The Whispering House, page 25
I ought to have hurried downstairs and joined him before he came up to fetch me. I’d already heard him apologise for me several times. ‘Freya will be down in just a moment,’ he’d said, and one of the guests must have queried this because he’d replied, ‘No, no, not Diana. Freya. Freya is my … I’m afraid my mother won’t be here at all; she’s not feeling well.’
The fairy lights blinked and dimmed. Yet another car emerged from the woods, just as I’d persuaded myself to leave, and I hung on in case it was Tom’s Ford Fiesta. Not that I’d be able to tell. Even when it had parked up and the passengers were piling out, I couldn’t see much from here. I reached for my phone.
Where are you?xxx
It was the first message I’d written in two months, and I sent it to Dad because Tom would be driving. Whether anyone had messaged me during those two months was a moot point: either they hadn’t, or Cory had deleted everything from my inbox. That was the likeliest explanation, wasn’t it? Somebody – somebody – must have tried to get in touch? I crunched the last few sugared almonds.
Maggie! I remembered gratefully, dusting crumbs from the front of my dress. Maggie had texted me – she’d said so this morning. I put the empty jar down, squared my shoulders and turned towards the door.
With every step I took the red dress swished, as if a pair of shears were slicing through the fabric. Quite what wild and wonderful creature I thought I’d become when I put it on, I no longer knew. A firebird? A dragon? A sorceress? It turned out I was still myself, the same old Freya Lyell, zipped inside a 1970s ball gown with massive sleeves, tight cuffs, and too many beads on the bodice.
I had to stop when I reached the landing because I thought my knees were going to buckle. This whole situation was impossible. I should have gone down ages ago; I should have been there from the start. Now I would have to sweep down the stairs in a flash of bloody-minded red that I wasn’t feeling as much as I ought.
I nearly dropped my phone when it lit up and beeped.
Turning into the drive now! Dad x
Forty-odd guests seems a lot when you’re writing the invitations by hand, but the high-ceilinged spaces swallowed them up. A few people noticed me racing down the stairs, but not many, and they didn’t seem particularly intrigued. Half of them still had their coats on. The champagne was being handed round but I heard someone mention hot coffee, and I knew for a fact we were out of coffee.
‘It said on the invitation that Robert Lyell would be here,’ one man grumbled, and another replied with a doubtful, ‘Hmm …’
I brushed past them and made my way to the front door, where Cory was waiting for guests. Perhaps it was too dark for him to notice the colour of my dress, or perhaps he was too nervous to care – either way he smiled and murmured ‘Hi’, and squeezed my hand so tightly that the engagement ring hurt my finger.
The noise of the storm ruled out conversation, so I simply yelled, ‘Dad’s here,’ and jabbed my thumb in the direction of the drive. We stood side by side beneath the pillared porch, hugging our separate selves against the wind and staring across the garden. Before long a couple of headlights did appear through the trees, but it was a red Mini, so it couldn’t be Dad.
‘They’ll be here any second,’ I insisted. ‘He said—’
But Cory was making a dash for the Mini as it bumped over the gravel and parked in front of the garden steps. He opened the passenger door – doing his desperate ‘Welcome, welcome!’ act as the rain plastered his hair to his scalp – and my father emerged, squinting, with his collar turned up to his ears.
‘Dad!’
I splashed down the steps, hitching my skirt round my knees so as not to trip. Dad being Dad, when I seized him and flung my arms around his neck he undermined the moment by muttering, ‘Steady on now!’ and ‘Can’t this wait until we’re inside?’ but his heart wasn’t in it. His heart – for that brief, brief moment – was in agreement with mine, and he hugged me back in spite of the rain.
It couldn’t last. ‘Come in!’ Cory kept shouting, and in the second it took for me to shut the car door, the entire Lyell party – Zoë? Tom? Anyone else? I hadn’t had chance to notice – had been ushered inside, and another carful of arrivals had pulled up between us. By the time I got indoors, they’d disappeared into one or other of the galleries.
