‘I suppose you had better read it to me.’
‘“Dear Ones,”’ began Agnes experimentally, ‘“Freddie and I are positively frisking around Egypt. The
Sailing across deep, transparent water, lit by the reflection of glowing lamps. New land. Enchantment. Magic. Mystery. Love.
Agnes winced.
‘“… We’ve been to see the tombs with their beautiful wall paintings. Freddie is very dashing in his whites. In fact, I call him my Captain von Trapp…”’
To her surprise, Agnes felt indignant on Maud’s behalf, for that last remark was cruel.
‘I hope she breaks her hip.’ Maud knitted away furiously at a fluffy blue garment, destined for the children’s hospital.
‘She’s enclosed a photo.’ Agnes examined it. It was of the group, assembled by the ship’s rail. They were all in evening dress, and most of them held a glass of champagne.
Maud dropped her knitting and peered at it uncertainly. ‘Where’s Bea? Can’t see her.’
Bea was standing at the back of the group, and it took a moment or two to pick her out. There she was, smiling gently, in a long green dress. In the picture, her waist appeared as slender as a young girl’s.
Agnes got up and propped up the photograph on the mantelpiece. She tapped Bea with her fingertip but of course the figure did not respond. Funny old Bea, she thought. Running off with Freddie, pinching the Jane Austens. Lifelines, perhaps, in a bumpy sea.
After a moment, she slid the photograph behind an invitation.
‘By the way,’ Maud was uncharacteristically subdued, ‘did you send that property developer packing?’
One hand on her aching back, Agnes bent down to throw another log on the fire. Dislodged, yet another spider crept out from the basket and Maud put out her good foot and crushed it.
‘In a manner of speaking. He lives with someone else.’ Agnes hesitated for Kitty was owed her name. ‘She’s called Kitty.’
‘What a useless name.’
Agnes sifted through the rest of the post and listened to Maud, who had launched an offensive against unmarried mothers and the selfishness of Agnes. While she was ranting, the knitting was shaping up into a matinee jacket of the kind that had gone out of fashion. Angrily, Maud delivered her valedictory shot. ‘I’ve held back from asking, but are you ever going to grace us with the name of the father? Or perhaps you don’t know.’
Agnes was taking a long time to read the single sentence on a postcard. In fact, she read it over and over again, just to be sure. She said quietly, ‘I will ignore that remark, Maud.’
‘Maria would never have got herself into such a hole. No husband. No money. No prospects.’
Agnes turned over the card and examined a photograph of Lincoln cathedral. ‘No doubt, but it’s different these days.’ She put the card to one side then picked it up again and held it, as if it was of utmost preciousness. ‘Maud, I’ve arranged a small loan from the bank for the kitchen and I’ve worked out a timetable for the most pressing repairs, which can begin next year in the spring. In the end, the bank was helpful but not generous. If we go carefully they might stump up more.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Maud interjected. ‘Even I know there’s no collateral and we need hundreds of thousands.’
Agnes could not bring herself to reply.
Again Maud opened her mouth, and out issued the jangled, dissatisfied spirit that dwelt in her. ‘How are you going to manage? What are you going to put on the birth certificate?’ The voice cracked. ‘Don’t expect me to help.
The words flowed on but Agnes was not paying attention. She was thinking of how inadequate some words were. Some like ‘snazzy’ and ‘perfumed’ did a good job. But ‘joy’ and ‘surprise’ and ‘indebtedness’ only performed half their function. In no way could they match the feelings behind them.
‘I never told you he turned up here the other day when you were in Exbury.’
Agnes looked blank. ‘Do you mean Mr Harvey?’
‘Don’t be witless, Agnes. The property developer.’
Agnes dropped the postcard and retrieved it. ‘Julian? Here?’
In the study, which was stacked with videos of her work, including the orphanage programme, and an emergency spare of
This much she knew. When Thomas Campion had returned from the Armada in 1588 and, with his companions, looked down from the ridge to the water-meadow and made his plans to build his ‘bigge howse’, he had not been thinking of the past, but of a future.
In the records, it was set down that he spent ?550 on wood and, since oak was becoming scarce, he had ordered it from the wrecked ships on the shoreline. He had paid ?37 12s. for the marble fireplace, ?50 for the tapestries, stripped from a Catholic house in the next village. Finally,
The records told the story of Thomas’s fine burial stone, of his son’s extravagances, of his son’s marriage to Agnes and her goodly portion. She knew of Agnes’s great-great-granddaughter’s unwise decision to build a folly on the marshy land by the river, and she knew, too, of Gervase Campion’s passion for flowers and his death in the Himalayas on a bulb-hunting expedition. She could read of the remodelling and adapting of the house to accommodate new ambitions. A second staircase. The Victorian kitchen. How one member of the family had decided on change because the old ways had run out. How they shifted, adapted, expanded… and, finally, the story reached Maud and Agnes.
The past was a rich and fertile place, where Agnes had wandered to make up the shortfalls in her own existence. With her camera, she had projected her portrait of Flagge House on to an inner canvas – its richness of brick and wood, its beauty, its virtuoso stonework and glittering fenestration, its intimacies and poise. It had been a time of enchantment and profound disappointment. Of course it had been, for the past could never be trapped and preserved.
Agnes gathered up the family papers – incomplete, untidy, some indecipherable – and fitted them into the old- fashioned box file that had belonged to her uncle and put them away in the cupboard.
It was finished.
Julian arrived within two hours of her phone call. Agnes was sitting in the drawing room, looking over a sodden, flatly lit water-meadow. When she heard the car she got to her feet and went outside to meet him.
She saw instantly that he looked terrible, pale and bruised around the eyes, and felt the awesome depth of her love and tenderness, which burst to the surface, so intensely that she knew she could never have substituted anything else.
They stared at each other without moving. They needed that moment of harsh, pure feeling before the needle dropped into another quadrant. Then she asked, ‘Bad?’
He thought. Damn the figures and the dig-deep analysis. I can’t begin to explain this. He returned the smile, drinking in the iridescence of her radiantly happy grey eyes. As bad as it could be. Portcullis is finished, and finished with me. Legatt’s have taken over, the shareholders have been offered their pound of flesh, snatched at it, and the new masters want me out fast. It’s just a question of negotiating the pay-off, which they will do because they want my silence.’
‘I’m very sorry.’
She knew the words were inadequate –
Julian made a visible effort and came up with, ‘What news of the letters programme?’
‘Dropped from the schedules. But I’ll tell you about that later.’
She seemed reluctant to elaborate and he probed further: ‘Wasn’t the Exbury trip successful?’
‘Andrew lost the farm. He’s in quite a state.’ Agnes was shivering in the chill, and she led Julian into the
