Rumours

But not today.

* * *

Tea in the drawing room. It was an institution that Xander enjoyed as much now as then. The anticipation of the tray being brought in, counted down by the frustratingly slow, patient tock of the grandfather clock, while legions of Fortescues observed the event from their slightly tarnished photograph frames crowding the grand piano, the mantelpiece, the ledge in front of the glazed bookcase.

The selection was always the same: sandwiches of fish paste or butter and cucumber slices, and a plate of cakes. Today, it struck Xander how the food seemed to personify the irascible dowager and her cantankerous housekeeper – the cucumber sandwiches delicate and refined like the former, the fish paste slightly common yet comforting like the latter. Similarly, the pastries so elegantly put together with the fancy toppings, just as appealing as the plain but reassuringly doughy Chelsea buns.

‘Will that be all?’ Mrs Biggins asked.

‘Thank you, Mrs Biggins, that will be all.’

‘Thank you, Mrs B.’

‘Lovely to see you, Xander. You send your ma my love. And don’t be a stranger.’

With the large French-polished coffee table between them, Xander and Lydia sat opposite each other on matching sofas – faded, capacious rather than comfortable, fleshed out by a growing collection of daily-plumped cushions to counteract the general sag and lumpiness. Xander offered the sandwiches to Lydia and then took one of each for himself. Lydia poured the tea, the same tea cosy warming the pot that Xander remembered his mother knitting when he was still a boy. There was so much about Longbridge that stayed the same. There were the sounds – the clocks, different in each room, the water in the crunking old pipes complaining its way around the house, the whistle of the kettle on the Aga as dramatic as an air-raid warning. And the smells – Assam tea, ancient tobacco, a faint mustiness from old soft furnishings, a subtle drift of floral arrangements that needed changing, of vegetables cooking in the kitchen, or lavender secreted in little muslin pouches in between cushion and cover. And there was the set-up of each room – the photograph frames and various porcelain ornaments just so, the furniture whose configuration never changed, the heavy folds of the enormous curtains as vertical and precise as the fluting on Greek columns. And the portraits of the ancestors, positioned around the house like sentries, some gazing benignly, some fixing sternly, all staring directly.

‘Little changes, Xander.’

‘I’m pleased.’

‘You still look from portrait to portrait, as if answering questions asked of you in a particular order.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re wearing a tie.’

‘I could have worn a jacket.’

‘Mostly, these days, I see you scampering around in all that ghastly sportswear.’

‘I’m training – I have a half-marathon next week.’

‘Does that mean you’ll be begging me for sponsorship?’

‘Most definitely.’

‘African babies again?’

‘Cancer, this time.’

‘Jolly good. Pastry?’

Xander finished a jam tart and waited for Lydia to raise her eyebrows at the platter for him to help himself to another. ‘Longbridge plums,’ he said, ‘incomparable.’

‘Jars and jars of the bastard stuff in the pantry – help yourself when you go,’ Lydia said. ‘Surplus from the summer fete – the first time we’ve come back with unsold produce. Ever.’

‘Don’t take it personally,’ Xander said. ‘People are holding on to their pennies. Anyway, I heard it was more to do with politics within the committee.’

‘That wretched bouncing castle monstrosity?’

Xander laughed. ‘And the rest.’

‘Personally,’ said Lydia, ‘ I blame all that shopping people do nowadays on those computers. It’s an obsession and, if you ask me, absolutely unnecessary! All those supermarket vans double parking along the high street and all those delivery companies doing the postman out of a job. More tea?’

‘Please.’ He offered his cup because Lydia liked to pour and she wouldn’t tolerate people stretching. ‘How are things here?’ He looked around – it looked the same, but Longbridge was so much more than the house itself. ‘I hear Mr Tringle made a good recovery – pneumonia is no laughing matter, especially not at his age.’

‘I’ve always thought, if they dropped one of those nuclear bombs, he’d be the one creaking his way out of the debris. Extraordinary chap, really.’

‘How about the barns?’ asked Xander. ‘Did you get anywhere with the planners?’

Lydia looked a little uncomfortable. ‘I’m just going to have to let them crumble – it’s too much work and too much money. And Xander, how are you? Are you any closer to marrying?’