The wind burst with me into the house, making the paintings wobble on their hooks. I slammed the door shut and the hall went quiet, except that I could hear Cory’s voice, exuberantly loud, in the gallery to my right. He had dumped everyone’s wet coats and umbrellas in the corner of the hall any old how, and some of the guests were glancing unhappily at the heap as they sipped their champagne. We ought to have thought about what to do with coats. Perhaps I ought to think about it now.
Someone shoved a tray of half-filled glasses into my elbow and muttered, ‘Drink?’ The caterers had sent two waitresses along – school friends who smirked when they caught one another’s eye. They were meant to be handing out canapés as well as drinks, and I should have checked if that was in hand, but the girls moved on before I remembered. I took a swig from my glass and turned away from the wet coats, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about them.
Nobody was mingling. The people who’d come in pairs or groups remained in pairs or groups; those who’d arrived alone were looking down into their glasses, or up at the chandeliers, or checking their phones. There was a small gathering round the portrait of Lady Caroline Augusta Fitzroy-Byrne, and when one person remarked of her, ‘Rather fine,’ there was a grateful hum of agreement.
Most of the Freya pictures were in the rooms either side of the front door, but there were two in the entrance hall, including the one with the fancy gold frame. You couldn’t exactly miss them, and yet everyone seemed anxious to do just that. I heard a few people speaking kindly about Cory himself – ‘A relief to know the poor kid survived adolescence!’ ‘Isn’t it just?’ – but nobody mentioned his paintings, or not in my earshot.
I crossed the hall, swishing in my satin and smiling dumbly at anyone who would meet my eye. At some point, Cory was going to pinch my arm and demand to know what the hell was going wrong with his party. Perhaps I could suggest it had something to do with the lighting. Cory had dreamed of a candlelit glow, but the newly wired chandeliers were giving off a bluish glare which hadn’t been apparent when he tested them this morning. It did something bad to the walls; took all the warmth from the Pamplona Red.
I held my hand against the electric radiator that Cory had brought from upstairs, but its effect was puny in the cavernous hall. There was a halogen heater near the stairs which gave off a cosier glow, but it kept making odd buzzing noises, as if it were about to die.
Music, I thought vaguely, and Cory must have had the same idea, because the CD player started up.
‘Schubert!’ someone declared.
‘Lovely!’
There were nods and murmurs all round, as if the inarguable loveliness of the music was a relief to everyone.
Cory had been worrying about music all afternoon. ‘Schubert quintet?’ he kept asking. ‘Or Miles Davis?’ He had tapped his nails against his teeth and hung about in front of me, demanding an answer.
‘Freya, seriously, what do you think? It’s got to be something classy – but are we talking classy classical or classy jazz?’
I’d said Schubert just to shut him up, although as far as party spirit was concerned, the jazz would have been a better bet. There weren’t enough speakers for all this space, and the music sounded small and faraway, as if a quintet of ghosts had struck up in the cellar. To make matters worse, the wind was picking up outside and the music couldn’t compete; it could only add a thread of unease to the bigger, crazier sounds of the storm.
‘Listen, Robert, I don’t mind,’ a happy and half-familiar voice was saying in one of the front rooms. ‘I’m just glad to get out of London for a while, and spend some time with you.’
I peered round the edge of the door, and Zoë Stefanidis spotted me straight away.
‘Here she is!’ she cried. ‘Here’s Freya!’
Zoë bounced towards me with her arms outstretched, and I didn’t resent her warmth as much as I thought I would. I let her hug me and half hugged her in return, keeping my left hand behind my back so she wouldn’t spot the engagement ring. She smiled and her earrings clanked as she kissed me not once, not twice, but three times on the cheeks.
Dad was lurking behind her, thin and hunched, like a question mark. I could tell, without looking directly, that his mood had darkened since he’d entered the house.
‘I hope you don’t mind me coming tonight,’ Zoë said, and it was worry rather than pleasure that lit her features. ‘I wasn’t sure. You know what your dad’s like, all vague and airy and Oh, don’t worry, Freya won’t mind.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Actually, between ourselves, I think he’s embarrassed of me … No, no, I don’t mean that –’ as Dad muttered a protest – ‘I don’t mean embarrassed of me. Just worried what you’ll think about us.’
