The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde Read online

  ‘Margot,’ I say, disappointed that he’s already forgotten my name, hoping he doesn’t think me so young he’ll offer me water too.

  ‘Margot,’ he repeats, unflinching. ‘Margot Wilde, with an e.’ He grins, and a freckle on his lip flattens. ‘Can I tempt you?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ I’m not even sure why I say it when I desperately want to say yes and my mouth is so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

  ‘But this beer has your name on it.’ He plucks his pen out of his pocket, and carves ‘M’ in the creamy white foam. ‘See?’

  I start to laugh, light-headed, as if I might have drunk barrels of beer already. He presses the cup into my hand, folding my fingers one by one around the metal, deliciously cold against my skin. Sticky beer drips down on to my hand. Bats start to loop behind him, black as the night to come. I lift it slowly to my mouth, feeling the world tilt, come loose somehow. The cool rim of metal pushes against my lips and I taste it, bitter and sweet at the same time, hay and honey.

  Outside the house, we pass Billy, watering-can angled, spilling a silver liquid line. The way he looks at me makes me wonder if he’s seen us, knows where we’ve been. My older sisters flurry past, barely aware of his presence now – eclipsed by the Gores in a moment – as he straightens, politely removing his straw hat. A few moments later, I turn to smile, remembering my manners too late, but he has gone.

  The orangery is like a bell jar, Moll and Sybil its butterflies, Moll fanning Sybil with grey wings of newspaper, making Sybil’s white hair fly from her pale, high forehead as she slumps, back to us, on a wicker chair. I can see her spine through the cotton of her dress, bones like buttons, the hard, metallic gaze reflected in the dark window – it’s far later than we realized – tracking us as we cross the stone flags.

  ‘Aunt?’ Flora says gently. ‘Did we miss dinner?’

  She doesn’t turn. ‘I’ve been worried sick.’

  ‘We’re very sorry,’ says Flora, with a nun-like bow of her head, sneaking a smile at me. We’re not sorry at all.

  ‘I thought something had happened, Flora.’

  Something did happen, we want to say. Summer just became a lot more interesting.

  Sybil hands a little bowl of browning peach slices to Moll, and twists in her chair. ‘I thought you were sensible girls.’

  Moll starts fanning her again with the newspaper, which flutters in her thick, ink-stained fingers. The sweetness of jasmine trickles through an open window.

  ‘We lost track of time,’ says Dot, bravely, looking at Pam for approval. ‘It suddenly went faster.’ Pam gives her a small nod. Our little sister is learning.

  ‘Oh, the hours do slip about in this sort of heat.’ Moll sends Dot a quick, sympathetic smile that reveals the black door of her tooth. ‘There’s some cold cuts in the kitchen, don’t worry.’

  ‘And Flora is seventeen,’ Pam points out. ‘Margot and I not far off. Ma lets us –’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what Bunny lets you do,’ Sybil spits, naming Ma with unexpected acidity. ‘You are my charges while you’re at Applecote Manor.’

  We glance at one another in dismay: the perimeters of our summer tighten, just when we thought they might be thrillingly expanded.

  Flora tries to save us. She kneels beside Sybil’s chair, the evening still glittering in her eyes. ‘Aunt, we were only at the meadow. Quite safe, I promise.’

  ‘Nowhere is safe, Flora. Nowhere.’

  She holds up her hand to stop Moll fanning. And it is impossible to see in this gaunt nervous woman the aunt with the easy laugh who’d tell us to run off after lunch, enjoy ourselves and try to be back for tea.

  ‘But the men were terribly nice,’ says Dot. Pam elbows her but it is too late.

  There is a pause, a gash in the humid evening. ‘Men?’

  ‘Young men, really. Boys. Just a bit older than us,’ corrects Flora, quickly. ‘Summering at Cornton.’

  Sybil starts and sits up a little straighter, hand leaping to her throat. ‘Cornton? Cornton Hall? Are you sure?’

  Flora nods enthusiastically.

  ‘Tom and Harry.’ I taste the bitter beer on my tongue. It occurs to me that I will always be able to taste it. ‘The Gore cousins.’

  ‘One’s about to go to Oxford, I think, the other National Service.’ Pam rushes in with these impeccable credentials.

  Sybil stands up abruptly, long skirt swishing around her legs. ‘Did you know this, Moll?’

  Moll, who is plumping cushions on the sofa, pretending she isn’t listening, says, ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Wilde?’

