The Forget-Me-Not Sonata(83)
Chapter 17
At first sight Colehurst House looked cold and forbidding. It was a large greystone mansion set in the vast, manicured grounds of a park, surrounded by velvet green hills. Aunt Cicely said that it had once been the private house of a very grand family whose portraits still hung collecting dust on the wooden panelled walls. In the late nineteenth century it was converted into a school when the last in the family line died without an heir. Audrey remembered the building from the brochure and it looked no less imposing in reality. Tall sash windows reflected the light and a vast door within the gates of an archway yawned like a toothless old man. There was a small church on the left where the lawn rose in a little hill and a giant cedar tree which dwarfed it. The long driveway was flanked by lush fields of fat ponies and weeping willows draped their branches into an ornamental pond. The drive opened out into a gravelled semicircle in front of the mansion and was now teeming with cars. Fathers in tweeds and v-neck sweaters lifted heavy trunks out of the boots and mothers chatted to other mothers while their Labradors ran around with their noses to the ground, wagging their tails, excited by all the new smells.
Audrey’s shoulders hunched with tension as she looked out onto this strange world where everyone seemed to belong but her and her children. She glanced anxiously back to the twins who sat in the rear seat staring out of the windows, wide-eyed and curious. Leonora was frightened. Her face was long and pale and with white-knuckled fingers she held Saggy Rabbit tightly against her. Alicia smiled eagerly as she observed with total confidence the unconquered territory that spread out before her. She wasn’t unnerved by the sense of alienation that had gripped her mother and sister. On the contrary, she felt her distinctiveness to be her trump card which she would use to rise to the top of the pile.
‘Look at all those lovely dogs,’ Audrey said, knowing how much Leonora loved animals.
‘There’s the tree that Caroline mentioned,’ said Alicia, pointing to the cedar. ‘I’m going to climb higher than everyone else.’
‘I once fell off at Dead Man’s Drop,’ laughed Cicely, ‘luckily I was so round back then, I bounced.’
‘And all those ponies to ride,’ Audrey continued. ‘You love ponies, don’t you, Leonora?’
‘They look very sweet,’ she replied. ‘It’s a big house,’ she added and Audrey winced at the nervous quiver in her voice.
‘In the summer term they take you out on the hills in the early morning. It’s heavenly galloping across them at dawn. There are the ruins of an old castle up there and we used to ride through it. Deliciously romantic,’ Cicely exclaimed, getting carried away with her memories.
‘I hope the house is haunted,’ Alicia said as they drew up outside. ‘I’ll write to Merchi the minute I see a ghost.’
Alicia hurried out of the car and stood on the gravel staring in excitement at the other girls and their parents. Leonora lingered beside her mother, worrying how on earth they were going to carry the trunks in by themselves. She didn’t see one other mother on her own, all the girls had come with both parents. Leonora wished her father were there, dressed in tweed and corduroy like the other fathers. She noticed a couple of girls look her over disdainfully, their narrowed eyes scanning her from top to toe, then shifting to her mother and aunt. She felt painfully at odds with everyone else and longed for home. But there was no turning back. She felt her throat constrict with fear and would have taken her mother’s hand had it not been for the other girls who might have laughed at her childishness.
‘Good God!’ Cicely exclaimed in a loud voice, waving furiously. ‘Dotty Hollinghoe, of all people!’ Audrey recognized the woman in a husky and headscarf as the one she had met in Debenham & Freebody. Leonora recognized Caroline and her spirits jolted back to life. ‘Audrey, come and meet Dotty, we were both here in the same year. Goodness me, eons ago!’ The woman smiled a toothy smile and pushed her daughter forward.
‘Cicely Forrester! What a delightful surprise. Although I’m Stainton-Hughes now.’
‘And I’m Weatherby,’ Cicely replied, kissing her.
‘We’ve already met,’ said Audrey, extending her hand. Although she didn’t warm to Dorothy Stainton-Hughes, she felt a great relief at knowing someone and blending in with everyone else who all seemed pleased to see each other after the long summer break. She watched Caroline approach Leonora and felt pathetically grateful to the child for befriending her daughter. When she looked around for Alicia, she was nowhere to be seen.