The Lake House (45 page)

He'd listened all right then, his breaths as hot as a dragon's, and when she finished, he'd said gruffly, “I'll put someone on it,” and hung up in her ear. There'd been nothing more to do after that, other than to wait, and hope he felt inclined to give her the courtesy of a phone call to let her know what they'd uncovered.

And so, here she was. Sadie had to admit there were worse places to kill time. The house was different in the afternoon. With the changed angle of the sun, it was as if the whole place had breathed a sigh of settlement. The frenetic morning activity of the birds and the insects had ceased, the roof was stretching and cracking its warm joints with habitual ease, and the light that streamed through the windows was slow and satisfied.

Sadie poked about in Anthony's study for a while. His anatomy textbooks were still on the shelf above his desk, his name written neatly, hopefully, on the frontispiece, and in his bottom drawer she found his school prizes: first in Classics, Latin Hexameters and countless others. There was a photograph hidden in the dark back corner, a group of young men in scholars' gowns and caps, one of whom she recognised as a very young Anthony. The fellow standing next to him, laughing, was featured again in a framed studio portrait on the top of Anthony's desk, a soldier with wild black hair and an intelligent face. A sprig of rosemary had been placed beneath the glass, held in position by the firm setting of the frame, but Sadie could tell by its brittle brown colour it would crumble to dust and be blown away if released. There was a framed photograph of Eleanor on the desk, too, standing in front of a stone building. Sadie picked it up to have a closer look. The picture had been taken in Cambridge, she guessed, where they'd lived before Anthony surprised his wife with the rescue and return of Loeanneth.

Anthony's journals filled a whole shelf of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase against the far wall, and Sadie selected a few at random. She quickly became engrossed, reading until the dying light made her eyes strain. The entries gave no indication whatsoever that Anthony was harbouring murderous intentions. On the contrary, they were filled with his earnest attempts to “fix' himself; his self-reproach for having let down his wife, his brother, his nation; and page after page of memory games, just like Clive had said, as he tried to force his fractured mind back together again. The guilt he felt for having survived when others had not was all-consuming; his letters to Howard, his lost friend, were heartbreaking. Simple, elegant descriptions of what it was to live, as he put it,
beyond one
's usefulness
, to feel that one's life was an undeserved prize, stolen at the expense of others.

Expressions of the gratitude he felt towards Eleanor, and his deep shame in himself, were hard to read, but worse were the whispered descriptions of his terror that he would accidentally harm the people he loved most in the world.
You, dear friend, more than any other, know I'm capable of that.
(Why? Sadie frowned. Did it mean anything, or was Anthony simply saying that his friend knew him well?)

It was clear, too, that Anthony's inability to qualify as a surgeon plagued him.
It was the only thing in my mind
, he wrote,
after what happened in France. The only way I could make it right was to ensure my survival mattered, to get home to England, to work as a doctor, and help more people than I'd harmed.
But he hadn't, and Sadie felt desperately sorry for him. Her own brief taste of living without the work she loved had been punishing enough.

She turned around in the stiff wooden swivel chair to take in the rest of the dim room. It was a lonely space, sad and stale. She tried to imagine what it must have been like for Anthony, confined to such a place with only his demons and disappointments for company, frightened always that they'd overcome him. He was right to be fearful, too, for in the end that was just what happened.

Because of course Theo's death must have been an accident. Even if Ben Munro was Theo's father, and even if Anthony had learned of Eleanor's infidelity and been filled with a jealous rage, to kill his wife's child was about as heinous as a crime could be. People changed, life happened, but Sadie just wasn't able to believe it of him. Anthony's self-awareness, his anxiety that he might be capable of violence, the lengths to which he'd gone to prevent it, surely contradicted Clive's theory that he'd committed such a devastating crime on purpose. Theo's parentage was irrelevant. The timing, Theo's death and Anthony's discovery of his wife's affair, were a coincidence. Sadie frowned. Coincidence. That pesky word again.

She sighed and stretched. The long summery dusk had started to fall. Crickets had begun their evening chant in the hidden spaces of the sunburned garden and shadows within the house were lengthening. The day's warmth had pooled and was sitting now, still and thick, waiting for the cool of night to sweep it away. Sadie closed the journal and put it back into its place on the shelf. Shutting the door to Anthony's study quietly behind her, she crept downstairs to retrieve her torch. A quick shine of the light on her phone's screen—still nothing—and then she headed back up to Eleanor's writing bureau.

