Ann Pilling - The Empty Frame

For Joe, with love always

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.

1 John 4, 18

The Admiral relates how he was sitting up late one night with his brother, over a game of chess, in a panelled room overlooked by the portrait of Lady Hoby. “We had finished playing, and my brother had gone up to bed. I stood for some time with my back to the wall, turning over the day in my mind. Minutes passed. I suddenly realised the presence of someone standing behind me. I tore round. It was Dame Hoby. The frame on the wall was empty. Terrified, I fled the room.”

from The Story of Bisham Abbey

by Piers Compton

Cover Page

Title Page The Empty Frame Ann Pilling

Epigraph The Admiral relates how he was sitting up late one night with his brother, over a game of chess, in a panelled room overlooked by the portrait of Lady Hoby. “We had finished playing, and my brother had gone up to bed. I stood for some time with my back to the wall, turning over the day in my mind. Minutes passed. I suddenly realised the presence of someone standing behind me. I tore round. It was Dame Hoby. The frame on the wall was empty. Terrified, I fled the room.” from The Story of Bisham Abbey by Piers Compton

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

AFTERWORD

By the same author

Copyright

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Floss was fed up. She was looking at herself in the mirror and she didn’t like what she saw, neither her mop of dark hair, so frizzy and so coarse (“panscrubbers” a boy had said once) nor her stupid little nose, nor the fact that she was too short to be an actress and seemed to be putting on weight. She didn’t even like her name.

Floss was short for Flossie, and both were short for Florence. She hated all her names this morning, she wanted something dignified and mysterious, a name like Hepzibah or Beatrice, something with history behind it.

“Sam, what do you think Lady Macbeth’s name was?” she asked her brother, who was sprawled across the floor looking at a map. He too was stocky and short and he too had pan-scrubber hair, though it didn’t seem to bother him.

“Dunno. Mavis I should think.”

Floss threw her book at him. It was Mum’s Complete Shakespeare , it was big.

“Ouch! For heaven’s sake, Floss.”

“Sorry.” She rescued the book, relieved to find that it was still in one piece. “It’s just that I’m so depressed. I’ll never get this part. My hair’s not right and I’m too short. They’ll give it to Anna Houghton. She’s tall and she’s got the most brilliant hair.”

“Looks aren’t everything,” Sam said. “Anna Houghton’s dim, anyhow. I bet she doesn’t understand what the play’s about. Which bit are you doing, anyway?”

“The sleepwalking scene, where she comes on wringing her hands, when she can’t get rid of the guilt about them having murdered the old king. It’s funny, when they actually kill him she’s the strong one. Macbeth behaves like a real wimp. But when things start catching up with them she’s the one that goes mad.”

“And what happens?”

“She kills herself – but not on the stage.”

“Glad about that,” Sam said. “I don’t fancy watching you do that to yourself. Go for it anyhow, that’s what Mum and Dad said. I bet you’ll get it.”

Floss curled up again in her chair and tried to get the lines into her head. Their year was putting on Scenes from Shakespeare for the school’s Christmas drama competition, and she wanted to be Lady Macbeth. She had planned to get the part word-perfect by the end of the summer holiday, but now they were going away and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to learn all the lines. Perhaps she’d relax, instead of swotting up Shakespeare. The audition might be too nerve-racking. Anyhow, there was Magnus. Mum and Dad had said they must look after him.

“Do you think it’ll be all right, going away with Magnus?” she asked Sam. At first he didn’t answer, merely crouched lower over his map. Magnus, the boy their parents were fostering and who now lived with them, was a subject they found it difficult to discuss. They both had strong feelings about him.

“It’s on a river,” he said, “quite a big one. It looks like a tributary of the Thames. There’ll be boats I should think. It’ll be great if this hot weather keeps up. There’s a swimming pool too.”

“But what about Magnus? I don’t think he can swim.”

“He’ll be fine. We can teach him,” Sam said easily. He was the unflappable type, a good foil for Floss who tended to panic.

“What do you really feel about Magnus living here?” Floss asked him, shutting the book. She was definitely abandoning Shakespeare for the day.

Sam folded his map up, very precisely and slowly. Then he took in a deep breath and let it out, also very slowly. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I mean there’s nothing to dislike, is there? He hardly ever speaks.”

“No, but when he does it’s something he’s really thought about. Have you noticed? I think he’s rather clever.” The truth was that Floss thought Magnus quite amazingly clever. When he came out with his quick, precise observations she felt like a dinosaur plodding around in gum boots.

“Well of course he’s clever,” Sam said. “But then, his father was some kind of genius wasn’t he, in a university?”

“I think so. I wish we knew a bit more, though. I mean, I know it’s awful, how he’s been treated, but we’ve got to live with him.”

“Well, I’m not sure I’d go round telling people about my mother going to pieces, when my father had just walked out without a word, and had never come back. They sound weird. That’s when his mother started doing strange things, and ill-treating him, according to Dad.”

“But why did nobody know ?”

“Well, I think she, sort of, withdrew from everybody, with Magnus. She actually went to live in another town, where no one knew her. His father had been teaching him at home, so his school wouldn’t have missed him and I suppose outsiders didn’t want to barge in. I mean, they must have been very respectable, not the kind of people social workers are asked to investigate, unless someone tells them to.”

“And nobody did?”

“No, not until it was too late, not according to Mum and Dad.”

“I wonder why the father walked out?”

“Dunno, but I don’t think he went off with someone else. Dad said he’d got very stressed-out, about his work, he said it was all that mattered to him. He was obviously an unbalanced kind of person. That’s why he pushed Magnus so hard, at his lessons. I should think it’s why he won’t always co-operate now, at school. He’s digging his heels in. Don’t blame him either.”

“He’s getting a lot better though.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But why didn’t the mother protect Magnus more? That’s what mothers do.”

“Perhaps she was frightened of the father. She can’t have been very tough, she’s had some kind of mega mental breakdown now, that’s why he can’t go to see her.”