A faint spill of light behind me makes me turn in time to see Osian sneak in and stand at the back.
The professor’s voice goes on. “Around that time, a young unknown poet called Elias Gruffudd became part of the group.”
Osian gestures for me to turn back to the lecture and settles against the wall with Evan.
“Elias isn’t known now; very little of his poetry survived. What we know of him comes from what other, greater and more famous writers say about him.”
“Ah,” Shirley says,sotto voce. “So he was a hopeful hanger on.”
“Elias, our top hat gentleman, was good looking. He had wit and charm by the bucketloads. No surprise he quickly became a popular guest at Kendric House.”
I can almost feel Osian’s mocking smile behind me but the next thing the professor says keeps me hooked.
“He also started a love affair with Beryl Kendric. In her early letters she compares them to Chopin and George Sand. Mary and Percy Shelley. This, we believe, explains the paintings. Beryl would have commissioned visiting artists to paint her lover.”
“She was rich,” someone in the audience says.
“Yes and no,” Professor Jones answers. “Beryl wasn’t rich. The money didn’t belong to her and her income was stretched to its limits funding the constant stream of guests and parties. We don’t believe Elias was after her money. What he enjoyed was the society that collected around Kendric House. Remember, hetoo was a poet, albeit a less successful one. He’d have wanted to mix with other writers.”
My phone vibrates in my hand and lights up with an incoming text.
OSIAN:Bet you £100 they had a torrid affair and an illegitimate baby.
I quickly tap out a reply.
EVIE:You’re on. I bet he dumps her for a younger woman. (winky face)
But before I press send, the professor says, “The affair lasted a few years, until Elias fell out of love with Beryl and in love with Octavia Reed, the wife of the engineer Samuel Reed. In the memoir of another guest, it was said that the affair was an open secret and went on here. Beryl walked in on them in the library.”
EVIE:The professor just saved you £100. Jammy so and so!
“I hope Beryl threw him out of the house,” Shirley calls out from her seat beside me.
Professor Jones shakes his head. “No, she didn’t. She hoped the affair would end sooner or later because Octavia was married. And it did end. Because Elias started an affair with a French singer and left the country. Two years later, that affair also ended after Elias spent a lot of money in Paris. Beryl wrote to him saying that she forgave him and he would always have a home with her. In fact, she offered him a large apartment for his use. He could live here, write his own books and invite friends.”
There are several exclamations of outrage from the audience.
Now Alex moves forward and takes up the story. “As you can guess, Elias Gruffudd settled here at her expense andcarried on various affairs right under her nose. One of his lovers commissioned the small miniature we showed you earlier. And another posed with him for the stained-glass plate. But eventually Jack Kendric, Beryl’s son, turned twenty-five. He came into his inheritance and took over the house. By then, Beryl had been in love with Elias Gruffudd for twenty-two years, most of them unhappy. Her letters are full of expressions of misery and attempts to reawaken the love he used to feel for her. The fifty-year-old Elias by that point was no longer in demand as the life and soul of parties. His friends like Anthony Trollope and Thomas Hardy had moved on and become big names. They had little time for the aging party boy. Newspapers which used to publish his poems had found newer, more fashionable poets, and he was slowly forgotten.”
“Serves the bastard right,” Shirley mutters.
“He lived out the rest of his life here in Kendric House in the apartments given to him by Beryl. She alone continued to treat him like an important man, invited him to dinner parties held by her son and insisted on including him in all activities. We found this letter from Beryl to her sister in which she asks in despair, ‘Why won’t he marry me? What does he wait for? No one remembers his name anymore. I alone love him; why won’t he marry me now?’”
“Why buy the cow when he gets the milk for free?” someone asks, and this starts a bit of a discussion.
“No, I don’t think it’s that,” a woman says. “Marriage would have given him a more legitimate role in the house.”
“For my money, I think it’s because he got into the habit of saying ‘no’ to her. She let him get used to rejecting her.”
After a couple more comments they turn back to the professor. “So what happened?”
“Her last letter to him is a poem. Remember Beryl had hoped to be a writer herself but never had the time.”
“No, she was too busy looking after everyone else.”
Alex comes forward again and clicks another slide. Another letter. The handwriting is hard to read because the letter has some faded bits.
“Because of water damage, we only have fragments of this poem.” The professor reads out in a rich and solemn voice:
