‘No place,’ agreed Mrs B, pursing her lips together with emotion. Audrey looked bleakly out onto the country that her father and husband spoke of with such devotion and wondered what they saw in it. She remembered the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes and felt like the little boy who shouts into the crowd that the Emperor is in fact not wearing any clothes at all.
‘I thought it was late summer,’ was the least confrontational thing she could think of to say.
‘The end of the summer,’ Mrs B replied.
‘There’s nothing quite like an English summer,’ Mr Linton sighed, pulling his jacket around him to keep warm. Audrey glanced at her daughters who looked as grim as she did and felt the resentment towards her husband rise up inside her along with a sudden shiver of cold.
Chapter 14
‘It’s all terribly quaint,’ said Alicia in amusement as she followed her mother and sister onto the station platform. ‘All the porters speak English.’
‘Well, of course they do,’ her mother replied, ‘we’re in England.’ But she knew what her daughter meant. In the Argentine the working classes spoke only Spanish.
‘I can’t understand a word he says,’ hissed Leonora, nodding in the direction of the porter who hurried along in front of them with a tower of suitcases balanced precariously on a trolley.
‘That’s because he speaks with a regional accent,’ Audrey said, trying to appear confident. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘It’s very misty,’ Alicia giggled. ‘It’s like soup. If he goes any faster he might disappear into it and never be seen again.’
‘I hope not, all your worldly possessions are in those suitcases,’ said Audrey lightly, but her laughter caught in her throat. She stifled a sob and pulled her coat tightly about her shoulders. It was cold. A damp cold that penetrated her very bones.
Before Audrey could dwell any further on her impending loss a shiny green train appeared up the track, the metal of its carriages glinting in the dull morning light. A quiver of anticipation shivered up the platform as it drew into the station, hissed to a halt and exhaled thick puffs of steam. ‘It’s a dragon, it’s a dragon,’ squealed Alicia, jumping up and down, shouting above the screeching of brakes and the bustle of passengers who now boarded the train. Leonora copied her sister and jumped up and down too, her ankles tickled by the dragon’s smoky breath.
‘Come on, girls, we don’t want to miss it,’ said Audrey, taking Leonora by the hand and marching towards the carriages. For Leonora and Alicia the cheerless English weather no longer affected them for there was so much that was new and exciting. They threw themselves onto two seats by the window and knelt with their noses pressed against the glass staring out in wonder at the unfamiliar world that now opened up to them. Audrey took off her coat and hung it on the hook, then sat beside Leonora. ‘Girls, take your feet off the seats,’ she said in a low voice, eyeing the other passengers who glanced at them over the top of their newspapers with the utmost discretion.
As the train rattled through the English countryside Audrey switched her mind from the high-pitched chatter of the twins and allowed her thoughts to drift rootless and free among the happy events of the past two weeks aboard the Alcantara. She recalled those languid afternoons on deck, with the warm breeze brushing her skin and the light happy voices of the twins carried on the wind in carefree songs of childhood and focused her thoughts on the past in order to avoid the pain of the present. But in spite of all her efforts the present had invaded those sunny decks and images of school and partings, suitcases and uniforms rose up in her mind in the form of dark shadows until her head throbbed. Weary and emotional she was no longer able to control her thoughts and Louis’ face finally emerged out of the gloomy picture of Colehurst House that Audrey had concocted from the brochure she had read and the tales she had heard of English boarding schools. She allowed her anxieties to retreat and steadied her mind’s eye on his raffish face and uneven smile and felt her heart lurch with longing. Gazing dreamily out onto the misty English countryside she saw him in the dying summer trees and burning fields and she heard his hollow voice in an echo that leapt across the years: ‘I’m obviously a huge disappointment.’ She winced as once again those words pierced her heart and flooded her with regret. This was his home. This was where he had grown up and she imagined him riding across those autumn hills and resting his eyes upon the same scenery that she was now surveying. If she had had the courage to dream the impossible perhaps she would have made this remote island her home too. She might have grown to love it. Then he was tracing his long fingers down her face and across her lips and she blushed because even in her imagination Louis took more than he was offered.