The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets Read online

  ‘Think you might like these,’ he said. ‘This boy’s gettin’ kinda big where we come from. Mah friend Sam’s got him on his record label. We saw him jus’ a couple of months ago at the Louisiana Hayride — crowd went mad for him, y’know. Sam thinks he’s the greatest thing he’s ever seen. Ah think you kids’ll love this record.’ (I loved the way Uncle Luke said record. ‘Rec-ud.’)

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Charlotte, flopping onto the chair next to me.

  ‘He’s a white boy. though you’d never believe it, hearing this. He’s this funny hillbilly cat — sorta your school weirdo type — but man he’s good too. Loretta says he’s a good-lookin’ kid. I wouldn’t know but I guess she’s right.’ Luke laughed.

  He put the record on. When I heard Uncle Luke’s hillbilly cat singing ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ for the first time, the only thing I remember thinking was that I didn’t believe for one moment that the singer was a white boy. Certainly, the voice was something else, and hearing new records from America was always exciting, but I doubt I would have given any of this much more thought that night were it not for Inigo.

  ‘Play it again! Flip it over. What’s the other side?’ Inigo demanded. ‘Can I keep it?’ His face was white as a sheet, as if he had been given a terrible shock.

  ‘Y’know, I should’ve played ya the other side first,’ said Luke, grinning. ‘This is the real eye-opener.’

  When I tell people about the first time I heard Elvis singing ‘Mystery Train’, they don’t believe me. For the rest of the country — unless, I suppose, Sam Phillips had other friends from Memphis who had travelled to England at the end of December, armed with records from his tiny label, which I sincerely doubt — Elvis did not break through until the start of 1956. Yet there we were in the hall at Magna, in the primitive hours of 1955, listening to the man who would become known as the King. I wish I could say that I knew, from that moment, that Elvis was going to change everything. I wish I could say that I had some extraordinary sense of something new and important happening, but I just can’t. I liked the songs, and I was intrigued by the sound of the white-boy singer, but that night my judgement was blurry with champagne, and I felt sick with violet creams and dancing. It wasn’t until after Luke and Loretta had left a day later, after Inigo had drummed the songs into my brain with his constant playing and replaying of the record, that it dawned on me that he was something a bit different — yet for Charlotte and me, Johnnie was still the brightest star in the firmament, irreplaceable, untouchable. Inigo was quicker than us, like that. For him, the Messiah had arrived. It was almost as if he did not know what to do with himself The revelation of Elvis and the New Sound was so great to him, he would have happily swum across the Atlantic just to meet him. From that night on, he became possessed.

  Only’ half an hour after Elvis made his debut in Wiltshire, England, Mama demanded that we take him off the gramophone and play some jazz.

  ‘You can’t dance to this white guy of yours,’ agreed Harry. ‘We want a bit of something we can really move to.’ He clicked his fingers rapidly. a gesture that would have made anyone else seem absurd.

  ‘If you can’t move to the hillbilly cat, you can’t move to nuthin’,’ observed Luke, and I thought how nice it would be to have him around all the time, just to be on hand to make remarks like that in his addictive Southern drawl.

  ‘What do you think of our boy Elvis, girls?’ asked Loretta. ‘He’s pretty sweet in the flesh, I might tell you.

  ‘He certainly sounds good,’ I said politely.

  ‘Don’t ask them, they’re Johnnie Ray obsessed,’ said Inigo dismissively.

  ‘You are?’ asked Luke. ‘You girls rather hear Mr Emotion than my man Elvis Presley?’

  Charlotte looked thoughtful. ‘Johnnie moves us,’ she said simply. ‘That’s why we like him so much.’

  ‘Love him,’ I corrected her automatically.

  Luke roared with laughter. ‘The Million Dollar Teardrop?’ he cried, wiping his eyes with the mirth of it all. ‘Y’know, girls, ah’m not altogether sure that he’s the kinda guy who’d love you two back, if y’know what I mean. Hee hee haa haa hee!’

  I didn’t know what he meant, really I didn’t, but I smiled and looked as though I did.

