It had been photograph albums that Arthur had come up here in search of, along with anything of worth that nobody would notice if it disappeared. He saw no reason not to help himself when Romily wouldn’t have a clue what was here. As far as he was concerned, she had no claim to anything that had belonged to the family prior to her arrival. She might be his father’s legal widowed wife and principal benefactor, but she had no claim to what Arthur considered his by birthright. If he had believed he stood a chance of winning, he would have contested the will; it was tempting to give it a go just to stir things up, but Roddy Fitzwilliam had made his feelings clear on that score.
He eased open the rusting catches of a large wooden steamer trunk that was plastered with luggage labels from hotels around the world – the Astor House Hotel in Hong Kong, the Gritti Palace in Venice, the Cairo Grand, the Paris Ritz, the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo, the Budapest Imperial, the Majestic in New York and the Grand Hotel Suisse. Each and every label was irrefutable evidence that Jack Devereux had spent more time away travelling and enjoying himself than at home with his family. He cast aside a layer of fusty old tissue paper and found several photograph albums resting on top of a thick woollen blanket, as well as a box of assorted photographs and postcards. He took his find over to the window and sank into the battered armchair there, with its broken springs and feathers leaking from the seat cushion.
He tackled one of the albums first, turning the pages with a slow and careful hand. It was foolishly sentimental of him, but being back here at Island House had made him think about things he hadn’t thought of in a long time, things he had preferred not to think about.
He had been three years old when his mother died, and so any tantalising memory he had of her could not be relied upon for authenticity. Very likely anything he thought he remembered had been conjured up inside his head based on hearsay, or purely of his own invention.
But despite accepting this as perfectly logical, a wholly illogical part of him was firmly of the opinion that he most certainly did remember certain things about Maud Devereux. Firstly, he remembered her as being gentle and loving towards him, in a way that nobody since had been; and secondly, she had been beautiful. Of this he was absolutely sure, because as a child he had seen photographs of her. For a time he had possessed one, taken from an album his father had kept in his study. It had been a rare photograph of his mother standing alone – mostly she was captured arm in arm with her husband, or lost amongst a group of people.
He had hidden the photograph within the pages of a book inside his trunk when he had been sent away to school. It had become his most treasured possession, had taken on a far greater importance than it should have, but then one day, a boy he’d taken to be a friend had discovered the photograph and had taunted him with it, snatching the small square of precious paper out of reach of his grasp when he tried to take it back. Two other boys then joined in with the fun and held him down while the so-called friend took a torturer’s delight in slowly tearing up the photograph, letting the pieces flutter to the floor.
Arthur learnt two important lessons that day – to trust no one, and never to treasure anything, or anyone, again. To fear losing something precious was effectively to make one vulnerable, and he was determined never to be at the mercy of another. As a consequence, he had decided that the cause of his misery – his sentimental adoration of a woman he had scarcely known – had to be revoked. Better to revile her memory than cherish it and make himself weak.
And yet now here he was, all these years on, curious to know more of the woman who had given life to him. What sort of woman had she really been? Was he like her in any way? And why, since returning to Island House, had he recalled a handful of memories of a woman sitting on the edge of his bed stroking his forehead when he was unwell; of a quietly spoken woman reading to him by the fireside; of a woman in a sage-green coat playing with him in a garden?
Were these false recollections, a confusion of reminiscences that may or may not have actually taken place; or if they had, was the woman in question merely one of the myriad nannies who came and went? It annoyed him that he could not be completely clear on the matter, because if there was one thing he craved in life, it was a sense of control over all that he did and thought.
The only way to find that clarity, he had concluded, was to revisit the past by investigating his father’s photograph albums. Having searched the house downstairs and drawn a blank, he had been left with one last place to look: the attic. Should he have been surprised that that part of his father’s life had been consigned to the junk pile up here?
He continued to turn the pages of the album, not recognising anyone or anything. There were men in labourers’ clothes – shirtsleeves, trousers held up with string, and workmen’s boots – and women in high-necked dresses; a gang of sickly-looking ruffians like something out of a Dickens novel, and then a lone boy peering out from beneath an oversized cap and with a determined jut to his chin, pushing a market street barrow. Presumably, thought Arthur, that was Jack Devereux just starting out in the world, embarking on his rags-to-riches success story.
He was about halfway through the album when he came to a picture that made him pause. Looking back at him was a smiling young woman with a baby swaddled in a lacy shawl in her arms. Beneath the photograph were the words: Maud proudly holding our darling seven-day-old Arthur Ronald Augustine Devereux.
