The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets Read online

  ‘I really should be going,’ I said. ‘I have to catch the train home.’

  ‘And where is home?’ asked Aunt Clare.

  ‘Wiltshire, near Westbury.’

  ‘Milton Magna Hall,’ said Aunt Clare. ‘Of course.’ She spoke the name in what was almost a whisper. Although I was accustomed to people knowing of the house, there was something in Aunt Clare’s tone that unsettled me.

  ‘Milton Magna Hall!’ said Charlotte. ‘What a name!’

  ‘It’s supposed to be quite the most magnificent building in the West Country,’ said Aunt Clare, recovering her voice.

  ‘It was, perhaps,’ I said. ‘It’s in rather a state at the moment. I mean, it hasn’t quite recovered from the war. There was a lot of mess made when it was requisitioned. The soldiers treated it pretty appallingly—’ I stopped there, my heart bearing furiously. I hadn’t talked about the problems Magna faced to anyone, not even my mother. The subject made me more nervous than anything else in the world.

  ‘To watch a great house dying is a terrible tragedy,’ murmured Aunt Clare. ‘One of the great tragedies known to man. Goodness knows, I’ve known enough of the one that have gone. We’ll look back on this time in horror, you know, girls. In fifty years, no one will believe that so many beautiful houses were forced to fall.’

  ‘We’re fighting to keep it alive,’ I muttered, slurping noisily at my tea to cover up how moved I was by her words.

  ‘Is the house glorious at Christmas?’ asked Charlotte, sensing my discomfort.

  ‘It is lovely. Though fearfully cold.’

  ‘I love the cold! So inspiring. I’m quite sure we shall all pass out with heat in this room.’

  Aunt Clare stood up, crossed the room and poked at the fire. ‘Harry adores a warm house,’ she said resentfully. ‘He has no stamina at all.’

  ‘He has a warm heart,’ Charlotte observed. Aunt Clare snorted. Ah, Harry, I thought. Always, we returned to the boy.

  ‘So tell me, Penelope. What do you do with yourself? Do you work hard? Do you fixate upon the notion of having a career, like Charlotte?’

  ‘I work one day a week in an antique shop in Bath,’ I said, seizing the chance to prove my worth. ‘It’s owned by a man called Christopher Jones who was a great friend of Papa’s at school. He knows more about art than anyone else I know. I’m learning all the time about beautiful things,’ I added lamely.

  ‘From Christoph? I doubt that-very much,’ said Aunt Clare kindly. ‘He’s the most outrageous gossip.’

  ‘Oh! You know him?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Aunt Clare smiled blandly. ‘Oh yes,’ she said again.

  Charlotte raised her eyes at me with an expression that said, ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘Penelope, have you ever been in love?’ Aunt Clare asked congenially, as if wanting to know whether I took sugar in my tea, swerving off the subject yet again. I blushed furiously. (You may as well know now that I am a terrible blusher; it’s a trait I gather I inherited from my father who had freckles and a pale complexion, like me. I’ve heard that if one wiggles one’s toe at the moment of acute embarrassment or humiliation, it can distract the brain from the task of reddening the face. Well, I spend my whole life wiggling my toes, but I’ve never noticed any difference to my hot face.)

  ‘Gosh, no!’ I said eventually. ‘I don’t really know many boys. Well, my brother has his school friends, I suppose, but they seem awfully young and silly to me.’

  ‘How lovely to have a younger brother with pretty friends,’ sighed Charlotte. And how lovely they would think her, I thought.

  ‘Very useful for tennis,’ remarked Aunt Clare, bafflingly. Then, on cue, and just as I was preparing to get myself out of the place, the door opened again and Harry was there. Despite Aunt Clare’s talk of his insomnia and rage, he looked far from troubled — he gazed at us almost pityingly, with a hint of a smirk on his face, his chaotic hair almost hiding his extraordinary eyes. New-found knowledge of his skills as a magician seemed entirely appropriate; never before had I met someone who looked capable of turning men into frogs and frogs into princes. Charlotte smiled at him.

  ‘Back already?’

