Authors: Priscilla Masters
I tried to dissuade him.
‘We don’t have to be—’
He cut in. ‘We do, Susanna. Believe me. We do.’
I stared at him. It was the first morning since he had arrived that we had not made love.
We breakfasted very quietly and very slowly and I watched as he packed his suitcases and loaded them into his hire car.
I clung to him and felt that the episode would soon be over.
As he reversed down the drive he opened the window and gave me a small smile. ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’ He waved.
I put my hands on the window. ‘Don’t do it,’ I urged. ‘Don’t divorce her.’
Perhaps I believed that to divorce his wife for no reason was tempting the fates again. Perhaps I still didn’t understand Paul’s psyche or perhaps I thought that he
was asking me to share his life in Tacoma and that was against my wish.
Perhaps…
Who knows?
Paul divorced Frances anyway.
I spent Christmas of ’87 at Hall o’th’Wood. As I drove up through the snow I reflected that the crooked black-and-white walls looked like the design on an expensive Christmas card.
I stopped the car to gaze up at it and recalled my first visit. The old house still made me catch my breath with its beauty. But now I knew something of its secrets.
Richard, or Dick as I called him, was now a tall, serious boy of fourteen years old and I could see the resemblance to my husband grow stronger every day. He had the same clear, grey eyes and direct way of speaking. He met me in the hallway, Michael and Linda standing behind him. Richard threw his arms around me. ‘Happy Christmas, Zanna. Maria says we’ve time for a ride before Christmas dinner,’ he added excitedly.
So we took the horses out for their Christmas morning gallop and dismounted at the lake. I knew Dick had something to ask me. ‘Zanna,’ he said seriously. ‘I want to ask you about my grandfather. People say things but they never tell me the full story.’ There was the hint of petulance in his voice. ‘He did something very bad, didn’t he?’
I nodded. I have never seen the point of hiding things
from children – even unpleasant things. ‘Yes, he did. We both did. He died and I went to prison.’ I hesitated. ‘For three years.’
He had the schoolboys’ love of unearthing secrets.
‘What was it?’
‘We brought some things – letters – into the country illegally.’
His eyes were round, his mouth open.
‘My father told me that you did it for money.’
I nodded.
‘He said it was to preserve the house.’
We both glanced involuntarily through the trees, at the crooked, white walls with their black timbers crisscrossing, woodsmoke drifting up from the chimneys.
Richard put his hand on my arm. ‘I just wanted to tell you,’ he said, ‘that it’s all right. I would never do anything that stupid. Not just for a house. Not even Hall o’th’Wood. It wouldn’t be worth it.’
I felt reassured.
We galloped back to our Christmas dinner then.
Christmas fare in every household is full of its own traditions. Mulled wine, the turkey and then the Christmas pudding, brought in in flames. In the pudding in Hall o’th’Wood we had always hidden small silver objects – a shoe, a tiny suitcase, a heart. Portents of our future. We would leave them on the side of our plates and Maria would clean them, wrap them in tissue paper and preserve them ready for the next Christmas – and
the next. I was eating my portion when I felt something hard and round. I spat it out and knew the wedding ring had found me this year. Then I looked up. Linda was watching, smiling, Michael too, even Maria from the doorway. They were all part of the conspiracy. The trinkets were not randomly distributed but carefully manoeuvred to the correct person’s plate. I spat it out and put it on the side of my plate. Dick, I noticed, was not part of the conspiracy. He carried on doggedly spooning the pudding and brandy sauce into his mouth, oblivious of the drama playing over his head.
Right on cue the telephone rang and Maria returned to the table to say that Paul was asking for me.
He wished me a merry Christmas, said that he was in Tacoma, alone with Junior, that he was having a great time and that he hoped I was too. He sounded happy. He asked me again to marry him and this time I said yes.
I put the phone down, looked round the ring of faces and told them that I would be getting married again. Michael kissed me and opened a bottle of champagne. Linda kissed me and asked me when. Only Dick regarded me mournfully from the end of the table as though I had let him down badly.
Paul was ecstatic. He could talk about nothing but the wedding which he had decided was to be at Tacoma, on the lawn. Every single, tiny detail was of the greatest importance to him – guests, the cake, the dress. He talked endlessly about my living in Tacoma, with Junior, about us being a family.
A week after Christmas he arrived at Horton Cottage very late one night, theatrically bent on one knee and presented me with a huge solitaire. ‘You don’t need to wear that,’ he said, touching the third finger of my left hand. So I removed Richard’s engagement ring and put his ring on instead.
Even that small gesture seemed disloyal. He touched my wedding ring and I knew he would soon expect me to remove that too.
I felt I was living a dream. No – not a dream. A lie. I still felt that I had not severed the threads of my previous existence and I could not shake off the feeling that none
of this would really happen, that it would somehow melt away, like ice in sunshine.
