Nicola Upson - Angel with Two Faces

Intrigued, Josephine poured some tea from the flask, grateful now for Ronnie’s sedate pace. ‘How’s Archie?’ she asked. ‘I can think of better starts to a holiday than carrying a coffin.’

‘Bearing up, if you’ll excuse the pun. Lettice and I always dread any big occasion taking place while we’re at home – weddings, funerals, christenings, they’re all the same. Everyone’s got such a history, you see – they’ve lived and worked together on that estate for generations, and that makes for very strong alliances, and even stronger grudges. It’s like being part of some sort of brotherhood, I suppose – if you imagined something midway between Camelot and Dennis Wheatley, you’d have it about right.’ They both laughed. ‘Most of the time, it’s all perfectly normal. The estate’s big enough for everyone to have his role, and there’s something rather fine about the way they all work together to keep it going. But when we’re gathered together under one roof, it all gets a bit tense and incestuous.’

‘Not unlike the theatre, then,’ Josephine said wryly. ‘It must be home from home for you.’

‘I’d never thought of it like that, but now you mention it, there are some similarities. I have to say, though, it was a very strange do today, even by our standards. The young lad, Christopher – the Snipe’s nephew, in fact – he nearly dropped the coffin; the curate bungled the eulogy; and, to cap it all, when we came out of the church desperate to get the man safely in the ground, his little sister had tarted the grave up to look like a florist’s showpiece. We rounded the corner and there she was – grinning over six feet of bluebells. All very Lady of Shalott. I could have died, but I’m eternally grateful to you for saving me from the wake. It can only have got worse.’

Josephine pictured the scene with a shudder. She had a hatred of funerals, and in particular of flowers on graves. ‘If anything happens to me, I don’t want a petal in sight,’ she said. ‘But are you seriously telling me that someone let a child decorate the inside of a grave?’

‘Loveday’s not exactly a child. I suppose she’s about fourteen, but she’s always been precocious and her outlook on the world can be a little – well, fanciful. To be honest with you,’ Ronnie added confidingly, ‘I don’t think she’s quite right in the head, but nobody would ever say that. They just accept her for what she is. The parents are both dead, but there’s another sister – Harry’s twin – and the three of them were devoted to each other. I dread to think how this has affected them.’

‘What happened to Harry, anyway? Archie said there was an accident, but he didn’t have time to tell me much.’

‘Well, Harry’s always been one of those daredevil types, but this time his luck ran out. The stupid boy rode his horse into the lake and drowned.’

‘What happened to the horse?’ ‘He swam safely to the other bank. Trust you to think of that first.’

‘Well, I’ve always thought the phrase “daredevil type” was another way of saying “irresponsible bastard”,’ Josephine said tartly, ‘so my sympathies are firmly with the horse. Don’t you think it’s a little selfish to get yourself killed like that?’

‘I know what you mean, but don’t say it out loud when we get there – you’ll be lynched. Everyone loved Harry, and they certainly won’t have a word spoken against him now he’s dead.’

‘Let’s ask the older sister in three months’ time shall we?’ retorted Josephine scornfully. ‘I don’t think I could ever forgive someone who left me so unnecessarily, no matter how much I loved them – and I’m financially independent. From what you say, she’s got a tough time ahead.’

‘Pa will look after her – he always has. And Jago – he and his wife were good friends with the parents, and he’ll do what he can for Morwenna.’ They turned off the main road and followed a narrow lane which ran closer to the sea. Ferns of every description lined the roadside, and the hedgerows were filled with campion and bluebells – as beautiful in their natural setting as they had been sinister a few moments before. ‘Pa won’t tell you this himself, but he saved Loveday’s life when she was a little girl,’ Ronnie explained. ‘There was a fire at their cottage one night a few years back – a spark must have caught in the thatch and it went up like a beacon. Pa saw it across the park and got there as soon as he could with a couple of men from the stables. He found Loveday crouching by the stairs while another man dragged Harry unconscious from his room, but it was too late for the parents – they both died in their beds.’

‘Good God – that’s awful.’

‘I know. It makes you wonder what the family did in a former life, doesn’t it?’

‘Where was the other sister?’

‘Morwenna? She was away from home, thank God. She’d started to work at the Union over in Helston by then. It’s a sort of poorhouse-cum-refuge, and she was on a night shift. As you can imagine, she’s had her share of shocks in life, and she’s still a way off thirty. So you’re right, I suppose – Harry’s recklessness was selfish.’

‘Things could have been so much worse if it hadn’t been for your father, though.’

‘Yes, although he always shakes it off. He didn’t even tell Lettice and me that he was the one who’d saved them – we found out from the Snipe, who found out from her brother-in-law. He’s always taken his responsibilities to that estate and everyone on it very personally – although I think diving into burning buildings is carrying things too far. He won’t be told, though. He’s paid for Harry’s funeral, of course, and he’ll find a way to ensure that Loveday and Morwenna are all right without making them feel like charity cases.’

‘It must be a nightmare overseeing something that size,’ said Josephine, thinking of all the once grand estates that she read about which had fallen on hard times in recent years, ‘especially since the war. And I can’t imagine anything worse than having all those livelihoods dependent upon you.’

‘It is difficult,’ Ronnie admitted. ‘God knows how many people live and work on the estate, and I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen when Pa’s gone. I can’t see that Lettice and I have inherited sufficient stoicism and dedication to carry on what he does, and Archie certainly wouldn’t want it. Touch wood, though, he’s got more energy than people half his age, and he works twice as hard.’

‘And that you have inherited from him. I’m looking forward to meeting your father – I want to see what else I can trace back to him.’

‘I think you’ll find there’s quite a bit of him in each of us. And a lot of my mother, too, of course. We’ve been lucky with both of them.’

Not for the first time, Josephine reflected on the degree to which life had blessed the Motley sisters with exactly the right balance of comfort, eccentricity and tragedy for them to flourish in the theatrical world they had chosen to make their living from. She knew that their mother, Veronique, had died when they were still young, grief-stricken by the death of her eldest child, Teddy, who had gone down with his ship before the war was six months old, but she had often heard them speak of her and knew how much they had been influenced by her creativity and flouting of convention. She remembered Lettice once telling her that their mother had brought them up to believe they could do anything, and it was that which had given them the confidence to take on the unwritten laws of the West End, and change them for the better. ‘Has your father never been tempted to marry again?’ she asked.

‘Good grief, no,’ Ronnie said. ‘He’s not been short of admirers, but I honestly think he’s still too in love with my mother even to notice when someone’s setting her cap at him.’ She smiled sadly. ‘It’s a refreshing change from all the bravado people come out with about getting back in the saddle and moving on with your life. Lettice and I do worry about him, but there’s something rather noble about a grief that lasts for life, isn’t there?’ Josephine nodded, and wondered what it would take to make her want to share her life so wholeheartedly with someone. ‘Anyway, Pa’s other woman is the Loe estate,’ Ronnie continued, ‘and she’s very demanding.’