Unspoken Desire

Since the children were not allowed to go with them, it had been necessary to find somebody else to take charge of them. Frazer, of course, had been the natural choice.

Having herself been the child of parents who of necessity had had to spend long periods of time out of the country, her father before he had retired having been a diplomat, Rebecca was very familiar with the attacks of isolation and loneliness that could hit children separated from their parents for long periods of time. That was one of the reasons she made such a good teacher, or so her head had told her. She readily understood the fears and anxieties of those children who actually boarded at the school and seemed to have the knack of being able to soothe and comfort them. However, while she and Robert had had parents who had been absent for long periods during their childhood, they had never for one moment doubted their parents’ love and concern for them.

Helen and Peter, it seemed, did, and perhaps with good reason, she acknowledged uneasily. It was no secret in the family that Lillian had been annoyed when she’d discovered that she was pregnant a matter of months after she and Rory were married.

She had been twenty, Rory twenty-two—two spoiled and self-indulgent young people who had married on a whim and conceived the twins without a moment’s thought for the future responsibilities they would bring.

Rory had always been lightweight compared with Frazer, eager to taste every one of life’s pleasures, self-indulgent to the extreme. Fun to be with if fun was all one wanted from life, but with no substance to fall back on for life’s difficult and unhappy times.

‘If Frazer gets married, his new wife won’t want us living at Aysgarth. Everyone says that,’ Helen reminded her brother. ‘That means we’ll have to go away to boarding school or go and live with Gran and Gramps in Brighton.’

‘Perhaps Mum and Dad might come back and Dad will get a job here in England,’ Peter suggested hopefully, but Helen quelled his suggestion with a stern frown.

‘You know he won’t,’ she told her brother. ‘We heard them arguing about it last Christmas, don’t you remember? Mum said she’d leave Dad if it wasn’t for us. Anyway, I don’t want them to come back, because they’re always quarrelling and arguing. I want to stay here at Aysgarth with Frazer.’

Their voices faded as they made their way along the path away from her, and Rebecca felt her heart turn over with pity and compassion for them. Adults forgot how much children saw and heard and felt. Only when she was sure they were safely out of sight and earshot did she make her own way back to her car.

The lane from here to Aysgarth was straight, apart from one particularly bad bend about fifty yards away. Thoughtfully she left her car where it was and walked towards it. As she had suspected, as she rounded the bend, she saw on the road in front of her some dangerously sharp shards of glass which, had she driven over them, must surely have severely damaged if not completely destroyed her tyres.

What neither of the twins could possibly know was that eighteen months before their birth, a very severe accident had been caused on this very bend by broken glass, though not left deliberately in that instance. A bottle which had fallen accidentally from a crate and not been noticed had broken on the road and the young couple in the car had been killed when their tyres had punctured and the car had swerved out of control off the road, plunging down into the valley, where it had burst into flames.

Rebecca was far too sensible and knew far too much about children of the twins’ age to imagine for a moment that they had thought far enough ahead to realise the possible outcome of their plans to get rid of her. Death, if they thought about it at all, was to children of that age a concept outside their grasp, unless they were unfortunate enough to suffer the loss of someone close to them.

As she picked up the glass and carefully put it in her handkerchief, carrying it back to the car with her, she pondered on how best to deal with the problem facing her.

All her desire to return to London was now gone. The twins needed her help, even if they themselves did not recognise it.

She got back into her car in a very thoughtful frame of mind indeed. The twins might not be able to recognise their need, but others might. The Great-Aunt Maud she remembered, despite her assumed vagueness and love of drama, had possessed more than her fair share of her nephew’s astuteness. Could it be that Maud had summoned her, not so much because she needed help in keeping the twins under control, but because she saw that they needed something more than mere discipline, and perhaps because she was hoping that, given the similarity of their childhood, Rebecca might be able to reach out and give the twins the reassurance and love they so obviously needed.

