The Haunting of Harriet (8 page)

Edward had been poking the fire. He threw on another log and watched flames lick around it, giving off a satisfying sizzle. His success in the money market was never a source of embarrassment for him. He took pleasure in sharing his good fortune with his friends, but his insensitivity meant that it never occurred to him this might be construed as showing off.

“You should. God knows you’ve been threatening to for long enough. And don’t forget your friends when the film rights roll in. I’ve just been bloody lucky, mate; and let’s face it, you can’t take it with you, Dave, so enjoy.” He refilled their whisky glasses and raised his. “Here’s to you, old friend, Happy New Year. The twenty-first century! Who’d have thought it!” Then as a flippant aside: “Of course, I could be tapping you for a bob or two if the dreaded millennium bug hits and wipes the whole shebang!”

As the others burst into the room, the men’s moment of intimacy was gone. Liz, desperate to see her children, had already reached the first landing when Edward, hearing her voice, turned and saw her framed against the rose window. Elegant and tall, she could have been carved from ivory except for that vital spark of light that shone out of deep emerald eyes. The soft light of the candles gave her the appearance of a young girl rather than a mother of two-year-old twins. Liz saw him watching her and blew him a kiss; then seeing Donald she blew one to him, turned on her heels and was gone, effortlessly running up the next flight.

Donald turned to look at his own wife. Brenda was slumped inelegantly in an armchair by the fire. Letting out a slight snore she slumped further into the voluminous chair and let her head fall back, surrendering to the irrepressible spinning of the room. Her legs splayed in front of her, one of her sensible brown shoes abandoned beneath the chair. Donald looked at his semi-conscious wife and for a brief moment contrasted her to the willowy figure on the stairs,

“She’s gone! One glass and she’s had it.”

“Night, night, darlings…” The words might have come from Brenda’s mouth but her mind was already lost to the ether of the night.

The rest of “the Circus”, the name adopted by this close group of friends, was sitting around the fire when Liz re-joined them. They were munching thick doorsteps of sandwiches that Mel had obviously thrown together without the refined removal of crusts that Liz would have insisted on. Donald rose and sidled up to her, sliding his solid arm around her waist.

“Thanks,” he said. “I assume it’s all quiet on the Western front?”

Good old Donald, at least he showed some sense of responsibility towards his son. David had shown no concern about young Emily. But then she was thirteen and had been left in charge of the other three. He probably assumed that being so dependable, a clone of her mother, she needed no checking on. And Edward… well, he was the host and far too busy to play concerned father. She gave Donald a peck on the cheek and answered his question.

“They’re fine, all ‘snuggly-buggly’, including the dog. Even your Robert’s fast asleep, bless him. Get me a drink, there’s an angel.”

Donald filled a clean glass with champagne. “I hope Ed realizes what a lucky sod he is.”

Liz threw him a wry look and grabbed the last of the sandwiches: “Mine, I think,” she said, sinking her teeth into the thick crusty bread. She groaned with ecstasy as her fingers crammed the crust into her mouth. After dinner she had vowed never to eat again but now she was famished.
Well,
she thought,
this is another century, the start of a new millennium.
She tore off another chunk and was suddenly filled with an overpowering sense of guilt.
How mean of me to criticize Mel’s sandwiches. They’re deliciously decadent. Why have I so much? This world is such a hell hole for some, survival dependent on a global post-code lottery? Maybe Mel’s right. We will all have to come back to live other lives until we’ve been through the whole gamut of experience, before we get to rest in peace? How many of those who stood here before me asked the same questions? Maybe they had lost children in dreadful epidemics or been struck down by hideous plagues. Thank God for modern medicine. I’m a lucky cow.
With that final thought she unceremoniously stuffed the last morsel into her mouth.

Edward was whispering obscenities in Mel’s unabashed ear. Chewing with an over-full mouth, Liz slipped her arm around her husband’s waist and then foolishly attempted to speak. What came out was a jumble of words and crumbs that sprayed incoherently over Mel.

