Page 50 of Happily Ever After
I spent most of the day cataloguing, although in an even more desultory fashion than normal now that I knew I probably wasn’t going to get to finish the whole library. I occasionally glanced up at Oswald, whose painted face had lost the slightly lascivious expression I’d imagined on it, and taken on a hunted look.
‘You soft old bugger,’ I said to it. ‘You should have just sent her packing.’
Oswald’s fixed glare told me that this would have left Caroline without anyone to assist her; that Lady Tanith probably would have taken being fired as Oswald’s admission that he could no longer contain his feelings for her, and that she probably would have camped out in the woods rather than go home, simply to be close to her love. After all, what had been her alternative? The cousin who’d brought her up had presumably handed over responsibility for the young woman with a measure of relief and made it impossible for her to return there. She had nowhere else to go.
Tanith and I had more in common than I would ever have wanted to admit.
Pity fought with incredulity somewhere behind my heart.Howcould Lady Tanith have been so blithely unaware? But then I remembered some of the less fortunate people that we’d met out on the road. Travellers who didn’t have my parents’ advantages, those who moved around not because they wanted the freedom, but because they had nowhere to go. Those whose mental health was so fractured that they entertained some strange beliefs and imaginings. Lady Tanith was broken, yes, but she had the financial backing, the education, the wherewithal to maintain a normal life. Other than her firm and abiding belief in a relationship that had never existed, and an unpleasantness to anyone she considered lesser, she functioned perfectly well in society. She was managing the estate, she’d brought up her sons, she kept everything ticking over, ready for Hugo to inherit. The fact that she was still having monthly memorials for a man who had actively hidden from her, that she kept his house exactly as it had been when he’d lived in it and had a shrine to him in the attic – well, did that make her mad? Or very, very single-minded? Or just brave?
Around mid-morning, clearly in search of someone to upset, Lady Tanith wandered into the library. I felt the immediate leap of guilt fire into my cheeks, and kept my eyes fixed firmly on the computer screen as she walked around, looking at the piles of books that teetered against the walls.
‘Youstillhaven’t found those diaries?’ she asked, giving me a horrible moment of uncertainty when I wondered whether she could have overheard Jay and me yesterday, moving the furniture.
‘Nope.’ I kept my burning face down, pretending to drop a book so that I could hide as much of myself as possible under the table.
‘Iknowthey are here.’ She picked up a book, looked at its spine, and flung it down again, where it let out of a puff of dust. ‘Oswald wanted me to have them, so he put them away in here to keep them safe from prying eyes.’
I so,sowanted to say, ‘Did he, did hereally?’ but knew it would be cruel. I wanted to ask why, if Oswald had wanted her to have the diaries, he hadn’t just given them to her in the first place. I knew, though, that confronting delusional people with reality never worked. I’d tried often enough on my parents, asking why we couldn’t just buy a house and live somewhere, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about the bus breaking down or bad receptions from locals or not being able to find anywhere to empty the toilet and have a shower. They would just stare at me, as though it were I who was obsessed with travelling, never settling, showing off a new, viable way of life.
Presumably Oswald had known what reading those diaries might do to Tanith. He’d kept them for himself, memorabilia perhaps, or maybe he meant to publish them himself one day, with anything personal removed. But he’d hidden them away, somewhere she wouldn’t find them, to save her from the knowledge they contained.
‘I’m still looking,’ I said, when I came back up off the floor, hoping my face had gone back to normal. ‘In between cataloguing.’ I fought my eyes, which wanted to stare beadily at Oswald’s portrait in a treacherous betrayal.
‘Hmm,’ Tanith snorted. ‘Clearly, you aren’t looking hard enough. I think, a week more, and if you haven’t found them by then, I will let you go and recruit someone else. Someone with a touch moreimpetus. More drive. That will be good for Hugo, too.’ Then, to my horror, she stepped back and looked up at Oswald, but without her usual doting expression which always made her look as though her face was melting. She tipped her head to one side. ‘Does Oswald look a little askew?’ she asked.