  ‘Hats off to y’all,’ said Luke. ‘But I think you’d be on to a surer thing with young Presley here. He’s got somethin’ the like of which ah’ve never seen before.’

  ‘It’s the way he moves,’ said Loretta.

  ‘You wouldn’t expect it from a young guy like him. But when he sings, he moves like he’s lost control of his whole self. Tell them, Loll.’

  Loretta gave us a wicked look. ‘We watched the girls watching him when he played the Hayride. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, really something extraordinary. He just ripped the place up.’

  Inigo hung on to every word.

  ‘He sings so raw,’ said Luke. ‘Up-tempo songs, not all slush like your man Johnnie. For what it’s worth, I’d keep watching.’

  I had my doubts. Can you believe that? I had my doubts.

  While this conversation had been going on, Harry had taken it upon himself to change the record and suddenly the hall was full of Humphrey Lyttelton and jazz.

  ‘Feel this!’ said Harry. He stood in the middle of the hall, arms lanky and loose by his sides, cigarette hanging delicately between his fingers, smoke swirling up around him like a genie. Spot-lit by the remaining candles on the chandelier, easy in his suit and correspondent shoes, he looked very grown up all of a sudden. I felt a million miles from him.

  ‘Won’t you dance with me, Penelope?’ he asked. My eyes flickered towards Mama.

  ‘Go on, then,’ she said rather roughly. ‘Surely those dance classes you took last year taught you something, Penelope.’

  ‘Oh, Harry, I’m sorry,’ I said, flushing scarlet. ‘I can’t dance to jazz,’ I added lamely.

  ‘How can you not dance to jazz?’ he asked me, half laughing. ‘You’re ridiculous. All girls under twenty are ridiculous.’

  ‘It’s probably because Johnnie hates jazz,’ interrupted Inigo. ‘She has no interest in anything that Mr Ray hasn’t deemed noteworthy.’

  ‘Come here.’ Harry pulled me towards him and spun me round.

  ‘No!’ I pulled away. horrified in front of Mama.

  Harry laughed. ‘Don’t be so silly.’

  ‘And a happy new year to you too,’ I muttered, hating him again.

  ‘I think she looks beautiful,’ said Mama tersely. I shot her a grateful smile. Sometimes, and always at the times I least expected it, Mama really came out on my side. I think it was because she took criticism of me as a personal insult to her.

  Harry just laughed.

  Charlotte was talking to Loretta at great speed about American fiction. ‘I’m crazy for Salinger,’ I heard her say.

  I shook my head, suddenly hot. ‘I think I might take a breath of air.’

  ‘Have you read Catcher in the Rye?’ demanded Charlotte. ‘I thought it was blissful.’

  I slipped out of the hall, through the dining room, into the kitchen and out of the back door. It was a chaotic night. Grey, shadowy clouds skidded over the cold, pale moon, and although I could make out the stubborn form of the Plough, there seemed no order to the rest of the firmament. The stars looked wild and unscrewed to me, as if there was nothing there to stop them shooting towards the earth at any moment.

  Instinct and champagne drew me and my beautiful frock out onto the black velvet lawn and through the door in the wall that led to the kitchen garden. I might add at this point that I had consumed more champagne than I ever had done before, which had the useful consequence of washing away fear in a sort of blissful wave of carelessness. I’m not afraid of the dark! I thought, and shouted it out loud, just in case there were any badgers or barn owls that might have been interested.

  ‘Nineteen fifty-five!’ I said. Then louder, ‘NINETEEN FIFTY-FIVE!’ I laughed. The year ahead was a blank page, and
surely all anyone could ever want was blank pages? I turned round, feeling tiny. swaying and sinking my heels in mud, to face Magna, imagining the centuries slipping back and back until the day the first stone was laid in its creation. Nothing, not the dedication of Inigo Jones, nor the years of hard work from those austere, painted faces that lined the walls in the drawing room and the hall, made me anything other than the most important person ever to have lived at Magna, the one who understood and loved the house the most. I could almost see the ‘place breathing from where I stood, and I closed my eyes and felt myself terribly. terribly modern. As I say. I was also terribly. terribly drunk. I struck up a conversation with Johnnie.