“Hey, didn’t your mother teach you not to talk with your mouth full? I assume you want your husband back. Here, he’s all yours but don’t believe a word he says; he’s a cad!” She pushed him towards Liz, whom he literally swept off her feet, lifting her into his arms. Liz threw her head back and laughed as he kissed her greedily, stealing the remains of the sandwich in the process.

“Hey, you, that’s my supper. You are disgusting. You’re a disgusting….” Between choking and laughing Liz found the right word: “A disgusting husband!” she exclaimed. “But you are my disgusting husband and I love you, Mr Edward Anthony Jessop.”

“And I love you, Mrs Edward Anthony Jessop.” Now he was waltzing her around and around. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love the twins, I love my friends. I love this house. My God, tonight I even love the fucking dog!” Edward threw back his head and let loose his infectious, natural laugh, which tonight came from the core of his being.

Edward stopped spinning and placed Liz gently onto her stocking feet; holding her close until her balance returned. For a moment she was spinning alone in an empty room, the piano just a shadow and the grandeur still a dream with the lake and the boathouse waiting for her… and that boat. The drawing-room was filled with candles, their scented heat mingling with the delicious smoke from the apple logs. This was how it had been that first time she saw it. The house was perfect as she had known it would be. Everything she had wanted to do she had done. She opened her eyes and remembered they still had a lot of work to do before the restoration was complete. But this was definitely the home they were meant to find and now it was extending hospitality to their closest friends. What more could she possibly want? She shut her eyes tight so that she might burn the image on her mind. She wanted to hold on to it forever.

As the night drew on, the group grew quiet. They stood by the open windows and watched the millennium dawn. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a woman singing in French, her contralto voice trained and mature. In that moment Liz was at peace. Subliminally she understood that we never know the true reason for our existence, our reason for being. And for that brief moment she was content to remain in a state of ignorance. She was on the brink. The future called to her and she was excited, keen even, to visit it, but not if it meant leaving this present time.
It should be possible to bottle moments of your life like rare perfume, so that you could relive them by the simple unscrewing of a cork,
she thought.
Imagine all those bottles lined up each one filled with a fabulous memory, their magic contents as fresh as new, just waiting to be released. Better than photographs or souvenirs, the essence of a moment waiting to emerge like a genie to transport you back to the past, to brighten up dark future days. Like this haunting song. I’ll never hear it again in such a perfect setting, at such a magic time. If only I could capture it and hear it again whenever my soul wants to fly?
She did not realize she was the only one who had heard it.

G
eorge Alfred Marchant had been wounded during the First World War; he was hit by the door of a moving train while standing on the platform at Tonbridge station on his way to join his regiment. He never fully recovered from the ignominy of these injuries, which were severe enough to prevent him ever reaching the front. His shame grew with each published list of the fallen and honourably wounded. By way of atonement, he threw himself into his work at the Foreign Office with every fibre of his being. As a result of this diligence, when war ended he was still a young man of twenty-three but with considerable standing in the department.

A pipe-smoking, slow-thinking man, George was quiet by nature, old before his time in some ways, much of which was due to his disability. He lived his life through others, never begrudgingly, because he chose to observe, not participate. He was a private, modest man: a natural bachelor who, at the age of forty-five, was amazed to find himself knocked off his feet again, this time by a tiny redhead. He was literally bowled over. They were both at a formal party when, enjoying being watched rather than watching where she was going, Alice had crashed into this tall, awkward man. For him it was love at first sight, for her it was a novel experience. He was twenty-five years her senior and as shy as she was forward; so when she proposed he found himself accepting before he realized what was happening. Friends warned him it was folly to consider marrying a woman as strong and attractive as Alice, but he could not resist. The unlikely pair married with a great deal of pomp and ceremony just three months later.

Alice had been born ornamental rather than useful. She was a perfectionist used to being spoiled and indulged. Her Papa, the main cause of her spoiling, gave Beckmans to her as a wedding present. It would have been far more diplomatic to have presented it to the couple but diplomacy was not in his autocratic makeup. It never occurred to him that such an action could be the cause of future dissent. The gift had been accepted with some disdain. Looking at the large, unwieldy bunch of keys that came with the property, Alice declared them ugly, overweight and hideously old-fashioned, just like the house.

