Annie Claydon - Forbidden Night With The Duke

‘Dr and Mrs Perera, you were in Sri Lanka when the tsunami of 2005 hit.’ Megan’s voice came from somewhere behind the camera. ‘The medical station that you set up to help the sick and the injured was the foundation of the present-day clinic. What were the biggest problems you faced...?’

The video lasted exactly five minutes. By the time it had finished, Jaye felt tears pricking at the sides of his eyes.

This wasn’t appropriate either. He knew the story well enough, he’d been there for much of it. The interview had clearly been carefully edited, and somehow Megan had managed to catch all the passion, the battle against seemingly overwhelming odds, and the achievements that had kept everyone going. At the end of the interview there were photographs, some of which had been taken from his parents’ personal albums.

There was silence in the room and then someone started to clap. Megan grabbed her laptop and hurried back to her seat, red-faced, as everyone applauded.

* * *

Everyone had crowded around Megan when the session ended, wanting to know more about the Sri Lankan clinic. Jaye had hurried from the room, trying not to notice that Megan’s head had turned to watch him go.

He’d taken refuge in an armchair, tucked into the corner of the large landing where the main staircase split in two. It was one of his favourite places in the house where he could sit and watch the world go by, without being a part of it. But as Megan walked through the hallway, she looked up and saw him there.

‘May I join you?’ She walked half way up towards him and then stopped.

‘Yes, of course.’ Jaye rose from the chair and sat down on the stairs next to it.

‘Is this your stair?’ She had a mischievous look in her eyes as she approached him.

Actually, it was. The one where he’d sat as a child, hidden from the hallway by the turn in the stairs but able to peep out and see what was going on.

‘Why don’t you try it for size?’ There was plenty of room there for two.

Megan nodded, sitting down next to him. Looking around, she peered through the heavy banister rails to see down into the main hall.

‘It’s a good stair. Just right.’ She smiled at him, and Jaye felt a warm tingle shoot down his spine.

‘I think so.’ His legs were a little longer now, so it wasn’t such a good hiding place as it had once been. But his initials were still there, carved into the stair tread and hidden by the carpet.

She was hugging her laptop, obviously there on a mission. Jaye waited. No doubt Megan would come out with it, sooner rather than later.

‘I hope you didn’t mind... Your mother and father were really happy to do the interview and they offered to let me scan some of their photographs... They were very kind, and I didn’t mean to impose on them by asking so much. I hope you don’t feel it was too personal.’

‘Not a bit. And my parents looked as if they were really enjoying it. My father never passes up a chance to reminisce.’ It occurred to Jaye that including his parents’ words and photographs hadn’t been an exercise in currying favour. Megan had simply gone down the route that she felt told the story best, despite not being sure whether he’d approve. The thought made him smile.

‘I had to cut some bits out.’ She looked up at him, her eyes bright. ‘Did you really help dig the foundations of the clinic?’

‘I was a lot younger then.’ It seemed like a hundred years ago. And yet somehow he could still touch the feeling of something fresh and new.

‘John spoke to me about sending me there for my first assignment. I’ll have to check out your bricklaying skills.’ She was clearly testing the water, waiting for Jaye’s opinion on the matter.

‘Well, when you get there, take the path that runs around the back of the building. We all put our initials in the cement, under the window of the main ward.’

Megan gave a broad smile. ‘I will. I can’t wait...’

She seemed to have said all she’d come to say and had begun to fidget nervously. Jaye stretched his legs out in front of him, wondering if he might persuade her to stay. Just so he could breathe her scent a little longer.

‘What do you think of the course so far?’

‘It’s been great, really helpful. It’s been good to talk to people from other charities and compare the different approaches. And being in this house has made all the difference.’

Jaye had always felt he paled into insignificance next to the great house, set in its spectacular landscape, but it was disappointing to hear the words on Megan’s lips. He wouldn’t have minded so much if Sonia hadn’t fallen so irrevocably in love with the place. When he’d first brought her here, she’d hardly looked at him all day, as if he’d suddenly melted into a poor second place in her heart. Jaye had tried to dismiss the feeling, but it had turned out to be a warning of things to come.

‘You think the house is what makes the difference. Not the people in it?’

She flashed him a withering look, as if he’d misunderstood on purpose. ‘What I meant was that we don’t leave every evening, so we sit and talk a lot more. Don’t you think that surroundings have an impact on how people operate?’

Jaye chuckled. ‘Yes, I do. It’s one of the founding principles of the clinic in Sri Lanka. We tried to make it a quiet place, where people could find healing and balance.’

‘The principles of Ayurvedic medicine? You practise that?’

‘No. But we understand that tradition sometimes has a lot to offer. We respect it.’

Megan nodded. ‘Everything I hear about the clinic in Sri Lanka just makes me want to go even more...’

She’d relaxed now, her shoulder brushing his arm as she turned to put her laptop on the stair next to her. That one touch seemed to linger.

‘So what impact do you think this house has had on the way the group has operated?’

‘Apart from the fact that I’m tempted to take a sandwich with me when I trek from my bed over to the shower in the mornings...? Not that my room isn’t lovely, of course, and very comfortable.’

‘Of course. And leaving your early morning hunger pangs out of it?’ Jaye filed the information under the category of irrelevant but nice to know.

‘It’s like a bubble. It seems as if it’s been here for ever, and it must have seen so much over the years. That makes almost anything possible.’

Jaye swallowed hard. She seemed to have reached into him and found his own response to the house he’d been brought up in. Megan had seen past the glitz and the glamour that seemed to preoccupy so many others.

‘These are all the past Dukes?’ She was pointing up at the portraits, which stretched along the landing and up the stairs.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And you’re carrying on their tradition.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Jaye heard his own laugh, almost breathless in the bubble that Megan had created around the two of them. ‘Some of them were rogues. The one just there almost gambled the estate away. Luckily for us, his son was a little more prudent. He’s the next one along.’

Megan craned her neck, staring at the painting and then glanced back at Jaye. ‘I can see a likeness, I think... Between you and the son.’

‘I’d be proud if there was one. He was one of the more enlightened Dukes of Marlowe.’

‘Why?’ She turned and Jaye shivered in her steady gaze. ‘What did he do?’

‘He was a campaigner against social injustice, at a time when no one thought about the sufferings of working people. He put his principles into practice, here on the estate.’

‘You’re very lucky, to have someone like that in your family.’

That was what his father had taught Jaye. When he’d been barely old enough to understand, his father had told him that this collection of paintings was a reminder of the choices that he could make in his own life.