Some Old Lover's Ghost (63 page)

Kit, too, was dead, had died the previous October. The last of those to bear the de Paveley name had gone.
I curse the de Paveleys and all their issue –
Aunt Sarah’s voice again. Sarah might have triumphed at the extinguishing of a line; she, Tilda, could not.

She washed and dressed, and went, as usual, to the solar. A first draft of the earlier chapters of Rebecca’s book lay on the table. She had smiled to herself when she had read the title that Rebecca had scrawled in pencil on the top most page:
Some Old Lover’s Ghost: A Life of Dame Tilda Franklin
. When she looked out of the curved stone window, she saw that the frost had silvered the lawns and greyed the box trees, and that the pale wintry light showed that it was not quite dawn. She felt very alone. February was such a dead, silent month. ‘Max,’ she whispered again, but he was not there. The pain gathered ominously in her chest, and she fisted her hand against her ribs and leaned her forehead on the glass pane. So long since he had gone: almost fifteen years. You did not get over such a loss, you only grew accustomed to it.

Often she sensed him here, but today that was not enough. All she had ever wanted, she thought, was to be with her family. She had never yearned after wealth or fame or position. Yet her life had been one of repeated separations from those she had loved, each tearing away more painful than the last. A series of failures. Erich had taken his own life, and Caitlin had wasted hers. At seventeen, Josh had run away from school for the last time, and had wandered the world ever since.

The pain intensified, and she fumbled in the pocket of her cardigan for her tablets. She must not be ill. Melissa and Matty were to visit today. Melissa had promised her a surprise guest. One of The Red House extra children, perhaps, and she smiled, wondering which one.

Yet her sense of failure persisted. Tilda sat down on the sofa, and closed her eyes and dozed. She was walking through London during the Blitz. Fires burned in the East End, brightening the night sky in a horrible mockery of daylight. Rubble was tumbled
across the road, but she carried on, scrambling over it, tearing her stockings on the broken mortar. She could smell the brick dust, hear the water from the firemen’s hoses sizzling on the burning wood. She entered a street where the front walls of the houses had fallen away, so that the rooms, now three-sided, could be seen from the pavement. It reminded her of a dolls’ house: open it up and see the patterned wallpaper, the three-piece suite, the kitchen sink. The emptiness frightened her, but she kept on walking, skirting around the fallen beams and the shattered sticks of furniture and the iron bath tumbled like an upturned turtle in the centre of the road. Max was standing at the end of the road. She went to him, and he embraced her, and said, ‘I was waiting for you.’

When she awoke, she felt better. The sense of failure, of futility, had eased. She was, after all, only a small part of history. She had had no more control over what had happened to her than she had had over the events that had led up to her birth. Her sufferings were not unique: they were symptomatic only of the sufferings of many in the troubled first half of the century. The ill-starred love affair that had led eventually to Daragh’s death had not been the real tragedy of her life. The greatest tragedy had been that of war. War had deprived Rosi and Hanna of their families, war had robbed the child Erich of all hope for the future. It had taken Max away from her, and it had shown him such sights that he had been afraid to love again, because with love came the possibility of loss. Tilda sat for while, feeling more at peace with herself and with her past than she had felt for a long time. Forgiving herself. Then, in the distance, she heard a car door slam.

The sun had broken through the mist. Footsteps on the gravel. Tilda rose, but could not yet see her visitors: they were hidden by the box trees. She heard Melissa’s voice, Matty’s laughter. A child’s high-pitched squeal, and then a deeper voice. Her heart beat faster, and she pressed her face against the glass. They emerged from the tall column of trees. Melissa and Matty first. Then Max. No, not Max. He was tall and lean and had a spring in his step, like Max, but his hair was fair, not dark. Patrick.
And beside him, Ellie and Rebecca. Rebecca, whom she had chosen for her detachment, had become a part of the family. In her arms, Rebecca carried Tilda’s newest great-granddaughter.
Sarah
, whispered Tilda, looking down at the child, and did not feel alone any more.

She went downstairs to greet them.

THE END

About the Author

J
UDITH
L
ENNOX
is the author of six novels, including her most recent,
Footprints on the Sands
. She lives with her husband and three sons in Cambridgeshire, England.

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Also by Judith Lennox

REYNARDINE

TILL THE DAY GOES DOWN

THE GLITTERING STRAND

THE ITALIAN GARDEN

THE SECRET YEARS

THE WINTER HOUSE

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SAND

THE SHADOW CHILD

Copyright

Copyright © 1997 by Judith Lennox

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN.: 978-0-062-22817-8

First published in 1997 by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10019.

It is the policy of William Morrow and Company, Inc., and its imprints and affiliates, recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, to print the books we publish on acid-free paper, and we exert our best efforts to that end.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lennox, Judith.
Some old lover’s ghost / Judith Lennox.
p.   cm.
ISBN 0-688-17219-9 (alk. paper)
I. Title.
PR6062.E65S66 1999
823’.914—dc21 99-42541
CIP

FIRST QUILL EDITION 1999

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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