Past All Forgetting

Janna glanced at her watch. ‘We’ve over an hour. The service at the White Hart isn’t that slow and …’

He shook his head. ‘We aren’t going there. There’s something I want to show you first. We might manage a drink and a sandwich at the Crown afterwards.’

‘The Crown?’ Janna stared at him, puzzled. ‘But that’s out of town.’

He sent her a brief, triumphant smile. ‘I know. Sit back, my sweet, and prepare for a surprise.’

Janna complied, faintly bewildered by the air of barely suppressed excitement that hung about Colin. He was generally so imperturbable, so much in control of his emotions. It was one of the things that she admired about him, and certainly an aspect of his character which explained his success in business. It was an open secret locally that Colin was the driving force now at Travers Engineering, and that his father, who had founded the firm, was content to be a figurehead, and leave the running of the company in Colin’s hands.

Travers was the only large works in the locality, and it had expanded dramatically in recent years in spite of the generally depressed economic climate. With the expansion had come a change of role for Carrisford, with a brand new housing estate springing up on its outskirts, and a hurried building programme to add to the capacity of its primary and comprehensive schools. Yet in many ways it still remained a rather sleepy little market town, Janna thought with affection as Colin’s car threaded its way through the crowded square bordered by tall grey stone buildings. The tradition was there in the market cross, and the square Georgian town hall set firmly at one end of the market place.

It had always looked the same for as long as she could remember. She had gone away to do her training, and in many ways had been glad to go, and she still wasn’t sure what had brought her back as a newly fledged teacher in her probationary year. Her parents were undemonstratively glad to see her. They regarded it as part of the scheme of things that the daughter of their marriage should live at home until she set out on a married life of her own. There was a reassuring sense of permanence, of stability about things, and Colin’s advent into her life seemed, as far as her mother was concerned certainly, merely an inevitable piece in the pattern.

Janna and Colin had met two years earlier, when Colin had first come to the Carrisford works. Up to that time, he had merely been a name to many of the local people, having followed school and university with a prolonged training period, both abroad and at the other works in the north-west of England.

They had met at the cricket club one warm Saturday afternoon when Janna was helping some of the players’ wives with the teas. When the match was ended prematurely by a drenching thunderstorm he had asked her to go out to dinner with him. Before many weeks had passed Janna knew she was being courted. At first, she could only feel dismay, but she soon discovered Colin had no intention of rushing her either physically or mentally into a relationship she was not prepared for. His pursuit of her, though determined, was leisurely. As she had come to know him better, she realised that this was not solely out of consideration for her, but because there was an instinctive element of caution in his nature. He too wanted to be absolutely sure before committing himself.

They had been officially engaged for just over three months now, and Janna had begun to sense a slight change in his attitude of late. They had not planned an exact date for their marriage, but she knew he was thinking in terms of the following spring. But though this had led to a new sense of urgency in their relationship, Janna had not discovered any determination in Colin to take it to a more intimate level which she might have expected. After all, he was going to be her husband. She wore his very expensive ring and was a frequent guest at his father’s rather ostentatious house in the neighbouring dale. In many ways, there was not the slightest reason why they should hold back any longer. And yet … Janna gripped her hands together in her lap until the brilliant solitaire she wore on her left hand bit into her flesh. At the back of her mind there was always that memory, no matter how deeply buried she thought it was. Savagely, she dammed it back into the recesses of her brain. It was over—had been over for years. Anyway, she’d been hardly more than a child. She couldn’t still go on blaming herself for that …

She dragged herself back into the present with a start, aware suddenly that the car had turned left at the last fork and was climbing steadily.

‘The Crown’s the other way.’ She twisted around in her seat and looked at the grey town lying in the sheltered valley behind them. ‘Darling, I know I said I had an hour, but it doesn’t last for ever.’

‘I know. But I do have a surprise for you, my love. Be patient.’

‘All right.’ She looked ahead of them uncertainly. ‘But there’s nothing up here, you know. Only Carrisbeck House.’

She was glad that Colin had no idea what an effort it cost her to say that.

‘Correct. Clever girl! Go to the top of the class.’

To her dismay, the car was slowing, and Colin was indicating his intention to turn left.

‘But we can’t go in there,’ she protested, fighting her panic. ‘It—it’s empty. It has been for years.’

‘I know,’ Colin said casually as they drove through the gates and up the long curve of the drive. ‘Tragedy, isn’t it?’