Xander stirred his tea thoughtfully, despite not taking sugar. ‘No.’

‘Are you one of the gays?’

‘No, Lydia. I’m not.’

She raised her eyebrow, archly. ‘I’ve heard people talking.’

‘Talking?’

‘Village tittle-tattle.’

‘And you listen to it?’

‘Sometimes I like to remember dear Alice Roosevelt who used to say, if you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.’

‘And people are saying I’m not nice?’

‘Well, if you won’t provide the real story of Laura – then the only option you give them is to rumour.’

‘Whatever the gossip is,’ said Xander, ‘it’s probably far more salacious and entertaining than the reality. I don’t care what people say about me.’

‘If you’re sure you haven’t joined the gays – perhaps you’ve become a playboy?’ Lydia chuckled. ‘A cad?’ She laughed. ‘A gigolo?’ And she pronounced it with hard ‘g’s.

Xander shrugged – coming from Lydia, none of this irritated him. ‘I haven’t met the right girl, Lady Lydia.’

‘But you’re having lots of fun with all the wrong ones, for the time being?’

He loved it when Lydia turned saucy.

‘Your mother must be so proud.’ She paused. ‘I bet your mother doesn’t know the half of it.’

‘I sincerely hope not,’ said Xander.

‘Are you a two-timer?’ She said it as if it was some modern phrase she wasn’t entirely sure she was using correctly.

‘No, Lydia, I’m not. I just don’t invest much time, or importance, in – relationships,’ Xander said, as if it was a word whose meaning he was unsure of. He loosened his tie, feeling hot under the collar.

‘I hope you’re a gentleman,’ Lydia said sternly.

‘I’ve never made a girl cry,’ Xander said, with a theatricality that had Lydia chuckling.

‘I’m sure your Laura shed a tear or two over you. I know your mother did, at the time.’

‘That was well over two years ago.’

Lydia could see Xander’s discomfort. ‘I always said you should have tracked her down sooner. Said sorry with something sparkly from Garrard’s.’

‘Lydia – she moved to the States and she’s married. You know this.’

‘More fool you.’

‘I have no regrets.’ The Chelsea bun was sticking in this throat.

‘You’re a catch, young man. An eligible bachelor. You oughtn’t to go to waste – that would be a travesty.’

‘I’m not so young these days – I’m heading for forty. Look at all the grey.’

Lydia rubbished this with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Very distinguished. Silver fox, we’d call it. Like my fabulously expensive coat. Which reminds me – it’s still in cold storage. Don’t you go putting yourself in storage, Xander, you’ll grow cold. You’re a whippersnapper – I’m seventy-eight.’

A phone began to ring. There were no modern cordless phones at Longbridge. In fact, there were only three telephones in the whole house; one in the kitchen, one in the staircase hallway and one in the Victorian wing. They listened to it ringing.

Lydia blasphemed under her breath.

‘Why the wretched woman won’t answer the telephone or the door I do not know. I should dock her pay, I really should.’ And she heaved herself away from the sofa, rubbing her shoulder and wincing as she made her way. ‘She’s an atrocious housekeeper, that Mrs Biggins. I really ought to sack her.’

But she keeps you on your toes, Xander thought tenderly, as Lydia left the room to answer the phone. And she’s company. Mrs Biggins and Lady Lydia Fortescue, practically the same age, diametrically opposed backgrounds, together longer than either of their marriages – together, realistically, for ever. He listened to Lydia curtly admonishing the caller for phoning in the first place and then barking something in the general direction of the kitchen where Mrs Biggins was no doubt still ensconced in the Mail.

He’d phone his mum and dad when he was home. They lived, now, in Little Dunwick five miles away and Xander wondered why he always felt compelled to phone them when he’d been to Longbridge. He’d tell them how nothing had changed apart from Lydia growing thinner and Mrs Biggins plumper, that everything at Longbridge was just ever so slightly more dusty than in the days when his mother was nanny to the Fortescue offspring and the house bustled with staff.

