The Winter Secret Read online

  ‘So I see.’ Charles glanced over the remains on the table, suddenly showing his tiredness.

  Buttercup followed his gaze. ‘There’s plenty left, darling, if you’re hungry.’

  ‘I’ll have some later.’

  There was a pause, and then Wilf, swapping a swift glance with his wife, said, ‘We must be on our way, actually.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Buttercup said, crestfallen. ‘Must you?’ She’d been enjoying the casual evening. Through Wilf and Cathy’s eyes, this was her home, her domain. She had the sense that when they left, she would go back to being in that strange nebulous position: neither guest nor mistress. A permanent newcomer. The long-time resident at the luxury hotel. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cathy said firmly. ‘It’s been lovely but we must leave you two alone. We’ll take Olly and get on our way.’

  ‘Olly?’ Charles asked, pouring out some wine into a glass.

  Buttercup said, ‘Their little boy. He’s upstairs, asleep.’

  ‘How nice. Well, I’m so pleased you had a charming evening but we mustn’t stop you from getting back.’

  With a scraping of chairs and polite murmurings of thanks, the evening was over. Buttercup waited in the hall until the Tranters came down with Olly, Wilf carrying him wrapped up in a blanket, a ruffle of blond hair, closed eyes and pink cheeks just visible over its rim.

  ‘Good night, little man,’ she whispered as they carried him out to the car. It was ridiculous, she knew, but the house felt colder and emptier without him.

  ‘I wish you’d let me know you’d invited the Tranters for dinner, darling,’ Charles said, as they got ready for bed. ‘I was looking forward to having you to myself this evening.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were back tomorrow.’ She was sitting at her dressing table, taking off her make-up, swiping away the cold cream and leaving putty-coloured streaks on the cotton wool.

  ‘It was a surprise for you.’ He smiled a little tightly. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so tired after the last few days and I was looking forward to seeing you. I’ve spent all week with colleagues and I just wanted to relax.’

  ‘You can relax with them. They’re so nice.’

  ‘Not really. We’re their employers.’

  ‘They’ve bought the lease, that’s all. They don’t work for us!’

  Charles stopped unbuttoning his cuffs and looked over at her. ‘I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s quite the thing to have the pub landlord and his wife here for intimate dinners, that’s all. If you make friends with Cathy, that’s different, but . . .’

  She looked back, surprised.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Sorry, darling, forgive me. I’m tired . . . it’s been a long day.’ He turned away, and she could only see his back, the creases in his shirt and the trimmed sandy-grey hair at the back of his neck.

  She turned to face the mirror, where she could see an expression in her own eyes that she could not quite read.

  I need to ask him what he really thinks about having children. But this definitely isn’t the right time.

  Chapter Nine

  Xenia stood at the bay window in her sitting room, squinting up the lane at the gates of Charcombe Park until she saw them swing open and the bicycle she had been waiting for began to edge through the gap. At once, she went quickly to her front door, flung it open and hurried down the path, calling, ‘You! Yes, girl, you!’

  The slender young woman had pushed the bike through the gates and was on the lane. She turned at the sound of Xenia’s voice, staring over with questioning eyes.

  Xenia beckoned to her briskly. ‘Come here.’

  ‘Yes?’ The girl dismounted and walked over tentatively, rolling her bike beside her.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Agnieska.’

  ‘Polish? I see – well, come inside, I want to ask you something.’ Xenia led the way back up the path, walking quickly. Her vision might be suffering but she was still fit and her pace was vigorous. ‘Come along, follow me. Leave your bicycle there, by the porch. Come along in!’

  Xenia went into the drawing room, the girl following. She waved her arm about to indicate the room. ‘Can you do anything about this?’

  The Polish girl stood silently for a moment, looking around, her expression unchanging. Then she turned to face the old woman. ‘You want I clean?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I can’t see the dust any more, I can’t see what’s in front of me. I need someone to clean and tidy and keep it organised for me.’

  ‘Whole house?’

  ‘Naturally. I can’t live in squalor.’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘What days can you do?’

