The Winter Folly (35 page)

She had read it and barely stopped to think. Her father was ill, dying, and she must go to him. He must want her and need her now, as the end approached. For seven years they had lived in close
proximity and never once had she laid eyes on him or heard from him since his last letter. Her Christmas cards were returned unopened. He had never been to the house, attended the christenings of
his grandchildren, or even seen them. Invitations were not replied to – perhaps they burned away to ashes in the grate moments after they were received.

She felt that in some way she deserved this punishment of being cast out. She had sinned after all, deserting her husband and living with another man. But after seven years, had she not proved
herself again? She was respectable now, a wife and mother, the chatelaine of Fort Stirling. Surely if she could just see him again, speak to him for a moment, his heart would melt and they would be
reconciled. Besides, how could she live with herself knowing that her father was a couple of miles away dying in his bed and she had not been there? Her conscience would not allow it.

She got quickly into the car and roared off across the gravel, heading for the village. Five minutes later, she pulled the car to a halt in front of the Old Grange. Her loud knock on the door
was answered by a maid she didn’t know.

‘Yes, m’m?’ the girl asked, looking blankly at Alexandra.

She was struck by the awfulness of not being recognised at her own father’s house. She had expected Emily to answer her knock. ‘I’m here to see . . . Mr Crewe,’ she said,
trying to sound commanding.

‘I’m afraid Mr Crewe is indisposed and not receiving visitors,’ the girl said, reciting her sentence in a sing-song way as it had been taught to her. ‘But may I say
who’s called?’

‘I’m Lady Northmoor,’ she said crisply.

‘Oh.’ The girl’s eyes stretched wide and she bobbed a curtsey. ‘Yes, your ladyship.’

‘I’d like to come in. I know Mr Crewe. He won’t mind.’

The girl stared at her, obviously caught between the obligation to obey a real lady and the instructions that had been laid down for her.

‘Now, don’t be so frightened. I’ll explain the situation if anyone complains. Please let me in.’ Alexandra stepped forward and the girl was too timid to stand in her way.
The next moment she was in the hallway, surrounded by the familiar blue flowery wallpaper, looking into the round mirror over the hall table with everything just the same.

‘Mr Crewe’s in bed, your ladyship,’ the girl ventured. ‘And the doctor’s with him at the moment.’

‘I see. Well, I’ll wait for the doctor. You can take my coat.’ She slipped off her coat and handed it to the girl. Just then she heard a door close on the upstairs landing and
the familiar figure of the village doctor came into view. He seemed lost in thought as he came downstairs but looked up to see Alexandra standing in the hall as he reached the ground floor. He knew
her well from his visits to the house to see the children.

‘Oh, Lady Northmoor! I’m glad to see you here. I was just about to write to you as it happens.’

She hurried forward, her expression imploring. ‘How is he, Doctor Simpson?’

‘Not well, I’m afraid. He’s very ill, in fact.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s been suffering aches and pains for a while now but we couldn’t ascertain the cause. He began to lose weight very rapidly and I suspected that cancer of some sort might be
to blame – in a site that meant it remained well hidden until it had progressed too far for any change of treatment.’

Alexandra gasped. Cancer. That meant little chance of recovery. It was a death sentence, she knew that. ‘How long has he got?’

The doctor looked grave. ‘Not very long at all, I’m afraid, which is why I was on the point of writing to you. I know you and your father are estranged but now . . .’

‘Of course, of course.’ She bit her lip, fighting back the desire to start explaining everything to the doctor. ‘I’d like to see him.’

‘He was awake when I left him. He should be capable of speaking to you, though he’s in some pain. I’ve given him morphine but the effects are diminishing as the disease takes
its toll. I’m very sorry to have to tell you such bleak news but I see little hope of anything but a short time remaining to him.’

‘I see.’ She tried not to show that her mouth was trembling or that she felt dizzy and overwhelmed. She realised that she had assumed her father would one day send for her. Now it
was obvious that day would never come. She must go to him without being summoned. ‘I’m going up to him now.’

‘Good.’ The doctor smiled. ‘I’m sure he will like that.’