  ‘Oh, Johnnie,’ I sighed. ‘Will I ever see you sing again?’ I closed my eyes for an answer. I imagined him standing next to me, talking into a microphone, a band lined up behind him ready to strike up at any moment.

  Come to the Palladium! I heard him say. I’ll sing for you, I’ll cry for you, Penelope. Can I call you Penny?

  ‘Oh, I’d rather you’ didn’t, Johnnie. Nobody does.’

  I felt cross with myself for making him ask a silly question like that. I reached out my hand. I wanted to touch him, to know that he knew me, that he understood me the way I thought he would— ‘Penelope! Where on earth are you?’

  It was Mama. Johnnie and his orchestra vanished with a regretful smile and a wave, and I watched Mama wrapping her coat round her and taking little steps in her Christian Dior shoes down towards the kitchen garden. Fido followed her, plunging ahead, his nose to the ground.

  ‘Where are you, Penelope? For goodness’ sake, you’ll catch your death of cold.’

  ‘I’m here., Mama.’

  ‘Oh! Gracious, you frightened me! Who in heaven’s name were you talking to?’ she demanded, eyes flashing torch-bright into the box hedge.

  ‘I was talking to Johnnie.’

  She looked irritable, as well she might. Her sacred space for private contemplation about Papa was not the spot for chatting away to pop stars.

  ‘Do come inside. People will think you’re quite mad.’

  We walked back up to the kitchen door, and I found myself holding her hand.

  ‘Did you like dancing with Harry?’ she asked me.

  ‘Not really. He’s so rude to me, Mama. I’m sure he would much rather have danced with you.’

  Mama answered me briskly. ‘You’ve had too much to drink, darling. It’s not attractive. You’ll end up like your grandmother if you’re not careful.’

  Oddly enough, this remark was enough to sober me up completely.

  Most people collapsed into bed soon after that. Inigo wanted to carry on listening to Elvis, but Mama told him that she would have to remove the gramophone from the house if he did not give it a rest.

  ‘Well, goodnight y’all,’ said Luke, his arm round Loretta. For some reason, the sight of them both, making their way upstairs together, tired but happy. and ready to start their return journey the next day. choked me unbearably. Magna needed the rock-sure stability of people like Luke and Loretta. Without people like them, the house swayed, unhinged.

  Charlotte led me into the library and shut the door quietly behind her. Kicking off her red shoes, she flopped into the reading chair and started pulling grips out of her hair at terrific speed. Rooms came alive when Charlotte was inside them, and the library was no exception. Her vitality gave a curious glamour to the rows of dust-covered first editions; her literacy and unquenchable thirst for reading somehow justified the unashed cigarette swaying dangerously close to the hopeless oil painting of The Lake, Milton Magna, on Mid-Summer’s Eve 1890 by good old Great-Aunt Sarah.

  ‘Harry seems happy tonight,’ she said, placing heavy emphasis on the word happy. ‘He seems to have forgotten all about the American girl.’

  ‘Marina?’

  ‘Yes of course Marina — who do you think I was talking about? Ava Gardner?’

  I giggled.

  ‘It won’t last,’ sighed Charlotte. ‘He can only ever forget about her for short bursts of time. Then it comes back again, worse than ever.’

  ‘How tiresome it must be,’ I said, ‘being in love. I was always led to believe it would be the most wonderful thing ever.’

  ‘Who on earth told you that?’ said Charlotte in amazement. ‘I’ve never known it to be anything other than torture.

  ‘Andrew?’ I asked softly.

  She twisted her hair around a finger, something that I noticed she tended to do when she felt uncomfortable. Andrew and Charlotte remained something of a mystery to me. I had tried to talk about him — to find out when Charlotte had last seen him, how often she thought about him — but it was tricky. She kept him to herself most of the time; he was a piece of her that I sensed I would never be able to touch. She guarded her time with Andrew and what she said about him seemed attentively planned, selected with care so that I knew enough, but not enough at all. That night, it seemed that she couldn’t quite resist talking about him.

