Authors: Rachel Hore
The Dream House (28 page)
Famous last words, thought Kate, as she closed the exercise book with a sigh. What a lonely childhood the young Agnes had had, cut off from the world, learning about life from Victorian fiction and the servants’ gossip. How much she must have missed the mother she couldn’t remember. Her father, often absent, was the centre of her life – and poor damaged Raven, who already seemed to be drifting beyond her reach. Dreaming about love, Agnes was, at fourteen, at the stage where she needed a mother figure more than ever, but it seemed that there was no one to guide her. Aunt Florence was too far away and probably too caught up with her own young family. And soon Agnes’s fragile bubble would be burst by her darling father’s infatuation with Vanessa . . .
Kate had picked up the second exercise book to read on when she heard Bobby barking and the door downstairs open and close.
‘Kate? Hello, dear.’ Joyce’s infuriatingly bright voice rang up the stairs.
Kate dropped the exercise book on the bed with a sigh of frustration and, slipping into her shoes, loped downstairs to help bring in the shopping.
Kate wasn’t able to read any more of Agnes’s diaries until after the children had gone to bed that evening. There was one interruption after another.
First of all, after lunch, the phone had rung.
‘Mrs Hutchinson – Kate – it’s Gwyneth Smithson here. I wonder whether you’ve time to pop into my office before school ends this afternoon? I just want to show you this letter Mr Overden and I have drafted. And I need to check, would you be able to make a meeting next Thursday evening? That’s when the clerk from Education can come and see us.’
‘One moment, Mrs Smithson,’ said Kate and put the phone down on the table. ‘Joyce?’ she said, putting her head round the kitchen door. ‘You wouldn’t be able to look after the kids next Thursday evening, would you? Or would you like me to ask Michelle?’
Joyce dried her hands on a tea-towel and came to squint at the calendar hanging in the hall.
‘I’ll give them their baths first and get them in their pyjamas,’ Kate put in quickly, feeling guilty that her mother-in-law was having to babysit so soon after having the children for the weekend.
‘Well, I’ve got no plans that evening, so, yes,’ said Joyce.
Kate mouthed her thanks and picked up the phone again. ‘Hello? Yes, that Thursday should be all right.’ Her voice sounded more breezy than she felt. Who knew what next week would bring at the moment? Would she still have a husband, for a start?
‘This is the list of parents who’ve volunteered to help,’ said Mrs Smithson later that afternoon. Good, Sebastian’s father and Debbie were on the list, and Stuart from the post office. More of a mixed blessing in Kate’s eyes was Jasmin Thornton. Jasmin, the mother of eight-year-old twin boys, was a bossy woman with an Alice band, too-pale make-up and a voice sharp enough to shatter bottles at fifty paces. She was always highly organized – the twins’ lunch boxes with their home-made organic avocado and chickpea rolls and chocolate puddings were the envy of those mothers who cared about such things, and if costumes were called for, Jasmin’s boys were the stars of any show with her imaginative and beautifully turned-out creations. On top of these achievements, Jasmin held down a job as partner of a solicitors’ firm in Ipswich. How did she fit it all in?
Kate had to admit that, although Jasmin made her feel inadequate she would be incredibly useful with her list of contacts and her formidable organizational abilities.
The letter, inviting parents to attend the meeting the following week, was a no-nonsense call to arms. A Mr Keppel from the Education Department would be in the hot seat and there would be plenty of opportunity for questions. It was hoped that all parents would attend.
‘We’ve invited the vicar, as well,’ said Mrs Smithson, ‘and some of the parish council. We need all the help we can get.’
‘We surely ought to get the committee together to start work the week after,’ said Kate. It would be important to get their defence in motion before the school broke up for the holidays.
Mrs Smithson nodded. ‘I’ll ask Peter Overden if I should ring round with a few dates. And I’ll make sure we all get copies of the accounts for that. All this makes me feel much brighter, you know, Kate, actually doing something.’
Joyce was out for the evening at a friend’s birthday supper in Woodbridge, and by the time Kate had given the children tea, taken and fetched Daisy from Rainbows, heard both of them read and put them to bed after Sam’s latest delaying tactics, she was glad to have the rest of the evening to herself.