You know nothing about it
, she thought, as she ascended the stairs.

The last time she had been in this house was her wedding day. She’d run up these stairs in her torn dress, away from Laurence’s brother and into her room, panicked and wondering what
she had done. That girl was long gone now.

She walked along the hall to the door of her father’s room and knocked quietly, gathering her strength. She was afraid but she had to face her fears and do what she knew to be right. A
female voice said, ‘Come in,’ and she entered to see Emily standing at her father’s bedside.

The bed was covered in blankets despite the warmth of the room and on the pillows her father’s head rested, looking quite different to her last memory of him: he was shrunken and grey, his
hair wispy and his cheeks hollow. His eyes were open but only just, flickering slightly with the rise and fall of his chest and the thick rattling breath that came from him. The sight filled her
with desperate sadness and pity.

Emily said quietly, ‘It’s good to see you, miss. I’m only sorry it’s in these circumstances is all.’

‘Thank you, Emily.’ She managed to force a smile. ‘I’m glad to see you too. How are you?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I know it’s your father you’ve come for.’ She beckoned Alexandra closer.

She walked tentatively towards the bed. ‘Is he asleep?’

‘No, I don’t think so. He’s tired out, though. He’s not talking all that much now. Conserving his strength, I should think.’ Emily looked down mournfully at the old
head on the pillow.

‘May I have a few minutes alone with him?’

‘Of course. I’ll wait outside. You can call if you need me.’ Emily went to the door and left quickly.

Alexandra walked to the bedside. There was a chair there, and she sat down on it. Her father’s hand, now thin and wasted with the veins raised on his purplish skin, lay on the blanket. She
put her own hand out and rested it lightly on his. It felt icy under her touch, as though he was failing inch by slow inch from his fingertips back. He didn’t respond but lay there, his
battle for breath taking all his concentration.

She leaned forward. ‘Father? It’s me, Alexandra.’

There was no discernible change.

‘I’ve come to see you, Father. Aunt Felicity wrote to tell me that you’re very ill. I want us to make our peace. I’m so sorry that I disappointed you but I hope you can
forgive me now.’

She waited for a response, watching the greyish face with the cracked thread veins running all over it, the purplish-grey circles under the eyes. Where had his eyebrows gone? Once they were
thick and dark but now they were sparse, white and wiry. His nostrils had sunk into his nose so that it looked different now – pointed and thin. His lips were a hectic red and cracked too.
She could see he was dying. So this was age and illness. This was a body collapsing in on itself, failing at last. From the first new moments of life, the howling baby with kicking limbs, all its
future self a blueprint inside, through the strength and vigour of childhood with its imperative to grow and become, to manhood and then to the inevitable crumbling of age, as everything begins to
wither and stop, it all led to this, the end of the journey.

And what do we leave?
she wondered. Only the memory of ourselves in the minds of those living. And our children, if we have them.

‘Father,’ she whispered. ‘I’m here.’

His eyelids lifted slowly and he was staring at her, his eyes clouded and the pupils huge so that the whole iris looked black. He dragged in a breath and then spoke. ‘You shouldn’t
have come.’

‘But I wanted to, Father!’ She smiled and squeezed his hand gently. ‘You’re so ill. I had to see you, tell you how sorry I am that we’ve been apart all these years
when we could have been sharing so much. The children . . .’

‘Your children mean nothing to me.’ His voice was harsh and bitter.

She recoiled and then tried to calm herself. He was sick and perhaps not entirely himself. It would take patience and kindness but her persistence would surely triumph so that they could be
reunited before he died. They would weep together and he would beg forgiveness which she would grant. Then they could both be at peace.

‘Father, please. Isn’t it time to forgive me? I know I was wrong and what I did was terrible, but I was very young and things have turned out well, haven’t they?’

‘They could not have been worse,’ he spat out on his next rattle.

‘But I’m married to Nicky, we’re happy—’

‘I gave you a chance,’ he said, fixing her with his strangely distant but penetrating stare. ‘I decided to forget the truth. I shut the Stirlings out of our life and brought
you up as well as I could. I found you a husband who would take care of you and keep you away from them. But there wasn’t any way to stop you. Something wicked in you made you seek him
out.’

