Act of Will (19 page)

Audra nodded.

The two of them sat together on the sofa in silence, holding hands, waiting.

It was not very long before Alicia Drummond returned, carrying the wooden jewellery box. She brought it straight to Audra, thrust it at her rudely. ‘Here it is,’ she snapped. ‘No doubt you want to check, to make sure nothing is missing. And quite frankly, I would prefer you to do so. I don’t want to be accused of misappropriating your property—at a later date.’

There was no response from Audra.

She sat staring down at the box on her lap. How familiar
it was. It had always stood on the dresser in her mother’s bedroom at High Cleugh. Sometimes, when she had been a child and playing at dressing up in her mother’s clothes, she had been allowed to dip into it, to take out a pin or a brooch or a pendant to wear for a while.

After a moment, she raised the lid, filling with relief now that she had these most personal things of her mother’s in her hands at last. She began to sort through the items in the box, fingering each one lovingly. She thought of her mother’s elegance and grace, smiled to herself as innumerable memories flooded her, touched off as they were by the different pieces.

She picked up her mother’s engagement ring set with three tiny diamonds and gazed at it. My mother wore this for most of her life, Audra thought, and now I shall wear it. She slipped it on the third finger of her right hand and as she did she experienced a sense of deep satisfaction. She felt as though the ring brought her mother closer; it was like a link to the past. And this pleased her.

Audra had no need to refer to the inventory, since she knew it by heart. The jewellery was intact. Nothing had been taken. And whether or not Alicia Drummond had been wearing it all these years and was suddenly beside the point. The box and its contents were now hers, and rightfully so, and this was the only thing of any importance.

Placing the box on the sofa between her and Vincent, Audra opened her handbag and took out the other inventory. Directing her gaze at Alicia, she said, ‘This is the list of my mother’s furniture and silver and paintings which are in this house. I’ll leave it for you to look over later. Vincent will come back with two of his brothers next Saturday morning to collect everything. At about ten o’clock. I hope that’s convenient?’

Mortified, Alicia could only nod.

Audra placed the piece of paper on one of the Sheraton occasional tables, and went on, ‘In the meantime, I thought we could take my father’s paintings with us today. We have the motor car and they’ll fit nicely in the back.’

Wanting to be finished with the business, and get Audra away from this depressing house, Vincent sprang up, interjected, ‘I’d better start taking them off the walls.’ He glanced at Alicia, explained, ‘I know which pictures were painted by Audra’s father, she already pointed them out to me.’

Alicia Drummond thought she had turned to stone.

She could neither speak nor move. She simply gaped at Vincent, watched transfixed as he removed one of the oils, leaned it against a chair, then walked over to the other one, reached his hands up for it.

It was then that something cracked in Alicia Drummond. Years of rigid self-control fell away. ‘Don’t touch my paintings! Don’t you dare touch it!’ she cried, leaping up, rushing across the room, all semblance of dignity evaporating. She grabbed Vincent’s arm roughly, peered into his face, shouted with mounting rage, ‘Don’t you dare touch any of my paintings!’

He was flabbergasted at her words and her behaviour. He shrugged off her hand, stepped back, turned his eyes to Audra on the sofa. They exchanged looks of astonishment.

Audra was on her feet swiftly and hurried across the floor. ‘They’re not your paintings, Aunt Alicia. They’re mine,’ she said in a firm but reasonable voice. She wondered if the woman had lost her senses. ‘Unless you’ve forgotten, my father painted them. And they always hung
at High Cleugh. They are part of my legacy from my father and my mother, and I—’

‘Your mother!’ Alicia screamed, whirling on her. ‘Don’t you mention your mother to me. She was nothing but a whore!’

Audra gasped, recoiled.

Vincent could not believe he had heard correctly.

‘Here, watch it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t you talk like that to my wife. I won’t stand for it.’ He drew closer to Audra, slipped his arm around her and glared at Alicia. ‘Where do you get off, calling Audra’s mother such a terrible thing?’