  ‘I haven’t been out yet. Got trapped with Phoebe in the kitchen,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Oh, poor thing,’ said Charlotte. ‘Why don’t you have some tea?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Are you dreading this evening terribly?’ went on Charlotte, her voice soft and full of concern.

  ‘Nor particularly,’ said Harry. ‘I love her, she loves him. It’s not exactly the most original story in the world, is it?’

  I sipped cold tea to hide my astonishment. Where I came from, nobody spoke like this, least of all in front of their family. Harry lit another cigarette with elegant fingers, and walked over to the fire.

  ‘This house is always so bloody cold,’ he snapped. ‘And I wish you would stop talking about me to everyone who walks through the door, Mother.’

  I presumed he was referring to me, though I wondered who everyone else was. Perhaps Charlotte did this every week? Perhaps I was the last in a long line of mystery guests who were asked to tea with Aunt Clare?

  ‘Penelope’s not everyone, she’s my friend,’ Charlotte corrected him.

  ‘Then I don’t expect her views differ largely from your own.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, with perfect truth. Charlotte reached over for yet another slice of cake. For a second I caught Harry’s eye, but this time, far from making me blush for his own entertainment, he looked straight through me as though I wasn’t there at all.’

  ‘You see what I mean?’ demanded Aunt Clare triumphantly after he had left us for a second time. ‘He has none of his father’s ability to sit still and do nothing.’ She stood up. ‘Girls, you must excuse me, I have to see to Phoebe. Delightful, Penelope.’

  I scrabbled to my feet. ‘Oh, thank you so much for tea. I’ve loved it,’ I said, suddenly realising I had. Aunt Clare smiled at me.

  ‘Darling girl,’ she said. ‘Do visit again soon.’ As she left the room, she paused and whispered something in my ear. ‘Do remember me to Christopher. Just mention Rome, September 1935 to him, won’t you?’ She winked, smiled and was gone.

  I left the house soon after. Charlotte saw me to the door.

  ‘You were just wonderful,’ she said, taking off my coat and handing it to me. ‘Aunt Clare says I have to give this back to you now. She noticed right away that I’d asked you to swap coats with me. She thinks I’m fiendish.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘And I am sorry to hear about your father. Mine’s dead too, you know. Heart attack, which is much less romantic than dying for your country, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t see any romance in death,’ I, said.

  Charlotte looked at me incredulously. ‘Really? You’re obviously not even halfway through Antony and Cleopatra then.’

  There didn’t seem to be an answer for this.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough for sharing the taxi and sitting through tea,’ she went on. ‘It really makes such a change to have a guest for tea. Even Harry couldn’t resist popping in to have a gawp at you.’

  ‘I hardly think he was gawping,’ I said. I gave Charlotte her green coat, feeling suddenly foolish and wondering what to say next. ‘Well, goodbye then,’ I said stiffly. ‘I hope we meet again one day.’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘What a thing to say! Of course we shall.’

  I laughed. ‘How certain you are! Why on earth should we?’

  ‘We all adore you already,’ Charlotte said, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘None of us will let you go now. Have a good journey home.’

  As I walked away, Charlotte called out to me. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Penelope!’

  I turned round. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you like music?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Music. What music do you like?’

  I paused. Charlotte looked to me like a jazz fan and I hated jazz. Bu
t how could I tell her that I was madly in love with Johnnie Ray? Yet how could I not tell her?

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ I replied uneasily.

  ‘Like what?’ she persisted.

  ‘Oh, the usual stuff, a bit of jazz, a bit of—’

  ‘Oh, jazz!’ cried Charlotte, her voice heavy with disappointment. ‘How terminally dull. Funny, I didn’t have you marked as one of those. Harry’s addicted to the stuff, can’t get enough. Personally, it leaves me utterly cold.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I think jazz is rather important,’ I said pompously, but Charlotte said nothing. I can tell her. I thought. She’ll understand. I took a deep breath. ‘But I — I rather prefer, well, actually, I am utterly and completely dedicated to — to — Johnnie Ray,’ I admitted.

  There. I had said it. Charlotte pretended to swoon. ‘Thank goodness!’ she said. ‘I think he’s the dreamiest man alive.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course. How could anybody not?’

  ‘Do you think he might come to London and marry us?’