Chapter Six

Stella was prepared for it to come and yet, when it arrived, though she knew exactly what it was, she felt thrown. She stared at the envelope and re-read her name and address carefully, underlining the words with her finger, as if to be absolutely sure that the contents were indeed intended for her. It was something she’d applied for, paid quite a lot for; waited over two years for but didn’t want. Not today. Today was about other things, positive things. The Marshalls were due to exchange on Mercy Benton’s little cottage in Long Dansbury – less than a month after viewing it, record time for Elmfield Estates this year. Today, Stella was viewing a large property in Cold Christmas and another in Bengeo. Today the Haddams’ mortgage offer for the house in Bramfield should be through. Today should be filled with all the excitement of here and now, not sullied by then and there. And tonight, parents’ evening (or parent’s evening – Stella was fastidious about the correct position of the apostrophe in her case) at Will’s school and there was nothing more uplifting than being nourished by the warmth of compliments and praise bestowed upon one’s child. So damn you, bloody brown bloody A4 envelope with the franked mail mark and correct address.

But she knew what she had to do. She’d been prepped. She texted Jo.

it’s here. Sx

A moment later, the response Jo had been waiting a long time to give.

do not open – will try to be there by 8. Jxx

She wasn’t expecting Stella’s response.

not poss – parent's eve. Sx

who’s bbsittng? J?

Mum Sx

Jo thought, much as Stella loves her mum, she won’t be opening it with her.

cant do 2moz – Mike out. Soz

Can you hold on til w/end?? Jxx

Stella thought, I’d rather not open it at all.

K. Sx

U ok, babes? Jxx

Yep xx

Everyone had told Stella that, if there was an optimum age when change would have a minimal effect on a child, then she’d taken that decision for Will at exactly the right time in his life. Home. School. Just the two of them. Stella bit the bullet and went for change. Her loved ones had praised her, as if it had been a canny choice she’d systematically made and not the only angst-ridden option she’d felt she had. Actually, the only choice she’d really had was between Harpenden and Hertford and her big brother had made that an easy one, with the cut-price offer of his rental house.

That evening, listening to the teacher praising Will, the feeling of Stella’s heart expanding even more for her popular, industrious and bright little boy was tempered by the presence of the little low red plastic chair empty next to the one on which she sat. It was as if the full impact of all the wonderful words was somehow reduced because it was heard by only one set of ears. Parent’s evening.

Four terms in, she no longer felt conspicuous as the lone single parent in Will’s year. If anything, she was pleased to have moved to a community in which stable family values were strong and she’d grown to enjoy the genuine warmth extended to her. Waiting outside the classroom, busily browsing art folders and maths books, admiring the displays of Words Into Pictures on the walls as if the corridor was an overflow for the Royal Academy, Stella felt happy, lucky, that she and Will were there. He had his little gang of chums – and she was now very much one of the mums.

‘Mums’ night out next Friday, Stella – Will can come for a sleepover if babysitting’s a problem.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Wasn’t Will fantastic in assembly last week! Quite the little actor!’

‘Thank you.’

Much to be very grateful for. Just that hiccup of an envelope at home, waiting to be opened. Its contents already known yet the effect they might have, strangely unfathomable.

* * *

Whenever Douglas Hutton asked to see her in his office, Stella was never sure whether she’d find her boss or her uncle in there. When she was summoned on Friday, the morning after parent’s evening, she just couldn’t tell who’d be behind his desk. Belinda, Steve and Gill eyed her suspiciously; Geoff, though, didn’t look. He liked Stella and had decided early on to turn a blind eye on any rumoured favouritism and focus on his files instead whenever Douglas Hutton put his head around his office door and said, Stella – a quick word.

‘A strange one, this,’ was Douglas’s opening line. He looked at Stella quizzically, as if alternating between seeing her as his niece and as his newest member of staff who was already proving her worth. ‘You’ve been asked for. By name.’

‘Oh?’

‘Really, I ought to be taking this myself – if it comes off. Being head of the company, and more experienced than any of you. And you’ll have to steel yourself – if it comes off – to that lot out there baying for your blood. But whatever I want – and whatever the others won’t want – has no bearing, whatsoever, on what this potential client wants.’ He paused. ‘Are you all right?’

Stella wasn’t sure how to tell him she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. ‘I’m fine. I’m just not entirely sure I understand.’

