Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (40 page)
But finally one evening, after she’d been rambling on about making rhubarb wine and the best way to tighten up sagging canework furniture, she suddenly paused and heaved a heavy sigh.
‘
Well, lovey, I can’t avoid it any more, so I’d better tell what happened just before VJ Day, all those years ago. There isn’t anyone left to be hurt by the truth any more – and moral codes have gone totally out of the window these days, so I don’t expect anyone will blink at what I’m about to say. Whether Tansy will be surprised or not, I don’t know, but hers will be the decision as to whether this part of the story goes into the public archive or not.
’
And with that, the CD ended. I switched it off and sat there thinking about Aunt Nan’s life till Ivo brought Flash back from his evening walk and I could tell him what she’d said.
‘So now I’ve just got the last one, the one she recorded especially for me. I’ll have to brace myself for that a bit, even though I’ve guessed what’s coming. And … I don’t really want to get to the end of them, anyway. It’s a bit like letting go of her altogether.’
‘I’ve almost got to Kate’s final diary too,’ Ivo said. ‘It’s unfinished, of course – it was returned to me with her effects after the accident and I just put it in the box with the others. I don’t suppose there’ll be any new revelations in it … only things I already know about, and they’ll be painful enough to read …’
I supposed he meant more of her infidelities – or maybe just the poignancy of her excitement at being offered the
Cotton Common
role, when he knew what was to come.
Whatever it was, we each seemed equally reluctant to bring our self-imposed journey into the life of our loved one finally to an end.
I wanted to listen to Aunt Nan’s final explanation … and yet, I didn’t. I certainly couldn’t settle to anything else the following day, and Bella said I was like a cat on hot bricks and why didn’t I just get it over with?
‘You don’t have to wait till evening, do you?’
‘I suppose I’ve just got into the habit. I like to listen to it while Ivo is out with Flash, though I have listened to bits here and there, late at night or in the morning, when the temptation has been too much for me. But the evening is good, because it’s … nice to have someone to discuss what she’s said with, to talk about Aunt Nan, even though he never knew her.’
‘You save it then,’ Bella said kindly, but with a worried look at me. I’m sure she thought I was getting too reliant on Ivo’s company, when he was a bird of passage, about to take flight back to Stratford, and I’m afraid she is right.
Ivo understood – he left me to listen to it that evening with an encouraging, ‘Go for it!’ before vanishing into the night with Flash.
Mind you, I thought that was a bit rich coming from him, since he appeared to be spinning his diary reading out indefinitely!
But for me, it was time to hear the truth.
‘
Here goes, Tansy my love, and don’t judge your old aunt Nan too harshly
,’ said her beloved voice. As if I would judge her at all!
‘
Violet sent me a letter at the same time as she sent one to our parents. Theirs said she’d been ill again and needed me to go down and nurse her, but that wasn’t the truth, because the one she wrote me swore me to secrecy and confessed that she was pregnant
–
with a husband who’d been in the Far East at the relevant time! She’d hatched this crazy plan that we could make it appear that the baby was mine. We’d no phone then, so I rushed out to the village call box as soon as I could and rang her, but she’d already written to her husband, telling him that I was having an illegitimate baby, and she was going to adopt it.
’
‘What!’ I exclaimed to the empty air, sitting bolt upright.
‘
Well, I was that upset!
’
Aunt Nan said.
‘
Not to mention furious that she expected me to give up my good name so she could keep hers for, whatever she said, I knew rumours would soon fly round the village. But what was done, was done, so in the end I had to accept it.
’
Oh, poor Nan!
‘
Of course, her husband never suspected the truth, for although Imogen was tall and fair like Violet, while I was small and dark, Immy looked just like our mother, so it was easy enough to say she took after that side of the family in her colouring.
’
I could see that Aunt Nan hadn’t really been left with any alternative, but there wasn’t anything at all to forgive her for. She was the blameless one in all this. And when she described how some people in the village cut her dead when the rumours went round, including the curate with whom she’d thought she might have a second chance at marriage and a family, I just wept and wept for her.