She was still turning these thoughts over in her mind as she drove in past the gates to Aysgarth. The house had been built by a Victorian Aysgarth who had made his money from the boom in railways and promptly retired to Cumbria with his wife and family.

It was a large, square building, more sturdy than elegant, three storeys high with deep, ample cellars. The sturdy Victorian furniture had been retained by the various generations of Aysgarths to inhabit the house, so that the rooms possessed an air of solid comfort rather than fashionable luxury.

It was a house in which one instantly felt at home, or at least that had always been Rebecca’s impression of it as a child. As she drove past the front door to park her car, she saw that the back door was standing open.

Aysgarth was remote enough for its inhabitants not to need to worry about the intentions of any passing caller, and as Rebecca got out of the car she heard a familiar shrill barking and kneeled down just in time to wad off the ecstatic welcome of a spaniel of rather large size and dubious parentage.

The best thing that could probably be said about Sophy was that she was extremely affectionate, the worst that she was also extremely scatty. As an adult Rebecca had always been rather surprised that Frazer of all people, so meticulous, so hard-edged and determined about everything he did, should actually have given house room to this overexuberant little stray who had wandered into the grounds of Aysgarth House a few weeks before Rebecca’s own eighteenth birthday. She had been the one who had found her and who had taken her into the house, bundling her shivering, soaking form in a towel and rubbing her dry till she stopped shivering.

She had pleaded with Norty to be allowed to keep the dog until Frazer came back from the Institute. In those days he had not headed the impressive and very important scientific institute whose work was always shrouded in so much secrecy, but he had still worked hard with very long hours, and it had been almost nine o’clock that evening before he had put her mind at rest and announced that yes, she could keep the stray, providing no one turned up to claim it.

Within twenty-four hours of being in the household, Sophy had firmly and determinedly attached herself to Frazer, becoming not her dog, but Frazer’s. However, it seemed she had remembered her, Rebecca reflected as she bent down and scratched behind the long floppy ears.

‘Ah, Rebecca! I thought it must be you.’ Silver-haired, pink-and white-skinned, dressed always in lavender, cream or black, Great-Aunt Maud, Rebecca had often thought, would surely look far more at home in some genteel establishment in Bournemouth rather than up here in the granite hills of Cumbria.

Indeed she had for a time after being widowed lived in the south of England, but immediately upon Frazer’s request to her to come and take charge of the house she had given up that life and had remained at Aysgarth ever since.

‘Ten to four—excellent!’ she announced approvingly, waiting for Rebecca to join her, ‘I’ve already warned Mrs Norton that you would be here for afternoon tea. The twins are upstairs washing their hands and faces and changing out of those disgusting jeans all children seem to insist on wearing these days. I can’t think what the world’s coming to. In my day little girls dressed like little girls,’ she added disapprovingly, ‘not in this ridiculous dual-sex uniform of jeans that everyone seems to favour these days.’

Rebecca, remembering her own mother’s gentle remonstrations and explanations when she herself had protested bitterly about the smocked velvet dress Aunt Maud had insisted on buying for her the Christmas she was twelve years old, considering herself far too grown-up for such a childish outfit, repressed a small smile.

‘And while I think about it,’Aunt Maud continued, ‘that’s another thing that will have to be sorted out. Both of them need new clothes. Such a nuisance, that girl Frazer appointed leaving the way she did.’

‘Why did she leave?’ asked Rebecca quietly, curious to hear what her aunt would say, wondering exactly how much Maud knew about the twins’ plans.

The hallway to Aysgarth was large and square with a parquet floor and an impressive carved wooden staircase running up three sides of it. At the rear of the hall was a large stained glass window, depicting various scenes of relevance to the original builder of the house, including one displaying the arms and colours of the railway which had made him his money.

‘Oh, I expect it was the usual thing,’ snorted Maud, startling Rebecca for a moment until she added in explanation, ‘too few young men and not enough to do on her days and evening off.Young girls these days don’t know how fortunate they are,’ she continued severely. ‘In my day, a girl was expected to get married whether she wanted to or not. We didn’t have the freedom you do these days. I’m glad to see you haven’t rushed into marriage, Rebecca,’ she added approvingly, then rather spoilt the effect of this phrase by adding musingly, ‘How old are you now? It must be nearly thirty, surely.’

