The Hidden Palace, page 7
‘I was just going to have toast with some of Gladys’s crab apple jelly. She didn’t have enough sugar so it’s a bit runny, but it tastes nice. Would you like some?’
‘Thank you. I do believe I would. Must be the country air. I never eat breakfast in London.’
Florence sliced the bread and toasted it on the Aga and then poured out the tea.
They ate in silence, Florence jigging her foot nervously and wanting nothing more than to escape and dress herself in something more stylish, aware of how childish she looked next to Belinda. She had in mind a pale celadon dress, the colour neither green nor grey but falling between the two and perfect with her grey-blue eyes and blonde hair. She’d cut the dress down from a larger, old-fashioned one Gladys had given her, in a delicate paisley fabric with hints of lilac and pink. The bodice now fitted perfectly, and the skirt, made from a full circle, flared out when she twirled around. She’d added side pockets, white buttons down the front, a buckle belt and felt pleased with her handiwork. She loved making things and had lots more plans for the house, starting with painting the living room. Had, had, lots more plans that is. What was going to happen now was anyone’s guess. Her mother’s overheated cottage beckoned, and she sighed.
Belinda drew out a Kensitas filter tip and lit it with an expensive-looking engraved lighter.
‘Is that gold? Florence asked.
‘It is. A present from Jack’ She passed it across to Florence. ‘Oh, I should have offered you one.’
Florence regarded the cream and red cigarette pack still lying on the table and then at the engraving on the lighter. To my darling Belinda, it said. ‘I don’t smoke,’ she eventually replied and coughed as if to prove it.
‘Of course you don’t.’ Belinda narrowed her eyes. ‘Tell me. What is a little girl like you doing setting her cap at the great John Jackson?’
Florence swallowed and passed her another slice of toast. She tried to deny it but knew she had failed the moment she felt her cheeks reddening. Damn it. It seemed that Belinda, this paragon of elegance, could see right through her.
‘Oh, he’s glamorous, I’ll give you that, with all his tales of derring-do. But it’s what’s beneath the surface that counts. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Florence chewed the inside of her cheek.
‘Anyway, can’t sit here chatting all day. Must get on. I assume you don’t mind me using the antiquated washing facilities first. Honestly, this place.’
As the woman left, Florence banged her teacup down with a clunk. Was there anything going on under Belinda’s smart, superficial surface? Or was she all bitch?
Florence went through to the living room and looked out towards the road, not knowing if she wanted to see Jack or dreaded seeing him. She leant against the deep window frame. These walls tell stories, Florence thought, and she loved a good story, devouring novels whenever she could. Jack’s grandmother had accumulated so many and she picked out one now. Cold Comfort Farm, a comic novel by an English author called Stella Gibbons. Florence needed something to laugh about.
After having had breakfast with Belinda, she’d felt like chucking the cake in the bin but couldn’t bring herself to waste food, and maybe Jack had a reasonable explanation. But what? Her mind kept snagging at that, but she arranged the cake on the kitchen table along with a cake knife and some pretty plates, in case Jack arrived back while she was out. Then she pulled on her wellingtons and went outside, glancing up at banks of thick clouds. Dark in the middle, their top edges were lined with silver and in between slices of palest blue. Would the clouds bring rain, or would the blue sky win the day? She hoped the threat of bad weather would recede and even though she was wearing her best dress, she decided to get as far away from the house as she could.
Instead of walking across the flat water meadow and then the hill beyond, she opened the gate nearest to the house and climbed the steep hill behind it, where sheep were grazing. At the top she stopped to catch her breath and looked down at Jack’s house cradled between the hills and the woods, now turning red and gold. The sky grew a little darker, the clouds so low she felt she could almost reach out and touch them, but Belinda’s presence was too unsettling for her to go back so soon. Hopefully, the rain would hold off long enough to still get in a decent walk.
