The Magic Hour Read online

  ‘Mrs Cruddle—’

  ‘Mrs Cruddle. Such a powerful woman – always seems about to break something, I don’t know why. Not like you at all.’

  ‘You ler-ler-like her, you know you der-der-do.’

  Mrs Smithers leaned forward impulsively and kissed Alexandra on the cheek, a first for both of them.

  ‘You take care, dear, and don’t forget to leave me your hotel address.’

  ‘It’s on the pad by the drawing-room telephone, the White Harte. I can ber-ber-be reached at the dear old White Harte.’

  ‘Do take care, dear.’

  Alexandra put her head on one side.

  ‘You have the Mer-major to think of now, Mrs Smithers, don’t forget, you are due for chatty ber-ber-bridge on Saturday night.’

  ‘Oh the Major, he is such a nuisance. He plays conventions I detest, and he makes mad bids, particularly once he’s had a Scotch whisky or two, really he does.’

  Mrs Smithers sighed, attempting to make Alexandra feel sorry for her, but Alexandra merely smiled and left.

  Bob had taught Alexandra to drive and had loaned his car to her, so she was able to draw up outside the old coaching inn in some style, roof down, hair carefully concealed under a knotted scarf, luggage neatly packed.

  She checked in, lunching on her own, imagining herself with Bob, imagining how they would laugh and talk, and try and guess the life stories of everyone else in the luncheon room. It made lunch pass quicker, pretending she was with Bob, picturing him sitting opposite her, his charm and bonhomie filling their corner of the room.

  Driving first to have tea with Janet Priddy, before going on to see her father and Kay, was something she had long planned to do.

  ‘Ah, Alexandra dear.’

  Janet, like Alexandra, had grown older, but because Janet was much older than Alexandra, she had actually become quite old, which surprised her guest. She had never thought of Janet becoming older, as her grandmother had become older. She had thought of her going on to enjoy a form of eternal late middle age, always dressed in conventional tweed suits, seamed stockings quite straight, everything just so. However, the diamanté owl brooch on her lapel, which Alexandra remembered was always worn for lunches and teas, was unchanged, like the oak furniture in her front parlour, and the silvered Victorian teapot, always polished on a Monday afternoon, and the cat asleep in the window beside the pot plants.

  Her talk was of the village, of deaths and births, or rather of more deaths, and fewer births, and was just succeeding in making Alexandra feel as if she had stepped back in time and was still wearing a smocked dress and long socks and sandals when she said, suddenly, ‘You remember Mrs Laughton?’

  Alexandra remembered her very well.

  ‘Well, she died, dear. Did I tell you that? No? Well, she did, she died here on the farm, poor soul, in the cottage here; and the strangest thing happened, Alexandra. She only went and left me all her money.’ Janet looked embarrassed. ‘It’s not as if I did anything except keep an eye on the old dear, but then she only upped and left me a small fortune. Of course I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t accept it, not knowing that she had family, even though they never visited. They came to the funeral, of course.’

  ‘Well, they wer-wer-wer-would.’

  ‘And I could see that they were distressed about it, what with one thing and another.’

  ‘Ab-ab-about the funeral?’

  ‘No, not about the funeral, dear, no, no, about the money. So I told them they could have it all, all the money back, and I gave them all her – effects. But I did keep that.’ She nodded towards a small porcelain ornament of a black and white cow with flowers beneath its feet. ‘Seeing that I’ve been a farmer’s wife all my life, I thought I would keep that, the cow, because she’s pretty. I thought that was all right, seeing that she did leave me everything else and I did give it back to them. But they didn’t much like it, I can tell you. I mean they didn’t mind me making over the money to them, but they minded me keeping the cow. Even now they keep writing to me, asking for it back. And my lawyer, he keeps writing to them telling them that they’re lucky to have what I gave them back, but it doesn’t make any difference. At all events, I became so distressed by it all, I went to a lady who helps people with their … well, headaches and suchlike.’ She smiled for the first time. ‘Course I felt stupid at first, but now I quite enjoy it. She gives us games to play, and we sit in a circle and talk, and that. Yesterday she made us all imagine we were looking into a black pool of water, an oasis in a desert, and then she asked us what we could see in the water. Well, you can imagine all sorts came up, as it would. But me, guess who I saw in my oasis? Your grandmother.’ Janet stopped, sighing. ‘I still miss her, you know. We were friends for fifty years. Another cup of tea, dear?’