She had no idea, really, what she was looking for; she only knew that she was missing something and Eleanor's letters were the best place she could think of to look for it. She would start before Theo was born and read everything in the hope that along the way she'd find the vital piece of information, the lens through which all the rest would suddenly reveal itself as linked. Rather than read by correspondent, she went chronologically, starting with Eleanor's triplicate, and then finding and reading the relevant reply.

It was slow going, but Sadie had time to fill, nowhere else to be, and a deep desire for distraction. She forced the Bailey case and Ashford out of her mind and let Eleanor's world come to life instead. It was clear that Eleanor's love for Anthony was the defining relationship of her life, a great love shadowed by the relentless horror and confusion of his awful condition. In letter after letter to doctor after doctor, she made continued pleas for help, her tone always cordial, her determination to find a cure undimmed.

But behind the polite entreaties, Eleanor was in agony, a fact made plain in her letters to Daffyd Llewellyn. For a long time he alone was entrusted with the topic of Anthony's diminishment and distress. The girls didn't know, and neither, it seemed—except in the case of a few notable, trusted exceptions—did the servants. Nor did Constance, with whom Eleanor, and Daffyd Llewellyn, too, apparently, shared a longstanding enmity.

Eleanor had made Anthony a promise, she wrote on more than one occasion, that she would keep his secret, and there was no question of breaking her word. For everyone else she had created a fantasy in which she and her husband were without a care: she busy with the running of the house; he occupied by his studies of the natural world and production of a Great Work. She wrote chatty missives to their few acquaintances about life at Loeanneth, filled with funny, sometimes poignant, observations of her daughters,
each more eccentric than the one who came before
.

Sadie admired Eleanor's stubborn insistence, even as she shook her head at the maddening impossibility of the task she'd set herself. Daffyd Llewellyn, too, had urged her to be honest with those around her, particularly, in early 1933, when her concerns took a worrying turn. She was anxious as always for Anthony, but now she feared, too, for her baby son, whose birth, she said, had triggered something terrible in her husband's mind.

A deep trauma had resurfaced, memories of a horrifying experience he'd had during the war when his best friend Howard had been lost.
It
's as if it has all snowballed. He resents his good fortune, and regrets deeply his inability to work as a doctor, and somehow it has all become confused with his memories of the war, with one “incident' in particular. In his sleep I hear him crying, calling out that they must go, that they must keep the dog and the baby quiet.

And then, some weeks later:
As you know, Daffyd, I have been making my own quiet enquiries for some time. It had perplexed me when I could find no mention of Howard on the honour roll, so I dug a little deeper, and oh, Daffyd, it's awful! He was shot at dawn, the poor man, by our own army! I found a fellow who'd served in the same regiment as Howard and Anthony and he told me: Howard had been trying to desert and Anthony stopped him. My poor love must have thought he could keep it quiet, but evidently another officer got involved and things turned out as they did. The man I spoke with told me Anthony took it very hard and, knowing Anthony as I do, I'm certain he will have blamed himself just as surely as if he'd been the one to pull the trigger.

Knowing the reason behind Anthony's night terrors didn't explain why they should be increasing at that time, however, and didn't help Eleanor with the difficult task of soothing and steering him back to reality. He adored baby Theo, she wrote, and the fear that he might inadvertently harm him was causing him to despair and even, in his darkest moments, to talk about “ending it all.”
I cannot let him
, Eleanor wrote.
I cannot allow the hope and promise of that tremendous man to end in such a way. I must find how to fix things. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that only by talking about what happened to Howard will he finally have a chance to escape the terrors that stalk him. I plan to ask him about “the incident' myself, I
must
, but not until everything is settled here. Not until everyone is safe.

Throughout it all, the one light in Eleanor's existence, her single place of respite, was her relationship with Ben. Evidently she'd told Daffyd Llewellyn about Ben, and in turn she'd confided in Ben about Anthony's state of mind. There was something about Ben's itinerant nature, Eleanor had written, his lack of roots, that made him the perfect person with whom to share her secret.
Not that we discuss it often, you mustn't think that. There is so much else to talk about. He has travelled so far and wide, his childhood is like a treasure trove of anecdotes about people and places and I am greedy for them all. A form of vicarious escape, if only for a while. But on occasion when I simply have to free myself of my burden, he is the only one, aside from you, dear Daffyd, in whom I can trust. Talking to him is like writing in the sand
or shouting into the wind. His nature is so elemental that I know I can tell him anything and it will go no further.