From where she now stood, she could see across the rounded rolling hills and valleys of Devonshire, the winding lanes, the thick hedgerows, the oak thickets, and the stretches of mixed woodland. She chose a direction and carried on over the crest of the hill before descending the other side and then following a track lined with blackberry bushes. It stretched as far as the eye could see, deep into the woods beyond. All she could hear was the wind, intense now as it whistled through the flickering leaves.
She walked for a long time, deep in thought, before turning to head back just as the first drops of rain began to fall. A fine drizzle, that’s all, she told herself. Of course, she’d known the warm September weather couldn’t last and here they were in early October and it was as if a curtain had fallen, leaving the sunshine behind it.
‘It’s autumn now,’ she said out loud and could feel the trees whooshing in agreement. Within half an hour the rain was coming down in sheets so thick that she could barely see the path. And after such a long spell of dry weather, the ground quickly turned slippery. Florence could smell the rich dark scent of soil, as rain quenched the earth’s thirst and soaked into the parched undergrowth. Normally she enjoyed the peace of walking in wet weather, the feeling of inner calm and being in tune with nature. She used to believe in rain fairies and water sprites. She didn’t any more, of course, but she missed the innocent girl she’d once been and mourned the loss of her peaceful childhood world that had been so brutally destroyed.
She wasn’t dressed for a deluge like this and before long, her hair was soaked, hanging in strings down her back and her carefully chosen dress was sodden and clinging to her legs. She scolded herself for dashing out without a mackintosh or umbrella, although now the gusting wind would have blown it inside out within seconds.
At the top of the hill, she glanced down, hoping to spot the cottage again, but the rain had obscured it so completely she wondered for a moment if she was even in the right place. She made her way down as carefully as she could, but the grass was so slippery she lost her footing, only just managing to save herself in time. She carried on cautiously, but the lumps and bumps on the hill were terribly uneven and she caught her foot in a hole she hadn’t spotted, this time falling forward onto her front. Winded, she lay there for a second, feeling tears coming, but after a moment struggled to her feet. She glanced down at herself; her beautiful dress streaked with mud and patches of grass stain. She wiped the wet hair from her brow. Everything had gone wrong since Belinda arrived. Everything. She’d been so happy baking a cake for Jack and looking forward to seeing him, but now all she could hope was that she’d have enough time to clean up before he arrived.
As she reached the house, she saw it wasn’t to be. Jack’s father, Lionel, was opening his car door and about to get in, his coat pulled over his head, when he glanced up and saw her bedraggled state.
‘My dear girl. What happened to you?’
She shrugged. ‘I took a tumble.’
‘But why were you out without a coat?’
‘Didn’t think the rain would come on so fast or so hard.’
He nodded. ‘It can do.’
‘So, I take it Jack’s back?’
‘Dropped him off ten minutes ago.’
‘You know his wife is here?’
‘Unfortunately, yes. Listen, try not to worry about Belinda. I don’t think … well, I hope she isn’t dangerous. She hasn’t been … Well it should be Jack who tells you really.’
‘That’s what Gladys said too.’
‘She was right. Nice to see you again, Florence.’
Unable to delay going inside any longer, Florence drew in her breath and let it out in a puff. She walked around to the back door. In the porch, with one hand on the wall to balance herself, she pulled off one wellington then the other, leaving them where they fell, and then she pushed open the door. Jack was in the kitchen, his back against the Aga and looking strained, while Belinda sipped a sherry and blew smoke rings that floated up towards the ceiling. The atmosphere felt fraught.
‘Hello,’ Florence said, distinctly at a disadvantage with her bedraggled hair and wet dress. ‘Welcome home.’
Jack gave her a tight smile. ‘Thank you.’
Florence felt an ocean of distance between them. It was far from the warm reunion she had hoped for.
‘So,’ Belinda interrupted, her voice slurring slightly, and Florence wondered how much sherry the woman had already drunk. The evening before she had watched Belinda polish off nearly a third of a bottle of Jack’s favourite Laphroaig whisky.
