Season of Storms (19 page)

x

THE
door to the kitchen, tucked away around a corner at the bottom of the stairway that we came down from the ladies’ wing, was an old-fashioned swinging door, covered in green baize that deadened all noise from outside as effectively as any soundproofing system. And the look on Poppy’s face when I pushed the door open told me I had just been elevated in her books to the level of a Sherlock Holmes.

“You were right,” she said, in open awe. “She’s here.”

“Yes, well, I rather thought she might be.”

Madeleine, sitting at the thick oak kitchen table, looked as though she hadn’t been to bed at all—she still wore the pleated soft trousers and jumper she’d worn at dinner, cosmetics intact, her hair only slightly rumpled on one side as though she’d been resting her head on her hand for support.

She wasn’t alone. Den, across from her, looked round with surprise as we came in. And then he grinned. “You see?” he said to Madeleine. “I told you we’d get busted.” The bottle of wine on the table between them explained, I thought, both his good mood and his grin.

Madeleine’s eyes went directly to Poppy. “Oh, Poppet,” she said with great sympathy, rising, “what’s wrong?”

“I saw the ghost—the woman in the photographs. I saw her standing right beside my bed.”

“Oh, darling. Come here. This is my fault,” she said, over Poppy’s head, to Den and me. “I was talking to Nicholas, earlier . . . Poppet, you know I wasn’t being serious at all when I said those things about the woman in the photographs.”

“What woman?” asked Den.

“Celia Sands. The first one,” she explained, with an apologetic look at me. “I have all these pictures of her in my room, you see, and Nicky was saying she seemed to be everywhere, and I said it was probably her who broke in on our séance. I was only joking.” She hugged her daughter closer. “I didn’t mean to give you a bad dream.”

Poppy, no longer in the throes of immediate terror, submitted to her mother’s hug with the typical stiffened response of a twelve-year-old who knows she’s being watched and is determined not to look too much the baby. “It wasn’t a dream,” she said in that same stubborn tone she’d used yesterday with Nicholas. “She was there.”

“Oh, Poppet,” Madeleine said again, smoothing a strand of the girl’s hair away from the childish cheek. “Here, come and sit down. Would you like anything? A glass of water? Cocoa?” Looking at Den, she asked, “
Is
there cocoa?”

“I don’t know. Let me look.” He stood and rummaged through the cupboards as though it were his kitchen, not Teresa’s.

The kitchen was designed, I thought, for function more than comfort. It had one small window, curtained, on the far wall, and beneath it was a single sink and draining-board, scrupulously scrubbed and as white as they must have been the day they’d been installed, no doubt as part of Galeazzo’s modern upgrades in the twenties. The tiled worktop ran along two walls and ended at a frighteningly archaic-looking cooker, all knobs and hobs and shelves, that looked as though it might explode if one pushed the wrong button. There were mod-cons as well—a microwave oven, a spidery gleaming espresso machine—but the overall look was traditional, competent, much like Teresa herself.

Den found a tin of cocoa in the cupboard and milk in the fridge, mixed them both into a mug and set the microwave to heat it while he fetched an extra wineglass for me. “Give this a try,” he said, nudging the bottle towards me on the table. “There’s lots more where this came from. I think we found Teresa’s private stash.”

The label, turned towards me, had a rich, exclusive look to it, as though it had been pasted on by hand. “Or else,” I ventured, “this is one of those rare vintage things that the D’Ascanios have kept for an investment.”

“Could be.” He didn’t sound overly concerned. The microwave beeped and he retrieved Poppy’s cocoa. “Here you go, honey. Just the thing for curing nightmares.”

Poppy took the mug, and in a small but firm voice said again she hadn’t had a nightmare. “She was real. Our séance brought her back. No, Mummy, I
know,
” she said, when Madeleine would have interrupted, “I saw this thing on television last year and the same thing happened, these people accidentally raised a ghost and then it wouldn’t leave, and it did all these horrible things, until an expert came to make it go away again.” She seemed very sure of her facts, and I knew it would be useless for us to try to tell her otherwise. She was twelve, after all. At that age, one knew everything.

Madeleine smiled. “Well, in that case,” she said, neatly working her way round the problem, “in that case, we’d better have Mrs. Farrow hold another séance, so she can lay this ghost of yours to rest. All right?”

That suited Poppy. “Can she do it soon?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps Celia could ask her.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Why me?”

