Eva was overjoyed when, in the autumn of 1928, it was confirmed that she was pregnant. As soon as he heard William set about planning the life and education of his son. The Laceys always had sons and it did not occur to him that there would be any other outcome from Eva’s confinement.
When the doctor announced the safe delivery of a girl William had to ask twice, “Are you certain?” and did nothing to hide his disappointment. His daughter, christened Audrey Catherine, was decidedly second best.
Eva always thought of that day as the beginning of the end of any chance of happiness in their marriage.
William became single-minded in his demands that she give him a son. He no longer wanted her to entertain. He forbade her from travelling. He made it unpleasantly clear to her that she had one purpose in life and that was to give him a son and heir.
There were times when she felt she had never known him and that the man who had been her husband for eleven years had been a fraud. Two miscarriages did nothing to help her frame of mind but when she passed the fourth month of pregnancy, in May 1935, she allowed herself to feel confident that this would be the son her husband demanded.
Arthur Bernard Llewellyn Lacey was born in the early hours of the fourteenth of October 1935, to the enormous relief of the mother, the father and the doctors who attended the birth.
When Audrey, aged six, was introduced to her brother she was told by her father that she was to respect her brother. “Arthur will be the head of the family. In the fullness of time he will be Sir Arthur Lacey, seventh Baronet of Oakridge.”
“What about me?” Audrey had asked.
“In ten years you will be married and then you will be your husband’s responsibility.”
Audrey had turned to her mother. “Have I been very naughty?”
Eva had looked to her husband to answer but he said nothing and the delay of several moments before she was able to answer, “Of course you haven’t, darling,” the opportunity had been lost.
From that moment Audrey knew she was less important, less wanted and less loved than the baby in the cot who was her brother.
By the time, a little more than four years later, war was declared Audrey had accepted that her expectations in life were very different from those of her young brother. She accepted that she received less attention, less of an education, less of everything than Arthur.
*
In October 1939 Eva telephoned Rose.
“Can you take the children?”
“Of course we can.”
Despite Henry’s disabilities the years since Rose had found him had been good ones. They had enough money for their needs, none of which were extravagant, and for the first time in many years The Lodge was a happy family home. They had discussed the coming of war and had anticipated Eva’s hopes to evacuate the children to the island, hopefully safe from bombs and the gas that she feared that war would bring.
“Of course, send them over. We will meet them at the ferry.”
“I’ve spoken to the lawyers and they have amended the agreement we made back in 1925. The Lodge is to be Audrey’s or Arthur’s home for as long as they want it to be. We have no idea what will happen to us. William insists on staying in town.”
*
Ten-year-old Audrey took to the house immediately. She played in the garden, helped in the kitchen, sat by her Uncle Henry in the kitchen as he told what he remembered about The Lodge.
“What’s in the attics, Aunt Rose?” Audrey asked at teatime one day when she had lived in The Lodge for less than a week.
“Where?”
“There’s a door at the top of the landing.”
“The one right up at the top?”
“It’s locked,” Audrey’s Uncle Henry answered slowly. “And it’s locked for a reason.”
“What’s that?” Audrey asked, though she didn’t feel as confident as she sounded.
“It’s really not very safe up there,” Henry answered tentatively. “Behind the door there’s a very rickety staircase, thirteen steps through cobwebs, and at the top there’s a landing with another door, and through that a room with a very weak floor.” Rose and Audrey stared at Henry as he spoke, his sightless eyes filling with tears. “Your father, my brother, fell through the floor when he was a boy. He was badly hurt and so our father had it boarded up. So no one could get hurt. Like William was hurt. Like I was hurt.”
Rose and Audrey exchanged a glance as Henry’s voice gave way and he could say no more.
“Couldn’t it all be fixed?”
“No. It bloody couldn’t.” Henry’s voice was uncharacteristically harsh.
“But I’d love to go up there to explore,” Audrey had ventured after a few moments of uncomfortable silence.
“No,” Henry repeated, getting more agitated.
“You won’t, will you?” Rose said, more persuasively.
“Why not?
“Because, as your uncle has said, it is not safe and he doesn’t want you to put yourself or your brother at risk.”
“Arthur won’t go up there.”
“Well neither will you. You will promise not to, won’t you?”
Audrey reluctantly nodded, her fingers crossed behind her back.
Rose hoped that Audrey would take her warnings to heart. Henry had told her everything about his brother’s fall and the aftermath. His memories of that day had never softened.
“Say you promise. A nod is not enough,” Rose said firmly.
“I promise,” Audrey repeated, her fingers still crossed behind her back, a sign which, of course, meant she did not have to keep it.
*
Audrey only went up into the attics twice.