It made it worse that everyone was so happy for me. Sara and her family, and especially Michael and Linda. Linda came with me one day to Chester to look at wedding dresses. I tried on one after the other and couldn’t decide. It all seemed too unreal. I couldn’t wear a long, white wedding dress, which was what Paul wanted me to wear. I imagined I would wear a tailored, white, silk suit. Something like that, anyhow.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love Paul. Admittedly I didn’t feel the same as that first passion I had felt for Richard. Love matures as do people and the love I felt for Paul was different; but it was love. He had stuck by me for years. He was a part of my life. In a way I felt I owed it to him to make him happy.
The problem was that I could not see myself as mistress of Tacoma. I would be happier in my own tiny cottage than there.
I couldn’t imagine living in the States, away from Richard, away from Hall o’th’Wood, away from Bottle Kiln and everything that was so dear and familiar.
But I let Paul continue planning the wedding. A marquee on the lawn, caterers, a string quartet. Every time he thought of some small extra thing he would ring. Whether it was the cake or the cars or the honeymoon or the service or the hymns. I answered automatically, in a flat voice.
All I can say is that it didn’t feel right. Something was very wrong.
Dick had taken me to one side. ‘I don’t want you to be married,’ he said, with all the stilted stubbornness of a fifteen-year-old. ‘I don’t want you to live in America. I want you to stay here, with me.’
I said nothing but hugged him. It was what I wanted too.
I must make my own life – not bloodsuck theirs.
Two months before the wedding Michael had to go on a business trip to Australia and Linda decided to go with him.
My treat was to stay at Hall o’th’Wood with Dick who was on his school holidays.
I was hugely happy living back in the old house. The furniture seemed to come alive under the attention Maria and I lavished on it. I slept in the same bedroom that I had shared with Richard which Michael and Linda had kept as a guest room and sometimes, when I awoke in the dead of night, I could almost persuade myself that he was still alive, maybe pacing the long gallery over my head, but still here somehow. I could believe that he had never really left the place. I could pretend that young Richard was our son, that none of the nightmare had really happened. I was truly, truly happy and knew that I could never be complete away from Hall o’th’Wood. I spent long hours staring at his portrait, the latest one to grace the collection, looking at the photographs, particularly the one taken of us on the night of our third wedding anniversary, and talking to his grandson about my days in his home. I had brought the jug back with me
to its rightful place, where it should have always been, standing on the long, low dresser in the dining room, warning the current owners of the house to take care of their morals. I wished I could tell my husband that I had found it again. I decided that I would search out Mr Cridman, whose ancestor had first retrieved the jug from its enamelling kiln. Perhaps he would be able to shed further light on the circumstances surrounding the jug’s beginnings. I would stand beneath the stained-glass window on the landing and commune with the crusader as Richard, my Richard, had done when he was a little boy.
I felt the strongest impulse that this was where I truly belonged.
Once the studded great door of Hall o’th’Wood was closed Paul Wernier-King almost ceased to exist. He was outside the rarefied atmosphere of Hall o’th’Wood. It was a jolt when he rang up. I almost had to remind myself who he was. He seemed a foreigner, an alien. And then I would remember that I was to marry him in a few short weeks.
Good phone calls never come in the middle of the night. No one rings in the small hours for a chat or a gossip. It is always bad news.
I wrapped my dressing gown round my waist and ran down the stairs. Seconds later I was staring into my own future. Because this would change everything. Now I was beginning to understand my destiny.
A car accident on a highway near Adelaide and
Michael and Linda were both dead. I stared at the receiver in my hand and knew that if they could speak they would remind me of my solemn promise, to treat Richard as my own son, to bring him up here, where he belonged, in Hall o’th’Wood. To teach him the family traditions. I must obey my destiny.
I woke him up and told him. He cried and I hugged him and then made the most solemn of promises to Richard’s grandson, that I would be here, for him, as long as he needed me.
Now I only had to break the news to Paul.
It was out of the question that I would use the telephone. I wouldn’t pay him that insult. I flew to Newark and took a cab out to Long Island without telling him I was coming. I arrived late on a Thursday night, unexpected, to find the house shrouded in a mist that had stolen in from the sea.
I spoke into the intercom and watched the gates swing open sleepily.
I met Paul coming down the stairs in his dressing gown. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Hi. How’s the blushing bride?’ He kissed me. ‘Did you come over just to take a peek?’
I shook my head.
He must have read something in my face because he took me into the library, closed the door behind us and I told him.
Firstly about Michael and Linda and then what it meant.
He looked shocked at the news and then I watched his
eyes narrow as he absorbed my statement.
‘I can’t marry you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I must stay in England, in Hall o’th’Wood, with Richard.’
