Page 32 of Mirrors of the Past

Chapter Twelve

1911

The autumn was generally Laurie’s favourite season. It was not the hot, sticky time that summer could be, and not cold and wet like winter in Cornwall often was.

Spring was all right though. Spring was acceptable. But he still preferred autumn.

Only in autumn could he see the glorious colours spreading out before him — the reds and golds of the leaves turning, those odd, bright-blue days where the orange trees would pop against the cloudless sky. His sisters would dismiss it as simple colour theory — ‘Blue,’ Isolde would say with a sniff, ‘is the complementary colour to orange. How do you not know that, Laurie Teague?’

‘Because I don’t really paint pictures,’ he’d say. No, Laurie was much more at home with words. It was, he supposed, his guilty pleasure. He’d begin novels and poems and the like, but never get around to finishing them. Part of the enjoyment was starting new things. He liked playing with how the words sounded, writing them out, reading them in his head . . . that sort of thing. But he never wanted to try to publish anything or had any great ambition to be known as a writer.

He was Laurie Teague, he liked words and was rarely stuck for them. Unless, of course, he was in the company of Miss Viola Arthur. Even her name in his head made him shudder and forget what sensible thing he was stringing together in the form of a sentence.

Laurie used to have a habit of stuffing his notebooks and scraps of paper on the library shelves, but then his younger siblings had discovered his notes and tried to read them, and that was not for him. Especially when Medora had decided she wanted to act out one of his ghost stories as a monologue one Christmas Eve in her traditional guise as the family storyteller.

‘And then the duchess wailed as she saw the roses in her garden shrivel and turn black, one by one, as she drifted past them on that moonlit night . . . she would not rest, her spirit would not rest and the Tower became the only safe haven she knew . . .’

Honestly, the story had sounded better when Laurie had written it, aged ten. It had been on those shelves for the best part of a decade when fourteen-year-old Medora had found it.

It was, he thought, hiding a smile, amusing now in a way that only the distance of years could make it amusing.

He had particularly liked autumn and the darker nights, though, when it came to creating those sort of stories — sitting by candlelight in his room, preferably with a full moon streaming through his window, scratching these things out with a traditional pen and ink, and wondering what exactly would terrify his younger siblings the most.

Now, as an adult, he preferred getting out into the fresh air and doing what he was doing right now — riding his horse as fast as he could over Bodmin Moor. He dug his heels into Jester’s flanks, sensing that the horse too wanted to go faster. Obligingly, Jester took off at full pelt and Laurie leaned forward over his neck, clinging onto the reins, exhilarated by the sense of freedom and speed.

Thiswas better than being hunched over a piece of paper, scribbling words down! This was far better.

Because by doing this, on this glorious autumn day, when, yes, the sky was blue and the trees were stark against it, he had no time to think about Viola Arthur. Because she — or a version of her, anyway — had crept, unknowingly, into his bedroom and he’d spent several evenings with that pen and ink, and that candlelight, and these thoughts in his head about words. And he’d written words down that made the outcome of that hideous ball quite, quite different.

In his version, she hadn’t walked away from him and disappeared back into the crowd. He hadn’t stood like a total incompetent and let her go. He had called her back, or he’d reached out and taken her hand, or she’d looked back over her shoulder and hesitated just long enough for him to take those few steps towards her. And the common denominator in all those versions and in all the words he was writing, was that there was a kiss somewhere. And, yes, had it all happened as he had written it, the ending of the evening would have been very different . . .

Laurie dug his heels into the horse’s flanks again and grasped the reins more firmly as Jester lowered his head and bolted across the moor.

This was better, though, he told himself again. This was much better than words. He needed to concentrate on staying on his horse, which left absolutely no time for thoughts of words, or thoughts of Viola, or any thoughts at all beyond not falling off the beast and breaking his neck.

Because it would be Halloween soon, and he really wanted to be at Pencradoc in person and not as the resident ghost.

* * *

So there they were, heading up to Pencradoc on the night of 31 October 1911 — Halloween.

‘The night where the veil is thinnest between the living and the dead.’ Sam intoned the words as he peered out of the carriage window. ‘What has Pearl been up to? Are those things even available in England?’

‘Outta the way!’ Viola practically clambered over her brother to see what he was commenting on. She gasped — for instead of the dark, chilly, Cornish October night, there was an eerie orange glow coming through the window. The moon wasn’t full — it would be another week or so before that happened — but what light there was, was practically dulled by flickering jack o’ lanterns, lining the carriage drive.

The pumpkins had all been carved with grinning faces, and candles lit inside them, and Viola could only marvel at the work Pearl must have done to bring them to life like this — and even to her acquiring the things in the first place.

‘I wonder if she grew them on the estate?’ Viola whispered in awe. ‘She might have had a proper pumpkin patch created, knowing Pearl.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ replied Sam. ‘Those children are going to be mesmerised.’

‘I’m pretty mesmerised!’

‘Is that what you call it?’ Sam glanced at her, amused. ‘You look more like a vampire.’

‘Oh, funny.’ Viola was indeed dressed as one, in a confection of red and black, with her hair standing out around her head and a considerable layer of face powder caked on to give her a ghastly pale complexion. Sam had gone as the male version and accepted the face powder under sufferance, but not the messy hair. He was a man of standards, her brother. ‘Oh, here we are. Right at the door.’

They had travelled from Elton Lacy with the carriage swathed in black velvet, and even the horses had black plumes on their heads. It made Viola deliciously shivery. She’d always enjoyed the celebration in New York — apple-ducking and storytelling and all the wonderful traditions — and it made it even more exciting that she was attending this party today.