Eloise Read online

‘Of course. I’ll come straight away. Do you want anything?’

  ‘Oh God, Cathy. I want my darling daughter, and I want her daughters too.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ I said, aching with sympathy for her. ‘I’ll come. I’ll be at Roseland in an hour.’

  *

  I don’t drive. Well, I do – I finally passed my test after six attempts and felt too embarrassed to be triumphant. But it was all such a strain that I never really enjoyed it and always had the feeling that I was two steps away from a fatal accident.

  Because of that, I now leave it to Chris, who loves driving; one of the many areas of our life together which I cede to him because I have so little confidence in myself; part of the catastrophic breakdown in my mind from which I was supposedly recovering. When I was ill, I became agoraphobic. I was terrified of leaving the house, and I hated meeting new people. I was much better now, but I still had no faith in my ability to drive. I have a little VW Beetle convertible that we keep in Cornwall, but I only drove it once last year, after my breakdown. Within yards of leaving the cottage to do some shopping, I hit an enormous boulder on the left-hand side of the road. I wasn’t hurt and the only damage was a blown tyre, but that, as far as I was concerned, was that. Total failure. Despite all of Chris’s encouragement, I refused to take the wheel again, even though he took a sledgehammer to the offending rock and smashed it to bits.

  So the little cream Beetle sat forlornly on our Cornish driveway like a neglected pet: utterly sweet and begging to be taken out for a walk – or rather a spin. And hardly ever rewarded but for an occasional impulsive trip to the pub, on days so sunny it was irresistible not to drive with the roof down; but every time Chris or one of the boys was firmly at the wheel.

  So it was Chris who drove me to see Juliana, and when we arrived he said he’d take a walk around the grounds, sure that Ellie’s mother would prefer to talk to me alone. The gardens were magnificent, National Trust owned and cared for, so it wasn’t exactly a sacrifice. Actually, it was a total treat.

  Roseland Hall is a grand old manor house, built in the mid-seventeenth century, overlooking the lower part of the beautiful River Fowey. It’s open to the public and is no longer the private domain of the Trelawneys, the great, ancient Cornish family to which it originally belonged.

  Eloise had often shown me round it. She especially loved inveigling the curator to let us in late at night, when its ghostly grandeur easily persuaded us that it was haunted, as was its reputation. It’s a remarkable house, astonishingly almost as cosy as it’s grand, lit with exquisite French crystal chandeliers, and with a magnificent Long Gallery hung with the finest tapestries and paintings.

  For any family, it would be a tragedy to leave such a house behind. But sadly, Juliana, the last Lady Trelawney, no longer lived there.

  For generations, Eloise had confided to me, the Trelawneys had had problems with fertility and gradually, but inexorably, the line dwindled. Sir Charles, Eloise’s father, the last baronet, was the only child of his generation, as his father and grandfather had been of theirs. He had no brothers, no sisters, no cousins. When he married the beautiful Juliana, a well-bred Cornish girl from an old, landed family, he had high hopes of producing a son and heir. And, after five years of increasingly desperate attempts to conceive, Juliana at last fell pregnant. When Eloise was born, Charles tried hard to hide his disappointment, but Juliana knew she had failed him. She never got pregnant again, and they never talked about it. She was afraid to plumb the depths of his despair. Juliana, though, adored her little daughter, and increasingly resented her husband’s indifference to their child. She also suspected that her inability to produce more children was not her fault, but his. Her own family had no problems with fecundity.

  Still, there was nothing to be done about it. Charles was so gloomy about Trelawneys no longer living on the estate that his wife knew to press him on the matter would open deep, irreconcilable wounds, wounds that could destroy their marriage, so she kept her peace.

  Charles became increasingly maudlin about the future of the big house. He had a great deal of money, but the estate was a constant drain on his resources. And for what? There was no dynasty here, no reason to invest in his ancient family’s future because there would be no future Trelawneys. If Eloise married, she would take her husband’s name. And he sensed Juliana’s heart was not in it. Charles was right. She was not enthusiastic about being forever responsible for an enormous stately pile, with all the sacrifices, discipline and hard work it required, and she had absolutely no wish to burden Eloise with the responsibility of maintaining an anachronism that had outlived its usefulness. She vowed to herself that if her husband died before her, she would give the house to the National Trust.

