Voices in a Haunted Room

“I’m realistic.”

“If this blatant conduct is realism ...”

“I know you prefer to live in your fantasy world. You are a strange girl, Claudine.

Perhaps that is why I love you. You can be practical and yet so fanciful. Remember the voices you heard.”

“I often remember them.”

“That was when the trouble started. You got an attack of conscience.”

“A disease from which you are never likely to suffer.”

“It’s strange,” he said. “Our relationship has always been like this ... sparring.

Until those moments at Enderby in that room when you stopped pretending and admitted the truth. Remember?”

“I’m doing my best to forget, Jonathan. There is one thing I ask of you. Please, let me forget.”

He looked at me intently. I saw the light in his eyes; it was not that intense blue which I likened to flames. It was calculating, speculating. I saw that he did not desire me sufficiently now with my bulky body and what he called my maternal spirit; but he was thinking of the past and I guessed that with his natural arrogance he believed he could rekindle those fires in me which had been temporarily dampened down by my condition. He said: “You are young in the ways of the world.”

“If you are an example of an adult, I never want to grow up.”

“You’re broody, maternal. I wouldn’t recognize you as that eager young girl.”

“You will never see her again.”

“I will find her. Rest assured of that.”

“There is one thing I rest assured of, and that is that you never will, for she has gone forever.”

“That would be a calamity too great to be endured. Trust me. I will find her. I will bring her out of her hiding place.”

“I wonder what your future wife would think,” I said. “Oh look. Here she conies.

Shall we discuss it with her?”

It was true. Millicent was coming across the grass towards us.

“Oh there you are,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you. What a pleasant afternoon!”

She sat down on the other side of Jonathan and put a proprietorial arm through his.

Sophie had settled into Enderby. The house suited her sombre mood. She did not seem to notice its ghostly ambiance and if she did it did not disturb her.

Alberic Claremont had proved a great asset and she was clearly delighted with him.

He was of a very merry nature with a gift for making friends-quite different from Sophie herself-and it surprised us all that she was so pleased with him. He had quickly taken the role of major domo, working in conjunction with Jeanne who, fortunately, did not resent this, but encouraged it. Jeanne would do anything to make Sophie’s life happier and she must have realized that her interest in this young man helped her to forget her own troubles.

There was another frequent visitor to the house. This was Dolly Mather. I could understand that well. Dolly was disfigured, as Sophie herself was, and lame ducks were special proteges of Sophie. It was natural, for they helped her to minimize her own misfortunes, whereas someone like my mother-beautiful and beloved, the mother of children-brought home most forcibly to Sophie that life had treated her unkindly.

She had a certain feeling for me and she was interested in the coming baby. I was made more welcome than most, and once, in a very unusual communicative mood, she told me that she often thought of me as her daughter. “If,”

she said, “that tragic firework disaster had never taken place hi the square that night, I should not have been like this. My marriage would have gone ahead. I should have been your father’s wife and you and Chariot would have been my children.”

I did not point out that my mother had also had a share in making me, and I believed I should have been a very different person if I had been Sophie’s daughter.

She talked of Leon Blanchard, whom she had loved much later. I remembered him. He had come to the chateau to be tutor to Chariot and Louis Charles and we had all liked him very much. Then he had left. I remembered that he and Sophie had had some romantic attachment. He had turned out to be no real tutor but an agitator who had wormed his way into the chateau to spy and he was urging the people to revolt. Poor Sophie. Life had been cruel to her.

And now here she was with her own household in Enderby, making a life for herself with her lame ducks; poor Alberic, who had escaped from France, and Dolly, who was a sad little creature.

It was July. I was getting very heavy now, but I still liked to walk when I could, and the distance to Enderby was just about as much as I wanted, particularly as I could rest there before making my way back.

As I arrived I saw Evie and Dolly at the entrance to the house. I immediately thought of Mrs. Trent’s words at the funeral, and wondered whether Evie had had any communications with Harry Farringdon. It must be rather unsatisfactory to be living so far away and the Trents and Farringdons not being the kind of families who would be on visiting terms. It seemed to be a somewhat slight romance. No wonder Mrs. Trent wanted to speed it up.