‘Wicked? What do you mean?’

‘Wicked. Disgusting. Sinful.’

‘Because I left my husband for Nicky? Because I was unfaithful?’

‘That was bad enough but it was far worse than that.’

She felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Her next word came out in a whisper. ‘Why?’

He blinked slowly at her, the lids moving across his eyeballs as if there was not quite enough moisture for them to slide easily. ‘You are like your mother, it seems. She was also unable
to resist the Stirling family. She was unfaithful to me with Northmoor. They thought I would be too stupid to find out, or else too grateful for the honour done to me to mind. They reckoned without
my pride. When I knew for sure, I put a stop to it but it had been going on for years.
Years
. I believe your deluded mother actually thought he might marry her. That was ridiculous, of
course. But what broke everything to pieces was my discovery about you.’

She stared at him, a clammy horror crawling over her skin. ‘Me?’ How could she have been involved? What did she have to do with it all?

‘You’re not my daughter.’ He said it almost with relish, as if this was a last pleasure he would savour before he died. He said it as though he’d tried to do the right
thing and keep silent but she had insisted and now he wasn’t going to deny himself this last triumph, although exactly who he was triumphing over was unclear. ‘You’re the child of
old Northmoor himself. That’s right. Your husband’s father. You married your half-brother.’

It felt as though a dead weight plummeted through her, taking her breath with it. A nasty sick sensation coursed through her, making her palms tingle and her stomach clench. She replayed his
words several times in rapid succession, each time absorbing and then rejecting what she’d heard. ‘No.’

‘Yes. Yes!’ A smile seemed to crack his face, making his deathly pallor even more gruesome. ‘I tried to stop it but you wouldn’t listen. So I let you wallow in your filth
and bring those poor children into the world. Why should I care if the Stirling line poisons itself? You’re all tainted now, aren’t you? You’ve got your mother’s blood.
You’ve got her madness in you.’

She got to her feet. Her pity for him was gone. Death had not softened him or allowed him to find forgiveness or charity. She thought suddenly of all the many hours they had spent sitting
together in church in their pew near the front. All those wasted hours where nothing he had heard about loving kindness had ever meant a thing to him. Instead he’d dealt this blow, this
deathly blow to her, destroying her life in an instant and enjoying it too. ‘You must hate me very much,’ she said in a shaky whisper.

‘You can’t help it,’ he said. ‘I never hated you, I simply washed my hands of you. I hated
her
.’

She knew suddenly that this was her last chance. She would never see this man again. ‘What did you do to her? What happened?’

‘I knew what she intended to do, and I allowed it. I planted the idea of the folly in her mind. I led her to see that it was for the best.’ He smiled a ghastly smile that filled her
with such horror it was all she could do not to scream. ‘I knew that eventually she would be unable to resist. And you remind me of her so much.’

Appalled, she turned and ran out, bumping heedlessly past Emily outside on the landing, hurrying down the stairs and out of the house as fast as she could, as though pursued by demons.

She climbed into her seat and felt the hysteria whirling up in her. No! No, she would not believe it. How could she and Nicky be brother and sister? It was too terrible, too awful to
contemplate. It could not be true, but if it were . . . violent sickness twisted her stomach and she retched into her shaking hand.

There was a knock on the window. A face was there, a big white moon under a brown hat, staring in, concerned. ‘Lady Northmoor? Are you all right?’

She stared back with frightened eyes. It was one of the local ladies, but she had forgotten her name. ‘Yes, yes!’ she stammered, then turned the key and pulled away into the road,
driving at manic speed to get away from her father forever.

She flew the car up the hill towards Fort Stirling, hardly seeing the route. She was shaking, breathless, her head spinning. What would she say to Nicky? How could she tell him? They’d
been living in the most terrible sin for years – oh God, she was going to be sick again – and she’d done those things her father had said: poisoned her family, tainted them.

Her breath came in shallow gasps as she thought of the children. What did it mean for them? The shame for them, the horror for them all . . .