Sadie wondered how Ben had felt about Anthony's condition—in particular, the possible threat he posed to Eleanor and to baby Theo.
His
baby, after all. The letter Sadie had found in the boathouse made it clear that Ben had known the boy was his child. She fingered the pile of letters to Eleanor from Ben. To this point Sadie had avoided reading them. Poring over someone else's love letters had felt like crossing a line. Now, though, it seemed she had to take a peek.

She took more than a peek. She read them all. And when she reached the last letter the room was pitch-black and the house and garden so quiet she could hear the distant rolling of the sea. Sadie closed her eyes. Her brain was both weary and wired, a strange marriage of contradictory states, and everything she'd seen and read and heard and thought that day tumbled together. Alice telling Bertie about the tunnel entrance near the boathouse; Clive and his boat—“the easiest way to get between here and there . . . you can go the whole way without glimpsing another soul'; Eleanor's promise to Anthony and her concerns for Theo; Ben's stories of his childhood.

She thought, too, of Maggie Bailey and the things a person would do to save their child from harm; of Caitlyn, and the way Gemma had smiled down at her; of Rose Waters, and the keen love a person could feel for a child who wasn't their own. She pitied Eleanor, who'd lost Theo, Ben and Daffyd Llewellyn within a week of each other. And she kept coming back to Alice's description of her mother:
She believed that a promise, once made, should be kept
 . . .

It wasn't so much the discovery of a single clue, as the coming together of many small details. That moment when the sun shifts by a degree and a spider's web, previously concealed, begins to shine like fine-spun silver. Because suddenly Sadie could see how it all connected and she knew what had happened that night. Anthony hadn't killed Theo. Not on purpose, not by accident, not at all.

T
hirty-two

Cornwall, 23 June 1933

Out in the middle of the lake, the bonfire burned. Orange flames leapt jagged against the night-starred sky, and birds cut black above. Constance loved Midsummer. It was one of the few traditions of her husband's family with which she held. She'd always appreciated an excuse for a party, and the fires and lanterns, the music and dancing, the shedding of inhibitions, made it especially exciting. Constance had never cared a jot for all the superstitious talk the deShiels spouted about renewals and transitions, the warding off of evil spirits, but this year she wondered whether perhaps there might be something in it. Tonight Constance intended to undertake a momentous renewal of her own. After almost forty years, she had decided, at last, to let go of an ancient enmity.

Her hand went to her heart. The old ache was still there, lodged within her ribcage like a peach stone. After decades spent suppressing the memories, they came often these days. Strange the way she could forget what she'd eaten for dinner the night before, only to find herself right back in the frantic swirl of that room, that early morning as dawn was breaking outside and her body splintering inside. The gormless housemaid dithering with the flaccid cloth, Cook's sleeves pushed up to her raw elbows, coals spitting in the fireplace. There'd been men in the corridor, debating as to What Should Be Done, but Constance hadn't listened; their voices had been drowned out by the sound of the sea. The wind had blown ill that morning and as people started to move in the liminal dark around her, a confusion of rough hands and sharp voices, Constance had disappeared beneath the relentless heave and pound of the hateful waves. (How she despised that sound! Even now, it threatened to drive her mad.)

Afterwards, in the wasteland of weeks that followed, Henri had called in a number of doctors, London's finest, all of whom agreed it had been unavoidable—the cord had been wrapped tight as a noose around his little neck—and it would be best for everyone if the whole unfortunate incident were forgotten. But Constance hadn't forgotten and she'd known they were wrong. The “incident' hadn't been unavoidable; her baby had been killed by incompetence.
His
incompetence. Of course the doctors had closed ranks around him—he was one of their own. Nature was not always kind, they'd advised, each more ingratiating than the one before, but she always knew best. There was nothing to stop them trying again.

Stiff upper lip.

Least said soonest mended.

Things would be different next time.

They were right about that. When Eleanor was born twelve months later and the midwife held her up for inspection—“It's a girl!”—Constance had looked her over from top to toe, enough to see that she was wet and pink and squealing, before nodding shortly, rolling over, and sending for a hot cup of tea.

She'd waited for the feelings to come, the rush of maternal love and longing she'd felt the first time (oh! that plump waxen face, the long fine fingers, the sweet curled lips that would never utter a sound), but the days had passed, one rolling into the next, her breasts had swelled and ached and then settled, and before she knew it Dr Gibbons was back to declare her fit and usher her out of confinement.

