The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (31 page)

‘I want
to look like him,’ announced Inigo as the record came to an end. ‘I could look
like him if I tried.’

‘Your
hair’s wrong,’ I said.

Inigo
stood up and combed his hair forward, Ted-style, and slung his guitar round him
and stood the way Elvis stood, his right leg cocked out in front of him. I
giggled.

‘You
look as if you’re in pain,’ I said.

Inigo
ignored me and struck a few chords of the song that Uncle Luke had first played
us,
Blue Moon of Kentucky,
and I was forced to stop laughing, for he had
the art of imitation perfected. At the end of the first verse, he swung around
the room, jiving away as if possessed by the spirit of Sam Phillips’s recording
studio, and I beat my hands on the surface of the dining-room table in time to
his playing, and stamped my feet, and the sharp heels of my shoes made a
terrific sound on the wooden floor. It took me all my life up to that moment to
realise that without noise, Magna might as well have crumbled and fallen to
dust. Without youth, the house was just a shell, a shadow. We might not have
had the money to keep the house how it deserved to be kept, but we had the
energy to fight its demise for all we were worth. Funnily enough, when Inigo
stopped playing, there was a five-second silence followed by a deafening crash
as an ugly purple vase and a vast stack of sheet music that had been balancing
in an unhappy alliance atop the piano cascaded to the ground, hitting several
untuned keys on the long journey floorwards. Giggling madly. Inigo and I
scuttled around picking up pieces of broken glass and pages of Cole Porter and
Beethoven.

‘I hope
it wasn’t worth anything,’ I said, placing a shard of the vase inside last week’s
Sunday Telegraph.

‘Probably
was,’ said Inigo. ‘But it was hideous, so who cares?’

Mama
appeared five minutes later, her hands over her ears. ‘What was all that
appalling racket?’ she cried. ‘My nerves are in shreds, children. And Penelope,
Mary has just announced that you’ve been housing a rodent in your bedroom?
Really. it’s no wonder this place is falling apart.’

‘She’s
a guinea pig, Mama,’ said Inigo, in dignified tones.

‘And I
won’t hear a word said against her,’ I added cheerfully. Marina the Rodent
certainly continued to thrive in the confines of my bedroom. She really was the
most amiable creature, who had grown accustomed to the sound of my voice. She
made odd, purring sounds when she was hungry, and loud squeaking noises when
she was afraid. Mary. though disapproving, had to confess that Marina was at
least a clean pet, and I think she was secretly glad that she lived upstairs,
and not anywhere near the kitchen. Mama was harder to convince.

‘She’s
doing no one any harm, Mama,’ I said. ‘When the weather improves, she can move
outside — I’ll get her a friend!’

‘I don’t
want them breeding all over the estate, Penelope.’

‘They
won’t breed! I’ll be sure to get another female!’

‘Don’t
be silly. No two guinea pigs are ever the same sex. Even
I
remember that
much from my school days.’

This
was to be one of the few issues on which Mama was proved to be entirely
correct.

On the day of Harry’s
visit, Mama decided to spend the afternoon in Bath.

‘Do
make sure you offer him a proper drink when he arrives, darling,’ she said. I
was surprised that she was leaving me alone with him. It wasn’t like her to be
so cavalier, but I supposed she felt that there was no danger of Harry falling
for me, and even if he did, he was out of the question because he had no money.
It was a thunderous afternoon and the house was hemmed in by heavy black
clouds. Mama pulled on her headscarf and tightened it round her chin.

‘I’ll
be back in time for supper,’ she said. ‘Do remember to feed Fido, and if the
weather worsens, make sure he’s not left on his own. You know how thunder
scares him.’

And me,
I thought.

