Secrets of the Heart

7

Jim’s reaction to Penny’s departure stung Andrew. ‘Grief! Penny’s a stayer – you must have treated her rotten.’

Had he? Andrew reviewed his own behaviour. Rotten? He didn’t think so. But the relief at being alone was enormous although he felt a queer, contrasting shudder of grief whenever he thought of his wife. A couple of days after leaving, and he still had not quite forgiven the bald note, Penny had returned to Tithings for a flying visit. ‘To have it out with you,’ she said.

He had done a bit of thinking by then, summoned his better nature and told her that of course she must go and find happiness and that she would be far better off without him. Even with the awful Bob, whom he disliked intensely.

She had listened impassively, then said, ‘You’re just easing your conscience, Andrew.’

She abandoned him to an empty kitchen, his beasts and the letters.

He was delighted, he wrote to Agnes, that the Hidden Lives programme seemed to be on the cards, but he had been notified that the planning appeal inquiry had been set for early June. Therefore, if Agnes wished him to be around while they were filming, it would be best if she and the team came during the last week of May.

He promised to send the remaining letters in the next few days. Meanwhile he enclosed a pamphlet from the conservation group to which he belonged, ‘DID YOU KNOW?’ it asked in very bold, badly assembled type. ‘200,000 MILES OF ENGLISH HEDGEROW HAVE BEEN RIPPED OUT, ENOUGH TO GIRDLE THE EARTH NINE TIMES.’

Underneath was printed a list of bird populations whose habitat had been destroyed. It included grey partridges, linnets, song thrushes and the cirl bunting. On it, Andrew had written, ‘Can you do anything about this on the programme? NB. I layer and pleach my hedgerows in the old way. The birds on my farm are safe. I am looking forward to meeting the crew.’

It was a risk to attempt to write more letters, but Agnes had stirred him up – not that he needed stirring. She had imported the flavour from another world where what was said and done had an impact. Her programmes affected people.

He opened the desk drawer, took out a piece of the paper he had found in the attic, sharpened the old-fashioned lead pencil and placed its point on the grained sheet. He wanted to conjure her shape and colouring, and the impact they had made on him. At that one meeting she had sprung, golden and fresh, into his consciousness and elbowed Penny aside. Recapturing Agnes on paper was an act of lust and fanaticism, which would make his letters live.

Agnes had become Mary. Defining Mary was the springboard that gave him power and a voice that had been silent for most of his life.

He began to write.

Agnes pushed the pamphlet Andrew had enclosed with his letter on to Bel’s desk. ‘I think this angle will work. We don’t have to do anything except present it.’

‘If you like.’ Bel was preoccupied.

It was the weekly catch-up. Bel reported that her research on Jack Dun had yielded thin results. ‘Ag, I don’t think we should waste any more time on this one. It has “slog” written all over it. The Kelseys have no idea who this bloke was and nor does anyone else in the area. And, let me tell you, I’ve rung quite a few’ She contemplated her nails. ‘Truth game now. No one cares much except a bunch of greens.’

Agnes had been riffling through her notes. Alerted, she looked up. She and Bel did not usually part company over the philosophical content of their work. ‘That’s not like you.’

Bel’s answer was the flicker of a serpent’s tongue. ‘No, but we haven’t had to deal with a joker like Andrew Kelsey before.’ She peered at the schedules tacked up on the wall and wrote a couple of filming dates into the diary.

Bel’s opinions were always worth taking seriously. Agnes frowned. ‘How do you know he’s a joker? You haven’t met him.’

Bel kept her face averted. ‘Instinct.’

‘You’re wrong. It’s a good subject.’

‘It’s no way to do business. Fancying a farmer.’

Agnes said, with old hot insistence, ‘I don’t but if I did it wouldn’t alter the fact that these letters have got it.’

‘Why, Ag? Tell me.’

‘Because they’re about a life that is vanishing.’

Slipping. Dissolving. Dying.

She thought of this conversation as she prepared for a day of meetings at Flagge House. Things were always more complicated than they seemed. She had learned that. But trust in your own responses also had a part to play and Andrew had the convincing desperation of the wronged. Perhaps having no parents and siblings gave you an unnatural belief in yourself and she should listen more to observers like Bel. For, at the bottom of her heart, where the non-negotiable truths lived, Agnes was well aware that most people spend most of their lives pulling the wool over the eyes trained on them.

Think of the house. Surrounded by its water-meadow, its kitchen garden, its once formal parterre, Flagge House was a dreamscape of kind brick and generous windows. But, she knew, she knew, that under the eaves the birds scrabbled with sharp claws and rose abruptly into the winter grey, spiders spun intricate silk patterns and the mice constructed atria of pulped wood and stolen linen.