Jack didn’t speak and Florence edged towards the door to the hall. She didn’t want to reveal how upset she was. ‘I just need to change. I’ll leave—’
‘What are you going to do about it?’ Belinda interrupted again.
Jack sighed. ‘I already told you.’
‘You laid down the law, yes, but my lawyer says I have a right.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Belinda. You have the London flat. You always hated it here.’
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Florence managed to say and then she fled the room. But as she climbed the stairs, she heard what must have been the crash of a plate as it hit the wall, followed by Jack’s shout of anger.
‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered. ‘If that was my cake going for a burton, I think I might just murder her.’
CHAPTER 11
Florence was sitting on the uncomfortable put-you-up bed in the box room, glowering through the rain-streaked window at the hill behind the house. The horrible little bed was so close to the sill that her knees jammed uncomfortably against it. Seething with frustration, she itched to hit out, but all she did was clench her fists, pick up her pillow and pummel it. It just wasn’t fair; Jack really should have told her about his wife, and she felt hurt that he’d kept such a bloody great secret from her – and from her sister too. Hélène hadn’t known anything about this.
She heard a gentle tap at her door but didn’t respond. A few moments later the door swung open and Jack came in. There was no space on Florence’s side of the bed, so he was forced to stand behind her. She kept her eyes steady but no longer seeing the view; she was only aware of the rapid beating of her heart.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said gruffly.
‘What for?’
‘This godawful mess.’
‘The cake, you mean?’ she said, her voice as haughty as she could make it.
She could hear him almost chuckle at that and then having to restrain himself. ‘Well yes the cake, but—’
‘Just tell me,’ she said.
‘About Belinda?’
She twisted around and couldn’t disguise the anger in her voice, and nor did she want to. ‘Of course, bloody Belinda. What did you think I was asking about? The price of sausages?’
‘Well, we aren’t actually buying sausages. Gladys brings them.’
Florence rose to her feet in an instant, her anger boiling over. ‘This isn’t funny, Jack.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You should be.’
They both fell quiet. She took fierce breaths as the voices clamoured in her head. Jack’s, Belinda’s, Hélène’s, and even her own.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘we can’t talk in this tiny room. Let’s go for a walk and I promise I’ll tell you everything.’
Florence narrowed her eyes. ‘It’s still raining.’
‘Only drizzling now. Do you mind?’
‘All right. Give me a chance to change out of these wet things and dry my hair a little.’
Before this, when she’d been sleeping in the guest room, the silence had wrapped around her like a soft blanket through which nothing could intrude. Knowing he was just along the landing and that with a few brave steps she’d be by his side had been comforting. Now everything felt very different.
Instead of heading through the long grass leading to the gated water meadow, she and Jack had been traipsing up the acorn-strewn track for several minutes. Neither of them had spoken, the silence uneasy. So long as I don’t look at him, I’ll be safe, she told herself, deciding to leave the thrust of the conversation to him. After all, it really wasn’t her business if he had one wife or five of them hidden about the place. They were just friends and he owed her nothing – although her heart was aching at the unspeakable wreckage Belinda had wrought on their peaceful life.
‘Belinda and I married young,’ Jack eventually said. ‘A whirlwind romance, you know, and we barely knew each other. Every marriage has its faults, of course, and ours began to show up early on.’
He fell silent and she listened to the wind blowing the trees about. It seemed a terribly sad kind of sound. Lonely and desolate, which was rather the way she was feeling too.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I suppose I allowed myself to be swallowed up by work and spent more and more time down here or in other parts of the country, then later, when the war began, in France too. We dealt with the growing rift between us in different ways. She stayed on in London, living the party lifestyle with her glamorous acquaintances and her lover, Hector.’
‘She was unfaithful?’
‘Yes.’
‘She seems very bitter.’
‘She is. She’s damaged too. We both are.’