I was glad when Harry
arrived, because the sky had grown so dark and fierce that I felt nervous
alone. Magna did that to one, sometimes. It wasn’t so much the idea of ghosts
that set one on edge, more the feeling of being trapped indoors for ever by the
gathering storm outside — and fancy having a dog who couldn’t protect you from
devilish weather, I thought crossly. As soon as the storm really began, Fido
ran under the table in the dining room and wouldn’t come out again. I didn’t
hear the doorbell at first as the rain had just started hammering against the
windows in the hall, and I was singing at top volume to keep me dauntless. When
at last I heard it ring out in the hall it frightened me half to death. I
imagined myself opening the door to a ghoul or gorgon or some other fantastic
creature, but to my relief, when I peered outside, just Harry was there. A
little damp, and very magician-like in a long black overcoat, but just Harry
all the same. His wicked eyes flashed bright against the blackness of the
afternoon.

‘Perfect
weather for a round of golf,’ he said, handing me a bunch of freesias.

‘Do
come in,’ I said with a curtsy.

The
front door slammed behind us like something out of a horror film.

‘Cripes!’
said Harry. ‘This is really the way to see this place, isn’t it?’

‘I hate
this weather.’ I shivered. ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’

‘How
about a brandy and then up to the Long Gallery?’ said Harry at once.

‘Why do
we have to go up there?’

‘Because
you need to get over your silliness about it. And I’d like to stare out at the
garden and the storm. I’ve got a couple of new tricks to try out.

‘Do you
always get your own way?’

‘Not at
all. Look at me and Marina.’

I
hesitated. ‘I don’t mind going up there if we take the gramophone.’

‘And
that means listening to Johnnie Ray all ‘afternoon?’

In the
end, we concocted a funny sort of mid-afternoon snack to take up to the Long
Gallery. I found a half-finished ham in the larder that we hacked into strips
to eat with a loaf of bread and some of Mary’s homemade pickle. I put the lot
on a tray along with the remains of a plum pudding and a couple of chocolate
sandwich biscuits each. I boiled up some water for tea, and Harry produced a
bottle of brandy from the back of his car. Mama would be horrified, I thought.

When we got upstairs, the
sky had turned from dark grey to a threatening, angry violet. The rain bashed
violently against the windows and the wind tore at the walls. We stood at the top
of the winding staircase that led up to the Long Gallery. This time Harry
turned the key.

‘All
aboard,’ he said, stepping inside.

He was
quite right. The yellow and indigo light of the storm clouds bouncing off the
uneven wooden floor gave the room the lustre of a ghost ship far out at sea.
Cautiously. I stepped in,’ and shivered. Harry plonked down the gramophone and
I busied myself choosing a record to play. and a few moments later Johnnie’s
voice filled the room — 1955 was doing its very best to chase away the
fourteenth century.

‘Want
to see something?’ asked Harry. He strode off down the middle of the room and
came to a halt in front of the longest window.

‘A
trick?’ I asked hopefully.

Harry
pulled out a black cloak and appeared to be concentrating very hard.

‘What
are you doing?’ I whispered, but the sound of the wind whistling over the walls
stopped Harry from hearing me.

‘Come
over here,’ he instructed. I slid over towards him. He was so good now that
when he was performing he seemed to tower over me, Gandalf-like, despite his
diminutive frame. ‘I’ve only tried this a couple of times,’ he admitted under
his breath,’ ‘but I needed a room like this to pull it off properly.’

‘Pull
what off?’ I whispered, scared of breaking the spell.

Harry
closed his eyes, and all of a sudden whipped the cloak away. ‘Fly!’ he cried. ‘Fly!’

Three
white doves, feathers ruffled and thoroughly confused, flapped wildly into the
air. One of them flew up to the top of the room and perched on top of a
portrait of Capability Brown. Harry opened his eyes.

‘Not
bad,’ he said. ‘Needs work.’

‘You’re
telling me,’ I cried. ‘Get them out of here, for goodness’ sake! Where did they
come from? Oh no, they’re not from the pigeon house, are they? Mama will go
stark, staring mad if anything happens to any of her birds!’ I was genuinely
irritated at the same time as being unwillingly knocked out by the beauty of
the trick. Harry moved with such fluidity, such style, when he was performing
that it was impossible not to watch in excitement.