  And that’s exactly what she had done. Ellie told me it was the best decision her mother ever made.

  Chapter Four

  I knocked at Juliana’s door. Since Charles’s death, she had lived in a very beautiful old farmhouse in the grounds of Roseland Hall. I always felt a bit intimidated by its utterly perfect, though slightly shabby, patrician décor. But, to be honest, that was only my own inverted snobbery kicking in. And Juliana did not deserve that. She was so warm, so utterly enveloping, that her aristocratic background, her upper-class vowels, her complete confidence in her own being and her place in one of the most ancient and romantic families of distinguished Cornish aristocracy made you want to be close to her, to be involved with the rich tap estry of her days.

  She looked wonderful, even though losing Eloise was, I knew, the greatest tragedy of her life. Tall and slender, she wore ruffled blouses with high collars, long flowing skirts. Her hair was abundant, ice-queen silver, gathered behind her head and then left to flow like a curling wintry river over her shoulders. She was completely beautiful at seventy-five, a graceful Cornish nymph, a dryad who could sit by a sacred well and comb her long hair to charm and enchant, even now in her old age.

  She asked if I wanted tea, and one of her remaining devoted servants brought it. We sat in her pretty sitting room, and she talked about Eloise.

  ‘She seemed so much better, Cathy. The doctors said she was in remission.’

  ‘But you must know they just meant a sort of reprieve. Seriously, Juliana, you knew she was terminal?’

  ‘Of course, but she was full of energy, and enjoying her life so much.’

  ‘OK, I know she was, but we have to accept in an illness like that, things can suddenly accelerate. God knows, Juliana, we’ve talked so much about her pain. That’s why she was taking the drugs. However much we wanted to deny it, we knew what was coming for Eloise.’

  She fixed me with a long stare.

  ‘Cathy, don’t you think it’s strange that I wasn’t there?’

  ‘What do you mean? When she died?’

  ‘We were so close. She always wanted to be with me when … it happened.’

  ‘But … well, you couldn’t have been. It happened so fast. There was no time … ’

  ‘Yes, there was.’ She gave me an unfathomable look. ‘Tell me, Cathy, when someone is terminally ill, do they die suddenly as if they’d had a heart attack? I don’t believe so. I saw Eloise the day she died, in the morning. We had coffee with the little ones. She was happy, so relieved that the doctors had given her a reprieve. You knew Eloise. She was always so positive, convinced she would beat it. And then, three hours later, she was dead? It makes no sense to me.’

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I had my own concerns about Eloise’s death – a barely conscious doubt and unease that I suspected had caused my awful nightmare the other night. But I felt that if I gave in to Juliana’s anxieties, it would send me into a realm of total paranoia. What was she saying? That my dear friend did not die because of her terminal cancer? After all those years of gloomy prognosis? Of course she did. The alternative was utterly ridiculous.

  I asked her what she thought could have happened to Eloise, if her death was not from natural causes. There had been no need for a post-mortem,
of course. There was no need to confirm what we all knew: Ellie died from her cancer, which had metastasised throughout her body. Her lungs, liver, spine and brain had been riddled with the hideous disease.

  Juliana shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know. It’s just an instinct that I can’t shake off. Oh, I’m aware that I sound like a deranged old woman, unable to accept my daughter’s death. Ted told me as much a few days ago.’

  ‘You’ve discussed it with him?’ I was astonished.

  She gave a deep sigh. ‘I tried to, but he became really angry with me. He said he had enough on his plate without having to deal with an eccentric old biddy who couldn’t cope with reality. He even suggested I was going senile.’ Her face darkened. ‘That hurt me a lot.’

  ‘But you and Ted – you’ve never really got along, have you?’ I asked.

  ‘Did Eloise tell you that?’

  I nodded.

  She sighed unhappily. ‘Eloise got a bit impatient with me. Told me I was imagining things.’

  ‘What do you mean? Imagining what?’