The first time was on a rainy afternoon in the spring of 1941. She had found an old key in a drawer in the kitchen dresser and had spent the afternoon seeing what lock it would open. When she had felt it work on the door on the top floor she knew she had found the way into the attic.
She had waited until she knew Rose and Henry were in the kitchen with Arthur and she had unlocked the door and climbed the steep and irregular steps.
She had shone the torch into both rooms and seen the boxes and the pictures covered in cloth, but she had also seen the cobwebs and the skeletons of dead rats. The floorboards creaked ominously and seemed to her to give even under her light weight, so she had turned and climbed back down the stairs. She locked the door behind her but she was careful to keep the key.
One day she would be brave enough to have a better look at what was up there.
The second time was in the summer of 1943.
She had unlocked the door and climbed the stairs, but this time she was prepared for the cobwebs, the rats’ skeletons and the creaking floorboards which didn’t seem very safe. She spent an hour looking at the pictures hidden underneath the heavy cloths and pushing aside broken pieces of furniture to see the section of floor replaced after her father’s fall more than fifty years before.
After she had climbed back down the stairs and as she was locking the door behind her she heard her name called.
“Audrey? Are you up here?”
Audrey froze. Rowan was home on leave but she was early, and she was coming up the stairs. She would know exactly where she had been.
“Audrey?” Rowan’s voice was closer and Audrey knew she had been found out.
“Hello,” she said as Rowan’s head came into view at the top of the stairs.
“Audrey. What on earth are you doing here? You haven’t, have you? I mean you haven’t been up in the attic?”
She saw the key in Audrey’s hand.
“Oh Audrey, you naughty girl.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You just couldn’t resist it could you?”
“Could you?”
“I wanted to come up here. I really did, but Dad was so very, very against it. I couldn’t.”
“Do you want to know what’s up there?”
“No. I don’t. Well, yes. Was there anything interesting?”
“Just a lot of old junk.”
“I thought that’s what it would be. But you must promise never to go up there again.”
“Why?”
“Because my mum and dad tell you not to. Isn’t that good enough reason?”
“I suppose so.”
Audrey sat down next to Rowan on the top stair and Rowan took her hand in hers.
“We had good times here didn’t we, you and me?”
“Before you went away?”
“I know we only had a few months together but I did show you some of the places you could explore didn’t I?”
“The old chapel in the woods?”
“Yes, and every floor but the attics. I know it must be horridly difficult for you away from your mother and father, living in this strange old house. All these nooks and crannies must be really tempting but you must promise me never to go up into these attics again.”
“Why not?” Audrey asked.
“Because it would be very hurtful to my dad if he knew you had. Not just because you promised not to and had broken your promise to them, but because Dad has really bad memories of the last time he went up there and it would be really, really unfair if he realised you had been up there too.”
“Sorry. I know I promised.”
“Yes, you did.”
“But I had—”
“You had your fingers crossed behind your back?”
Audrey nodded sheepishly.
“I used to do that too, but it really isn’t right. It doesn’t mean that you cannot keep your promise.”
“Sorry.”
“Will you promise me you won’t go back up into these attics?”
“You?”
“Yes, me.”
“Why?”
“Because I love my dad and it would hurt him incredibly if he knew you were risking falling, and I love my mum and it would hurt her terribly if she knew you had broken your promise.”
“All right,” Audrey whispered.
“If you promise I’ll give you something to remind you to keep that promise.”
“What?”
Rowan reached up and passed the gold chain over her head. “Here.”
“Your pendant?”
“Yes. Dad gave it to Mum before he went to war in 1914. She wore it all the time Dad he was away. Then she gave it to me for luck just before I joined the WRAF. Dad said it once belonged to your great-grandmother, her name was Josephine, and he believes her father gave it to her so it is very, very old. Now it is yours and you must keep it to remind you of the promise you’ve made never, ever, to go up into those attics again.”
“I can’t wear it, can I? She’ll know you haven’t got it anymore.”
“No. You can’t wear it, at least until you’re older.”
“I’ll keep it in my treasures box.”
“Yes, you can do that.”
Audrey held the fine gold chain and the beautiful locket in her hands. “I promise,” she said.
And this time she meant it.
Audrey never did wear the pendant.
She put it into her treasures box which she kept in the drawer in her bedside table and when, two weeks later, news came that Rowan had been killed during an air raid at the airfield in Kent where she had been working as a driver, she decided that she never would.
Audrey always blamed herself. If Rowan had still had her lucky pendant she would not have been killed.
*
The day after Rowan’s funeral Rose asked Audrey into what had been her daughter’s bedroom.
“You must move into this room now, you are the daughter of the house.”