  Agnieska thought for a moment. ‘Thursday afternoon. Friday morning. Other times I am already busy.’

  ‘Friday morning. Four hours. That should be enough to tidy up after one woman. If it isn’t, we’ll see about adding the afternoon as well. Come at eight.’

  ‘I come at nine thirty,’ the girl said in her low voice. ‘My children, I go to school.’

  ‘Oh.’ Xenia blinked, surprised to be defied with such ease. But she understood that the children going to school was important and she was reassured by the girl’s bluntness. It implied honesty. ‘All right. I’ll supply all your cleaning things, you must use what I want you to use and do it just as I like. I’ll pay you well but you must be on time and no coffee breaks or phone calls. My last girl would talk incessantly on the mobile in her own language and it made me so cross.’

  ‘Yes,’ Agnieska said blankly and Xenia wondered what, if anything, she had understood.

  Xenia drew herself up to her full height, which was rather less than it had once been. ‘And you are to call me Princess or Princess Arkadyoff. Do you understand?’

  ‘Arkadyoff?’ Agnieska’s pale eyes glittered. ‘Russian?’

  ‘My father was Russian. But I was born in this country. I have never been to Russia, as a matter of fact.’ She added stiffly, ‘I hope that won’t be a problem.’

  There was a pause and Agnieska said, ‘Problem? No. Fine.’

  ‘Good. Then you can do your first day tomorrow and, if we are both happy, we’ll carry on. Bring your passport. ‘

  Agnieska nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then I’ll show you out. Till nine thirty tomorrow.’

  The following morning, Xenia was awake earlier than usual, fretting about whether she had done the right thing by inviting this stranger into her home.

  Not just any stranger, a Polish girl. Papa always talked so disparagingly about the Poles. And perhaps she’ll dislike me, or want to steal from me. It’s hardly any wonder they dislike Russians, after the years of Communism.

  Papa certainly hated the Soviet state more than he could ever dislike Poland. But what the girl would make of working for someone of Russian heritage . . . Still, she had every chance to say no.

  Xenia did not feel Russian in any way. She couldn’t speak the language and had never visited. She had seen her Russian grandmother – the terrifying and elderly Princess Arkadyoff, who had escaped the revolution on board the ship sent to rescue the dowager empress from the Red Guard – only a handful of times and remembered a small, straight-backed woman in old-fashioned clothes, layers of pearls at her neck, grey hair curled and dressed high, who smelt of jasmine and powder. She had sensed disapproval, she had no idea why.

  Some of Grandmama’s things had come to them after she died: icons, jewellery boxes – empty – bibles in Russian and French, enamelled photograph frames and porcelain trinket pots. Things that had been easy to carry. The rest of the family wealth had been left behind for the Soviets. Xenia wondered what the Polish girl would make of the bits of Russia around the cottage. She had put some of the icons on the wall in her bedroom, along with a large silver crucifix, and in the drawing room were silver-framed photographs of her Russian relations among the pictures of her parents and their friends.

  She’ll just have
to get used to it, Xenia thought. I’ll find someone else if she doesn’t do.

  But she hoped that this girl would be the one.

  She had taken her customary breakfast of strong black coffee and oat bran porridge and was watching the clock with increasing irritation as the hands crept past nine thirty when there was a light knock at the front door. When she opened it, the girl stood there, pale and monochrome as ever in her black coat with its grey furry hood.

  ‘You’re late,’ Xenia said curtly, stepping back to let her in.

  The girl said nothing but slipped out of her outdoor shoes, dropped a pair of soft-soled slipper-style shoes on the floor and put them on. Then she took off her coat and hung it over the edge of the radiator. She held something out to Xenia but it fell into the black hole in the middle of her vision.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Passport.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Xenia took it. ‘Thank you. I’ll check it. Let’s begin.’

  She took the girl on a tour of the house, telling her exactly how things should be done to her satisfaction. Agnieska followed, nodding obediently and saying ‘yes’, although she asked no questions and kept the same, blank expression so that Xenia wondered again how much she actually grasped.