She picked up her rucksack, and let herself out of the bedroom. Strains of ‘Edelweiss’ led her to Maud’s bedroom, where she knocked and heard a flurry of movement.

Both sisters were tucked into the matrimonial four-poster bed where they had obviously spent the night. Maud was knitting and Bea was propped up on pillows reading. Despite the blankets, both sisters looked cold and there was a distinct burnt smell.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ exclaimed Maud. ‘You’re always coming and going, Agnes. We never know where you are.’

‘Yes, you do. I told you twice I’d be coming in late.’ Agnes crossed to the grate and poked at a lump. ‘Maud, have you been burning things again?’ Maud had a habit of gathering up unwanted papers or clothes and burning them in whichever fireplace was to hand. ‘Fire is tidy,’ she said. ‘It clears the air.’

‘We were so cold last night,’ said Maud plaintively. On one hand, she sported a new bruise.

Agnes felt that hand slide around her and squeeze – the squeeze of the feeble on the strong. She straightened up, raised her eyes and looked into the mirror over the mantelpiece. Campion brides had always occupied this bedroom. Two of their portraits looked down from the wall: a Regency beauty in striped silk and a Victorian matron.

‘I hope you didn’t burn anything important,’ was all she said.

‘We’re so bored,’ snapped Maud. ‘So bored. Aren’t we, Bea?’

‘Are we, dear? I don’t think it’s quite as drastic as that.’

‘Darlings, have you had breakfast?’

‘Not yet.’ Bea dangled a pair of frail varicosed legs over the edge of the bed. ‘You must be exhausted, Agnes. I’ll go and get some.’

Agnes pushed her back gently on to the pillows. ‘You stay where you are. I’ll make it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘They’ll be here at ten thirty.’

Maud drove the needles through the ball of wool with a samurai twist. ‘Who? Do I know about this?’

Bea and Agnes exchanged looks. ‘Dear,’ said Bea, ‘it’s the lawyer and the others. You know. You promised.’ She leaned over and prised the knitting, a lacy baby’s shawl, from her sister’s grasp. ‘Let’s get up, shall we?’

Maud grimaced and the dusting of pink-orange powder from yesterday’s maquillage cracked. Bea patted it away. ‘There, we’ll make you all nice.’

Agnes said comfortingly, ‘If I put them in the dining room they’ll freeze and they won’t stay long.’

Peter Bingham, the lawyer, arrived with Mr Dawkins, who was in charge of her uncle’s investments and what remained of the Campion trust. They were standing in the hall as an unfamiliar Porsche shot into the drive and parked smack in front of the door. A short young man climbed out, walked into the hall and stood knotting his tie.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I’m Paul and I’m here to do the valuations for probate. I rang.’ His gaze ricocheted around the hall and fell. ‘It shouldn’t take more than a few secs.’

Maud, who was descending the stairs at that point, said, ‘Tiens, and the house has been standing for centuries.’

‘How do you do?’ said Agnes, and held out her hand.

Paul ignored it. He was busy pushing the ends of the tie into his waistband. ‘As I say, shouldn’t take too long.’ He snapped open his briefcase, extracted a notebook and positioned himself in front of the portrait of the seventeenth-century Agnes. ‘I don’t care for this sort of thing myself. I can never see the point.’ He moved on to examine the lamp on the side table made of spun glass in which a ship rode a crystal sea in full sail. When it was turned on, the ship flew through a sea of light.

Agnes reckoned he could not have been more than twenty-five.

Paul turned his attention to the elephant’s foot, which was used for umbrellas. ‘Now, that’s more like it. There’s a good market for this sort of thing out East.’ There was a minute inflection of curiosity in his tone. ‘How old is this place, then?’

She told him that it depended where you were in it. With a knowing smile, he responded, ‘It’s very flung together, then, isn’t it?’

The dining room was in the Victorian wing, which had been tacked on to the main house by an Archibald Campion, who had made money in jute. It was furnished with brocade curtains and had a series of dull portraits of later Campions on the wall. The room was north-facing, and within seconds everyone was freezing and could concentrate on nothing except the temperature.

They sat round the table and, their feet numbing, tried to agree on strategy. Peter Bingham was young, ambitious and computer literate. He and Agnes had quickly established an understanding. Coming up for retirement, Mr Dawkins belonged to a different era.

Bingham was at pains to tell the Campion women that although John Campion had done his best to protect his house he had been able to do little in the later years, just routine maintenance.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Agnes. ‘I had talked to him about it from time to time, but the subject upset him.’

Agnes was used to meetings and to controlling them, but this one kept disintegrating as Maud demanded, first, the bungalow she craved and, second, more money to live on. Failing those, she wanted a new central-heating system installed. Then she burst into an uncharacteristic flood of tears. Bea hastened to comfort her.