Madeleine told me, “I think she likes you best of any of us.”

Den agreed, with a happy smile that told me just how much wine he’d consumed. “No one,” he said, “could say no to that face.”

“Well . . .” I hesitated. I had a feeling Alex wouldn’t like it if we had another séance—he certainly hadn’t thanked us for encouraging his grandmother the first time out. But on the other hand, there was Poppy to think of, and if this would help stop her nightmares . . .

She looked at me, large eyes imploring.

“I’ll talk to Edwina tomorrow,” I promised, “and see what she says.”

xi

“
NO
.”

I stared at her, taken aback. It was not at all the answer I’d expected her to give. “I’m sorry?”

“Well, my dear,” she explained, with a smile to soften the words, “for one thing, I haven’t the time. I am leaving tomorrow.”

I didn’t like to be reminded. In the two days that she’d been here I had grown rather fond of Alex’s grandmother, and when I’d spotted her this morning from my window, strolling through the gardens as though on military inspection, I confess it hadn’t been solely the thought of my mission for Madeleine that had hurried me into my clothes and downstairs through the still-sleeping house—I’d been eager for Edwina’s company.

I’d never had a grandmother myself; at least, not one I’d been aware of. My natural father, whoever he was, might have parents still living, but Mother’s had died long before I had made my appearance. And Rupert and Bryan, for all their love and nurturing, hadn’t been able to help much in that area—Bryan’s parents, like my mother’s, were long gone, and though Rupert’s mum had managed to hang on a little longer than the others, she’d been very ill, so ill that he had never taken me to see her, and she’d died when I was small.

I rather envied Alex all the schoolboy holidays he’d spent at his grandmother’s ‘draughty house in Norfolk’ with the forest and the ducks. The séances she’d held might have put him to sleep, I thought, but I doubted Edwina herself would have been boring.

She paused on the path to bend over a cluster of flowering shrubs that I couldn’t identify. “Shameful,” she said, with a click of her tongue. “Look how the weeds have got in there. Alex will have to have words with his gardeners.”

I didn’t let her off the hook so easily. “I know that you’re leaving tomorrow, but surely . . . I mean, you said yourself you’re all packed and ready. Why couldn’t we do it tonight, at the villa?”

She straightened from the shrubs with a faint smile. “Daniela would have a fit. She’d be crossing herself and complaining—she takes a dim view of the spirit world.”

I couldn’t picture Daniela crossing herself, personally. It implied a certain level of humility and piety that didn’t fit my image of the woman. Aloud I said only, “I shouldn’t have thought that you’d worry about her approval.”

“Oh, just look at the state of this border,” Edwina said, stooping again. She poked at the greenery, shaking her head.

“And anyway, Daniela doesn’t
need
to know. It was only a thought, you know, using the villa—we felt it might be more convenient for you, that’s all. But we can always do it at the main house, if you’d rather.”

She didn’t answer me directly. Wandering a few steps further on along the path, hands clasped behind her back, she appeared, in fact, not to have heard me. Above us the morning sun broke through the clouds with a tentative air, as though testing the waters. Reassured by the chattering song of the birds, it gained confidence, pushing its way clear to cast a weak shadow at Edwina’s feet.

“It’s criminal,” she told me, “what has happened to these gardens. When my daughter was alive, you know, the grounds were kept immaculate. She used to love to hold enormous parties then, and dances at the Peacock Pool, just as there’d been in Galeazzo’s day. A shame her husband let things fall to ruin.”

Realizing that I wasn’t making any headway in my efforts to persuade her, I gave in for the moment and went with the flow. “What’s the Peacock Pool?”

“Haven’t you seen it? Well, come then, it isn’t far. See for yourself.”

A short distance on, the path forked, running off in one direction to the trees that ringed the hollow where the theatre lay, but we chose the other turning, winding uphill between fragrant pines and mossy-trunked magnolias till we came upon an avenue of cypresses. These opened out in turn into a setting that brought to mind pictures I’d seen of the Taj Mahal—a long, narrow pool flanked by broad marble paving bleached white by the weather and sun, with a miniature temple affair at the far end that might once have sheltered musicians or elegant ladies who liked to sip tea in the shade. The effect was exquisite.