  ‘There are Gores at Cornton Hall again. Had you heard anything?’

  Moll looks uncomfortable, lowers her eyes. ‘There were rumours at the village-hall coffee morning, Mrs Wilde.’

  ‘Rumours?’ Sybil says sharply, waiting for Moll to elaborate.

  ‘Old Ma Peat said she’d had to send her Brian over the other day. The bathroom was awash, the moulding on the ceiling below a right mess.’ She raises one eyebrow. ‘High jinks. The Gore boys had been at the wine cellar apparently.’

  ‘The Gore boys?’ His voice booms, orbits the room. Perry fills the doorway, nostrils flaring, like a mare’s. Moppet sidles up to Dot’s legs. ‘What about the damned Gores?’

  We cautiously explain, unable to read the contradictory emotions flitting over our uncle’s face. After a while, he puts a hand over his mouth, some horrible truth dawning on him. ‘Why are we always, always the last to know what goes on in the village, Sybil? Nothing damn well changes, does it? We stay locked away in this house like people who have something to hide.’

  I watch him carefully, wondering if this might be a clever double bluff.

  Sybil starts to wring her hands, making a pistol with her fingers. The exchange has the feeling of an old argument. ‘It was that swim this afternoon. What possessed you? You haven’t swum in years, Peregrine. It’ll do a mischief to your back. And it’s put you in a tizz, I can see that.’

  ‘We act guilty of something, Sybil,’ Perry continues, his huge face starting to pulse red. ‘Holed away here.’

  At ‘guilty’, Flora raises an eyebrow at me.

  ‘I – I will visit the village soon,’ Sybil stutters. ‘Yes, I must make an effort to get into the swing of things again. Committees and things. It’s been far too long.’ She looks out of the window at distant hills with a peculiar mix of fear and raw yearning. ‘I’ll invite Lady Anne over for drinks,’ she continues, her words piling up against each other, like they do when you don’t believe them. ‘I’m sure she’ll return to the house this summer, if Harry is there. Yes, I must.’

  ‘Invite them and they’ll be oh-so-busy, just like all the others.’ Perry stands at the window, hands threaded behind his back, lost in thought. And he suddenly seems to be a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, crunching his spine. ‘Let us turn this to our advantage.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ says Sybil, tightly.

  Perry swings round, eyes shining. ‘Why do you think Bunny really sent us the girls, Sybil? It wasn’t just to help her out, or fill Applecote with girls’ laughter again, I can assure you, whatever she might have said.’

  I hear Ma’s shameless sing-song voice, calling across the parched expanse of Sybil’s maternal emptiness. It makes my cheeks burn.

  ‘They’re not here for us to fatten on Moll’s jam. Or would you prefer them to marry Billy the gardener? He’s a rather dashing fellow.’

  Sybil puts her hand to her throat. ‘Good God.’

  ‘Actually, Uncle, I’m going to be a nurse,’ says Pam, indignantly.

  ‘Nurse?’ A huge unexpected laugh bolts out of Perry’s mouth, like a pheasant from grass. ‘Ah, very good, very good. Well, you might have some work to do on your bedside manner first, my little vixen.’ He turns to Flora. ‘But you, Flora, I hope you’re not entertaining any excitable ideas about working for a living.’

  ‘Peregrine,’ Sybil warns, a grave expression on her face,
as if she knows what’s about to come.

  He glances at her impatiently. ‘Well, it would shut the gossips up, wouldn’t it? One of our nieces marrying into the glorious Gores. Damn them.’

  ‘Peregrine, this is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous,’ snaps Sybil.

  He strides closer to Flora, hands on his hips, a spine of sweat on the back of his shirt. ‘If you’ve got half of your mother’s wits, I advise you to aim yourself, like a bloody Hun’s missile, in the direction of Harry Gore. Do you understand, Flora? Don’t be distracted by Tom.’ He dismisses him with a flick of his hand. ‘Pretty enough, but not worth a penny. Harry is the lad you want. He’s on the rise, that boy, mark my words, quite brilliant apparently, tipped for the top, and heir to a sugar fortune. Understood?’

  Flora nods, her face inscrutable. ‘Understood, Uncle.’