‘Mrs Campion,’ Bingham was embarrassed, ‘your husband’s will stipulates that you have a home in the house as long as you wish. There is no need for you to move to a bungalow or anywhere else. Indeed, it would be impossible.’ He turned to Mr Dawkins. ‘Am I correct?’

Mr Dawkins shuffled his papers.

‘Have you anything to say, Mr Dawkins?’ Maud blew her nose defiantly, and Agnes deduced that these two were old adversaries.

‘As you know well, Mrs Campion, there is money -just – put aside for the Inheritance Tax but nothing else.’ Mr Dawkins refused to look at Maud.

‘’Scuse me.’ Paul popped his head round the door. ‘I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee.’

Bea was on her feet before he finished speaking. ‘I’ll do it. Everything’s ready.’

Mr Dawkins looked sick. ‘I believe,’ he addressed Agnes, ‘you are going to have to negotiate a loan from the bank if you wish to do any repairs to the house.’ He made a second raid on his papers. ‘Of course, there are grants for this sort of house… Perhaps the heritage people would help.’

Agnes steepled her fingers and rested her chin on them. ‘How much is there?’

Mr Dawkins named the sum, and Agnes winced.

‘Oh, good, you’re still there.’ Paul’s head reappeared. ‘I’ve had a teeny accident with the coffee on the stairs. Do you have a J-cloth handy?’

By one o’clock, they had all gone, leaving a trio of strung-out women. Thinking of lunch, Agnes hunted for a saucepan to boil potatoes, and discovered one in the pantry with several pairs of dun-coloured stockings soaking in it.

The phone rang. ‘Darling,’ said Dickie, from the BBC, ‘can’t seem to get hold of you for love or mon. Just to say I’ve secured the budgets for the lovesick farmer and the breastmilk thingy. If you can find out where the girl went, terrif. Hurry is the word…’

She sighed, wiped her hands on her apron and got on with peeling the potatoes.

‘Agnes,’ Maud fiddled around with the food that Agnes had eventually served, ‘John did say that you were to look after me, didn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ Agnes was wary.

‘Well,’ Agnes had often wondered how eyes managed to look cunning, but her aunt’s did, ‘I would very much like to go on the tour devoted to The Sound of Music.’ Maud did not wait for Agnes’s reaction. ‘We fly to Austria and are taken to the places where the film was made, and then to Salzburg for a special showing.’

Agnes sensed what was coming.

‘Bea and I need a break. We need to go.’

Bea looked embarrassed. ‘We don’t have to, dear. Not if it’s inconvenient.’

‘Please,’ wheedled Maud.

Agnes looked at her watch. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘While you are tackling the frightful Dawkins, Agnes, I need a bit extra for one or two things. And the headstone for John’s grave. It must be organized.’ Maud rubbed fretfully at a worm of lipstick wriggling at the corner of her mouth.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ There was no escape now from the next attack.

‘I can’t think why John didn’t leave me all the money instead of putting it in trust for you.’ The gear shifted into the role of the wronged widow – a role Maud had seized as one that held infinite possibilities. But, then again, Agnes thought wryly, she was a wronged widow. ‘You would have got it in the end, Agnes. Do you know why your uncle cut me off at the knees?’

Bea assumed her frozen look, and Agnes knew that she was withdrawing into the still place that she had at her centre, a place where her sister failed to reach her. Agnes summoned her charity. She had to be fair, but dealing with Maud was like dealing with an ageing car. Some days it functioned smoothly, sometimes lack of oil caused the engine to blow up.

‘It’s so cruel of John to exclude me. So thoughtless of you to agree.’ Maud looked round at Bea as if to say, There, I’ve cleared the air.

But Agnes flashed back, ‘Perhaps you mentioned the word “bungalow” too often.’

On application for funds, Mr Dawkins simply replied that there was no spare money. That was that and, if Miss Campion would excuse the comment, he was surprised that Mrs Campion had considered such a thing.

‘There’s no slack at all?’

Mr Dawkins paused. ‘No,’ he said, with an unexpected blaze of temper. ‘I don’t think I have convinced you, Miss Campion. There is nothing in the way of slack.’

Agnes decided to pay for the holiday out of her own savings, and Maud acknowledged the gesture with a flash of the complacent smile that had once, long ago, enraptured John Campion, but not with a thank-you.

‘Dear Agnes,’ Bea hastened to supply the gratitude unforthcoming from her sister, ‘thank you.’

To her astonishment, Agnes choked back a lump in her throat. Anger? Disappointment? Fatigue? She seized her jacket from the peg and let herself out into the kitchen garden.

Nothing. Ruined earth. Ruined plants. Ruined buildings.

Echoes and sadness.

She closed her eyes, dug her hands into her pockets and encountered a small, rectangular business card. Her mood lifted, and she promised herself that she would ring him.