He went white. ‘You can’t do this to me,’ he said, gripping my shoulders. ‘Susanna – you just can’t. I won’t let you. I have…’
He must have looked at my face and realised it was no good. Mentally I was back there already – not here at all.
He screamed at me then. Shouted at me, threatened, cajoled, begged.
Reasoned. ‘We can bring the boys up together here,’ he said.
I reminded him of my promise – that Richard would be brought up in England, in Hall o’th’Wood.
‘Does it matter where? He’s at boarding school.’
He reminded me that my aunt had brought Sara and me up in Majorca.
‘That was different,’ I said. ‘We had no family home.’
At some point he must have realised that I was deadly serious and that nothing would divert me from my purpose.
Something in him froze then.
He left the room and I summoned a taxi to return me to the UK and Hall o’th’Wood.
I turned around to watch the great gates of Tacoma swing closed behind me and knew they would never be opened again to me.
Paul wasted no time. Within a week of my visit I felt the full fury of the Wernier-Kings. I had letters from his lawyers dissolving the Wernier Oliver partnership.
But I was happy. After fifteen years I was back where I wanted to be, living in Hall o’th’Wood.
Richard grieved for his parents as I had mine but I took comfort in the fact that I was there for him as my aunt had been for me and Sara.
My days were happy. I managed the estate as best I could. Rented out Horton Cottage again and ran my antiques shop. Luckily I had made some wise investments in my earlier, prosperous years and Michael and Linda’s finances had been well managed so, for now, we were solvent. Unexpectedly Richard began to take an interest in my work and expressed an intention to join me in the business. He certainly had a talent for it. I loved taking him to the salerooms and watching him pick out the fine pieces or dismiss others
which were poor quality, point out restorations or anomalies.
‘A levels first,’ I warned. ‘Then, if you still want to you can come in with me.’ He demurred but I insisted. ‘Your father and mother gave you into my care,’ I said. ‘They wouldn’t want you to give up on your education.’
He grumbled but did as I asked.
From Paul I heard nothing. I suppose as I had watched the gates of Tacoma lock behind me I had known that it must be the end, not only of our partnership, but our friendship too. I missed him more than I’d thought but never doubted that I had made the right decision.
I did as I had vowed to myself and sought out John Cridman, the farmer whom David had told me about. I took the jug to show him one day. He was in his eighties and lived now in a converted barn. He was bent with arthritis. Even the joints of his fingers were lumpy and distorted. I let him sit in his chair before unwrapping the jug and handing it to him.
‘Ah,’ he said, running a rheumy eye over it. ‘You know, it were such a story in our family. My father kept it hidden from human eye in a box as had his father before him and his before that.’Twere a shameful story.’ He looked up, his eyes bright. He was dying to tell me.
‘I don’t know if I know the full story,’ I prompted.
Cridman eyed me with suspicion. ‘What’s your connection? How did it come into your possession?’
I decided to give him a sanitised version of my life, told him I was a dealer and had bought the jug at a sale and
subsequently married into the Oliver family. ‘I currently live at Hall o’th’Wood,’ I said.
‘You are the owner then?’
I shook my head. ‘I am the guardian of the current owner,’ I said, ‘until he is twenty-one. He was orphaned a while ago.’
‘Bad business,’ he said. ‘I’m truly sorry about that.’
I bowed my head.
Cridman eyed the jug. ‘I’m not sure this is a story suitable for a youngster’s ears.’
‘That’s why I came alone, Mr Cridman,’ I said.
He puffed on his smelly pipe.
‘Well now,’ he said. ‘There are several versions of this tale.’
‘If it helps,’ I said, ‘I believe I know the bald facts.’
Cridman pulled some more on his pipe. His eyes flickered.
‘Rebekah Grindall, so the stories say, was a very lovely girl. Strong and beautiful.’ He leant forward and touched my hair. ‘With a thick mane of very dark hair, like yours, so my grandfather told me his grandfather had told him.’
‘And have you told your grandson?’
Slowly Cridman shook his head. ‘I have not,’ he said. ‘When I decided back in ’67 to sell the jug I also decided it was time to bury these evil, old tales. Sometimes it’s just time to move on.’
I nodded.
‘Rebekah was betrothed to a young potter named Luke Chater,’ Cridman said, ‘who was struggling to
manage the factory together with Rebekah’s brother…’
‘Matthew,’ I said.
The old man nodded. ‘…when Richard Oliver came to visit the factory on his fine horse. They wanted to borrow some money and he was the only one willing to back the potbank. Unfortunately the price he demanded weren’t money at all.’
I understood now.
