obvious that you prefer Ben and Phyllis. She's not stupid, you know …”

‘“I like them because they're mine.” That's what he said. I didn't understand it, but I felt there was something wrong with me, and I used to keep in the background when he was near, so I wouldn't be noticed. Not that it happened often. We saw very little of him, thank God.

‘I was sent to Ireland with my governess before the inquest on my mother. We stayed in the depths of the country. There were no papers, no radio, not a chance that I'd hear anything. I remember having a lovely time staying in this big house with a river running close by. I can't tell you who the people were – friends of the family I suppose. It was Grandmother's way of protecting me until she knew what was going to happen.'

He saw the tears suddenly well up and overflow.

‘Poor little thing. I see her in that dream, and it's hateful and sickening, but I remember her as she was. So pretty, like a doll, with big eyes and a sweet face. She'd come and kiss me good night. And if they'd been away she'd have presents for me. Even when I was little I felt she was more like a child than one of the grownups. You wouldn't think that a child could feel protective, but I did. Grandmother was strong – she was what made the world safe. My mother was like that fairy you had to shout out loud that you believed in or else she'd die. We went to a pantomime once and all the children had to shout as loud as possible to save the fairy.'

‘I didn't go to pantomimes,' he said.

‘She left me that brooch,' Nancy went on. ‘And her money. She didn't have much, but there was a settlement when she married my father. Her family insisted on it. They were giving the Vandekars the bloodline and the Vandekars had to pay for it. What they didn't realize was that along with the pedigree they were getting the legacy as well.'

She didn't wait for the question. She answered it quickly and defiantly before he could ask. ‘My mother was sick,' she said. ‘She couldn't help it. She had to have men. Any man. That's what my Aunt Fern told me when she threw me out of here. “You could be anyone's brat,” she said. “Not even the boot boy was safe from her.” She was twenty-seven when she died. For all these years I felt I've failed her. I've blamed myself for saying nothing, pretending she'd killed herself when I know in my heart she didn't.'

She had turned away from him. He knew she was crying. He turned her round and put his arms round her. ‘I'm a bit of an ordinary guy and a lot of this sounds like a bloody nightmare, if you ask me. It's not my world, and sure as hell they're not my values or the values I grew up with. But what matters is what it's done to you. You're the most special lady in the world so far as I'm concerned. If you want to know what really happened to your mother, then we'll find out together, OK?'

‘Help me,' she said. ‘I can't go back now. I've got to know the truth. If it's not too late to find out.'

‘It's not,' he assured her. ‘There are people alive who were here when it happened. We'll find them. And we won't go away without answers, I promise you. Now give me a kiss, sweetheart, and then I'm going to get the bill and get the hell out of here.'

He drove her away from Ashton at speed. For all its beauty, the great house was full of rottenness. He couldn't wait to get out and take Nancy away from the place. All that money and snobbery and misery.

They didn't talk much during the drive. He put his foot down and just said, ‘We'll be home soon, darling.'

She nodded. ‘I'll be glad.'

He took her back to his house in Holland Park and as soon as they were safe inside he felt better. It was as if he'd shed a heavy weight. They were back in his environment; he felt master of the situation for the first time since they went away.

He turned Nancy to him. ‘Glad to be back?'

‘Yes, very glad. You've been wonderful, David, you know that?'

‘I'm always wonderful,' he retorted, and was thankful to see her smile. He kissed her and she responded, opening her lips to him, grasping him close to her. He wasn't deceived and he didn't mind. The passion of despair, not desire. It wasn't time for that, not yet. He eased her away and said, ‘You put your feet up, and I'm going to get you a nice gin and tonic.'

‘David –' she began.

But he wouldn't listen. ‘I won't be long.'

They'd have got on, she thought, imagining him and Alice together. Alice valued loyalty above anything else. It was a quality she possessed in abundance herself. Loyalty and courage.

He came back with the drink and sat beside her.

‘She must have known she was going to die,' Nancy said suddenly. ‘My grandmother, I mean. She'd made a will only a few months before. When she gave me the envelope she knew. The will mentioned it and said I was to open it after her death. I try not to think about that day, David. It was as if the world had come to an end. She was having tea in her sitting room – that lovely Wedgwood room I showed you – and suddenly she collapsed. I wasn't there, but I heard my grandfather shouting, and everyone came running. I saw her lying on the sofa. There was a look on her face as if she was in terrible pain. My grandfather was kneeling beside her, holding her hand, and poor old Lily had hobbled in – I could hear her sobbing. Then the expression on my grandmother's face changed. It just stopped, like that. Wiped clean. She was dead.'