He stared at the woman as if holding the gaze of the woman who stared steadily back at him. Was this the mother who had comforted him when he’d had a fever, who’d read to him and played with him in a garden? He turned another page and found the same woman standing beside a large pram: Maud takes Arthur for a walk. The following page showed a woman sitting on a tartan rug on an area of grass; on one side of her was a picnic basket and on her lap was a baby. Maud and Arthur enjoying a picnic in Hyde Park, read the caption beneath.
There followed page after page of mother-and-son photographs, interspersed with several containing Jack Devereux, who occasionally took his turn at holding Arthur. Nobody else featured in the photographs, and it would have been an easy assumption to make that this tight-knit family of three wanted for nothing but themselves.
By the time he reached the final page of the album, Arthur was left with a disturbing realisation: Jack and Maud had not only adored each other – that much was evident in the happy looks they shared – they had also adored their firstborn child. The discovery should have pleased him, but it didn’t. It made him feel confused and adrift, cut off from the only reality he had ever known. He’d gone from certainty to its polar opposite. All his life he had been convinced that Jack Devereux had cared for no one but himself, yet now it seemed there had been a time when that wasn’t the case.
He studied the photographs slowly, one by one, then turned to the next album. The first page showed the arrival of Jack and Maud’s second child, Hope. There then followed page after page of her progress, just as his own had been charted. Occasionally he featured in the pictures alongside Hope, but there was no getting away from the fact that he was no longer at the centre of his parents’ affections; Hope had taken that position and pushed him to the sidelines. Where he’d been ever since, he thought grimly.
He slapped the album shut and tossed it onto the rickety table at his elbow. It had been a mistake coming up here, snooping for verification of something he could never fully know.
Out of the armchair, and kicking aside the box of photographs and postcards he’d put on the floor, he made his way towards the stairs. He needed air. Fresh air, not this ancient dust-filled air that was suffocating him.
Cursing himself for giving in to the foolish desire to revisit the past, he slammed the door after him hard. There was nothing useful to be gained from such an exercise. Nothing whatsoever.
Chapter Thirty-Two
With Dr Garland’s words of warning from yesterday still echoing in her head, Allegra was heeding his advice and resting. Only a short while ago, losing the baby might have seemed like an answer to a prayer, but now wholly unbidden, the pendulum of her emotions had swung and she would do all within her power to keep this child safe. And if that meant doing as Dr Garland said, then so be it.
However, just as she’d predicted, she had succumbed to boredom, and with Romily’s permission she had been allowed out of bed to rest down here in the garden. The sun felt good on her face. It was good too to listen to the cheerful chattering of the sparrows and the joyous tuneful song of a blackbird in the apple tree. It was strange, and contrary to all that lay ahead for her, but she felt oddly at peace. She no longer cared who knew that she was pregnant; it would all come out eventually anyway. What did it matter what anybody thought of her? Only one thing mattered, and that was her baby’s survival.
Romily had put forward the idea that Allegra could invent a fictitious Italian husband for herself as a way to give her and the child a veneer of respectability, if she so chose. ‘Not that I’m implying you need to,’ she had added. ‘But you could pretend he’s died very conveniently and no one would be the wiser.’
The thought had already occurred to Allegra, but it would take effort to maintain the lie while the child was growing up. And what then? Would she then tell the child the truth when she believed he or she was old enough to understand? She knew from her own experience that there were some questions to which there were no answers.
One thing that her child would never doubt or question would be Allegra’s love. She would also make sure he or she never doubted their place in the world. What was more, Allegra would provide the kind of loving home she herself had craved while growing up. Her inheritance from Uncle Jack would see to that.
Increasingly she was beginning to revise her opinion of her uncle, and such was the turnaround in her emotions, and the extent of her calm acceptance of her situation, she wished she could thank him for his generosity. He needn’t have left her a penny, but he had, even if it did come with certain stipulations. It was hard to admit, but perhaps Roddy was right; maybe Uncle Jack had cared for her after all. Or perhaps it was regret, a way to atone for how miserable her life had been at Island House.
She closed her eyes and listened to the harmonious rhythmic cooing of a dove, and before long its comforting sound had almost lulled her to sleep. Suddenly she sensed she wasn’t alone. She opened her eyes and saw Elijah standing in front of her with a wheelbarrow to the side of him.
‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ he said, his voice as soft and soothing as the dove still cooing.
‘You didn’t,’ she answered him, shifting her position in the wicker chair to look up at him. ‘Thank you for your message yesterday, that was sweet of you.’
He shrugged. ‘How are you now?’