  Alexandra handed her cup to her, and watched the tea being poured. It seemed to be coming out of the spout slower than the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hall, so slow it could have been custard. Only half an hour of her visit had passed. She could not possibly leave before she had been there at least an hour. With a sudden rush of recognition she realised that the old way of life was too slow for her. She had been independent long enough now to be used to being always in a hurry, running everywhere from the moment she woke up to the moment she went to bed. Always trying to think of new ways to attract business to the house, to make the cuisine better, to accommodate the new tastes that were coming into vogue, even in sleepy Deanford.

  ‘Shall I ter-ter-try imagining an oasis?’ she asked, as the silence that had fallen threatened to extend and she had just given another nervous yawn. ‘I could ter-ter-tell you what I see.’

  ‘Yes, you do, dear, you’ll be surprised at what you find, really you will. I tell you, some people saw things that you couldn’t repeat in mixed company, really you couldn’t. It made you wonder what sort of mind they had.’

  Janet watched Alexandra with interest as she closed her eyes, and they both fell into yet another silence as Alexandra imagined herself riding through the desert towards the cool water of the oasis. In her mind she dismounted and went to the pool. She stared into the dark water. What she saw amazed her, and filled her with delighted warmth, so much so that she only, finally, opened her eyes very reluctantly.

  ‘Well, come on, dear, what did you see?’

  There was a long, long pause as Alexandra, still recalling what she had seen, waited for the warm feeling to subside, yet for some reason she could not quite understand it would not, or could not. The image that she had seen stayed on, and on, as clearly as anything she had ever known.

  ‘I saw – myself. There were two of me. And we were both smiling at each other.’

  She turned to Janet who put her teacup down and then with the unmoving eyes of the old she stared at Alexandra for a few seconds looking strangely unsurprised.

  ‘Well, you would, dear,’ she said finally, in an almost satisfied voice. ‘You would do.’

  ‘Why? Why would I?’

  ‘Why, because, Alexandra dear, you were a twin, you were born one of two. I dare say,’ she went on, frowning, ‘I dare say it must have been your sister that you saw, your poor dead twin sister.’

  Alexandra stared at her, and Janet, realising at once the strength of her power over her, picked up her teacup and slowly sipped it, a sound that gathered in force to become a more than hearty noise in the silence that followed.

  ‘I was a—’

  ‘Twin, dear. One of two. Your mother died from what is known in medicine as toxic shock. Yes, it was the arrival of the second, unexpected baby that killed poor Laura. A girl like you, she was born dead, on account of your mother dying as she was born, and only half the weight of a normal baby. Of course none of the family spoke of it. Not at the time. Well, they wouldn’t, would they? They didn’t want everyone in the village turning round and blaming your grandmother, seeing that she was acting as a midwife, poor woman, the doctor not having arrived in time, except to sign the death certificates, of c
ourse.

  ‘That’s why your grandmother never wanted you to leave her side, never wanted you visiting Knighton Hall or your Millington relatives, none of that, she was always afraid that they might tell you something, or that questions might be asked and you might have been told, and would tell them. Of course they wouldn’t have – they wouldn’t have asked questions, no one did, or would, Lower Bridge Farm was too far away from everything not to have a life of its own, not to be a place where no one would ask questions. I knew of course, because she had to tell someone. But I kept mum; until now that is, because, well … you do, don’t you? You stand by your friends. And your grandmother, well, she was a friend, and family too. But I always think that’s why she gave in so easily when Kay came along, just left the house to her. It was as if the guilt of what she thought she had done to your father’s first young wife, silly Laura, was still eating into her, making her ashamed – at the back of her mind, not the front of it, at the back. Always felt she could have done something more to save them both, the mother and that second baby.’

