‘He was a tormented little boy. He’d have these terrible screaming fits and there was nothing anyone could do to quieten him. He’d just scream and scream with his arms out like this,’ she extended her arms and waved them about. ‘It was as if he was in great pain. It was horrible. Papa, who was used to being in control of every situation, was bewildered. He simply couldn’t cope. So, as Louis grew into a little boy he stopped taking an interest in him. As if he wasn’t there. Mama was very attached to Louis at the beginning. She felt guilty because her body hadn’t held him for as long as it should have. She felt she had failed. But he was simply too difficult for anyone to handle. He rejected her. I’m guilty too,’ she said and her voice cracked. ‘I used to pretend that he was adopted. I used to tell everyone he wasn’t related to us, that Mama and Papa had adopted him. It was awful. I don’t know how I could have been so brutal. He didn’t seem to mind. He used to laugh. But he must have hated me for it. I was horrid to him. Cecil was always good to him though. But then, Cecil is a saint. I’m more selfish, I admit it. I have many regrets but I’m far too weak to do anything about them. Cecil, saint Cecil, put up with Louis long after we had all given up on him. It was only when he started to play Mama’s piano, as if he had played for years, as if he had had professional tuition, that he calmed down. I think suddenly discovering that he could communicate, that he was gifted at something, assuaged his frustration and the fits stopped. But then he was lost to us all because he’d just sit and play for hours and hours, shutting us all out, alone with the music. Music is his only love. Isla didn’t stand a chance, Audrey. Dear Louis, he’s a tormented spirit.’
‘But he’s all right now?’ said Audrey. She knew Cicely was wrong. He was capable of loving another human being. He loved her and music was the backbone to that love. It was what held them together. It was their means of understanding each other where words failed to express what they felt in their hearts.
‘He’s learned to live with it and he knows his limitations, I suppose. But he still can’t cope when things go wrong. He breaks down.’
‘He just needs to be loved,’ she said in a quiet voice.
‘But who will love him, Audrey? Who will invest that sort of time and effort in order to understand him? He shuts people out. No one can reach him. He’s miles away in dreamland and the older he gets the further away he goes. One day he’ll simply disappear altogether.’
That night Audrey lay awake in the darkness and cried. She cried for her daughters and she cried for Isla and she cried for Louis. She didn’t know for whom she cried the most.
Finally Leonora and Alicia returned to Holholly Grange for the weekend. Audrey embraced them both with excitement and yet her excitement was undermined by the knowledge that once they had returned to school she was to board a plane and fly back to Buenos Aires. She didn’t know how she was going to do it. But she was determined that their parting should not ruin the present moment which she intended to enjoy to the full.
Alicia was so ashamed by the punishment dealt to her for riding Mr Snow bareback that she didn’t mention it and neither did Leonora. She had suffered a terrible humiliation. She wouldn’t even tell Mercedes, in whom she usually confided everything. Instead she went through all her teachers imitating each one with the perception of a professional mimic. They lingered in the kitchen by the Aga laughing at Alicia as she pranced up and down as if on a stage, while the dogs lay scattered about the floor on their beanbags.
To Audrey’s surprise Marcel appeared for lunch and instead of taking his food upstairs on a tray he sat at the table observing those around him as if attempting to draw inspiration. He smouldered in the corner like a hero in a bad romantic novel, brooding and sulking for effect, smoking a cigarette he had rolled himself. Cicely was transformed once again into a flighty girl and flitted about the room making a greater effort with the leg of lamb while the twins barely noticed that he was there and certainly didn’t care. Marcel’s presence was quiet and watchful and Audrey couldn’t fail to see that he was watching her. Not with the eyes of a lover, not the way he looked at Cicely, but knowingly. As if he knew her secret. As if she knew he knew and it was now their secret. She felt uncomfortable. Marcel hid himself up in the attic and yet everything seemed to reach him. He had heard her piano playing when she had believed she had been alone, he had deliberately found her there in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep. Who’s to say he hadn’t been there in the shadows too when she had spent those precious moments with Louis’ photograph? She caught his eye and frowned but he continued to blow smoke into the air, gazing at her with the eyes of an artist studying the object of his creation.