It was one of those moments that might have been awkward in another life. Maybe next week, maybe even tomorrow, this whole Dad and Zoë thing would bother me, but I couldn’t think about it now. One of the waitresses appeared with a tin-foil platter.
‘Oh, fantastic!’ said Zoë optimistically. There wasn’t much to choose from: a pile of grissini, a khaki dip, and some brown olives on cocktail sticks. We all took something, but Zoë was the only one who actually ate. Judging by the pristine state of his glass I don’t think Dad had touched his champagne, and his fingers kept twitching round his pocket, as if he could kill for a cigarette. He met my eye without smiling, and I got that hollow feeling in my knees again. Perhaps he was just upset – understandably – by Cory’s paintings, but in that case why was he glaring at me, as if I had committed some offence?
‘Where’s Tom?’ I wondered, glancing over Dad’s shoulder. Whatever else was going on, that was still the crucial question.
‘Tom?’ The way Dad said it, you’d think there was some doubt as to which Tom, out of many, I was referring to. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t realise he was invited.’
‘Oh.’ I stared at my father. ‘But I just assumed … Did he not drive you down?’
‘No, no, Zoë brought her car. Anyway, I barely see him these days – I suppose he’s busy getting ready for his big move up north. We would have offered him a lift but, as I say, I didn’t realise he was invited.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, no. I suppose he wasn’t exactly, come to think of it.’
I remember staring at my cocktail stick with its glistening olive, and wondering what on earth it was and why I was holding it. It bothered me that Dad’s hands were full – what with the un-sipped champagne and un-nibbled canapé – because that meant he couldn’t take notes. He ought to be making notes for his review.
‘Do you want to put those down somewhere?’ I said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Cory printed off some catalogue notes, if you want to scribble on one of them? Or I’m sure I can rustle up some paper—’
‘No, thank you.’ Dad’s voice was crisp, as if my suggestion had been in poor taste. ‘By the way, I meant to say: you’re looking terribly grown-up this evening.’
The bitterness in his tone was unmistakable, and I was a child again – the great, big, twenty-three-year-old child I’d been before I left home for Byrne Hall. Was that Dad’s problem? My appearance? I didn’t think so, deep down. It sounded like a casual swipe; a symptom of some other mysterious displeasure.
‘Dad? What’s up?’
‘Oh, I think it’s a fabulous dress,’ Zoë piped up before he could answer, and then there was a touch to my elbow and Cory was saying, ‘Hello again, Mr Lyell! How wonderful to see you!’
Cory wore his behaviour like a handsome and well-fitting suit, and since I intended never to be alone with him again, this meant I would never know his thoughts about the red dress. Even if I seized him by the shoulders and peered into his eyes, he would smile for the sake of his guests and give nothing away.
I’ll see Tom tomorrow, I thought. Come hell or high water, I’ll see Tom tomorrow.
‘Thank you for coming all this way,’ Cory was saying. ‘Freya tells me you’ve booked into a hotel in Bligh, but you’d be most welcome to stay here …’ and so on and so on, his voice shimmering with kindness.
Dad asked after his mother, and introduced Zoë properly, and Zoë kissed his cheeks three times: mwa … mwa … mwa. I doubted anyone would notice if I sidled away. Dad started thanking Cory – again! – for inviting him to the opening, although he made no comment on the paintings themselves. Even when Cory stood back with his arms slightly spread, and surveyed the walls with an inviting, ‘Well …!’ Dad just turned his attention to the olive he’d been holding for the last ten minutes and said, ‘This is an impressive spread! Did you make the food yourselves, or did you get people in?’
Zoë saw me backing away, but I shook my head ever so slightly, so that she’d understand not to make a fuss. She did understand, to her credit. I think she was worried, though, because when she told Cory, ‘It’s an absolutely stunning house you’ve got here!’ she had one eye on me, and her tone of voice no longer matched her superlatives.
‘Thanks!’ Cory said, as I made it to the entrance hall.
‘Oh, yes!’ Dad remarked. ‘You should see the gardens in summer!’