‘You can’t understand,’ he said gruffly. ‘I haven’t told you yet.’ Douglas was famous for his lengthy scene-setting, whether it was an introduction to a choice anecdote recounted at Christmas dinner or a preamble to a pep talk during Monday meeting here in the office.

‘Sorry.’

‘I don’t think you will be!’ He regarded her with a rare and wry smile. He shook his head gravely, contradicting the gesture with a chuckle. ‘You’ve been sent for – asked for by name. There’s no achievement greater, no seal of approval more valuable, than personal recommendation. That’s what you have. Your reputation precedes you already. From tiny acorns, Stella – from wee little acorns.’

She tried hard not to look confused.

‘That little acorn of a cottage at Long Dansbury may have turned into the mighty oak of Longbridge Hall.’ He fell silent before continuing to himself. ‘Unlikely though. It’s the Fortescue seat.’

She couldn’t even nod. She knew of the Eames Lounger but not a Fortescue Seat. Longbridge Hall meant nothing to her. And contracts on Mercy Benton’s cottage had been exchanged – so there couldn’t be any problems there. She tried to think tangentially about trees – subsidence? She couldn’t remember any strapping great oak that could undermine the cottage’s foundation.

‘You will go on Tuesday morning. Eleven o’clock – be prompt.’

‘OK. I’ll do that.’

‘Good girl. Your mother’s asked me for Sunday lunch – will you be going? I am looking forward to seeing young William.’

The sentence was said in an altogether lighter tone at a faster pace and enabled Stella to speak more freely.

‘Uncle Douglas – I’m sorry to sound vague. But can you just tell me exactly where I’m going on Tuesday morning at eleven – and why?’

‘Longbridge Hall, Stella. In Long Dansbury.’

‘Right.’

‘Right at the centre of the village, give or take a half-mile driveway.’

‘OK.’ She paused, hoping she didn’t look bewildered. ‘Oh – and why?’

‘The Lady Lydia Fortescue has asked for you.’

‘For me? Lady Fortescue?’

‘It’s Lady Lydia,’ Douglas corrected. ‘Actually, for a while she was The Lady Lydia Huffington-Smythe – but that was her late husband’s surname and he was a commoner so when she inherited her own family seat, she was quite happy to revert to The Lady Lydia Fortescue. But her family are also the Earls of Barbary. Between you and me – they probably make it up as they go along.’ Douglas could see that Stella was too confused to speak. It didn’t matter, really. ‘Anyway, she was rather taken with the recommendation given to her by Mrs Benton whose cottage you sold. That’s all I know.’

‘I see.’ But Stella didn’t.

‘I don’t know what it’s about – she wouldn’t say. But she owns other properties in Long Dansbury – some would say she owns the entire village. And the villagers too.’

* * *

Friday night. Stella reached across to the bedside table to check the time. Saturday morning, really, at just gone two. The working week done, the weekend upon her. A cup of tea with Jo and her daughters after Will’s football club in the morning, Sunday lunch at her mum’s with any number of the extended family. Perhaps the new Pixar movie after that – she might treat herself and Will to a 3D showing. Where had she put the 3D glasses after their last outing? And why it was suddenly so important to find them, at silly o’clock, just then? She left her bed and tiptoed into Will’s room, smiling at his fidget and gruffle when she leant over to kiss him. She peered into his toy box but knew the glasses were unlikely to be there. Still, though, she sat in his room, on the floor, her back to his bed, awhile longer. The most peaceful place in the world.

Downstairs she went, to look through the odds-and-sods drawer in the kitchen before having a satisfying flashback and going to the coat rack. There were the glasses, in the pocket of her Puffa. It made her realize how long it had been since their last trip to the cinema. It made her realize how much warmer the weather had become, that this billowing black padded mainstay of colder climes hadn’t been worn since. She tried on each pair of glasses, then buffed the lenses as best she could before placing them, side by side, on the radiator cover near the front door. It was as if Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello had come to visit and left their specs there.

Stella went back to bed. Briefly.

She said to herself, you’re seeing Jo tomorrow, remember? Remember what she said? Remember what you’d planned?