When Ivo returned I walked straight into his arms, seeking solace there as I had done before – and how that comforting embrace came to turn into a long, slow kiss, I have no idea … But it felt so natural, familiar and right that
I c
ertainly didn’t resist – in fact, I enthusiastically participated – and
he
was the one finally to pull back.
‘I’m
so
sorry, Tansy, I shouldn’t have done that,’ he apologised, all pale and taut, as if he’d committed some heinous crime.
‘That’s all right,’ I said slightly shakily – and not just from Aunt Nan’s story, either. ‘I know it’s just a luvvie thing and actors kiss each other all the time.’
‘Well, perhaps not quite
all
the time,’ he said, with one of those fleeting, fugitive smiles. ‘But I’m sorry if your aunt Nan’s story has upset you, though I suppose it was likely to, hearing it in her own words.’
‘It wasn’t that. It was because it was an entirely different story from the one I thought it would be! I suspected she was my grandmother and actually, she really
was
my great-aunt, after all.’
I explained what had happened and the terrible position that Violet’s actions had put Aunt Nan into. ‘And the upsetting thing is that some people believed the rumours, including the man she’d thought she might marry, so Violet destroyed all hope of that, too.’
‘He can’t have been worthy of her, in that case,’ he said.
‘No, she does say that her eyes were opened to his true character and she’d had a lucky escape. He was moved to another parish soon afterwards.’
I sniffed and dabbed my eyes. ‘I’m glad I know, but it’s just all so sad.’
‘
I’m
not expecting any surprises in Kate’s last diary, but it won’t make for easy reading,’ Ivo said heavily. ‘I’d tried to persuade her to turn the
Cotton Common
part down because of the baby, but she wouldn’t listen, and then she called me from Marcia’s and told me she’d miscarried. It was so early and it often happens, she said …’
‘Oh, Ivo, I’m so sorry!’ I cried.
‘She sounded quite calm about it, but in retrospect that must have been shock. And instead of being understanding, I blamed her and said perhaps if she’d listened to me and stayed at home, she wouldn’t have lost the baby. Our last words to each other were angry.’
‘But that was natural, and you weren’t to predict the accident,’ I said, and this time it was me who put my arms around him.
He rested his cheek against my hair and sighed heavily. ‘Even though I was so angry, I wanted to go up and fetch her home, because I didn’t think she should drive herself back, but she wouldn’t hear of it. If I’d been kinder and more understanding, the accident might never have happened.’
I understood now that he’d blamed himself for her death, and guilt had been eating him up, but sharing this awful secret with me obviously had a cathartic effect (just as that kiss had had a strangely cathartic effect on
me
) for he released himself and declared resolutely, ‘I’m going straight back to read the last diary! I’ve punished myself for months by prolonging the torture, but now it’s time to finish with it, burn them, and try to move on.’
When he’d gone I sat there turning it all over in my mind, not least the way I had reacted to his kiss, and finally admitted to myself that I could all too easily fall in love with Ivo all over again … in fact, I was more than halfway there already.
And that was so not a good idea, for I thought it likely he would always blame himself for Kate’s death and never quite get over her loss. She’d always be the unwelcome ghost at any future wedding feast.
I must have fetched two chocolate shoes and eaten them without conscious thought, for the evidence lay all around me in Cellophane and silk ribbon – and two paper Wishes.
The first read, ‘Don’t be afraid to step through the door and find what is on the other side,’ which would have been useful encouragement had I read it before embarking on the last of Aunt Nan’s memoirs.
The other said cryptically, ‘All things will come to she who waits,’
and I sincerely hoped that didn’t mean that Marcia is about to snaffle Ivo in a weak moment when he’s at his lowest ebb.
I poured myself a generous slug of Meddyg, hoping Ivo was doing the same to dull whatever mixed emotions he was feeling – for the dismal music was by now swelling and eddying next door – and began to listen to Aunt Nan’s final words.
‘
Since Immy has never mentioned anything to me, and Tansy seems to have no idea that her mother was ‘adopted’ at all, I suspect Violet may not have told her anything about it. In that case, all this might be a bit of a surprise to her, should Tansy decide to tell her!