‘What! No!’ I took a deep breath. ‘No, he looks all right to me.’
From beneath the desk, The Master’s head protruded and he let out a soft, multi-vowelled vocalisation. Lady Tanith’s attention immediately switched.
‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, as though she’d come in purely to look for the cat. ‘The Master seems very attached to you, Andromeda.’
‘He’s good company,’ I said, and didn’t mention the ever-attendant smell that came with him.
Lady Tanith ‘hmmed’ again and withdrew. I stroked the cat’s head. ‘Thanks,’ I said, fondling the dark ears. ‘I owe you. Again.’
The cat blinked at me, hopefully telling me that it was all right, he was being well paid back for all these favours by being allowed to snuggle up with me in the increasing chill of the nights. Our gas canister had sputtered its last gasp earlier, and I was trying to screw up enough courage to ask Hugo to ask Lady Tanith for a refill. I suspected The Master was sitting under the desk because it was the warmest place, cuddled up to my legs.
What was I going to do?
I couldn’t let Lady Tanith see those diaries. Unless… justmaybeshe would read them and decide that they must never see the light of day. But she’d always suspect thatIhad read them. Would that make me Enemy Number One? And what would shedo?What mighttheydoto her, with her insubstantial memories of what she thought love was?
No. I’d have to destroy them. I could probably get Jay to put them through the leaf shredder, remove any trace of their existence. Could I convince her that I hadn’t found the diaries or their hiding place and that Oswald must have destroyed them himself? I shook my head. Lady Tanith was so entrenched in her fantasy, and I was dreadful at lying, that I’d give myself away and she would know. I imagined that landscape gardening meant having a fairly high profile and being easily found – maybe I could persuade Jay to change his name? And move to Tierra del Fuego? After all, how longcouldLady Tanith hate me for? Ignoring the fact that she’d managed to love and grieve for fifty years, how long would it be before she sighed and decided I wasn’t worth the effort and investment in lawyers to hunt down?
What if she passed the hatred on to Hugo? Sweet, kind, Hugo, whom I’d have to leave to his solo fashion shows. Would he resent me too?
Oh God. There really wasn’t an easy way out of this.
The cat meowed at me softly as I banged my forehead against the desk in desperation.Whyhad I ever found those bloody diaries? Why couldn’t I have remained in blissful ignorance?
I looked up at Oswald. His stern rigidity in the portrait, painted before he ever let Lady Tanith into the house, must have been severely eroded by the presence of a woman besottedly in love. I knew from his diaries that he had kept the extent of her fixation from Caroline so as not to worry her, and that must have meant a good deal of tiptoeing around the staff who must surely have seen. He’d been the victim in all this. Lady Tanith had, in effect, been his stalker; living under his roof didn’t make her behaviour any more acceptable than anyone else’s. The realisation that, from fifty years’ distance, I was seeing it as a slightly amusing tale of an appalling writer being followed about by an infatuated young girl, when in reality it must have been dreadful for him, hit me hard.
Lady Tanith had made Oswald’s life hell. I owed her nothing. I should make the diaries public and blow her lies open.
But then I remembered those little posies of hand-picked flowers that she left on his memorial stone every twenty-first. Diaries could be very subjective, Oswald making himself the tragic hero of his own story. Maybe hehadencouraged Lady Tanith’s devotion, at least at first. Perhaps he’d liked someone’s close interest in his work and by the time he realised that she was taking it all too seriously, it was too late. After all, even by his own admission he hadn’t really done much to stop it – he’d just tried to avoid her. Hecouldhave sent her elsewhere, but he hadn’t.
Did that painted face show a hint or two of malice? Of enjoying control?
Oh, this was ridiculous! I banged my forehead again. I had to stop feeling sorry for absolutelyeveryonehere and come up with a plan before Lady Tanith forced me out of the house. It was far too soon for me to consider moving in with Jay, even as a housemate, and I needed a job anyway. I couldn’t see Lady Tanith taking me on as an under-gardener – the phrase gave me a tiny tingle of anticipation – and she might even fire Jay too if she discovered we were in cahoots.