Towering rhododendrons crowded on each side of the gravel. The last time she had driven up this drive they had been covered in blossom, she thought confusedly, and she had sat in the back of a much less opulent car than Colin’s, almost sick with excitement because she was going to a party at Carrisbeck House and because he would be there. And because tonight—that night—she was going to make him notice her.

She shivered suddenly, closing her eyes.

‘Grey goose flying over your grave?’ Colin’s voice was almost jocular. The car had stopped and when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t a nightmare. It was really happening. They were really parked in front of Carrisbeck House. It looked just the same, with the short flight of shallow steps leading up to the front door. The only difference was that the two great stone urns which flanked the steps looked empty and neglected. Mrs Tempest had always kept them filled with flowers, she thought. Summer or winter, it seemed there had always been something in bloom to welcome you at the door. Now there was nothing, and the curtainless windows seemed to stare down at her inimically as if they were remembering that other Janna Prentiss, not quite seventeen and much more sure of herself than she had ever been since.

‘We can’t go in.’ Her voice sounded strained and breathless even in her own ears. ‘I know it’s empty, but it still belongs to Colonel Tempest even so …’

Colin reached into his pocket and produced a bunch of keys tied to a label.

‘No longer, I’m afraid. I’m surprised you haven’t heard, but it will be in the Advertiser at the weekend. Colonel Tempest died last week, so the house is on the market. Barry Windrush’s father is handling the sale and Barry gave me a tip-off.’ He gave a swift, excited laugh and drew her unresponsive body against his. ‘Don’t you understand, darling? That’s going to be our house!’

The silence was endless and then she said stupidly, ‘But—we can’t buy that.’

‘What’s to prevent us? Don’t be an idiot, my sweet.’ The affection in his voice had an added note of exasperation. ‘I’ve spoken to Dad, and he’s given us the go-ahead. In fact, he’s all for it. It’s ideal—close to the works, big enough to do all the entertaining, but not so massive that you’d need an immense staff to help you run it. I believe the Tempests had a housekeeper. She’s been keeping an eye on the place, I understand, so its condition should be quite reasonable. And her husband has been keeping the garden in order. I know they’re neither of them young any more, but Barry reckons they might be quite willing to stay on, if they were asked, and that would solve all sorts of problems. Janna, what is it? Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she lied, trying desperately to catch at the rags of her self-control. She gave him a meaningless smile. ‘But you can’t be serious, Colin. How can we live here? It’s the old Tempest house. Everyone knows that.’

He shrugged irritably. ‘No doubt, but what happens now that there are no more “old Tempests” to occupy it? Do you really think a lovely place like this should be left to moulder away and fall down? Not if I know it. Come on, darling,’ he added with an impatient look at his watch. ‘It’s you that has to get back. Come and have a look round.’

She had no option but to obey. If she refused to go in at all, he would have every reason to accuse her of being illogical, and she couldn’t explain.

As they reached the top of the steps, she said carefully. ‘But there are more Tempests, aren’t there? What about the—the nephew?’

Colin shrugged, intent on fitting the key into the lock. ‘I wouldn’t know, darling. I didn’t even know there was a nephew. Whatever has happened to him, he hasn’t inherited the estate.’

The big panelled hall was just as she remembered it, with the sweep of the stairs leading up to the galleried landing above.

‘Barry says they used to hold dances in here.’ Colin looked around. ‘I must say there’s room enough. I’m quite sorry I never came to any of them. I suppose you never did, darling? You were probably too young.’

‘I came—once,’ she said, then walked over to the drawing room door and turned the handle. It was a beautiful room. She had always loved it with the great French windows looking out over the sloping gardens, and the gleam of the river in the distance. It looked forlorn without the deep sofas and chairs with their charming chintz covers. She could see the marks on the walls where pictures had once hung. The fire-irons still stood in the hearth to the left of the empty grate where sweet-smelling pine cones and logs had once burned. There had been a low-seated Victorian chair by that hearth once, she remembered, and Janna the schoolgirl had once sat nervously on its edge, clutching a bone china plate while Mrs Tempest poured tea and asked what she intended to do when she left school. And she had said quickly, ‘I’d like to travel,’ and tried to stop herself glancing too eagerly towards the door, waiting for the moment when it would open and he would come in. Rian. Rian Tempest, Colonel Tempest’s nephew and sole relative, who worked as a foreign correspondent on a newspaper and travelled all over the world.