‘They’re
not your mother’s birds,’ said Harry, gathering up his cloak and folding it
neatly. ‘But I thought I could leave them here for now. She won’t mind, will
she? Tell her they’re a present from me,’ to thank her for her — her
hospitality.’

‘Hospital
will be the word if we don’t get them out of here fast. Mama will kill me for
this. We shouldn’t even be up here in the first place—’

‘They
add to the atmosphere, don’t you think?’ interjected Harry, removing a white
feather from my hair.

‘Oh, it’s
very Noah’s Ark. Perhaps we should invite a couple of the sheep up here too?’ I
snapped.

Harry
said nothing but gave a low whistle and all three of the doves flew towards
him.

‘You’ll
be calming the storm next.

Harry
grinned. ‘I’ve been rehearsing with these three for quite some time,’ he said.

‘How
did you get them here?’ I asked curiously.

‘Magic,’
said Harry automatically.

I chose
not to ask any more. ‘Well, you can keep them up here until we’ve finished our
picnic,’ I conceded, ‘as you seem to have such astonishing control over them.’

‘Picnic!’
said Harry. ‘We need a rug for that.’ He pulled off his overcoat and spread it
out for us to sit on and we tucked into the ham and pickle. ‘Do you think we’re
the latest in a long line of people who’ve sat up here during a storm and felt
as though the house was going to fall down?’

‘Probably.
I know my father used to — to sit up here,’ I said without thinking. Blast. I
didn’t think that I had wanted to talk about Papa.

‘He
did?’ asked Harry, taking a slug of brandy from the bottle. ‘He — he was afraid
of his father, so he used the Long Gallery as a sort of refuge. It was always
his dream to captain a ship and he used to pretend he was in charge of the
Cutty
Sark.’

‘Isn’t
it odd?’ said Harry. ‘You have a house as staggering as this at your disposal,
but you still dream of getting out of the place. It just goes to show, doesn’t
it? You can’t always get what you want. Shall we have a cigarette?’

‘I’d
rather have your chocolate biscuit,’ I confessed.

Harry
lay flat on the floor and smoked. ‘Lie down,’ he instructed me. ‘You can feel
the storm shaking the ship.’

I
hesitated.

‘Don’t
worry, I’m not going to jump on you,’ said Harry archly.

I
blushed.

The
elements raged around us and when we closed our eyes we really weren’t at Magna
at all, but somewhere way out in the Atlantic.

‘Tell
me a story,’ Harry demanded.

‘A
story?’

‘Yes.
Go on. You want to be a writer, don’t you?’

It was
another challenge. With our heads resting on Harry’s coat, our feet were almost
touching. Something hung in the air between us, something so delicate that
anything other than lying as still as statues and whispering felt like a threat
to it. What was it? I didn’t know. I breathed in the now familiar scent of
Harry’s cologne mixed with the sweetness of the brandy from his breath.

‘You
smell nice,’ I admitted.

‘It’s
Dior
Pour Homme,’
he whispered in a mock-romantic French accent. ‘Isn’t it just
the thing
pour snaring les femmes?’

I didn’t
reply.

‘Tell
me about your Great-Aunt Sarah,’ said Harry, and he was whispering so softly
now that I could hardly hear him. ‘The one who painted the watercolour you all
detest so much.’

‘All
right,’ I replied, and at that moment Johnnie started to sing ‘Walking My Baby
Back’ Home’ and I sighed with the loveliness of his voice.

‘She
was quite barking,’ I began, ‘and apparently a great wit. She frightened people
rather because she had a loud voice and a limp from falling off her pony aged
seven. She wanted very badly to be a great painter. Apparently. she fell madly
in love with her art teacher, a redhead called Lindsay Saunders, and decided
that the only way to win her heart was to——’

‘What?’
interrupted Harry.
‘Her
heart?’

‘Oh
yes,’ I said. ‘Aunt Sarah was one of — you know, one of those women who — who
prefer the company of women.’

‘How
thrilling,’ said Harry. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this story.