  ‘Well, good,’ he says hesitantly, not quite sure if she’s being sincere or if we’re all in on a joke. ‘That’s settled. Your mother will thank you. And so will I. The Wilde family’s fortunes are in need of a top-up. We haven’t made a decent match in this family for a generation. Good luck.’ He turns to the rest of us dismissively. ‘And you three fight over Tom, eh? Chop him up and split him three ways to avoid arguments. And stop flirting with our handsome young gardener, or I’ll sack him immediately.’

  A small sob breaks in Sybil’s throat then, a cracking sound, like a hazelnut underfoot. She pulls a handkerchief out of her sleeve, dabs her eyes. We stare at the floor, pretend we haven’t heard.

  ‘The pollen again, is it, Sybil?’ says Perry, a catch in his voice. But the awful sound of my aunt crying is unmistakable. Moll slips out of the door.

  ‘Forgive me, girls.’ Sybil sniffs.

  ‘Not now, Sybil,’ Perry says wearily.

  As she’s clearly about to say something that Perry doesn’t want her to say, I encourage her. ‘What is it, Aunt?’ I ask, ignoring Pam who is shaking her head at me, warning me away from the awkward Audrey conversation we can all sense coming, like the pressure drop before heavy rain.

  ‘Just – just thinking of little Harry all grown-up, about to go to Oxford.’ Her voice breaks and her raw grief is there in the room with us, clawing at her legs like a small child. ‘And … Audrey …’

  ‘Sybil, darling,’ Perry says, more kindly. His hand hovers above her arm, ready to comfort her, then drops back to his side, as if he doesn’t quite know how.

  ‘Audrey will be delighted to find Harry close by again when she comes home,’ Sybil says, rallying a smile. ‘That is something.’

  Silence swells under the glass, like a high-pitched noise about to shatter it. And it is suddenly obvious to all of us that Sybil’s belief that her daughter will one day return is her life force, her reason for living. And that Perry sees things very differently.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, woman …’ Perry’s voice quivers on the edge of something terrible. ‘Audrey is not coming back.’

  As he barrels out of the door, leaving his words hanging in the still, jasmine-scented air, I wonder how my uncle can possibly know this for sure.

  My little alarm clock says 5 a.m. But no time seems to have passed since the previous evening, Harry’s beer, the gunshot jolt of the Gores’ names spoken aloud in the orangery, Sybil sobbing and Perry shouting, the past ripping through the fabric of the present, revealing it to be as thin and fragile as antique linen. Outside, a cock crows.

  I ask myself, What would Audrey do right now if she were me, and I her, and our fates had been swapped, like straw boaters, as they so easily might have been in the jumble of the last days of summer?

  I pull on my dressing-gown. Avoiding the top stair, which squeaks, I creep down into the cool heart of the house until I can no longer hear Perry’s geological snores. There’s a thrill that comes with being awake when everyone else is lost in sleep. I don’t feel rushed. Or watched. Time even passes differently, moulding itself around me, like a kid glove on warm skin.

  In the library, I note Perry’s menacing collection of guns and swords on the ox-blood walls. But the drawing room reveals only a lock of blonde child’s hair in a tiny, pull-out bureau drawer and, worse, a little cloth bag of milk teeth. Unnerved by them, I slip away into the kitchen. I steal two scones from under a wire cloche – one for me, one for a delighted Moppet – and start to investigate the warren of small rooms around the scullery, impossible during the day since this is Moll and Sybil’s territory.

  The rooms are so familiar the moment I see them that it’s like rejoining an old game of childhood hide and seek. A brick-walled room: shelves stacked with preserves, pickles, chutneys, jammy jewels in glass jars. I remember how I loved the glut of this room, its hive-like organization, how Moll would give me and Audrey the job of tying on the gingham jar tops, binding them with string. Then there’s the larder, with its mousetraps, baskets of potatoes, cool caves for cheeses. The broom cupboard, where Flora once hid and tripped in the dark, cutting her lip on the edge of a metal mop bucket, bursting out of the door, her mouth dripping with blood, making us all scream. The laundry room, warm, damp, like a freshly bathed baby, its white sheets hanging on wooden poles – there was an art to standing between them, breathing so lightly you didn’t make them tremble – the mangle I’d use to wring out my bathing-suit, just for the satisfaction of churning that heavy handle. Its mechanics fascinated me: we always sent our laundry out to be washed in London. And, next to this, a storeroom that makes my breath catch.