But he did not come, and Janna’s excuse for her visit—she had volunteered to deliver the parish magazine for Mrs Hardwick who had a sprained ankle—was a complete waste. And she still had dozens of the beastly things to hike around in the sun. It was less a sense of duty and more a fear of retribution, divine or all too human, which had stopped her giving them decent burial behind some convenient hedge. But perhaps, she’d thought, giving her imagination full rein, Mrs Tempest might mention that evening over dinner that she’d been there. ‘That lovely Prentiss child’—which wasn’t really conceit because she’d heard it said so many times, and Rian might take a new look at her and see that she wasn’t really a child any more but a woman—a woman …

As she stood in the middle of the empty drawing room, Janna’s cheeks burned at the memory of her own naïveté. It had all seemed so simple then. You stretched out your hand and said ‘Give me’ and a kindly Providence dispensed whatever was required, because you were lovely and so nearly seventeen and spoiled by everyone.

Someone had left a key on the inside of the french windows leading to the terrace. The key was stiff in the lock, but eventually it yielded and Janna walked outside into the fresh air. Somewhere at the back of her mind a warning voice was shouting at her, ‘Don’t look back.’ All these years it had worked so well. Glimpsing the house as she drove past on her way somewhere else, hearing the Tempests mentioned, she had managed to avert her gaze and closed her ears.

It had been difficult, though, when she had heard that Mrs Tempest had died. She had never been a robust woman, Janna thought, remembering the finely boned face under its coronet of silvering hair. Colonel Tempest had always been openly protective towards his wife, and Rian’s attitude to his aunt had echoed this.

But there had been no sign of weakness about Mrs Tempest that night. She had driven Janna home, her back straight as a ramrod, her gaze fixed unerringly on the road ahead. At her gate, she had said, ‘You are quite well, Janna? Then I will bid you goodnight.’ She had driven away and Janna had never seen or heard from her again. It had only been a few weeks later that the house had been shut up, and the Colonel and his wife had moved away. There was speculation, naturally, but it did not take the form that Janna had feared. It was taken for granted that Mrs Tempest’s health would not stand up to another northern winter. Someone in the post office had even remarked that she’d ‘been showing her age lately, poor lady’.

No one, luckily, had linked Rian’s abrupt departure several weeks before with the Colonel’s decision to close the house and move. Rian was a law unto himself. He came and went when and where his job took him. Everyone knew the Colonel had been disappointed because his nephew hadn’t followed him into the Army, but it was accepted that Rian had a mind of his own, and no one could say the Colonel wasn’t proud of the way the boy had turned out. More like a son than a nephew, people said, and that was the way it should be as Rian had no parents of his own any more.

A much younger Janna had always been among the crowd of worshippers when Rian, who played cricket for his university, turned out for the local club during the summer vacation. She had begged his autograph once on the corner of a score card and treasured it until it literally fell to pieces.

There had been a quality about him even then which had set him apart from the rest, although she had been too young to analyse it. His movements were unstudiedly elegant and economical, and although he certainly wasn’t good-looking in the film or television star mould, there was a latent attraction in his dark, saturnine features. When he smiled, his charm was magical, almost wicked. It hinted that its owner was not disposed to take anything really seriously, especially you, no matter how delightful he might find you, and it was irresistible. Or Janna had found it so.

She stepped forward to the edge of the terrace, wrapping her arms tightly across her body. The wind was blowing straight off the Pennines, and its force had an added bite.

‘Darling, what on earth are you doing out here? It’s freezing.’ Colin’s voice sounded rather plaintive as he made his way out through the french windows to join her.

‘Blowing the cobwebs away,’ she said, and heaven knew it was the truth. But would it work?

Colin, to her relief, took the remark at its face value.

‘The place could do with an airing,’ he remarked. ‘But I can’t smell any damp, can you? It all seems in pretty good nick. Shall we have a look upstairs?’

‘You go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll join you in a minute. I want to enjoy this view for a while. It’s a long time since I’ve seen it.’

A long time—seven years, to be exact. Seven years since she had come out of that antique auction further up the dale with her father and found herself face to face with Rian, come to collect his aunt who had been bidding for some china figures. For a moment she had barely recognised him. He had always been thin, but now his face was harder and older, the dark eyes under their lazily drooping lids suddenly wary. He had answered her father’s jovial greeting with a smile and a handshake, and then had turned to her, his smile widening.