  ‘He’s just so nice,’ she admitted.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. ‘Of all the things you could have said about him!’ I said. ‘I never would have expected you to say he was nice.

  ‘It’s hard to find nice boys,’ said Charlotte sadly. ‘I miss him so much sometimes. It hits me completely out of the blue. Pathetic, really. I feel myself desperate for a dose of him.’ She frowned. ‘Now, where did I put my glass of wine?’ she added quickly. And that was it. And as it happened, she had kicked her wine over on to the rug at her feet, but as it was impossible to tell what colour the rug was supposed to be in the first place, I didn’t suppose it mattered much. We lounged around talking until five in the morning. I had never spent so long in that room in the entire eighteen years that I had lived at Magna. By the time we crawled up the stairs to bed, I felt quite different about the library. Charlotte pulled books off the shelves and read me chunks from her favourite authors. Not only was it the first night I heard Elvis, but it was the first night I heard Coleridge. In turn, Charlotte asked me to tell her the stories behind the watchful faces of my ancestors. When all the faces seemed to jumble into one and I could not remember who they were or what had made them great or terrible, I made it up. I had the feeling that Charlotte didn’t really care what was true and what wasn’t. What mattered to her was a good story.

  The next morning, an hour before Charlotte and Harry were due to take the train back to London, I knocked on the door of the Wellington room and creaked open the door, and found Harry muttering to himself with an outsized, upturned top hat in his hands. He looked up when he saw me.

  ‘Quick!’ he whispered. ‘Stick your hand in!’ ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Into the hat!’ he hissed impatiently. ‘Close your eyes!’

  Obediently, I closed my eyes, stuck my hand quickly into the hat and felt something soft. I gave a bit of a scream, which I think Harry must have expected, because when I opened my eyes, he was grinning and looking smug.

  ‘Take a look,’ he said. I peered cautiously into the hat and gasped when I saw the tiniest of rodents no longer than my hand. It was entirely white, except for a dusting of charcoal over the nose.

  ‘Oh, Harry!’ I gasped. ‘It’s precious! It’s a hamster!’

  ‘It’s a guinea pig,’ he corrected me. ‘But how did you get— ‘Don’t ask silly questions that you know I will never answer, he said quickly. ‘I thought I’d give her to you.’ He blew a lock of hair out of his brown eye. ‘To say thank you for having me,’ he added a little heavily.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Rabbits are somewhat passé,’ said Harry quickly. ‘but guinea pigs strike me as rather amiable creatures. You can keep this one inside if you want. It seems a bit cruel to shove it into a cage outdoors when it’s used to the interior of a luxurious hat like this.’

  ‘But Harry, this is a living animal, not a loaf of bread,’ I said, casting my mind back to the legend of Julian. ‘What shall I do with her?’

  ‘You’re not su
pposed to do anything with her,’ said Harry.

  ‘Just make sure she has water and carrots and a bit of attention. ‘He lifted the creature out of the hat. ‘She has a look of Marina about her. In fact, I think she should be called Marina, don’t you?’

  I laughed. ‘Well, I suppose I should thank you,’ I said. ‘No one’s ever given me a guinea pig before.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said Harry.

  Luke and Loretta left half an hour after Charlotte and Harry. As usual, saying goodbye to guests at Magna made me feel more sad than saying goodbye to people anywhere else in the world. It was a grey. wet afternoon with the sort of efficient, blustery wind that encouraged the jackdaws to clack and shriek around the chapel like fighter pilots — even Banjo had stirred himself for a determined, hightailed gallop around the field. I hovered in the shelter of the front door with no shoes on, watching Luke load suitcases into the car. Mama fussed behind him,’ not really helping but wanting to leave him with the best impression she could. In the back of my mind, I knew that it had always irked her that Luke had only ever had eyes for her older sister, though it would have horrified her if it had been any other way.

  ‘Look after your mother,’ whispered Loretta, scrunching over the gravel and kissing me on the cheek. ‘Don’t fall in love and leave this place without making sure she’s a little happier.’

  ‘I have no intention of doing either of those two things,’ I said indignantly. Loretta laughed.