  In her bedroom, she looked around and said, ‘Polish the furniture and the mirror, clean the windows. Dust, obviously. Keep the silver looking fresh. Yes? But don’t touch anything else. Do you understand?’

  Agnieska nodded.

  ‘Good. Let’s go downstairs so you can get started. And please tell me before you run out of cleaning things, so I can replace them.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  They went back downstairs, Xenia going slowly and carefully as she struggled to see the step in front of her. She settled down with a book as Agnieska began to assemble what she needed and set to work; the presence of someone else in the house, someone who was tending to things, was, she found, a comfort.

  Sometimes she felt the weight of guilt and remorse for having sold Charcombe Park. For so long she had struggled on alone in that huge house, trying to keep it going by herself, but it had been impossible. Even if she’d worked all day and all night, it would have made little difference. But Papa had made her promise.

  ‘Look after your mother,’ he’d said, ‘and look after this house. Whatever happens, we mustn’t lose it. It’s all we have left.’

  So she had slaved and toiled, scrubbing and cleaning and doing her best to keep them living in some kind of gracious style. But caring for Mama too . . . it had been too much.

  ‘She’s your responsibility now, Xenia,’ Papa had told her solemnly. ‘You have to take care of her. You know why.’

  Xenia did know why. It was her burden and her punishment. It was why she could never escape, no matter how badly she longed to give up. Eventually Papa would come back and things would be like they used to be, in the days when there was plenty, and they lived a life of ease and beauty.

  She thought about it sometimes, as she fought to keep the place in order, food on the table for her and Mama, some warmth in the walls of the old house. At first, it wasn’t too bad. Mama’s films brought in some tiny payments, but sadly, that was not the case with Delilah on which she’d secured no royalty. That was one of the reasons Xenia found it too painful to watch when it was shown on the television. Hardly any of the great income it had generated had gone to Mama, its star. It had made her, and broken her too. Xenia couldn’t bear to see Mama, so young and beautiful, so full of promise and talent, and to remember the afternoons in the darkness, watching the cameras record her performance for all time: every flash of her eyes, the arrogant pout of her lips, the raised arches of her eyebrows.

  That was why she had left the portrait behind at the big house, the place where Mama had last been anything like that fiery beauty she had played on screen. That image was too powerful to bring into this place. Better that it hung in the room where Mama had laughed, smoked cigarettes, drunk martinis and charmed her many friends.

  I tried to do as he asked. But in the end, despite my best efforts, I failed.

  She felt her shoulders slump. She heard distantly the noises of Agnieska moving around upstairs. It helped somehow, to dispel her burden and take the edge off her fear. Her eyes drooped and she slept.

  Xenia was still snoozing when the girl came in holding a plastic bag.

  ‘You want I keep?’ she said.

  Xenia jumped awake and looked at the girl, bewildered, forgetting who she was and why she was there.

  ‘What?’ she said, her voice high and quavery. A stupid old woman’s voice. It isn’t me. I hate growing old like this. ‘What do you want?’

  Agnieska held out the bag wordlessly. It seemed to contain an animal or a furry toy or . . .

  ‘Oh.’ Irritation surged through her and she lifted herself slowly out of her chair. ‘What are you doing with that? Where have you been looking?’

  ‘It come out under bed,’ she said with a small shrug. ‘I find. You must . . .’ She frowned as she searched for a word. ‘In the cupboard. And they eat it.’ She wriggled the fingers of her free hand and let them flutter away upwards, watching them as they went.

  ‘You mean moths, I suppose. Well, you’re probably right. I’d forgotten it was there.’ She took the bag from Agnieska. ‘It’s a coat.’

  Agnieska nodded. Xenia pulled the coat from the bag and shook it out, releasing a musty smell of old fur and the tang that came from the silk lining within.