  ‘I always thought he was a bit hard. To be honest, I thought he was a gold-digger. I never really trusted him,’ she said.

  ‘And what did Ellie say to that?’

  ‘She laughed at me. She said she was grateful that I was looking out for her, but I was being ridiculous. She told me that Ted was a really talented artist, and that his paintings were increasing in value all the time. She said collectors were hungry for his work, and they both thought he was going to make a fortune in his own right. She said that what I took for hardness was actually fierce ambition, and a lack of sentimentality.’ Juliana shrugged. ‘She may have been right. She obviously knew him much better than I did. But Cathy, I never warmed to him – and he knew it, though we kept up a front for Eloise’s sake. I’m so scared that now there’s no need for that pretence that I’ll see much less of him and … and the twins … ’

  I tried to reassure her that she was simply and understandably hugely upset, that there was no need to worry, and I told her I would think about what she had said, and call her the next day. We were supposed to be returning to London tomorrow, but I had no real reason to go home. Chris had appointments on Tuesday, but I could stay. As I left, I thought about Ted and Eloise. We knew Ted quite well, and on the whole they had seemed happy. They’d had the occasional row, and would sometimes arrive at dinner parties, each of them silently simmering with resentment of the other.

  But so did every married couple. Chris and I certainly did. And Ted made Ellie laugh. He could be very witty.

  I found Chris outside, mesmerised by the beautiful garden. I told him what Juliana had said and he sighed. Chris was kind, but like most men he wanted solutions, not problems.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘She’s her mother and she wasn’t there at the most emotionally significant moment of her daughter’s life. What she’s feeling is natural. Not to have been with Eloise when she died makes her feel incredibly guilty. She feels she should have prevented it – and that if she’d been a better mother it would never have happened. You know all that stuff, Cathy. Comes with the motherhood territory. If it had been Evie, you would have felt exactly the same.’

  Evie was our sixteen-year-old daughter. A flash of pain tore through me as I imagined losing her.

  Then I felt furious. How dare he shift a mother’s grief into something that ‘comes with the territory’? Yes, of course, for a child to die before her is beyond the worst realms of a mother’s imagination. But Chris spoke so glibly, as if he were explaining something to me that I was too stupid to understand. As if he had a paternal overview which was quite naturally superior to a mother’s instinct.

  I did feel strongly, at that point, a sort of tribal alliance with Juliana. We were both mothers. We were both, in different ways, deeply uneasy about Eloise’s death. I decided then that, however irrational, I was on Juliana’s side. Something was wrong. And whatever Chris said, I was staying put in Cornwall until I had fathomed out what was troubling me.

  Chapter Five

  Monday. I woke feeling worried and oppressed. I had to do something and I really didn’t want to. Then I remembered. Ted. We hadn’t called him yesterday.

  ‘Will you phone him today?’ I asked, drinking tea on our little sun-drenched patio.

  ‘Right. And what am I supposed to say?’

  God. Men.

  ‘Jesus, Chris – you’re supposed to be his friend. You’ve always said he’s one of the straightest guys you know. Can’t you just talk to him about losing his wife? Then maybe we can talk to him about Juliana’s concerns. And we have to check on the girls. See how they are. They must be so bewildered and sad at losing their mummy.’

  ‘All right. Shall I ask them to lunch?’

  ‘Yes. If they can make it.’

  As it happened they couldn’t. They were staying at Ted’s parents’ house in Manchester. They wouldn’t be back in Cornwall until tomorrow.

  ‘Well, I guess that’s it,’ Chris said when he ended the call. ‘I’ve got to go back to London tonight, so we won’t see him.’

  Not ‘we’ – but I could, I thought. I didn’t have to go anywhere. I would stay here until I had sorted things out with Ted and Juliana. For Eloise. But I wouldn’t tell Chris for a couple of hours, until I thought of a way to convince him that I had to, that I needed to do this.

