The Forget-Me-Not Sonata(158)

‘That’s the most magical piece of music I have ever heard, Uncle Louis. Who did you compose it for?’

Louis hesitated, thinking very carefully of what he was going to say. He remembered her comment that it is always better to tell the truth if one is motivated by love. But he loved her too much to tell her the truth. It wasn’t his place. If Audrey hadn’t told her then he had no right to.

‘It rained like this the night Isla died,’ he said sadly and Grace believed she understood.

‘The night she died?’ she asked softly.

‘The night she died,’ he repeated. ‘The night I left Argentina a broken man.’

‘Oh, Louis,’ she whispered, feeling the full force of his sadness. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She sat beside him and wrapped her arms around him. As she wiped a tear on his jersey she suddenly realized that she wasn’t so very different from other people after all. Louis had taught her how to empathize. She no longer felt that she was watching the world through a pane of glass. She no longer felt detached. She felt it all as if she had suffered too.

‘Why do I feel so melancholy?’ she asked. Louis put his arms around her and squeezed her with so much tenderness that it almost overwhelmed him.

‘Because beautiful things always make us sad,’ he replied with a strong sense of déjà vu.

‘Why?’

‘Because we can’t hold onto them for ever.’

‘I’ve never felt melancholy before. Your music has touched me, Uncle Louis. I’m trembling.’

‘There’s more than earthly forces at play here, Grace. There’s magic in it, I tell you.’

‘And I believe you. Will you teach me how to play it?’

Louis pulled away and looked at her gravely. ‘If you promise me you won’t play it at home.’

‘Why?’

‘It’ll be our secret tune, Grace. Just promise me that.’

‘I promise,’ she said. ‘Our secret tune.’

When Grace returned home for the Christmas holidays she knew instinctively that she shouldn’t speak of her friendship with her uncle. She told her parents about her courses and the professors who brought her studies alive. She told them of the concerts and theatre she had been to and the weekends she had spent in the countryside. But she didn’t mention the friend she had shared it all with. She only told Aunt Cicely because she had to tell someone.

To her horror Grace saw that her father was getting old. She had never noticed it before but time was catching up with him. He was thinner too. His cheeks were drawn and the bones looked severe beneath the skin. He was pale and his eyes no longer shone. She wondered how he could have deteriorated so fast without her noticing. Had she really been so detached, so blinded by her hidden world of spirits as to have missed her own father fading away right in front of her?

Cecil had been retired now for eight years. He pottered about the garden, read books on military history and accompanied Audrey on walks up and down the beach. He enjoyed his grandchildren, who came to visit daily with their mother and enjoyed a deepening relationship with his sister and Anthony Fitzherbert who was much more to his taste than the moody Marcel. He had enjoyed his retirement, but now he was weary. He wished he believed in life after death with the same certainty as Grace. The end still frightened him. He hadn’t feared dying in the war. As a soldier he had been prepared to sacrifice his life for his country. He had thrown himself against the icy gates of death but had returned a hero having escaped the unknown, believing such victory rendered him immortal. Now old age had withered his courage as well as his bones.

‘You look decidedly peaky,’ said Cicely to her brother as they sat in her sitting room beside the fire, waiting for Audrey and Grace to come in from their walk around the farm.

‘I’m just weary, that’s all,’ he replied, puffing on a cigar.

Anthony put down Farmers Weekly and leaned forward to stoke the fire that was sending smoke out into the room. ‘It’s the cold. Stops the circulation at our age,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Honestly, darling, you’re a good ten years younger than Cecil. Cecil’s a dinosaur.’

‘Thank you, Cicely,’ replied Cecil, chuckling lightly.

‘I’m sorry, darling, I should save my venom for that other mad brother of mine. Isn’t it nice that Grace loves him so much.’

Cecil pulled the cigar out of his mouth and frowned. ‘Grace hasn’t mentioned anything about Louis to me,’ he said, puzzled. ‘I knew she would go and see him but . . .’

‘My dear, they’ve become firm friends. They go to concerts, picnic together. She spends more time with him than anyone else. She says she doesn’t need any other friends. She must have brought the best out in him because the last time I saw him he was a grumpy old sod.’