  ‘Mama’s coat,’ she said, gazing at it. It was so familiar and yet a relic of the distant past. How strange that this should be here, in her hands, when so many other things had fluttered away and disappeared like Agnieska’s invisible moths. All the many things she had been surrounded by over her long life. Where were they all? The teaspoons, the underwear, the combs, the tables and chairs, the books and lamps, the clothes she had worn, the umbrellas she’d held, her hair pins, her first watch. Where had it all gone? Some of it was left, here in this house. But there had been so much more.

  Here was Mama’s coat. She’d worn it on her way to and from the theatre, and then in Hollywood, despite the warm climate. Xenia remembered the cars, long and plush and purring like well-fed cats, that took them all to the studio in the morning and back home to the house on Bristol Avenue in the evening. Mama wore the coat when she and Papa went out to dinner in the evenings, for steak de luxe at Romanoff’s or shrimp curry at Ciro’s, or to dance and drink at the Cocoanut Grove, her hair curled and shiny, her lips bright with lipstick, jewels glittering around her neck and wrists; she wore it when she went to parties at the homes of other film stars, famous names like Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, Betty Grable . . . names that turned out to belong to real people – glamorous like Mama, but real.

  The coat was a reminder of those heady, glory days when Mama was on the cusp of her fame, revered for her beauty and her status as a real-life princess, and Papa was her handsome prince, always at her side with a cigarette clamped in his teeth, a hand on the arm of that coat.

  Agnieska regarded it thoughtfully, no doubt appreciating the warming qualities of fine sable. ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘Yes, yes, put it on.’

  ‘Oh no—’ She wasn’t sure she could stand the memories.

  But the next moment, Agnieska had taken it from her grip and was draping it around her shoulders. The smell was stronger: old damp fur, the slight reek of sweat from the armpits, and . . . oh my goodness. Mama’s scent. A lily-of-the-valley perfume, rich and redolent of spring woods, that made Xenia remember the inside of the trailer on the film set, where the scent had been pumped into it through an air conditioning unit.

  She shrugged so that it settled about her shoulders. It fit her perfectly and immediately she felt its warmth.

  ‘Air,’ Agnieska said wisely. ‘Hang it up.’

  ‘Yes. It needs to air.’ Xenia slipped her hands into the pockets. She felt the gritt
iness of old dust at the bottoms. She opened it up and saw that inside were two inner silk pockets; she put her fingers into one and felt two slips of paper. She pulled them out and looked at them, one a cloakroom ticket marked ‘Chasen’s’, the other a piece of yellowing lined paper with brownish folds.

  Chasen’s. Where Archibald Thomas had his booth. Mama dined there with him. She had chilli for the first time, she told me all about it.

  She opened the folded paper. It was a page ripped from a notebook and on it were some fading spidery lines, the first written in a strong bold hand and signed AT:

  You are Delilah, never forget that . . . You are magnificent today, tomorrow, forever.

  Below it, written in her mother’s sloping hand:

  I can, I can, I can. I can overcome this fear. I can do it. I must, I must, I must. For Paul, for Xenia.

  Xenia stared at it, then folded it back up and replaced it in the silk pocket.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will air it.’

  Chapter Ten

  1949

  Xenia thought that this must be the closest thing to fairyland she could ever imagine. She was in a magical kingdom where the sun always shone and the air was balmy and warm. The roads were broad and lined with palms, and large shiny cars trimmed with silvery bright metal glided along them. There were neatly trimmed grass verges and then house after house, like she’d never seen before: huge, often white, with swimming pools and endless gardens.

  No wonder everyone wanted to come and live in Hollywood.

  She and Papa had left England on a drizzly day and crossed over on the Queen Elizabeth. Life on the liner had been full of charm for Xenia. It was not at all like a boat, as she’d imagined, but like being in a large and comfortable hotel. Once they were past the last of the land, the vast ocean opened up before them, bigger and grander than she’d dreamed, and so stunningly, frighteningly empty. For days, there was nothing to see but the rolling, white-topped waves of the Atlantic. She knew they must be moving, but it seemed they were perfectly still in the middle of miles of water, not even feeling the waves that broke around the hull far below them.