First she tried to ring her parents, but they weren’t back yet. She left a message hoping that they had had a good day and promised to ring them soon. Next she tried Liz again, but a new nanny answered the phone and said in a weary voice that her employers were out. Then Kate stood by the phone, dithering. Should she ring Simon? The problem was solved for her when she realized he had left a message while she had been on the phone just now, so she rang him back.
‘Did you find somewhere for us on Saturday?’ he said.
‘Yes, finally. Chapelfield Hall – do you know it? Near Norwich.’
‘Heard of it, yes. The de Vere chain, isn’t it? Or Arden?’
‘Arden. I tried to get somewhere smaller and less corporate, but everywhere’s booked up.’
‘I’m sure it will be fine. Look Kate, I’ve got to go to Germany again on Monday – for the whole week. There’s a series of meetings with a new client and for some reason they need me there. Just thought I’d warn you now.’
Kate sighed angrily. ‘Well, if you have to, you have to. The timing’s not great, though, is it?’
‘No, it’s pretty awful actually. But, look, I’ve booked a fortnight off in August. Let’s take the kids somewhere.’
‘I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ said Kate quietly. ‘Let’s just see how the weekend goes, shall we? The children would love a holiday, though.’
When she put down the phone she couldn’t deny that her spirits were rising. Perhaps all would indeed be well. She picked up the calendar, lying on the table by the phone. It was school Sports Day on Friday, of course. She’d already had to break it to the children that Simon wouldn’t be there for the fathers’ race and Sam had stomped off to his room in a tearful rage. Anyway, it meant she wouldn’t be able to see Agnes on Friday. Tomorrow? She frowned. She had arranged to go with the children to Debbie’s after school and she had got to get her father a birthday present in the morning. She would have to see if she could fit in seeing Agnes as well. Otherwise, her visit would have to be postponed until Monday.
Kate made herself some coffee and brought Agnes’s books into the sitting room where she pushed Bobby off his illicit seat on the sofa and curled up on the space he had left warm. She picked up the second of the exercise books and quickly leafed through. It covered the years 1926 and 1927 and Kate saw that many of the entries formed a record of the young woman’s reading and the development of her collections, which were obviously becoming more extensive in these years. Mr Melton’s friend William Armstrong was mentioned often. It seemed he was a collector himself, and he often sent Agnes coins and curios that had come his way.
There was much talk of Raven. Whether because of Agnes’s pleading, or to please his father, or for some other unfathomable reason, Raven appeared to have given more attention to his schoolbooks than before. The tutor Mr Melton engaged for his son turned out to be an inspirational choice – a fellow officer from his regiment in Flanders who had been a teacher before the war, turning to writing and tutoring afterwards.
Captain Garland was a kindly man, a bachelor, and Raven in some measure responded to his charisma and his high expectations. Nevertheless, the man confided to Mr Melton that Raven was by no means suited to institutional life, nor was he a natural scholar, though he had an extraordinary facility with words and his love of modern culture was distressingly strong. The captain, himself soaked in the Greek and Roman classics, and an impressive mathematician, clearly had little regard for contemporary literature and ‘that corrupt music they call jazz’. His quiet good influence, however, paid off – Raven was admitted to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in Michaelmas 1926 to read jurisprudence.
By Christmas, however, it became glaringly obvious that the stringencies of law held no interest for Raven in comparison with the louche charms of a small group of friends whose aim in life seemed to be to read one another their poetry and to enjoy themselves on their extensive personal allowances. And when it came to money, alas, Raven was unable to keep up.
Agnes recorded several tempestuous exchanges between her brother and her father on the subject of Raven’s expensive lifestyle. The entry for Easter Sunday, 1927 was typical of these.
After church, I was reading old copies of
Punch
in the library, when I heard raised voices, then Father threw open the door and showed Raven in. They both looked furious. They didn’t see me in the chair by the window and Father lectured poor Raven about his allowance and how he couldn’t keep wiring him more money. Raven’s eyes were all glittery, as if he wasn’t there really and Father shouted that he just didn’t listen, did he? And then suddenly, Raven turned and opened the door and walked out of the room. A moment later he pounded over the gravel past the library window. He would be heading for the summerhouse, which is where he likes to be by himself. Father saw me then, but he said nothing and went away. When I went out to find Raven to tell him luncheon was to be served he wouldn’t speak to me but came in late to the meal, and the rest of the day passed with us all very subdued.