‘By the marriage failing?’
He didn’t answer, just shook his head as if uncertain and kept on walking.
The silence continued as they trudged down the hill and then took their time along one of the muddy tracks that ran through the woods.
‘You didn’t seem damaged in France,’ Florence offered in a quiet voice.
‘Much easier there. Had a job to do, and I could be a different person.’
‘I understand that, but what about when we came to Meadowbrook? Why didn’t you just tell me you were married then?’
‘I don’t know. I should have.’
‘And now?’
‘A divorce, but suddenly she’s insisting on a share of my cottage. We agreed it would remain as mine alone, and she would keep the London flat for herself. It’s in Chelsea and worth far more than my cottage, which has been mine since my grandmother died. I have no interest in the London flat.’
‘So why has she changed her mind?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. If I know Belinda, she’s just here to make trouble.’
‘Maybe she’s not ready to let go.’
‘Of what?’
‘You, I suppose.’
‘Maybe. Now she’s seen you here, it’s certainly made her more obstinate. I’m sure she doesn’t really want me back, but she doesn’t want anyone … Well, you get my drift. And she still has Hector, as far as I know. But unless I give her half of Meadowbrook, she’s refusing to go ahead with the divorce.’
Florence had been gazing down at the ground, but now glanced up at Jack, who was watching her with sad eyes.
‘Look, I’m intruding,’ she said. ‘This is between you and Belinda. I’ll go back to my mother’s, just until the war ends and then I’ll go home to France, or perhaps travel to Malta to see if I can find Rosalie.’
He shook his head. ‘That’s not a good idea. You know your aunt may not even be alive. The siege of Malta meant the country was bombed relentlessly for almost two and a half years.’
‘Why for so long? I hadn’t realised.’
‘It’s a strategically important island for the British, so Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany fought the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy to try to wrench control from them. The place will be in ruins. You can’t go there alone.’
‘We’ll see,’ was all she said.
‘I mean it, Florence. Malta is a bad idea. The Axis resolved to bomb or starve the country into submission. It will be dangerous. And it’s fine for you to stay here. I’m getting used to you being around. It’s just …’ He paused and sighed. ‘Don’t go. I’ll insist Belinda leaves. She has no place here.’
But Florence felt she was the one in the wrong place. In France she had looked after the house, the food, the garden, the animals and, of course, her two sisters, and she’d been good at it. It had been her way of doing her bit while Hélène had worked hard as a nurse for their much-loved village doctor and Élise had been helping the Resistance to fight the German occupiers. Nurturing her family had also been Florence’s own salvation when the … when the worst of things happened to her. She still found it hard to say the actual word out loud.
Here, in England, she didn’t know where she belonged. Despite spending much of her childhood near London, it was the Dordogne where she really felt at home.
Jack smiled at her, but it was a weak smile and she could not return it.
As they walked back in silence, she focused instead on Claudette’s request. Rosalie. She tried to picture the aunt she didn’t know, the aunt who had run away and she felt a rush of overwhelming pity. To be so dreadfully alone like that. How had she managed? Her own loneliness derailed her at times, but her situation was only temporary. And at least she knew where her family were. Rosalie had been out of touch for twenty years. Surely she must have made another home for herself? Another family even? What had she been doing for all these years, what kind of life had she led and, if she really was alive, where was she now? Although glad it wasn’t possible to travel anywhere for now and nervous of more secrets coming to light, Florence couldn’t help speculating about what might have happened to Rosalie.
CHAPTER 12
Rosalie
Malta, 1925
‘It’s the Mediterranean fleet,’ Rosalie’s excitable new English friend, Charlotte Salter, said, squeezing her arm. ‘British Navy. Based at Fort St Angelo.’
Enchanted by her first sight of the dancing lights in the harbour, Rosalie soaked it in. Here was a world she could never have imagined.
‘Can it be real?’ she whispered, as she stood on the deck looking at the island ahead of her.