  ‘He’d be mad not to,’ said Charlotte, without any irony at all.

  I hummed ‘If You Believe’ all the way to the station. It was as if I had been watching a play and hadn’t realised how good it was until the last scene. On the way down to Magna that night, I missed, yes, really missed, Charlotte, Aunt Clare and Harry. It had taken them just a couple of hours to alter my life, yet I didn’t quite know how yet.

  It wasn’t until I boarded the train that I felt something strange in the pocket of my coat that had not been there when I handed it to Charlotte in the cab. It was a small green velvet box. I opened it up and found a piece of paper inside, folded up. I opened the paper. On it were written two words, in peacock blue ink. Thank you!

  I liked the exclamation mark. Charlotte, I thought, seemed like one herself.

  Chapter 3

  THE DUCK SUPPER

  The train sped out of London and I found myself a seat by the window and ordered a milky tea and thought about what Aunt Clare had said about my parents and Magna. She was right, my parents were married before they were whelped. Of course, it never dawned on me that my mother was so very young until I got to the age of about eight, and started to pay attention to what other girls’ mothers looked like. I remember having lunch at Magna one rainy August afternoon and telling her that it was my best friend Janet’s mother’s birthday.

  ‘And she’s going to be thirty!’ I squeaked. It seemed terribly old. ‘How old are you, Mama?’ I asked her.

  ‘Twenty-five, darling. Twenty-five and glad to be alive — oh, Penelope, please don’t get jam on your dress — no, too late…’

  Now I must say something of Magna, or rather of Milton Magna Hall, the house that Aunt Clare so admired. To speak of its beauty would be missing the point of its power. To speak of its power would be missing the point of its chaos. Really I shouldn’t be referring to the house as Magna at all — it’s rather like shortening Windsor Castle to ‘Castle’ — but when Inigo and I were little, the word Magna came easily to us, probably because it sounded so like the word ‘Mama’ and Mama was, after all, the centre of our world. When I started working for Christopher he pointed out our error. I chose to ignore him.

  My parents met for the first time at Magna, at a cocktail party in June. It goes without saying that my mother’s version of events is always up for debate, but apparently she met my father and knew ‘within five minutes’ that he was the man she was destined to marry. My mother, then sixteen and about to begin three years of studying opera at the Royal College of Music, was not officially invited that night, but found herself accompanying a nervous friend who had asked her along to the party. This nervous friend, the legendary Lady Lucy Sinclair, was supposed to be utterly in love with my father, and hoping to snare him that night. Of course you can imagine what happened when she turned up with Mama. I have often wondered how Lady Lucy could have been so unbelievably dim to take her with her — did she honestly believe that anyone would look at her when a girl like Talitha Orr was in the room? My mother never tired of telling Inigo and me what she wore to Magna that night — a thin, pale pink satin and silk dress from Barkers of Kensington — and years later I would sneak up to the cupboard where she kept it, take it carefully out of its layers of tissue and try it on myself. Standing in front of my mother’s long looking-glass in her pink dress sent shivers of excitement and sorrow up my spine. When the soldiers left Magna after the war, the looking-glass had been broken, but the dress was still neat in the bottom drawer. Some things are made to survive. I don’t think that a thousand wars could destroy that dress.

  Mama’s father was a doctor, and her mother an Irish beauty who doted on her two daughters, Talitha and Loretta. I don’t suppose that either of my mother’s parents imagined in their wildest dreams that one of their daughters would end up living in America, the other in a house like Magna, but it just goes to show where beauty can land you in life. By any standards, Mama is staggeringly good-looking. When she turned up at the party at Magna, she had barely spent any time outside London. At just eighteen, Archie was not especially tall and not conventionally good-looking but he had acres of land and, more important, acres of style. His hair was thick and blond and his snub nose peppered with freckles. He was always laughing. Oh, I know people often say that of people they love, but in his case it was absolutely the truth. Mama once claimed that she had no straight-faced memories of my father. She said it in a voice of despair, which I found confusing at the time, but now I think I understand. When Archie saw her floating across the lawn, he reputedly fainted. When he came to, a minute later, Mama was holding his hand. Hello, she said. How lovely to meet you. I thought I was the one supposed to be falling over.