  The weather turned on Tuesday. As I had waved a slightly surly Chris goodbye on Monday evening the sky was clouding over. Now the rain was hurling down in the relentless sheets that Cornwall throws at those of us who fondly hope for sun. It mocks us, really. ‘Call yourselves lovers of Kernow?’ the wind howls. ‘What do you know about what living here really means? The hardship and bleakness?’ And yes, Cornwall can be far from a paradise. A beautiful haven for family holidays for a few months of the year; a relentlessly harsh and difficult place to make a living for most of it. And so dependent on the weather. Every winter, every spring, the locals’ eyes focus anxiously on the coming summer season. Will the sun bless the beaches? Will the holidaymakers flock to Looe, Polperro, and Penzance?

  On a day like today, with the rain lashing down, and the wind thrashing the plane trees, it makes even the most devoted lovers of this beautiful, mystical county question their sanity. What was I doing here in this godforsaken, isol ated place, so far from the shops, so shrouded in mist, rain and loneliness?

  It was a day for staying in. I lit the fire and turned on the lamps although it was still morning. My little VW sat outside on the drive, but I had no intention of driving anywhere, so it was fortunate that there was enough food in the fridge to tide me over for a few days. Milk, eggs, bacon, cheese. And bread, fruit and salad. I made a cup of Horlicks and sat in my favourite place – a little yellow sofa tucked into a corner window, which made me feel warm and secure. I watched the fire – we could see it from everywhere in the big, open downstairs space; from the living room, kitchen, dining table and the little snug, which is where I sat now.

  I loved this place, this cottage with its simple warmth, its big windows, the honey colour of the wide oak floorboards, the white, grey and blue of the walls and woodwork, the roaring fire and red and gold rugs. Sometimes I thought I could curl up here with a book and never feel the need to leave.

  The afternoon passed slowly. The rain turned to hail, thundering down on the roof and windows. I put my book aside and sat on the little yellow sofa, immersed in memories of the lovely days here in Cornwall when Chris and I would meet up with Ted and Eloise, all our children in tow. Little Rose and Violet, the gorgeously beautiful twins, and our own kids, Eve, Tom and Sam, much older than the little girls but still young enough to enjoy the beach and demand ice creams. We would go to Polzeath or Daymer Bay, on the north side of Cornwall, far removed from our gentle southern coves. This was surf-land, all crashing waves, tanned public school boys and waif-like girls whose parents hired houses in trendy Rock at vast expense every year. Personally, I despised it, but Ted and
Eloise were more forgiving, and, to be honest, quite relished the social vibe there. I suppose it’s exciting up in north Cornwall, but I much prefer the gentle, cradling south.

  We had some wonderful times, our two families. Chris and our eldest Sam would hire wetsuits and attempt to look convincing with surfboards, though they couldn’t compete with Ted, a brilliant surfer, revered as a bit of a legend by the eager kids who holidayed on the North Coast and thought everything to do with surf was über-cool, while Juliana, Eloise and I sat on the beach with the younger ones, feeding the tiny twins frozen yoghurt, laughing as the damp sand seeped up into our underwear. Soggy bums are very much part of the picture if you have small children in Cornwall. Photos of us all, raincoats on, umbrellas up, are among my greatest treasures. Lovely days. Full of the joy that having little children brings, as if you can believe, for a few fleeting moments, that life goes on for ever, that you can glimpse an extraordinary vision of bliss that will somehow endure. From here to eternity.

  I felt achingly sad for those days now. With Eloise’s death, that was all over. All that joy, that exuberance as you watch your children hold out the promise of eternal life – all snuffed out in an instant as your best friend, just forty-five years old, dies and shows you the true reality of your silly, ephemeral hopes for happiness, and the emptiness of what lies ahead for all of us. Oblivion. Darkness. That extraordinary god-like link with our children vanished in a moment, leaving them to their uncertain fate, alone and motherless.

  And us, the mothers. What happens to us in the void? Do we stop caring, watching? Or do we suffer eternal grief as we see our children grow up without us, knowing that however well their lives turn out, they will never be the same? Never be as happy, as secure as they would have been if death had not cleaved us cruelly apart?

  And that, I knew with absolute certainty, was how Eloise felt now. I shuddered. Something had shifted inside my head. I could feel myself hovering close to the dark pit of despair that had engulfed me during my breakdown. I must, must not let that happen to me again, I told myself.