She was inside the house.
She stood in the hall with its apricot-coloured walls and worn green velvet bench and the palm in the pitted brass pot. All was shadowy, quiescent. She listened for a while to the stillness. Then she stepped forward, her footsteps echoing with a metallic ring against the marble. Slowly she climbed the staircase. It twisted upward in a graceful curve. She paused on the first landing. Her room was here. She went inside, closed the door, sighed with pleasure.
Familiar walls of the palest green surrounded her, reminded her as always of a summer sea on a misty Yorkshire morning. The polished wood floor gleamed like glass under her feet as she stepped up to her four-poster bed. She reached out, touched the tulips printed on the worn coverlet, traced a finger around their once-red petals long since washed-out to the colour of old rust. Burnt sienna it was called in her paintbox. She glided to the window, looked out across the Dales, heard the rustle of the curtains as they flapped about in the breese. The scent of carnations filled the summer air. She turned her head, saw a cloud of pink petals in the blue willow-patterned bowl that stood on the oak chest. Their perfume drifted away, was replaced by a sweeter, headier fragrance. October roses lifted full-blown heads from the bowl, shining yellows against the blue. It was Autumn now. The time of the harvest.
How well she knew the changing seasons of this house.
The air had grown chillier. The fire crackled in the grate. She felt the warmth of the flames on her face. Snowflakes fluttered against the window pane. The gardens were made of white icing sugar.
She was no longer alone in the house.
She caught the sound of her mother’s laughter, the swish of her silk gown as she joined her by the fire. The Beautiful Edith Kenton. That was how they always spoke of her hereabouts.
Sapphires blazed at her throat, on her cool white arms. Blue fire against that translucent skin. Hair the colour of new pennies, an aureole of burnished copper light around the pale heart-shaped face. Warm and loving lips were pressed down to her young cheek. The smell of gardenias and Coty powder enveloped her. A slender, elegant hand took hold of hers, guided her out of the room.
Frederick and William waited in the hall, sang carols as they descended the stairs. Rowdy, loving brothers and devoted sons. Uncle Peter stood behind them in the entrance to the drawing room. He embraced her with his smile and ushered them all into the room.
She stood transfixed.
The room had acquired a magical quality this Christmas night. Its faded elegance had taken on a curious new beauty in the muted, golden light. Candles glowed on a sturdy little fir. Logs hissed and spurted up the chimney. Sprigs of holly decorated the paintings, draped the mantle, hung in great beribboned swags in front of the windows. Mistletoe fell from the cut-glass chandelier. Paper chains were inverted rainbows looped across the ceiling. The air was redolent with new aromas that assailed her senses. She smelled pine cones and wood smoke and eggnog, and succulent goose cooking and chestnuts roasting on the fire.
They crowded around the fireplace.
They sang carols and drank the eggnog from little crystal cups and lifted the steaming chestnuts from their bursting shells. And their laughter reverberated through the house.
Three red felt stockings hung from the mantelpiece. They opened them…she and Frederick and William. In hers there was a treasure trove. An orange, an apple, a bag of nuts and a new penny tied in a scrap of silk; a sachet of potpourri, Pears soap and yards of silk ribbons for her hair plus a box of Egyptian dates, lavender water and a book of verse with the name Edith Kenton written on the flyleaf in her mother’s flowing script. Little things which had cost nothing but whose value was priceless to her.
Snowdrifts were banked outside the house.
Sleet and bitter winds rattled against the window panes and heralded the new year. The Christmas decorations had disappeared. The house was hushed and desolate without her mother’s laughter. It was the time for Uncle Peter to go away again. She saw the sadness on his face, and her mother’s eyes, blue like the sapphires she wore, were filled with tears…
Audra’s face was wet with tears…she had not realized she had begun to cry. She straightened up and brushed her eyes with her fingertips, tearing her gaze away from High Cleugh.
She lay down and buried her face in the cool, sweet-smelling grass, then squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she felt the sharp prick of tears once more. But now she did not bother to suppress them; instead, she allowed herself the luxury of weeping.
And she wept for those she had lost and for the past and for the way things had once been.
Eventually her tears ceased. She lay there quietly, staring up at the china-blue sky, watching the drift of the scudding clouds, ruminating on her beloved family and all of the things which had happened in the last few years.
Audra’s father was a shadowy figure in her mind.
He had died in 1909, when she was only two years old, and her memories of him were smudged and indistinct.
But the images of her mother, and of Frederick and William, were potent and fresh, so very vivid to her the three of them might have been standing there, looking down at her lying on the grass. And Uncle Peter was as indelibly imprinted on her heart as the other three were.
How inexorably their lives and their destinies had been bound up with his.
Peter Lacey had died in 1920 whilst still a young man. He had been an officer in the British Army during the Great War, and had fought in the trenches of France, where he had been badly gassed in the Battle of the Somme. His lungs had been so seriously damaged his health had never been the same, and that was why he had died. Or so they said at the time.
Audra’s mother, the Beautiful Edith Kenton, had been inconsolable. She had followed him to the grave less than a year later, in July of 1921. She had been thirty-seven.
Frederick, Audra’s eldest brother, had told her that their mother’s death was due to heart failure, but she had recently substituted heartbreak for the latter. Audra had come to believe that their mother really had died of a broken heart as she had pined away for Peter Lacey; since Audra had grown to young womanhood she had come to understand their relationship so much better. They had been lovers, of course. There was no longer any doubt in her mind about that.
As a child Audra had never questioned his presence. He was their Uncle Peter, a distant relative of their father’s, a third cousin, she had been led to believe, and he had been there for as long as she could remember.
After Adrian Kenton had died of consumption, Uncle Peter had become an even more frequent visitor, staying with them at High Cleugh for a week or two at a time. Because of his business interests and financial affairs he had returned to London at regular intervals, but he was never absent for very long. And whether he came for an extended visit or a brief few days he never came empty handed. There were usually presents for them all.
‘Isn’t it wonderful the way Uncle Peter looks after us,’ her mother had said once to Audra. ‘I am a great burden to him, I fear. He is such a busy man…but very kind and generous, and most uncommonly thoughtful. He wishes to take care of me, and of you and your brothers. He insists, and will not have it any other way.’ Edith had sighed, then smiled her shimmering smile. ‘He was devoted to your father, of course. That is the reason why he has made us his responsibility, Audra.’
But it was not devotion to their father at all, Audra had come to realize. It had been adoration of their mother that had caused Peter Lacey to become their benefactor and protector.