‘Twenty-six, actually,’Rebecca told her, feeling irritated with herself for her own defensive correction of her aunt’s over-estimation of her age.

‘Twenty-six—mm…A very sensible age for a young woman, I’ve always thought.’

Rebecca wasn’t sure if she actually liked being described as sensible, but she put aside the thought to examine later, following her aunt into what was always described as the small sitting-room, although in fact it was a well-proportioned room that faced south and because of that was a favourite room for the family’s daytime use.

The yellow damask curtains had faded over the years to a soft appealing primrose. Rory and Frazer’s mother had replaced the original covers on the settees and chairs with new ones in a rich blue which had now also faded pleasantly. The walls were hung with straw-coloured silk and a faded blue and gold rug covered the parquet floor.

The familiar sight of her aunt’s embroidery frame standing to one side of the fireplace took Rebecca back to her own childhood. She had never actually seen a piece of embroidery completed by Aunt Maud, and she had a shrewd suspicion that the old lady adopted the embroidery as a skilful means of extricating herself from any duties she didn’t wish to perform.

‘Mrs Norton will bring tea through in a second. In the meantime, tell me, my dear, how are your parents and Robert and his family?’

‘They’re very well,’ Rebecca told her, describing the exploits of her niece and nephew to her as relayed to her through the medium of her sister-in-law’s latest letter.

‘Such a pity you couldn’t have gone to Australia with your parents,’ Aunt Maud commented, then pursed her lips and added thoughtfully, ‘although in the circumstances…’

She broke off as Mrs Norton came in, pushing a tea trolley. The housekeeper beamed when she saw Rebecca, who quickly and fondly embraced her, asking her how she was. It was a good five minutes before she left, confirming that she would go upstairs and find out what was delaying the twins.

‘So why didn’t you go with your parents, my dear?’ Aunt Maud pursued as she poured the tea. ‘Is there perhaps a young man in London?’

Mischievously Rebecca deliberately pretended not to understand, frowning and looking quite as vague as her aunt as she asked innocently.

‘A young man? London is full of young men, Aunt Maud. Which one was it in particular?’

‘You know exactly what I mean, Rebecca,’ Aunt Maud interrupted her sternly. ‘Is there a particular young man in your life whose presence there made you prefer to stay in London rather than to accompany your parents?’

Cautiously Rebecca hesitated, then said lightly, and not altogether untruthfully, ‘There isn’t one particular young man, Aunt Maud, but I do have several men friends whom I date from time to time.’

‘Date?’ snorted Aunt Maud. ‘What kind of word is that, and you an English teacher as well? These young men—are their intentions towards you serious, or…’

Rebecca couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing.

‘They’re friends, Aunt Maud. People whose company I enjoy.’ She broke off as the sitting-room door opened and the twins came in. A complete metamorphosis appeared to have taken place, not only in their clothes but also in their attitude. Nothing could have been more friendly or appealing than the way they both welcomed her, Rebecca acknowledged, and perhaps because of that and because of what she knew she deliberately decided to punish them a little, waiting until Maud had performed the necessary introductions and the twins were settled with their milk and biscuits before opening her handbag and removing the handkerchief as though to blow her nose.

When the shards of glass fell on to the floor, she looked at them in feigned surprise, meanwhile watching the twins’ faces. Peter’s showed a sharp stab of fear and guilt; Helen’s on the other hand remained impassive after one brief lightning look into her own face.

‘Rebecca, what on earth…?’Aunt Maud began.

Rebecca quickly apologised, getting down on the floor to remove the glass and saying quickly, ‘Good heavens, I’d forgotten about that! I found it on the road. Luckily I’d stopped the car to look at the view—if I hadn’t I would have been bound to have run over it, doing heaven alone knows what damage to the car.’