  ‘Did my father know of this?’

  ‘Not in too much detail, no, dear. Your grandmother hushed it all up, for her sake, and the poor doctor who always felt he could have been there. Besides, men can’t deal with that kind of thing, and nor should they be asked to. No, the other baby, all that, it was just brushed under the carpet. This is our secret, just ours, yours and mine. What would be the point of bringing up the past, of raking over old miseries? No one could bring poor Laura back. It seems that she couldn’t bear the thought of another delivery, you see, and no one knew there were two of you, as how would they, back then? But that is how it was, you see, Alexandra. That was what happened, and they buried them both in the same coffin, of course, and no more to be said. Now, would you like another cup of tea, and then I will show you round my new herbal, things are still coming along round here, you know. We may be old but we can still stoop to pick up a dibble.’

  There was something so firm about Janet’s manner, as there always had been, that Alexandra, dazed and speechless, found herself obediently drinking a second cup of tea, and then following her out to the courtyard garden. But when she eventually left her, it was without either of them once again referring to the subject of Laura and Alexandra’s lost twin. Perhaps because of this Alexandra made up her mind to visit her mother’s grave in the village churchyard. She had no flowers, and the shops in the village were shut, so she plucked some greenery from nearby shrubs, and some wild flowers from between the gravestones, and she twisted them into a small bouquet and laid them on her mother’s grave.

  Laura Millington Stamford. A beautiful young girl taken too young, always missed.

  She had been taken too young. She had been beautiful, because although there had been no photographs of her at Knighton, Alexandra remembered the photograph that her father used to keep by his bedside.

  Alexandra stood for a while willing herself to feel something, and yet knowing in her heart of hearts that if you have never known someone it is difficult to feel anything except regret on their behalf; tears such as she had shed at the opera would not come. Her mother and sister had died, but because she had never known them the way she had grown to know Violetta and Alfredo in the opera, her eyes were dry. For a second she even found herself wondering if Janet Priddy could have made everything up?

  And yet she could not have made up the girl whom Alexandra had seen reflected in her imagined oasis, the smiling girl with the same long dark hair, the same shaped face, the same upturned nose as herself. Could she possibly have been some sort of imagined ghost of her dead sister that Janet had willed on her? Or was she just a figment of Alexandra’s own imagination of which Janet had taken advantage? More than that, had she returned to Alexandra to tell her something? Was that why Alexandra had suddenly felt so warm, so wanted, so encouraged?

  ‘I wish I had known you both, I know I should have loved you,’ she said to the gravestone, after which she drove to Lower Bridge Farm.

  * * *

  ‘How are you, Pa?’

  It seemed all right to address him in this way, since she was older, and he was older, and a father once more.

  ‘Going along all right, thank you, Alexandra—’

  ‘He’s not, don’t you believe it. He’s got dreadful arthritis, in his wrists and his ankles,’ Kay interrupted briskly, as if John Stamford could not hear what had been said. ‘Any more of what we have been through this winter and he will have to sell the farm and go and live in a warmer climate. I keep telling him that. But your father does like to suffer in silence, one of the old sort. Gin and tonic?’

  It was so strange to see Kay standing in a drawing room that had once been her childhood drawing room. To see her beside a drinks tray which was crowded with everything from gin and bottles of tonic water to decanters of sherry and Madeira, whisky and brandy. Grandmother had never drunk. Grandmother had tea. Grandmother had a glass of champagne at Christmas, and that was all.

  ‘We haven’t seen you here for so long, have we, John? When did we last see Alex?’

  Kay carefully avoided the word ‘home’. Alexandra was just about to say that she had written to her father regularly from Deanford, but, receiving no replies, she had quite given up when Kay, forgetting to pour anyone else a drink, or perhaps not caring if they had one or not, sat down and began drinking her gin and tonic very fast, as if it were medicine.

  ‘Your father has missed you. He doesn’t say as much, but he has. He has missed you,’ Kay announced.

  John Stamford remained silent, ignoring his wife, and staring across at Alexandra as if he was only now beginning to recognise who she was, as if she had changed so much that she was no longer recognisable to him.

