Ursula smiles wryly at me and we proceed. The sound of hammers becomes louder as we go. Finally, after numerous pauses, we reach the barricade where the path terminates. It’s in the same place as the other barricade, all those years ago.
I hold onto it and look toward the lake. There it is, rippling lightly in the distance. The summer house is hidden, but the sounds of construction are clear. It reminds me of 1924, when the builders rushed to have it finished for the party. Vainly, as it turned out. The limestone had been held up by a shipping dispute in Calais and, much to Teddy’s chagrin, did not arrive in time. He had hoped to have his new telescope in place so party guests could come down to the lake and take a look at the night sky. Hannah was the one to reassure him.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Better to wait until it’s finished. You can have another party then. A proper observation party.’ You notice she said ‘you’, not ‘we’. Already she had ceased to see herself in Teddy’s future.
‘I suppose,’ said Teddy, sounding rather like a petulant boy.
‘It’s probably for the best,’ said Hannah. She inclined her head to the side. ‘In fact, it might not be a bad idea to put barricades along the path to the lake. Stop people from wandering too close. It could be dangerous.’
Teddy frowned. ‘Dangerous?’
‘You know builders,’ said Hannah. ‘They’re just as likely to have left some other part unfinished. Best to wait until you’ve had time to give it a proper going-over.’
Oh yes, love can make a person devious. She convinced Teddy easily enough. Raised the spectre of law suits and ghastly publicity. Teddy had Mr Boyle arrange for signs and barricades to keep the guests from the lake. He’d have another party in August for his birthday. A luncheon party in the summer house, with boats, and games, and striped canvas tents. Just like the painting by that French fellow, he said; what was his name?
He never did have the party, of course. By August 1924 the last thing on anyone’s mind was throwing a party. Except perhaps for Emmeline, but hers was a particular kind of social exuberance then, a reaction to the horror and the blood, rather than despite it.
The blood, so much blood. Who’d have imagined there could be so much? I can see the spot on the lake’s bank from here. Where they stood. Where he stood just before…
My head lightens, my legs fail. Ursula’s arms grip mine, keep me steady.
‘Are you all right?’ she says, dark eyes worried. ‘You’re very pale.’
My thoughts are swimming. I’m hot. Dizzy.
‘Would you like to go inside for a bit?’
I nod.
Ursula leads me back along the path, settles me in the wheelchair and explains to Beryl that she needs to take me to the house.
It’s the heat, says Beryl knowingly, her mother’s just the same. Such unseasonable warmth. She leans toward me and smiles so that her eyes disappear. ‘That’s it, isn’t it, darl, the heat.’
I nod. There is no use arguing. Where to begin explaining, it is not the heat that oppresses me but the weight of ancient guilt.
•
Ursula takes me to the drawing room. We don’t go all the way inside, we can’t. They have strung a red cord right the way across, four feet from the doorway. I suppose they can’t have everyone wandering through, dragging their dirty fingers along the back of the lounge. Ursula parks me against the wall and sits beside on a bench installed for observers.
Tourists straggle by, pointing at the elaborate table setting, oohing and ah-ing at the tiger skin on the back of the chesterfield. None of them seems to notice that the room is full of ghosts.
It was in the drawing room that the police held their interviews. Poor Teddy. He was so bewildered. ‘He was a poet,’ he told the police, clutching a blanket around his shoulders, still in his dinner suit. ‘He knew my wife when they were younger. Nice enough fellow: artistic but harmless. He went about with my sister-in-law and her group.’
The police interviewed everyone that night. Everyone except Hannah and Emmeline. Teddy made sure of that. It was unfortunate enough they’d witnessed such a thing, he told police officers; they didn’t need to relive it. Such was Teddy’s influence, I suppose; the officers acceded.
It was of little consequence so far as they were concerned. It was very late at night and they were anxious to get back to their wives and their warm beds. They’d heard all they needed to. It was not such an unusual story. Deborah had said it herself, there were young men all over London, all over the world, who found the adjustment back to ordinary life an ill fit after everything they’d seen and done at war. That he was a poet made it all the more predictable. Artistic types were prone to extravagant, emotional behaviour.
Our tour group has found us. Beryl bids us rejoin the party and leads us to the library.
‘One of the few rooms not destroyed by the fire of 1938,’ she says, clip- clipping purposefully down the hall. ‘A blessing, I assure you. The Hartford family owned a priceless collection of antique books. Over nine thousand volumes.’
I can vouch for that.
Our motley group follows Beryl into the room and spreads out. Assorted necks crane to take in the domed glass ceiling and the shelves of books reaching all the way into the loft. Robbie’s Picasso is gone now. In a gallery somewhere, I suppose. Gone are the days when every English house had works of the great masters hanging freely on the walls.
It was here that Hannah spent much of her time after Robbie died: full days curled up in a chair in the silent room. She didn’t read, merely sat. Reliving the recent past. For a time I was the only one she’d see. She spoke obsessively, compulsively, of Robbie, recounting to me the details of their affair. Episode after episode. Each account ending with the same lament.
‘I loved him, you know, Grace,’ she would say. Her voice so soft I almost didn’t hear.
‘I know you did, ma’am.’
‘I just couldn’t…’ She would look at me then, eyes glazed. ‘It just wasn’t quite enough.’
Teddy and Deborah accepted her withdrawal to begin with-it seemed a natural consequence of having seen what she’d seen-but as the weeks passed, her failure to acquire the stiff upper lip that was her nation’s renown grew tiresome.
Everyone had an opinion as to how she should behave, what should be done to restore her spirits. There was a round-table discussion one night, after supper.
‘She needs a new hobby,’ said Deborah, lighting a cigarette. ‘I don’t doubt it was a shock to see a man top himself, but life goes on.’
‘What sort of hobby?’ said Teddy, frowning.
‘I was thinking bridge,’ said Deborah, flicking ash into a dish. ‘A good game of bridge has the ability to take one’s mind off just about anything.’
Estella, who’d stayed on at Riverton to ‘do her bit’, agreed that Hannah needed distraction, but had her own ideas as to what kind: she needed a baby. What woman didn’t? Couldn’t Teddy see what he could do to give her one?
Teddy said he’d do what he could. And, mistaking Hannah’s compliance for consensus, he did.
To Estella’s delight, three months later the doctor declared Hannah pregnant. Far from taking her mind off things, however, she seemed to grow more detached. She told me less and