There were still a lot of champagne flutes standing in tidy formation. We had catered for too many as far as drink was concerned, and too few in terms of food. I drained a glass in one go and picked up another.
There were two women in the gallery to the left of the front door, conversing quietly with their backs to the pictures, and they didn’t acknowledge my entrance. I strolled from painting to painting, drinking quickly and allowing myself to seethe. It was as if I’d only ever peeped sideways at Cory’s work until the other week, when I found the Stellas in the attic. That had been my moment of revelation; the slap across the face that had shocked me into seeing straight. I’d made so many excuses for him over the months – he needs time; he needs practice; he needs to know me better – as if the problem with the way he painted was simply a question of skill.
I could admit it now, to myself; I could admit how much I hated Cory’s pictures. I stared hard at all the Freyas, with their drugged eyelids and puffed-up breasts; their milky whites and jaundiced yellows; their dead faces, like masks with no-one behind them. Freya Reading a Book … Freya Sleeping … Freya by the Window … Freya Sitting on the Stairs … Freya with her Chin in her Hand … Freya, Freya, Freya upon Freya, looming from the dark-red walls.
The women were still murmuring as I left.
‘That was my thinking precisely,’ I overheard one of them say, ‘but apparently she’s ill.’
‘Oh! So you mean she’s not going to put in any appearance at all?’
‘Apparently she’s not well enough.’
The second woman tutted with annoyance and the first one said, ‘I know.’
There were no pockets on the red dress but the sleeves were capacious, and I’d worked out a way of tucking my phone inside the cuff where no-one could see it. I went upstairs to the landing and leaned over the bannisters while I searched for Tom’s number. Everyone was standing about vacantly down in the hall, like people on a railway platform whose train is still some minutes off. A few were gravitating towards Dad; a few were still drawn to Lady Caroline’s lipless smile. I could only see the tops of their heads from here, and it struck me that nearly all Cory’s guests were white-haired, or greying, or bald. They were Diana’s generation – not his.
I turned my back on the party and carried on climbing. It wasn’t that I wanted to return upstairs. Going upstairs had been on the long list of Never agains that I’d been ticking off all day – Never again will I have to wake up on this mattress, Never again will I have to get dressed in front of Cory, and, at long last, earlier this evening, Never again will I have to climb these stairs. All the same, it was restful to leave the cold, glittery gathering behind, and push my way into the darkness.
I didn’t risk pressing Call until I reached the second floor – Diana’s floor – but even that felt too exposed, so I slipped up the attic staircase as it started to ring and felt my way to the top. The cold was different up here – more airy and mobile than below – and the rain was loud on the roof.
‘Freya! It’s you!’
‘It’s me!’
‘It’s so wonderful to hear your voice! Are you all right? How’s it going?’
Tom’s voice was huge and too happy. I walked the length of the corridor and ducked into the room where Cory had dumped his Stella portraits.
‘It’s awful,’ I whispered. ‘Oh Tom, it’s awful. I wish you were here. I wish—’
I stubbed my toe on something sharp, and when I crouched to rub the pain away, the phone-glow caught on the intricate, gluey lines of the mosaic, torn from its golden frame and flung on the floor. I could just make out the fracture lines across my sister’s cheek and nose.
‘Why? What’s happened?’ asked Tom. ‘You’re all right, aren’t you?’
The fear in his voice was thrilling to me; a thing of weight and value.
‘Freya, say something.’
‘I’m here, I’m fine, but—’
‘What’s going on? I thought it was the opening tonight? Is your dad not there with Zoë?’
‘Yes, yes, they’re here, but Dad’s acting strange, like I’ve done something wrong, and Cory’s paintings …’
‘What about them? Freya, what is it?’
‘They’re horrible, Tom. I’ve wanted to tell someone this for so long—’
‘Tell someone …?’
‘No, not someone. You. I’ve wanted to tell you. They’re such horrible pictures, and I … I don’t know … I feel so stupid.’
The bedsprings creaked wildly as I sat down. Tom was quiet, listening to my words and silences.
‘It’s good to hear your voice again,’ he said, with less exuberance and more depth than before.