  ‘I have missed Lower Bridge Farm,’ Alexandra stated, sounding prim, even to her own ears. ‘But I have been enjoying Deanford very much. I have a very good job now.’ She smiled.

  Kay lit a cigarette.

  ‘We’re thinking of selling my cottage. The one you and Mother-in-law occupied. If you’re doing so well, why don’t you buy it?’

  ‘It’s not your cottage, dear—’ John interrupted.

  ‘It was always meant to be my cottage.’ Kay paused as Alexandra’s father got up and wandered over to the drinks table. Alexandra looked away as a silence fell. Happily, Kay decided to fill it. ‘Did you hear that mad woman Mrs Laughton left all her money to Janet Priddy. The family were furious. Of course they went hell for leather after her to get back the money. And quite right too.’

  ‘Janet gave it all back, Kay, you know she did.’

  John was carefully mixing a drink for Alexandra and one for himself.

  Kay went on ruthlessly. ‘Apparently Janet’s gone round the twist, so the village says, and not surprising. It was the strain of the family setting the lawyers on to her.’

  ‘Janet gave all the money back to the family, Kay,’ John repeated quietly as if to himself. At the same time he shrugged his shoulders in Alexandra’s direction. ‘She only took a little ornament for herself, that was all. She’s a decent woman, Kay. All she kept was just a little china ornament. I’ve known Janet all my life, she would hardly accept a bunch of parsley from anyone, let alone money. Proud as a peacock she’s always been.’

  ‘She’s a stupid old woman,’ Kay finished.

  ‘She may be a bit crusty on the outside, but she’s a sweet person inside,’ John persisted.

  A silence followed broken only by Kay lighting another cigarette.

  ‘By the way, Alex, congratulations.’

  Alexandra looked at Kay, surprised, knowing she could not possibly know about Bob.

  ‘Congratulations. Your stammer is much better—’

  Her father pointed a sudden indignant finger at Kay.

  ‘She does not have a stammer, Kay. She has a slight hesitation.’

  ‘I-er-I-er-I-er—’ Alexandra started, feeling as if she was floating above them both, somewhere near the ceiling, feeling as if
she had shed the weight of a thousand years, feeling as if she had just been born. ‘I-er ther-think it is much better,’ she agreed, realising suddenly that it had improved, almost without her realising it. ‘Much better.’

  Her father beamed at Alexandra, and the look in his eyes was more proud than the day he won the cup at the agricultural show.

  ‘Just as well, I kept telling John you will never get a husband with a stammer like that.’

  Kay went to the gramophone and put on some band music. This seemed to offer John the opportunity he needed, because as he bent over to hand Alexandra a drink, he whispered, ‘Pear Tree Cottage, the cottage, is in your name, to do with what you will, your grandmother made sure of that. It was hers to give you, not Kay’s, whatever she says.’

  ‘What was that you said?’

  Kay turned sharply.

  ‘I was just remembering the first time Alexandra had a proper drink, before a Christmas party at the Chisholms’.’

  ‘Oh those Chisholms, what a mess. Such a mess they’ve made of everything.’

  Alexandra stared at Kay. She had given up trying to write to Frances, and although she had telephoned them before she left Deanford, for some reason their response to hearing from her had been more than discouraging. It had been as if they had never known her.

  ‘The Chisholms are about to go under, have been for some time. They are at their wits’ end,’ Kay announced to the room at large. ‘They have built far too many boxes for their hirelings, and of course what has happened now? Their yard is half empty. Serves them right for being so greedy. I tried to tell them, everyone tried to tell them, but would they listen?’

  John resumed his place in his favourite armchair and stared ahead of him as Kay went on relentlessly shredding the neighbourhood above the sound of a second-rate band. At that moment it seemed to his daughter that John Stamford was like an old bulldog, strong in aspect, but perhaps essentially gentle as bulldogs are, needing only for someone to understand them, wanting to be hugged and petted.

  ‘I suppose we’d better go in to dinner,’ Kay announced reluctantly, as the clock struck seven.