’
There was a pause and then Aunt Nan said, directly to me, ‘
I’ve sent that Cheryl out of the room for a bit, our Tansy, so it’s just you and me. I want you to remember that I’ve always been proud of you, lass, you’re a good girl, and it was a blessed day for me when Immy upped and left you here.
‘
I never thought that Justin was the right man for you, so I hope by now Mr Right has come along – and don’t you be stubborn if he has, because where would Cinderella have been if she’d told Prince Charming where to put his glass slipper? No, if you get another opportunity, which I pray you will, then grab it with both hands.
’
Well,
I’d certainly grabbed Ivo with both hands earlier, I thought! My reactions had been so automatic and it had opened my eyes to the realisation that once Justin had been expunged from my heart, Ivo had rapidly taken his place. But
he
wasn’t free. His heart belonged with an unfaithful ghost and probably always would.
Aunt Nan finished with her familiar, ‘
Good night, lovey
!’ just as if she was off to bed, rather than to some longer sleep, and then there was just silence … apart from the faint, sad strains of music from Ivo’s cottage.
I turned the machine off and sat there for ages just thinking – and then even when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep, because everything was whirling round in my mind like a merry-go-round: all that Ivo had let fall about Kate, my realisation of my true feelings for him and the sure knowledge that falling for a man still yearning for his dead wife was not the sort of second chance Aunt Nan had had in mind.
I gave up on sleep in the end and went downstairs in my dressing gown, where Flash seemed mildly surprised to see me again so soon, but asked to go out.
When I let him back in, the light from the kitchen sent out a bright beacon into the darkness, drawing Ivo from the darkness like a moth towards the flame until he stood before me, eyes wide open and staring – not at me, but inwards, at some terrible vision.
‘Ivo?’ I said, afraid and concerned. ‘What is it?’ I took his arm and drew him in, unresisting, closing the door on the night but not the dark miasma of thoughts he’d brought with him.
‘It’s … Kate,’ he said with difficulty. ‘She thought they wouldn’t give her the
Cotton Common
part if they knew about the baby and so … she aborted it!’
‘Oh my God!’ I said blankly.
‘She said she didn’t want it anyway and she’d just tell me she’d miscarried … and Marcia
– she
knew! She even took her to the clinic, helped to arrange it. Yet all this time …’ His voice broke.
‘Yes … I see. She pretended she didn’t know and let you suffer.’ Right then, I’d have loved to have made my ex-stepsister suffer a little too – or more than a little!
‘All this time I’ve blamed myself because I wasn’t kinder to Kate when she lost the baby,’ he said brokenly. ‘But she
chose
not to have it, chose her career above a family
and
lied to me. I’ve tortured myself over it and now –’
‘Don’t –
please
don’t look like that, Ivo!’ I begged, laying a hand on his arm and looking up into his anguished face. ‘I can’t bear you to be so upset!’
For the first time he seemed to be really aware of me and his grey eyes focused. ‘“Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold,”’ he said obscurely, taking me by the shoulders and staring down into my face. Then his grip tightened and changed intent and when we kissed, this time there was no drawing back on either side.
I awoke on the echoes of a scream that was my own, bathed in cold sweat from a very Brontëan nightmare, where Kate had been clawing at the bedroom window to be let in, while singing that ‘Wuthering Heights’ song. Her face had been white and framed in clammy curls, and her malevolent dark eyes had been fixed on me. I just knew her blood-red fingernails had been itching to get at me, too …
It took me several minutes to realise that there was only birdsong and early sunshine on the other side of the familiar flowered curtains at the window …
and
why my guilty mind had conjured up Ivo’s dead wife.
‘
My love
,’ he’d whispered at one point last night … but whether to me or a ghost woman, I had no way of knowing.
We’d clung together like two drowning people – but now I was aware without even checking that I was alone in the shipwreck of my bed and had been for a considerable time, for there was no warmth where he’d lain, limbs tangled with mine.