It was useless. Sleep would elude her while that envelope remained under her bed. She tried to flatter herself that it was a Princess and the Pea scenario. Actually, the envelope was inside the old canvas and leather suitcase, in which she’d kept all her secrets and treasures since adolescence. She pulled the case out, unbuckled the straps and jostled the slightly warped lid away. She could lose herself in teenage love letters and the doodles in her Rough Book from school. She could distract herself with old photos and hark back to the days when camera film was sent off to BonusPrint and returned fourteen days later as unique memories preserved on Kodak paper – not stored on an iPhone and randomly scrolled through, in little. She could do any of these things, while away time until she was tired enough to put it all back in the case and clamber into bed. But that envelope had put up some kind of impenetrable barrier between the Stella sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom at thirty-four years old and the youthful Stella epitomized by all the keepsakes in the case. Halt! Who goes there! Access denied!

It’s me.

It’s Stella.

Let me in – I want my life back.

So she opened the envelope at half past two. She remarked to herself, as she did so, that the tacky adhesive could close against itself easily enough, if she lost her nerve or if she wanted Jo to think she hadn’t opened it. But when it tore a little, in the last inch or so, she acknowledged she’d gone past the point of no return. She felt inside. A paper clip holding a compliment slip against just a few pages, A4 size. She knew the paper clip would be pink or red or orange. Something bright and certainly not steely. And the compliment slip would have a handwritten personal message on it. She knew the essence of what would be on the sheets behind it – just not the precise wording.

It’s just going to say what it is.

It can’t say anything else.

You know what it is.

You asked for it.

She slipped the contents out and in one movement, took off the paper clip (turquoise) and gave a cursory glance to the slip of paper (handwriting in red pen with some kind of doodle in the lower right-hand corner – how lucky she was to have such a sweet-natured solicitor). To one side, she placed a page which was a letter. In her lap, face up, lay a certificate over the other pages. She read it in an instant, absorbing all the information in the blink of an eye and then, immediately, read it again, out loud sotto voce, into the stillness of her bedroom.

‘Certificate of making Decree Nisi Absolute (Divorce).’

The type was tiny – as if the words were shameful and should be read in a whisper.

Underneath this, the font was much larger and in upper case. Stella raised her voice a little, accordingly.

‘IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

PRINCIPAL REGISTRY OF THE FAMILY DIVISION.’

She reverted to a lower tone for the next part, as it was in the same point size as the first.

‘Matrimonial cause proceeding in Principal Registry treated by virtue of section 42 of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 as pending in a divorce county court.’

She looked at the next part quietly before clearing her voice.

‘Between Stella Ruth Hutton Petitioner

and Charles John Taylor Respondent

She read to herself again, before repeating it out loud.

Whereby it was decreed that the marriage solemnized …

At St Peter’s Church, St Albans

Between the petitioner and the respondent be dissolved

‘Dissolved,’ said Stella. Thinking of soluble aspirin. Of tears. Wondering if destroyed or deconstructed or even dismembered were better words.

Out into the night she continued to read aloud. ‘… final and absolute … said marriage was thereby dissolved. Dated this 13th day of April.’

There were notes but Stella just skimmed these again. The type was small, the language dense and the content non-personal. The information she’d needed to see in black and white, that she needed to hear herself say, that she’d applied for all that time ago because it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, had sunk in. It coursed through her blood like anaesthetic. She was surprised to simply feel numbness, not pain. She felt flat and it was bizarre. She’d assumed that in spite of it all she’d be upset, yet the tears she’d anticipated didn’t come. Instead, her eyes were kept busy by the majestic, circular red crest of the court’s stamp, with its emblem of lion and unicorn, just overlapping the words ‘absolute’ and ‘dissolved’.

Divorced.

It is done. It is gone. I am a divorcee.

It was final, confirmed, official, legally binding. It was what she wanted but still, it was so blunt. Yet it didn’t hurt her – there wasn’t pain the way there’d been pain when she’d left Charlie. She just felt tired. Very very tired. As exhausted as if she’d scaled a mountain she’d spent so long in training for. She could sleep now. And when she woke, she’d take in the view that daylight would bring, of all that stretched ahead.