‘He took her and kept her at…’ The old man’s fingers traced the window on the jug. ‘Her fiancé were none too happy and tried to take her back. Unfortunately he died in the attempt.’ He looked at me through a cloud of tobacco smoke. ‘It’s no use your asking me exactly what happened. Mr Oliver claimed he had found him poaching on his land and had shot him. Certainly, so the story goes, a bag with some rabbits in were found but I don’t know.’ His eyes dropped. ‘No charges were brought and Mr Oliver were so furious he withdrew his money from the clay pit but kept hold of the girl. Again records and stories are poor – to say the least – but it is certain that Rebekah must have been locked up because she took the only way out she could – through the window. She tumbled into the knot garden which is understandable, all things considered.’ He puffed again on his pipe. ‘The way I look at it is this – that girl had not saved, as she had thought, the potters’ livelihood but had lost her betrothed and gained nothing – only losing her purity – which was the only thing of value that she had. With the result that she threw herself out of the window.’ His eyes flickered.
‘That is what the story said. But…’ His eyes flickered and looked away. ‘She did not die right away.’
‘
It took her four days to dye,
’ I quoted and the old man nodded.
‘There was talk,’ he said, leaning towards me conspiratorially, ‘especially as the master did not even visit her. A maidservant who was caring for her in those last painful days spread a rumour that Rebekah did not throw herself out as rumour had it but had been thrown out.’
I looked at him in horror.
‘This rumour reached her brother’s ears and before anyone could stop him he took himself up to Hall o’th’Wood and right in front of the tall window…’
‘Of a crusader.’
‘…he ran him through. Then he returned to the potbank and threw the jug. While it was still in the enamelling kiln they came for him.
Three days later he was swinging on the gallows,’ he finished with malicious pleasure.
I started. One of my favourite places to sit was on the great staircase, right in front of the crusader window – Richard’s too. Had we then sat on his ancestor’s bloodstain?
As I drove home I wondered whether I wished I did not know the full story behind my piece.
But I typed it out and placed it in an envelope inside the jug.
I knew Dick would want to read it one day.
About a year after Michael and Linda’s deaths I was scanning the Antiques Trade Gazette when I saw a picture that caught my eye. It looked very much like the partner of my own Tudor woman. I had removed all my valuables to Hall o’th’Wood when I had left my cottage, amongst them my favourite painting which now hung in my study. I took the paper up there and held the photograph up next to her. There was something about it which made me sure it was the companion to my painting. The brush marks, the way the eyes had been painted in, dead and flat – almost threatening. Certainly disdainful and proud. The date was right too, judging from the style and the costumes of the subjects, also the fact that it too was painted on an oak panel. I dialled the number of the gallery and made some enquiries.
A week later I caught the train to London to see the picture for myself. With me I had a folio of photographs to compare the two paintings.
The dealer had a small gallery in New Bond Street, locked until I pressed the buzzer and was let in. He was Jewish, Obadiah Cricklestone. He was well known in the art world though I had never met him personally before. I had heard about him, however, and knew that he had an awesome reputation for buying and selling period portraits, particularly Tudor portraits of gentility. He showed me into the back room where his portrait hung. ‘It was painted by George Gower,’ he said, handing me a magnifying glass so I could study the signature.
‘My painting isn’t signed,’ I said.
He looked comfortable with that.
‘The paintings were meant to be hung together,’ he said. ‘It is not uncommon for the artist to sign one and not the other. In some ways…’ He was studying my photographs with the same rapt attention that I was giving to his painting. ‘…it is not surprising.’
I looked up at the face of the portrait with its thick moustache and pointed beard, the dark, cynical eyes. Using the magnifying glass I peered at the ruff around the man’s neck. It was this that persuaded me that the artist had to be the same. The detail of the lace had been done with identical brush marks.
Next I took the painting off the wall to see the condition of the panel on which it had been painted. And this convinced me even more. There are a thousand different shades of brown, a hundred different grains of oak. And this one was the same. I would swear it. I knew my painting better than I knew my own face.
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘Your painting is of Lady Kynnersley,’ he said. ‘And her husband is Lord Kynnersley. She married him when she was very young and he much older. He died, I believe, when she was still very young and left her with a terrible debt. She was renowned for working on the farm herself to try and maintain the estate. Quite a thing in those days. Very hard work for a woman.’
I felt a curiosity for the woman. I had not known even her name for so many years and now I was learning her life history. ‘Did she have children?’
‘None of her own. And she never married again but lived a rather lonely life. I believe she adopted a nephew. Brought him up as her own and on her death he inherited the farm. Rather a sad story, I often think. She was about twenty-four when her husband died. Ah well.’ He sighed. ‘It’s a long time to be on your own, Mrs Oliver.’
I agreed that it was, paid the price he asked and took the painting home with me. I hung it adjacent to the Tudor woman so that husband and wife could watch each other for the first time in many years.
But the obvious parallels to my own life made me uncomfortable.