Even in neglect, with vines winding round the pillars of the temple and the water of the pool turned black and clogged with vegetation, the place retained its aura of formality, of grandeur. I could easily imagine couples dancing here, under strings of paper lanterns with the moonlight making shadows on the wide white marble paving. I looked for the source of the pool’s name and found at last, half-hidden in the weeds that choked the water, six stone peacocks in a perfect line that marked the very centre of the pool, beginning close by where we stood and running clear down to the temple end. The birds were tailless, which puzzled me until Edwina explained the design.

“There were fountains, you see, for each statue. Lovely fountains that came up as high as me, higher, and fell in a fan, and those made the birds’ tails. In the evening, with coloured lights shining on the water, it was beautiful.” She sighed, as though remembering, and I tried to cheer her.

“But surely Alex will restore this, too, in time.”

“He may. One never knows. He’s rather bound, in some ways, by what Daniela wants to do, and she takes more of an interest, I think, in the buildings. She wasn’t very keen, from what he told me, on doing the theatre, either. He had to push to get that project started. And once the estate has been signed over to the Trust . . .” She raised her shoulders in a shrug of resignation. “ ‘To every thing there is a season,’ and these gardens had their day.”

Looking down, I nudged a bit of fallen tree bark with my toe. “Edwina . . .”

“Yes, dear?”

“Are Alex and Daniela . . . that is, have they been together long?”

“Since last autumn, I believe.”

I didn’t know what had made me ask so personal a question. I could feel Edwina watching me, although I didn’t lift my head to look. To cover my embarrassment I said, “They make a striking couple.”

“Yes.” She didn’t sound approving. “And I don’t doubt that Alex sees her as an asset to this great campaign of his to be accepted as a bona fide Italian.”

“Well, he
is
half Italian.”

“He is. But the other half’s English.”

I did raise my head then, and found her studying me with speculative eyes. “It will be interesting to see,” she said, “which side wins out.”

Beneath her gaze I felt slow colour rising in my cheeks, and I felt tempted to tell her that I wasn’t in the competition for her grandson, but she’d already changed the subject. “Your rehearsal starts at ten? We’d best head back, then; you don’t want to miss your breakfast.”

As she turned to lead me back the way we’d come, I tried again to plead my case for the second séance. “It would be such a great help to Poppy. You know how great the power of persuasion is—you’d only have to pretend you were holding a séance, that you were telling this ghost of hers to go back where it came from, and Poppy would believe you and sleep easier.”

Edwina turned her head and fixed me with a kind and patient gaze. “But the spirits, my dear, wouldn’t know it was a ‘pretend’ séance, as you put it. And what if the spirit that spoke with us yesterday comes back again and says more? You do know,” she said gently, “whose spirit it was?”

I didn’t know exactly how to answer that without appearing to disrespect her beliefs. “Well, I—”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t risk a second séance. There are consequences, Celia, for each action that we take—isn’t that in fact the message of your play? It’s called
Il Prezzo,
isn’t it? In English, that’s ‘the price.’ Your characters pay a great price for their choices,” she said thoughtfully. She looked away, and for a long moment said nothing. She seemed to be focussing hard on the overgrown temple that rose at the end of the Peacock Pool, darkly reflected in what little water remained. “When dealing with the spirit world, one needs to choose sometimes between the living and the dead. One can put wounded souls to rest, but at what cost?” She brought her gaze back round to mine as overhead the morning breeze wept damply through the pines. “Sometimes it’s better, Celia dear, to let the past be past,” she told me. “Let the past be past.”

The day the workmen finished with the fountains in the Peacock Pool he threw the largest party he had held for many years. The night was fair and warm, the stars were out, and everywhere his servants had strung coloured Chinese lanterns so the pool became a fairyland of light and music, clinking glass and wafting cigarette smoke and the lilting sound of laughter.

At the centre of it all was Celia, dressed in silver, luminous herself, so young and lovely that it set his heart to racing just to look at her. With drink in hand he stood and watched her, proudly.

He was aware of nothing else until Francesca, at his elbow, said, “She must be very good, that girl, to hold your interest for so long. The other women you brought home were lucky to be here a month.”

“She is not like the others.”

“No.” A thoughtful tone. “I think perhaps you love her.”

“Does that make you jealous?”

“Caro, to be jealous one must care, and I stopped caring years ago.” She raised her glass and toasted him. “Do hurry up and write your play, I simply long to read it.” And she laughed and walked away from him, along the bright reflecting pool that caught the dazzling spray of each stone peacock’s tail beneath the Chinese lanterns.