  The light is greened by the ivy-spangled window, the air stirred by the draught from a large crack forking along the lower pane. Crammed inside, relics of long-lost childhoods – Grandpa’s, Perry’s, Pa’s, Audrey’s – awaiting a new generation that can’t be born: a wooden child’s chair, with long, slanting, insecty legs, a small china bowl, Peter Rabbit running along the rim. Audrey’s dolly pram, the mattress still chewed at one corner – the memorable legacy of Audrey’s and my overenthusiastic parenting of ‘Baby Moppet’. Skipping ropes, tiddly winks, alphabet bricks, and a small wooden box of dominoes that is like finding something of mine that I misplaced long ago. I slide back its stiff lid, remembering the games we played on rainy afternoons, how I’d let Audrey win, not wanting to disturb the natural order of things. Her fingerprints, I think, must still be over each piece, mine too, something of her, us. Impulsively, I pick out a lucky blank, a talisman, and drop it into the pocket of my dressing-gown. I shut the door behind me, impressed by my own audacity.

  When I open the kitchen door to the outside, the morning is soft and blessedly cool. I sit on a garden bench and slowly become aware of a sound: hard to identify, rhythmic, metallic, coming from the side of the house. I get up and cautiously peer around the corner.

  ‘Good morning, Margot,’ Sybil says, not even glancing in my direction, secateurs slicing into the ivy creeping over a ground-floor window, the one with the crack.

  My stomach lurches. She must have seen me. I wait for her to whip around and shout that I must never, ever snoop among Audrey’s things again, and return the domino immediately. But there is only the slice of metal against metal, an amputated arm of ivy falling to the ground, a small puzzling smile playing at my aunt’s lips.

  As our first week progresses, Sybil keeps popping up suddenly, silently, marking our movements, twice catching me standing outside Audrey’s door, fighting the urge to open it. Perry lumbers around after us too, noisily, Minotaur-like, one hand on his lower back, suggesting swims or games of bridge. ‘But really wanting to suck the flesh off our bones,’ says Pam. Yet our aunt and uncle step around each other, like awkwardly placed furniture or guests at a party with a long-running feud.

  It’s odd to witness. All our lives we’ve been brought up to want what Sybil has: a marriage to a first-born son, a big house, a loyal maid, clawed silver sugar tongs, a gold carriage clock ticking down to the next wedding anniversary. And yet Sybil grinds pepper over her boiled egg in the morning as if she’d like to wring the neck of the chicken who laid it.r />
  Although she always emerges in the morning fully dressed, her face scrubbed almost raw – it is impossible to imagine her idling in a dressing-gown like Ma, purring over a lazy continental coffee and the gossip columns of last week’s newspaper – she hasn’t gone further than the village church in five years. She’s imprisoned herself behind her own floral swagged curtains.

  And it’s becoming clear that she wants to do the same to us. When Audrey was here, we’d play in the meadow for hours, scramble across fields in the dark, swim in the river, crowned with duckweed. Yesterday, a proposal of a jaunt into the village, no more than half an hour’s walk away, sent Sybil’s fragile face into a twitching spasm of anxiety. She tried to persuade us to do something else. A dip in the pool? A game of croquet? A picnic in the orchard, perhaps? As our secret mission of bumping into the Gore cousins seemed to be under threat, Flora suggested Sybil come with us, knowing full well she wouldn’t. Sybil blinked and paled, torn in half by the question, and I could see there was something in her that desperately wanted to say yes. But she didn’t. Or she couldn’t.

  She didn’t miss much. A baby show on the village green by the duck pond, and dozens of staring locals, their mouths open. I’m not sure if it was Flora’s skirt, the pale cotton transparent in the bright sun, or just the sight of four sisters so obviously from elsewhere that disturbed the village air as we moved down the narrow cobbled streets, past bowed-glass shop fronts, leaving something uneasy, troubled in our wake. Lace curtains in cottage windows parted slightly, shivered shut again. Women whispered behind cupped hands, children gawped, ran away, and a couple of times I heard our aunt and uncle’s names snag the air. Not one person smiled at us. Returning to the house, puzzled and downhearted, I saw Sybil watching us from an upstairs window, hand on the curtain, face pale as a plate beneath the glass. And I wondered if she knew the reaction we’d receive in the village, if she’d even tried to protect us from it.

  Just when we’ve almost given up on ever hearing from the Gores again, they trot on sweating velvet-black horses past the orchard wall, and throw over an invitation, like a bunch of flowers. Sybil forbids it. Perry overrules her: ‘Go and charm Harry silly, Flora.’