‘Don’t you like the word
whore
? Then pick any name you prefer… trollop, slut, harlot, strumpet! They all fit her. Because that’s what she
was
. She took him away from me, she stole my darling Adrian.’ Alicia’s shrill voice now turned into a wail. Near tears, she rushed on, ‘He belonged to me. We had an understanding. We were to be married. Until she set her cap at him, turned his head, inveigled him into her bed with her wiles and her fancy ways.’ The words choked in her throat. Alicia began to take gasping breaths, holding her hand to her chest as if in pain.

Audra was so appalled, so sickened by what she had heard, she could only stare at her relative in horror. ‘So that’s what it’s been about all these years,’ she said finally, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘
Oh my God
! My brothers and I were punished merely because you were
jealous
. How despicable—to tear us apart when we were children just because of something as ridiculous and futile as that. And when my parents were already dead, when the past no longer mattered. You are a foul woman, Alicia Drummond, foul. As for you and my father being involved—’ Audra paused, took a deep breath. ‘I hardly knew my
father, but from what I’ve heard about him, Adrian Kenton was a fine and sensitive man. I don’t believe for one minute that he could have ever been interested in the likes of
you
. That’s a figment of your imagination.’

Filling with disgust, Audra turned away from the woman. She said to Vincent, ‘Please take down the other paintings by my father and then we can go.’

Vincent did as she asked.

Audra walked over to the sofa, picked up her handbag and the jewellery box.

Additional restraints, self-imposed over the years, began to snap inside Alicia Drummond. And all of the ancient hatred she had harboured for Edith Kenton, and which had not abated even in death, rose up in her. It seemed to congeal in her face, which was contorted into an ugly mask.

She scurried across the carpet to Audra, leaned close to her and hissed in her face, ‘Adrian Kenton was not your father! Not your father, do you hear? You’re a bastard.
Peter Lacey’s bastard
. She was carrying on with him when Adrian was still alive. My poor Adrian, my poor darling Adrian, having to bear witness to that.’

Audra took a rapid step back, shaking her head from side to side frantically, denying the woman’s words. ‘It’s not true! It’s not true!’ she cried.

‘Yes, it is,’ Alicia snarled, ‘your mother was a whore and an adulteress and you are a bastard!’

‘And you are a liar, Alicia Drummond!’

***

Vincent knew he must act immediately.

He seized hold of Audra’s arm and almost dragged her into the entrance hall. Pivoting on his heels, he sped back to the drawing room, grabbed the three paintings he had taken off the walls, then swung to Alicia Drummond.

She stood in the middle of the room, twisting her hands together in agitation. There was a febrile look on her face and a wildness in her eyes. He thought she had gone quite mad.

He said, ‘I’ll be back next Saturday for the rest of Audra’s stuff, and everything had better be in good condition—
or else
.’

‘How dare you threaten me!’

‘I’m not threatening you, I just want you to know that I mean business. And the law is on our side; think on, Mrs Drummond.’

Audra was standing where he had left her in the hall, clutching the jewellery box to her chest. Her face was white and she trembled.

‘Come on,’ he cried, ‘and open the door please, love, my hands are full.’

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to throw off the sense of shock she was feeling, hurrying after him to the front door.

Once they were inside his Uncle Phil’s motor car and driving away from the house, Vincent breathed a lot easier. As he came to the gates at the end of the long driveway he slowed, eased the car out onto the main road to Ripon. He drove in this direction for a few minutes, wanting to put a bit of distance between themselves and The Grange; soon he brought the car to a standstill, parked under a tall hedge.

Audra and he turned to face each other at precisely the same moment.

Vincent had never seen her looking so pale. She hugged the wooden box as if she was afraid someone was going to wrest it from her. But at least she had stopped shaking. His heart went out to her as he stared into her eyes. They were awash with hurt. He wanted to make her feel better but he was not sure how to do so.

He said softly, ‘It’s all right now, love. And you don’t have to set foot in that bloody awful house ever again.’

Audra nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

There was a small silence as they continued to look at each other.

Eventually, she asked in a low voice, ‘You don’t think it’s true, do you, Vincent? You don’t think that I’m… illegitimate, do you?’ Her lip began to quiver and her eyes brimmed.

‘Oh I don’t! I don’t!’ he exclaimed, his vehemence echoing loudly in the confines of the small car, ‘you said it yourself and right to her face… she’s a liar.’

‘But why would she make up something so awful, something as despicable as that?’