By then, though, something between them had been silently and mutually resolved. The baby girl cried and shouted and refused to calm when Constance held her. Constance looked at the child's bawling face and could think of no name that suited it more than another. It was left to Henri to name and hold and pace, until the advertisement could be placed and Nanny Bruen arrived on the doorstep with her impeccable references and nursery standards. By the time Daffyd Llewellyn stepped in, with his stories and rhymes, Constance and Eleanor were as strangers. Over time she nurtured her rage against the man who had taken not one but two of her children from her.

But—Constance sighed—she was tired of being angry. She had held on to her molten hatred so long it had hardened into steel and she had grown stiff with it. As the band launched into another merry tune and people swirled about the lantern-lit dance floor within its ring of willows, she cut through the crowd to the tables where the hired waiters were pouring drinks.

“A glass of champagne, Ma'am?”

“Thank you. And another, please, for my friend.”

She accepted the two brimming flutes and made her way to sit on the bench beneath the arbour. It wasn't going to be easy—her old antipathy was as familiar as her own reflection—but it was time to let it go and be freed at last from the anger and grief that had kept her prisoner.

As if on cue, Constance caught a glimpse of Daffyd Llewellyn on the edge of the crowd. He was heading directly towards the arbour, skirting around the revellers, almost as if he knew she was waiting for him. For Constance, the fact further cemented her certainty that she was doing the right thing. She was going to be polite, even kind; to enquire after his health—the heartburn she knew was giving him trouble—and congratulate him on his recent achievements and the upcoming honour.

A smile pulled nervously at the edge of her lips. “Mr Llewellyn,” she called, standing to wave at him. Her voice was more high-pitched than usual.

He glanced around, his body stiffening in surprise when he saw her.

A flash of memory came and she saw him as a young man, the bright and dashing physician her husband had befriended. Constance steeled herself. “I wondered if you might have a moment.” Her voice wavered, but she caught it. Determined, resolved, eager to be released. “I was hoping we might talk.”

* * *

Constance was beckoning him with a glass of champagne from beneath the arbour, the very spot in which Daffyd was supposed to be meeting Alice in fifteen minutes. The girl had a sixth sense for Ben Munro's whereabouts and Eleanor had pleaded with him to keep her occupied tonight. “Please, Daffyd,” she'd said. “It would ruin everything if Alice were to turn up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He'd agreed, but only because Eleanor was the closest he'd ever come to having a child of his own. He'd loved her since she was tiny. A poppet in a bundle, a permanent attachment to Henri, always in his arms, and then later, when she was older, riding on his shoulders or skipping along beside him. Would she have been so like her father if she hadn't spent so much time with him when she was small? It was impossible to say, but she was, and Daffyd loved her for it. “Please,” she'd said, taking his hands in hers. “I'm begging you. I can't do this without you.” And so, of course, he'd agreed.

In truth, he had grave misgivings about the whole idea. The worry he felt for Eleanor was driving him to distraction and distress. His heartburn had become chronic since she'd told him, and the old depression, the malaise that had once threatened to overwhelm him, was back. He'd seen firsthand what could happen to women who lost their children. It was the sort of plot invented by desperation that held together only in the long wee hours of night.

He'd pleaded with her to reconsider, during the many conversations they'd had in which she'd poured out her heart, but she had been emphatic. He understood her loyalty to Anthony—he'd known them both when they were young and grieved as she did for the loss her husband had suffered—and he shared her fears for baby Theo. But to make such a sacrifice! There had to be another way. “Show it to me,” she'd said, “and I will take it.” But no matter how he twisted and turned the pieces of the puzzle, he could find no arrangement that pleased her. Not without making public Anthony's troubles, and that she refused to do.

“I made him a promise,” she said, “and you of all people know that promises aren't for breaking. You're the one who taught me that.” Daffyd had remonstrated with her when she said that, gently at first, and then sternly, trying to make her see that the logic animating his made-up world of faerie, those luminous threads he wove together to make his stories, were not strong enough to support the complications of a human being's life. But she was not to be dissuaded. “Sometimes to love from afar is as much as we can hope for,” she'd said, and in the end he'd consoled himself that nothing was forever. That she could always change her mind. That perhaps it was all for the best, a temporary safe haven for the little fellow.

So he'd done as she asked. Arranged to meet Alice here tonight, to keep her from stumbling where she shouldn't and scuppering their plans. Eleanor had been sure the girl's natural curiosity would be enough to ensure her compliance and he'd been readying himself all day, going over contingencies, anticipating problems; but he hadn't foreseen being intercepted by Constance. As a rule, Daffyd tried to think of Constance as little as possible. They'd never seen eye to eye, even before the terrible business of that night. Throughout her courtship with Henri, Daffyd had watched from the sidelines as she led his friend a merry dance. So cruel, so uncaring, and yet Henri had been smitten. He'd thought he could tame her, that when she agreed to marry him her days of playing the field were over.

