Audrey smiled and felt her stomach flutter with the memory of the first moment they had played the piano together. He had taught her in the same way.
‘I always knew he was special,’ she said quietly.
Cecil’s jaw stiffened and the muscle pounded in his cheek.
‘Yes, you did,’ he said carefully, without taking his eyes off her. ‘Well, now everyone here thinks he’s special too.’
‘They do?’ Audrey slipped into a pair of white trousers and shirt then sat at her dressing table where she applied a little make-up and tamed her curls into a shiny chignon.
‘Well, he’s been elevated to the ranks of a romantic hero of old. Even the Crocodiles, what’s left of them, have welcomed him with open arms. Mothers are throwing their daughters at him and he has so many invitations he’s barely ever here.’
‘I’m so pleased,’ she said. But she felt a stab of disappointment. How fickle people are, she thought sadly, if they had loved him like this when he had first arrived in Hurlingham, we’d be happily married by now.
When Audrey stood up she noticed Cecil was watching her with a strange look on his face. She smiled at him and frowned. He returned her smile but it did little to hide the apprehension that distorted his features.
‘You look wonderful, my dear,’ he said jovially, collecting himself, but his eyes betrayed a sadness she hadn’t noticed before
‘Thank you,’ she replied, walking to the door.
‘It’s good to have Louis back, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is.’ She tried to sound nonchalant, as if he were any old brother-in-law who had come to pay them a visit after twelve years.
‘I think it’s highly appropriate to hold a memorial service for Isla in his honour, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ She felt there was an ulterior motive to his questioning, but then perhaps she just felt guilty. ‘Isla would have wanted it.’
‘He’s recovered well, though. Let’s hope he finds a nice English girl out here and marries her.’
‘That would be nice,’ she replied tightly, stepping into the corridor.
They walked down the stairs in silence. Audrey resisted glancing across the landing to Alicia and Leonora’s bedrooms and Cecil, who in the last month had accustomed himself to the emptiness, didn’t even feel the urge to. Audrey felt her husband’s presence behind her like a weighty shadow. She had greeted him at the airport with the same cool politeness with which she had left him and hadn’t even noticed the look of disappointment that had darkened his eager face. Her kiss had been stiff and awkward and their conversation in the car had revolved very much around the children and their new school and Audrey’s tone of voice had dripped with bitterness, accusing him of callousness and insensitivity. She could barely talk about the twins without crying and had only stopped when they had changed the subject to talk about Cicely and Marcel and the gypsies. Cecil hadn’t ever heard of Marcel and the Cicely she had described seemed like a stranger to him.
‘Have you met this Marcel fellow?’ Cecil asked Louis when they had all sat down for lunch. It wasn’t warm enough to sit outside, but the French doors were open and the sweet scents of the garden floated in on a fresh breeze. Louis was barely able to take his eyes off Audrey, who seemed to have blossomed in her sleep. Her eyes were no longer puffy and dull but shone with vitality and her blushing cheeks revealed that she was only too aware of his stare.
‘Yes, I stayed with her last year,’ Louis replied. ‘Not that I saw much of Marcel. He spent most of the time in the attic painting or in bed with Cicely.’
‘Good God,’ Cecil exclaimed, nearly choking on his soup. ‘Perish the thought.’
‘Cicely’s not the woman you once knew, Cecil,’ he said with a chuckle. Audrey wondered how Louis could be in such good humour. Why wasn’t he angry with her and bitter towards his brother? It just didn’t make sense.
‘She was always a paragon of old-fashioned values and phlegmatic like Papa. Can a man change a woman so much?’ Cecil dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. Audrey gazed into her bowl of soup.
‘Yes, a man can change a woman. He can either nurture her and love her so that she grows like a plant in the sun, or he can hurt her and let her dry out so that she withers and dies.’ Audrey felt his gaze upon her once more and remembered Aunt Edna’s sunshine Harry. ‘Marcel doesn’t love Cicely, he lusts after her, and that’s very different. But it’s had the same effect. She’s let go of all restraint and is quite changed.’
‘He doesn’t love her?’ Audrey asked without raising her eyes.