In fairness, the house had not been touched since 1869 and the Victorian stamp had been heavily applied. No one had wielded a paintbrush or repapered an inch of wall since then. It was a brown house: walls, ceilings, woodwork, floors. Alice had never seen so many shades of the same, sad colour, ranging from mousey biscuit beiges to the darkest burnt umbers. This was not the Art Deco dream in which she pictured herself, all glass and crisp; frightfully modern and bright. But once she overcame her sulks and conducted a thorough inspection of the old place its potential began to speak to her. She took it upon herself to modernize it, determined to turn it into the perfect country house for entertaining her many friends. George loved the quiet thought-provoking duns and bays. To satisfy his undemanding taste Beckmans needed nothing more than a gentle spring clean. He felt comfortable in it just as it was. But, characteristically, with no consideration for her unfortunate husband, Alice set to letting her creative genius loose.

Her extravagance knew no bounds; the house was taken apart and put together again. Once the task was completed to her exacting standards she gave it her stamp of approval. She engaged a housekeeper, a cook, a team of gardeners, maids, a chauffeur, and a handyman to maintain this state of perfection. Everything had its place and Alice insisted that nothing was out by so much as an inch. The rugs had to lie with their fringes immaculately combed and each ornament knew it must face the window or the door at precisely the right angle or the staff would bear witness to an embarrassing display of childish tantrums. Of course such behaviour was never experienced by the multitude of guests and revellers with which the house was constantly buzzing but it was only ever a closed door away. Behind another closed door her husband could be found continuing his solitary existence in his wife’s house. When things were going smoothly and when displaying her public face, Alice was sweetness and light, convinced that running a large house was simplicity itself. It was obviously one of her many natural talents.

Natural was not a word to associate with Alice Emily Marchant, born Alice Weatherby. Her life was one long artifice. She spent hours daily preparing herself before surfacing from her cocoon of a bedroom, bathed, oiled and buffed, crimson nails lacquered smooth, the white moons shining, face powdered and rouged, lips sculpted in scarlet. Such was her daily ritual. Her hair was the colour of copper and it was brushed every day until the burnished metal was moulded into an intricate series of swirls and coils secured by combs and pins of tortoiseshell. Life was an art form to be practised until faultless perfection was achieved and a flawless butterfly emerged.

Thoughts of motherhood had never entered her immaculately coiffed head. The couple had not discussed having babies. Being only five-foot three and extremely proud of her slim figure Alice had no intention of giving birth, deeming the whole process barbaric, primitive and unhygienic. After a year of marriage she removed her husband from the marital bed, having found sex to be an uncomfortable, messy business. As his subsequent visits to her boudoir had proved both depressingly unsatisfactory while thankfully infrequent, she had abandoned any fear of conception. So when in 1929 the Marchants discovered they were expecting their first child, interviews for the post of full-time nanny began. Alice was incandescent with rage, considering her pregnancy to be a hideous deformity that she blamed on her husband. She remained out of public view for the duration and made life a living hell for everyone around her. Her sainted husband kept his distance but secretly he was delighted. This marriage suited him. It was almost as though he were still a bachelor with the wonderful bonus of fatherhood.

Their first-born was a boy, David, who arrived without fuss and relatively painlessly in a short labour. Ten hours later Harriet arrived. Her birth was totally unexpected and agonizingly difficult. The doctor was surprised and exhausted, the midwife alarmed and scared; and Alice was all of these. She was also furious. She never forgave her daughter for those ten hours of hell during which they both very nearly died. Her instinctive favouritism was confirmed when the babies were finally displayed side by side. David was small, beautiful and feminine whereas Harriet was over-large, plain ugly and decidedly hairy. The general consensus was that the two had been born into the wrong bodies although no one was brave enough to say so within earshot of the mother. This anomaly became increasingly apparent as the children grew. David’s hair shone with the same bright cinnamon as his Mama’s, he could win the most reluctant onlookers with his radiant smile, and although he did not share her natural centre-stage flair, his beauty gained him all the attention, which did not please his jealous mother.