Page 57 of Happily Ever After
So I let him lead me away over the soft grass, following Hugo and Lady Tanith and the dress-carrying locals.
22
MANDERLEY (AGAIN) – REBECCA, DAPHNE DU MAURIER
The house burned all night. I sat at Jay’s table, fingers wrapped around non-stop mugs of tea and wearing his baggy hoodie and some jogging bottoms that I had to tie up with an old dressing gown cord. Parts of my face stung, despite an evil smelling cream that Jay had found in the back of a cupboard and had liberally smeared onto my skin. But I was clean, I was warm and the worst of the shock was beginning to wear off, particularly now that my lap was being kept extra warm by the presence of The Master. He smelled horribly of smoke and the tip of his tail had a sore patch where it looked as though it could have been scorched, but he blinked up at me happily enough and his weighty presence stopped me from going to the window every few minutes to look out at the glowing sky.
Lady Tanith and Hugo had gone to Jasper’s house. He wasn’t there, but it turned out that the entire village knew where he kept the spare key and had left them to it. I was pretty sure they’d all gone home to mutter about Hugo’s unconventional wear and Lady Tanith’s uncharacteristic silence, but we were all safe. That was what mattered. How much sanity may remain intact was a question for the morning.
Jay occasionally muttered, ‘Hugo and the dresses, eh?’ or shook his head as though trying to rid himself of the sight of his employers in blue velvet and wafty chiffon, but he mostly kept an arm around me as we sat together on the sofa in his kitchen, stroking the cat’s head.
Around dawn I fell into a light sleep, my head on Jay’s shoulder but half-dreams telling me that I was still in a burning building jerked me awake every five minutes. The smell of smoke which lingered around us all, mostly from the cat’s fur, didn’t help. Vigorous cleaning activities gradually replaced the smoke smell with the smell of old fish, and we all stopped coughing quickly enough to realise that smoke inhalation wasn’t going to be a problem.
Then it was morning proper and things couldn’t be put off any longer. Jay and I bundled up in his gardening coats and set out for what remained of Templewood Hall.
The entire library wing was gone, nothing but a pile of rubble with split rafters protruding, like a mouth full of broken teeth. Next to it, the façade of the rest of the front stood, looking wobbly and unsupported. We walked around to the back, which revealed an empty shell, burned away to leave nothing but a few walls, and the remnants of the wing that Hugo and I slept in, still two storeys high but without a roof or any floors. Some tattered panelling jutted into what was left of the hall; cracked and stained black and white tiles still marked the floor. A stone figure lay toppled and headless amid the ruins and outside on the grass stood a few pieces of furniture which the firemen had pulled from the blaze or rescued from the water.
It stank. The whole site smelled of that half-chemical, half-smoke that I’d noticed up in the Yellow Room what felt like a century ago, and the grass surrounding the walls was trodden into mud and ruts where the fire brigade had done their best to save what could be saved.
Hugo and Lady Tanith were there too, standing shell-shocked and wearing borrowed clothing. Hugo had clearly raided his brother’s wardrobe, because he was enveloped in a duster coat and had trainers on his feet. Lady Tanith must have been lent something by one of the villagers, because she was clad in a blue tweed skirt and a pink jumper with an elephant knitted into it.
Jay and I, hand in hand and accompanied by the delicate tread of The Master, went over to where they stood and we all stared.
‘It’s all gone,’ Lady Tanith said faintly, her only acknowledgement of our presence. ‘All of it.’
‘Yes.’ Hugo’s eyes were shadowed with tiredness.
Around us, the fire brigade were rolling up hoses and packing away equipment. Someone had turned off the blue light, at least. They paid us no attention, for which I was grateful.
Lady Tanith turned to me. She looked almost skeletal in this early light, her skin drawn tight over her bones with weariness. The pink jumper did her colouring no favours either. ‘You left the gas fire lit in the library, didn’t you?’
‘No.’ My voice sounded raspy from the smoke and the shouting. ‘The canister was empty, so it wasn’t even on.’
‘Well, itmusthave been you,’ she snapped. One of the firemen walked past, arms full of something that dripped, and she grabbed them. ‘Where did it start?’ Lady Tanith asked, with no preamble such as ‘thank you for your help’.
The firefighter, who looked about seventeen and had soot smudges on both cheeks, sighed. ‘You’re the owner, right? You need to talk to the boss,’ she said. ‘I’ll send him on over.’
‘Well, of course it was you,’ Lady Tanith said in my direction, releasing the arm to let the exhausted firefighter carry on her journey across the Somme of lawn. ‘Who else would be stupid and careless enough? I shall be suing, of course.’
I didn’t react. I was too busy trying to stare into what remained of the library to make sure that there was no trace of the diaries left. It didn’t look as though I needed to worry. Anything that was left of any of the books was reduced to single pages or charred covers, everything so water-soaked from the hoses that it was unrecognisable. There was nothing left of Oswald bar a small piece of standing wall from which an iron fixing drooped from one hinge. Lady Tanith was right. It was all gone.
‘At least we rescued the dresses,’ Lady Tanith went on. ‘Hugo, how could you be soridiculous!’
Hugo gave me a quick glance of agony, and then turned to his mother. ‘I…’ he began but she steamrollered on.
‘Those dresses arepriceless. They should have been in fireproof cupboards and protected! When I think of what could have happened… You have Moschino there, you know! And Dior!’
‘Yes,’ he said faintly. ‘I know.’
‘And vintage too! Some of those dresses are irreplaceable! Unique!’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said again. I got another ‘help me’ look over Lady Tanith’s head, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Even your father had the sense to put his dresses away in storage!’ Lady Tanith went on. ‘Incidentally, he had some very good diamonds which would look wonderful with that velvet.’
Hugo’s eyes became enormous and I saw his mouth flail for words. ‘Dad?’ was all he could come out with, and the word was almost lost in the arrival of a brusque, burly man, who’d taken off his fire helmet and looked tired, but In Charge.
‘You the householder?’ He addressed Hugo, who still couldn’t manage more than a squeak.