  They were married five months after their first meeting, in the chapel at Magna. Archie’s parents tried hard to dissuade him from marrying Mama, whom they considered worryingly pretty and far too young and inexperienced to cope with such a big house, but their protests fell on deaf ears. His bride virtually ran down the aisle and into his arms, a green-eyed, inky-haired fairy in pink lace, already three months pregnant with me. It was 1937. Mama gleefully moved her few possessions from London to Wiltshire and awaited the birth of her first child. She had convinced herself that she was expecting a boy so I came as something of a shock. I looked then, as I have done ever since, very like my father, which in turn seemed to please and irritate my mother who was happy that I was never going to rival her beauty but a little jealous of the instant connection between infant and father. All this makes her sound self-obsessed, difficult, capricious — and yes, she certainly was — but she was only seventeen. I have to remind myself of this sometime.

  For years after my father left us to fight, my mother would mark the date that they had first met by sitting on the steps leading down to the walled kitchen garden and drinking a glass of elderflower cordial. One year — I must have been about thirteen — I joined her and suggested that we toast their first meeting with champagne. She looked appalled.

  ‘But I was drinking elderflower the night that we met!’

  ‘But we could have a proper toast; we could celebrate your meeting,’ I persisted. I don’t know why I did; I could see that it was upsetting her to have her ritual shaken like this.

  ‘Penelope, you’re so horribly modern sometimes.’

  ‘It was only a suggestion, Mama.’

  ‘Sir down next to me,’ she pleaded, and I did, feeling the stone step warm on my thighs in the late afternoon sun. I rubbed my fingers over a stalk of rosemary and lay back listening to the hypnotic buzzing of the wasps in their nest in the old pear tree. The garden was the centre of the universe, and within its walls lay the whole world, Edenesque. What else counted outside the dry stone walls of Magna?

  I stared at my fellow passengers and wondered if any of them had had as extraordinary an afternoon as I had. I felt so restless, I had to sir on my hands for fear I might burst with wanting
to talk about everything. Aunt Clare, more than anyone else I had met, seemed instinctively to understand how living in a house like Magna was a double-edged sword. When you are just eighteen and desperate for something to happen to you (and anything at all will do as long as it involve a boy and some nice clothes) a house like Magna tends to give you a reputation before you have even opened your mouth. But it isn’t just the age of the place (most of the house was built by a faithful member of the royal household called Sir John Wittersnake in 1462) but its size that gets people’s eyes lit up. Glimpsed from the road, through a gap in the estate walls or a break in the avenue of whispering lime, Magna sits like a sapphire among the trees — part birthday cake, part ocean liner, part sculpture, part skeleton: a magnificent, ostentatious chunk of history, immediately defining those who have lived within its walls with the same adjectives.

  Even at a school like mine, it was hard to make anyone believe that we were not rich. Alas, by the time I was eight, anything of any value had gone the way of all things — to Christies. People who came to stay could not believe that in the 1950s anyone could live somewhere so giggle-makingly medieval. If you wanted grandeur, there was the Great Hall, if you wanted ruins, there was the West Wing, if you wanted ghosts… well, you just needed to live there. The largest room in the entire house was boarded up, destitute, unused and full of spiders. Before the war, there was a household of forty. Now there were two — a housekeeper and a gardener. Yet nothing could dim the extravagance of the idea of Milton Magna Hall. It was most frustrating.

  At Westbury, I jumped off the train and looked out for Johns who was usually sent to meet me in the beaten-up Ford, but much to my relief I found Inigo there instead, lounging against the bonnet of the car smoking a cigarette and looking fed up. Inigo, being just sixteen, dressed like a Teddy boy whenever he could, which was not as often as he’d like as Mama had twenty fits when he combed his hair into the notorious Duck’s Arse (DA we called it). Having just escaped from school for the weekend, he was still sporting his school uniform, which would have rendered any other boy desperately square. Not Inigo. Several girls on the platform saw him and giggled and nudged each other, which he pretended not to notice, but I knew that he had. He shouldn’t really have been at the wheel as he hasn’t passed his test, but he’s actually the best driver I know.