Surprisingly, Kate thought, there was no entry for the dramatic announcement of Mr Melton’s engagement, nor for some days afterwards. Was the event too momentous for Agnes to translate into words? Perhaps the shock rendered mental activity impossible.
Her question was partly answered by the following entry:
Thursday, 4 August 1927
It is suddenly announced Father is bringing Miss Wintour to visit tomorrow with her aunt, Miss Evelyn Wintour. They will be here for some days and the household is in uproar. Mrs Duncan believes that the best spare bedroom would be the most suitable for her; the aunt will have to make do with the smaller room next door, looking out on the kitchen garden. Ethel has been running up and downstairs with brooms, beeswax and bedding all day, and Mrs Duncan is most jittery about menus. She interrupts my reading every five minutes with some new way she’s read of cooking potatoes, though in truth it is impossible to concentrate I am so nervous. Will I like her? Will she like me? Worst of all, will she try to be my mother? I can’t call her ‘Mother’, I just can’t. I won’t and I hope she doesn’t ask me.
I don’t know what Raven thinks about it all. These days he never gets out of bed before noon and, since Father broke the news, is often away all afternoon and again in the evening, dining with friends or tooling around the countryside with Roddy Spalding, his college roommate who lives at Woodbridge, in Roddy’s motor. I went with them once, to Walberswick, and we had such fun on the beach and fishing for crabs in the stream then fish and chips at the Bell.
As soon as she heard Vanessa was coming, Miss Selcott asked permission to take her vacation early. I don’t know where she will go. Last year she stayed with her old aunt in Worthing, but this year she says she will take in some mountain air. I think it is too sad to stay by herself at some boarding house, but a holiday will be good for her. She has been very quiet and pale just lately. Diana says her mother thinks Miss Selcott has not been the same since her mother died, that grief has made her act strangely sometimes. She keeps washing her clothes and hates the dark. Poor Miss Selcott. Surely she will never find a suitor now, even if there was one to be had since the war took so many. Even Captain Garland didn’t want her. Raven’s horrible trick still makes me shudder. I’d have died of shame if I’d been Miss Selcott . . .
Puzzled, Kate leafed back through the diaries. She found the reference to the ‘horrible trick’ buried in an entry about Dickens for August two years before. Raven had forged a love letter from Captain Garland to Miss Selcott, scented it with lavender and left it on the governess’s bed. It invited her to meet the captain in the rose garden that afternoon. Raven had engineered his tutor’s appearance there at the appointed hour and a scene of hideous embarrassment to both parties – the captain being terrified of ladies – had ensued. Raven had had his allowance docked for that cruel escapade.
Saturday, 6 August 1927
Vanessa has been here a whole twenty-four hours now and I can hardly express my joy! I fell in love with her instantly. She is so interested in everything, and so kind. I wish my hair was as pretty as hers. She wears it in a shingled style that goes so well with her Clara Bow cloche hat, and makes her blue eyes look huge and surprised. She is very svelte, quite quite fragile. I worry that she is not strong. She is so sweet to me and says we must be sisters and best friends, that it’s ridiculous that I could ever be a daughter to her.
And Father looks so proud and manly when he’s with her. His face is transformed with love and happiness. Now that I have met Vanessa I am so happy for Father. He has been so worn down with grief all these years, as Diana’s mother says, and he deserves to have love and happiness.
It could all have been so good, thought Kate, closing the third book with its patterned cover. If Vanessa had been the right kind of woman, life for the Melton family could have improved dramatically. Agnes would have had a mother-figure to guide her through the difficult passage to adulthood, through the trauma of first love and to the safe haven of a happy marriage. Maybe Raven, too, would have benefited from sensible female advice – though perhaps it was already too late for him. And for Gerald Melton? A happy home, a companion in life, maybe more children. But, as Agnes had said, it was all to go so horribly wrong.