Startled by these questions, Vincent now looked askance at his young wife, and said, ‘Audra…
love
… you’re not daft, you
know
why. She spelled it out to you.’ His voice changed, grew much harder and sharper. ‘She’s a bloody old cow, bitter and spiteful. Not only that, she’s crackers, if you ask me. Off her rocker, that one. I wouldn’t be surprised if they cart her off one day, put her away in a padded cell…’

‘Yes, perhaps you’re right,’ Audra said slowly, wondering if he really was. Her eyes turned reflective as she ruminated on Alicia Drummond. The woman was wicked, wasn’t she?
Evil
. Madness might not be involved at all. Audra’s mind automatically swung to her brothers and she sighed as she thought of them, remembering their years of hardship and worry in Australia, and her own problems and loneliness after they had been sent away. The shocking thing was that none of it need ever have happened. It had all been so unnecessary.

‘Are you all right?’ Vincent asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she murmured, ‘I was just thinking… people can be rotten, can’t they?’

‘Aye, lass, they can,’ he agreed, then reached out, touched her arm lightly. ‘Try and relax… nobody’s going to steal the jewellery box.’

Audra half smiled. She loosened her tenacious grip on it, let it rest on her knee, and after a moment or two she remarked, ‘Well, I suppose we’d better be getting along. We can’t sit here all day.’

‘Okay… but where to, Audra? Do you still want to go and see your great-aunt? Or shall we forget it and make tracks for Harrogate instead?’

There was a fractional hesitation on Audra’s part, then she said, ‘I think we should go and see her. She
is
expecting me, and I want you to meet her.’ Audra gave him a reassuring look. ‘She’s nicer than her dreadful daughter, I promise you.’

‘I’ll have to take your word for it,’ he said with a grin and turned on the ignition. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’

‘We’re not very far away, as a matter of fact. Drive down this road, for about ten minutes, until we come to Cobbler’s Green on the right-hand side. That’s where we turn off, Bedelia Cottage is at the bottom.’

Neither of them spoke as Vincent drove along at a steady speed, and it was only after they had turned into Cobbler’s Green that Audra said, ‘It
could
be true, you know.’

Instantly understanding what she meant, he answered quickly, ‘Maybe it could, but I wouldn’t spend any time worrying over it, if I were you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll never know, the answer. Your mother
is the only person who could have told you the truth, and she’s dead.’

‘She might have confided in Great-Aunt Frances. I told you before, they were close.’

‘You’re not going to ask the old lady, are you?’

‘Well… well, yes, I may.’

***

But in the end, Audra did not ask her great-aunt anything at all.

From the moment they arrived at Bedelia Cottage it was easy to see that the old lady was very frail indeed. Even though it was late afternoon, it was still a lovely day, sunny and warm. Nevertheless, the windows were tightly closed and she sat in front of a huge fire in her cluttered parlour, a silk shawl draped around her withered shoulders, her hands outstretched to the warming flames.

Audra led Vincent through the maze of Victorian furniture and bric-à-brac, the long-forgotten smell of the room immediately assailing her. The dry, dusty air held a hint of over-ripe apples, furniture polish and potpourri, as it had for all the years Audra had been coming here as a child. And when she bent to kiss the wrinkled cheek she caught a faint whiff of moth balls mingled with lavender water and peppermints and she felt a rush of affection for Frances Reynolds. Sudden nostalgia took a grip on her, held her in its spell for a few moments.

Her great-aunt was overjoyed to see Audra after such a long time, and to meet Vincent. Surprised though she was that Audra had appeared with a husband, whom
she
had heard nothing about, she took to him at once, or so it seemed to Audra. She chirped away like a small bright bird, smiling at them benevolently. From time to time
she nodded her head and patted Audra’s hand and as she did she plied her with innumerable questions about her life.

Audra, equally glad to see her great-aunt, answered her as best she could, all the while observing the octogenarian closely. She looked as delicate and as translucent as the paper-thin china cups they were drinking tea from, and Audra thought that if she breathed too heavily on her the old woman would shatter. Silver-haired and slight of build for as long as Audra could remember, there was a new fragility, a brittleness, about her; Audra wanted to wrap her in cotton wool.