Constance's grief after the baby's death had been real, though; Daffyd didn't doubt that. Her heart had been broken, she'd needed someone to blame, and her eye had turned on him. It didn't matter how many doctors explained about the cord, assured her that the result would have been the same no matter who was in attendance; she wouldn't believe them. She'd never forgiven Daffyd for the part he'd played. But then, he'd never forgiven himself either. He'd never practised again. His passion for medicine had died that bleak morning. He was beset with images of the baby's face; the clammy heat of the room; the terrible keening that came from Constance as she clung to the stillborn child.

But now, here she was, holding out a champagne flute and asking to talk.

“Thank you,” he said, accepting the glass and taking a larger sip than he might have. It was cold and bubbling and he hadn't realised quite how parched he was, how nervous about the task that lay ahead. When he finally stopped drinking, Constance was watching him, a strange look on her face, surprised, no doubt, by his uncouth thirst.

And then it was gone. She smiled. “I've always loved Midsummer. There's so much possibility in the air, don't you think?”

“Too many people for me, I'm afraid.”

“At the party, perhaps, but I was speaking more generally. The idea of renewal, a fresh start.”

There was something unsettling in her manner. She was as nervous as he was, Daffyd realised. He took another swig of champagne.

“Why, you of all people know the benefit of a fresh start, don't you, Daffyd? Such a transition you made. Such a surprising second chance.”

“I have been fortunate.”

“Henri was so proud of your literary endeavours, and Eleanor—well, she worships the ground you walk on.”

“I've always been inordinately fond of her, too.”

“Oh, yes, I know. You spoiled her dreadfully. All those stories you told, writing her into your book.” She laughed lightly, before seeming to experience a sudden sobering of mood. “I've become old, Daffyd. I find myself thinking often about the past. Opportunities missed, people lost.”

“It happens to us all.”

“I've been meaning to congratulate you on your recent honour, the royal order. There'll be a reception at the palace, I presume?”

“I believe so.”

“You'll meet the King. Did I ever tell you, I almost enjoyed the same privilege when I was a young woman? I fell ill, alas, and my sister Vera went in my stead. These things can't be helped, of course. Life is filled with twists and turns. Your success, for instance—a tremendous case of roses from the ashes.”

“Constance—”

“Daffyd.” She inhaled and drew herself to full height. “I was hoping you might agree it was time to put the past behind us.”

“I—”

“One cannot hold on to ill feelings forever. There comes a time when one must decide to act rather than to react.”

“Constance, I—”

“No, let me finish, Daffyd, please. I've imagined this conversation so many times. I need to say it.” He nodded and she smiled brief appreciation, before lifting her glass. Her hand shook slightly, whether from emotion or advanced age, Daffyd didn't know. “I'd like to propose a toast. To action. To remedy. And to renewal.”

He met her glass with his own and they drank, Daffyd almost gulping the last of his champagne. He was stalling; he felt overcome. It was all so unexpected and he wasn't quite sure what to say: a lifetime of guilt and grief welled up inside him and his eyes glazed. It was too much to bear on a night that was already heavy with distressing duties.

His tumult must have been evident, for Constance was scrutinising him, watching as closely as if she were seeing him for the first time. Perhaps because he was being observed, he felt himself sway unsteadily. He was hot suddenly. It was stuffy here, very warm. There were so many people fussing, and the music was too loud. He drained the last dregs of his champagne.

“Daffyd?” Constance said, frowning. “You look peaky.”

His hand went to his forehead as if to steady himself. He blinked, trying to focus his vision, to stop seeing fuzzy haloes around everyone and everything.

“Shall I get you a glass of water? Do you need some fresh air?”

“Air,” he said, his throat very dry, his voice raspy. “Please.”

There were people everywhere, faces, voices, all a blur, and he was glad to have her arm to steady him. Not in a million years would Daffyd have anticipated a scenario in which it would be Constance rendering him aid. And yet, without her, he feared, he might have fallen.

They passed through a group of laughing people and he thought he glimpsed Alice in the distance. He tried to say something, to explain to Constance that he couldn't go too far, that he had important business to take care of, but his tongue was lazy and wouldn't form the words. There was still time. Eleanor had said they weren't meeting until midnight. He would do as he promised; he just needed a bit of cool air first.