Voices in a Haunted Room

Sabrina would say he deserved it. As for her, she was supremely happy. I believed that what was happening in France meant little to her. She wanted my mother to stay in England and marry Dickon, and she had wanted that as soon as she had heard that my father had died in the colonies. She wanted it fiercely because it was what Dickon wanted, and in her eyes his wishes must always be gratified. And if these terrible things had happened to bring to Dickon what he wanted, she accepted that calmly enough.

So my mother and Dickon were married.

“This is our home now,” said my mother to me tentatively. I was always closer to her than Chariot had been, and I remember how anxiously she had looked at me. I knew what she was thinking.

I said: “I should not want to go back, Maman. What is it like ... at the chateau?”

She shivered and lifted her shoulders.

“Aunt Sophie ...” I began.

“I don’t know what is happening to her. They came for us and they took Lisette and me. They took us away and left the others. Armand was in a sad state. I don’t think he can live long. And Jeanne Fougere was looking after Sophie. Jeanne seemed to understand the mob. She showed them Sophie’s poor scarred face. It stopped their desire to harm her, I think. They left her alone. Then Lisette jumped from the balcony of the mairie ... and the mob were at her.”

“Don’t talk of it,” I said. “Dickon brought you safely home.”

“Yes ... Dickon,” she said, and the look which illuminated her face left little doubt of her feeling for him.

I clung to her. “I’m so happy you’re back,” I told her. “If you hadn’t come back, I should never have been happy again.”

We were silent for a few moments, then she said: “Shall you miss France, Claudine?”

”I’d hate to go back,” I told her truthfully. “Grandfather is not there. It must be quite different. Grandfather was France.”

She nodded. “No. I don’t want to go back either. It’s a new life for us, Claudine.”

“You’ll be happy with Dickon,” I said. “It is what you have always wanted ... even when...”

I was going to say “even when my father was alive,” before I stopped. But she knew what I meant and that it was true. I knew it had always been Dickon for her. Well, now she had him.

When they were married she seemed to throw off her melancholy. She seemed young ... only a few years older than I ... and Dickon went about breathing contented triumph.

I thought: Now it is to be “happy ever after.”

But when is life ever like that?

I adapted very quickly and soon I was feeling that I had always belonged to Eversleigh.

I loved the house. To me it was more homely than either my father’s or my grandfather’s château.

Every time I approached it I had a feeling of excitement. It was partly hidden by the high wall which surrounded it, and I found great pleasure in glimpsing, from some little distance, the gables just visible beyond the wall. There was that sense of coming home when I rode or drove in through the wide-open gates. Like so many big houses which had been constructed during that period in England, it was built in the Elizabethan style-E-shaped, in honour of the Queen, which meant that there was a huge main hall with a wing on either side of it. I loved the rough stone walls adorned by armoury which had actually been used by my ancestors; and I spent hours studying the family tree which had been painted over the great fireplace and added to over the decades.

I enjoyed galloping through the green fields; I liked to walk my horse through the country lanes; sometimes we rode to the sea-which was not very far from Eversleigh-but then I could not resist looking across that expanse of water and thinking of my grandfather-who had died just in time-and wondering what was happening to unfortunate Uncle Armand and sad Aunt Sophie of the scarred face and constant melancholy. So I did not go to the sea often. But I believe Chariot did.

I was with him once and saw the look of frustration in his eyes as he gazed across to France....

There were undercurrents of emotion in the household. I did not pay much attention to them because I was so absorbed in my own affairs. A governess had been engaged and I had lessons with her; but I mainly studied English.

I think it was Dickon’s idea that I should, as he said, “speak properly,” which meant that he wanted me to be rid of my French accent. Dickon seemed to hate everything French, which I was sure was due to the fact that my mother had married Charles de Tourville. Not that he dominated my mother completely. She was not of a nature to be dominated. They sparred together in a way which is really lovers’ talk; and they could scarcely bear to be out of each other’s sight.

Chariot did not like that. There was a great deal that Chariot did not like.