Audrey was fourteen years old. She had always loved her cousin’s bedroom. They had spent many hours talking and listening to the radio or playing music on Rowan’s gramophone. It was nothing like her own room, which had failed to shrug off its connotations of once being a nursery. This was a woman’s bedroom and it always seemed to Audrey that that was the afternoon she was allowed to grow up.
“This will be your room for as long as you want it to be,” Rose had told Audrey, and it was her room for more than sixty years.
*
After the war William arranged for twelve-year-old Arthur to go to boarding school. They wanted Audrey to return to London, she was eighteen years old and, despite the post-war austerity, there was a social world re-emerging that Eva was determined Audrey would enjoy. She was to be a debutante and would find an eligible husband, one suitable for the daughter of a baronet.
But Audrey had other ideas; she had no intention of leaving the Isle of Wight. She loved The Lodge, she loved living on the island, she loved her uncle and aunt and she wanted to look after them. So she stayed.
When Rose died in the cold winter of 1947 there was never any question but that Audrey would remain with her Great-Uncle Henry at The Lodge.
“But darling,” Eva breathed persuasively down the phone line, “there are so many young things in town now, you’ll have such fun.”
“I don’t want fun, Mother, I am happy here. I’ve got friends here and Uncle Henry needs me.”
“You can’t possibly be happy there!”
“But I am.”
“You can’t give up your life to look after your uncle.”
“It doesn’t seem like giving up my life, Mother, he is a lovely man, he teaches me a lot about things.”
“What sort of things?”
“About history, about politics, about being interested in the world.”
“But he needs looking after, in ways, well, not to put too fine a point on it, in ways a young woman cannot get involved with.”
“Alan does all that.”
“Alan?”
“Alan Wickens. He’s lived on the estate all his life, he’s the grandson of the old estate manager, he does everything to run the house, and he looks after Uncle Henry, he helps him wash and dress, all that kind of stuff.”
“It’s really not the way you should be living, in a house miles away from anywhere, alone with two men. There isn’t a housekeeper? A woman in the house?”
“No mother, I am the woman in the house.”
And Audrey stayed.
When her mother died in 1950 there was no reason for her not to.
*
One morning in late 1970, when Henry knew that his time was coming to an end, he told Audrey about the family Bible. “Bring it to me,” he had said, telling her exactly where he had put it in 1914 before he had gone to war. He was certain no one would have moved it; he had never known anyone disturb the books on the shelves in the library.
As she carried the book through the hall to Henry, who was sitting in his chair by the range in the kitchen, she had looked at the handwritten entries in the inner cover. Claude Olivierre, born Napoleone Buonaparte; Ajaccio, Corse, fifteenth day of august in the year seventeen hundred and sixty-nine. She sat down on the bottom stair. Fourth day of april 1816, Patience Shaw married Claude Olivierre. She read on. Charles I.IX.1816 died same, Charles III.VIII.1817 died same, Mary Lettice born XXII.XII.1818 departed XIV.I.1820, Josephine VI.VI.1820.
The implications of what she was reading were not lost on Audrey, but she could not help but think what it must have been like to lose three babies in such a short time. She felt for Patience Shaw. But, Audrey saw, Josephine had survived.
Josephine Mary Olivierre married William Bernard Lacey IX.VII.1851.
She read down the entries ending with those that Henry had written and she saw that he and Rose, too, had lost a baby son.
“Uncle Henry?” she asked uncertainly, not sure how to ask the question uppermost in her mind. “Did you know about Claude?”
“You’ve read it then.” She noticed the resignation in his voice. “Yes, I’ve known since 1914. I forgot for a while. I forgot many things for a long while.”
“Yet you’ve remembered and you’ve not done anything with the knowledge.”
“If you can believe what is written.”
“No one would have written a lie like that, would they? It must be true.”
“Give it to me.”
Audrey handed the Bible to Henry and watched as he felt for the front pages. He had ripped them out before she realised what he was doing. She could not stop him as he ripped the pages to tiny shreds. His resignation had turned to a cold anger.
“Take this.” He held out his hands and she took the handful of paper from him. “Put it in a saucer.” She did as she was told. “Now set fire to it. I may not be able to see but I will hear and smell if you don’t do as I say.” She obeyed him and watched as tiny flames ate up what was left of the words. “Now take those ashes and wash them down the sink.” Henry could not know that she had kept a few of the scraps of paper to put in her box of treasures.
“Never speak of this Audrey. Swear to me you will tell no one. Ever.”
He became agitated when she made no immediate response. “You must swear you will never speak of this. There has been too much war. There has been too much unhappiness. Let it end here. Swear to me, Audrey. On Rowan’s memory.”
“I swear.”
“Here. Here’s the Bible. Put your hand on it and swear.”
“I swear. On this Bible I swear never to say anything about anything I saw to anybody.”
Audrey never forgot but she was able to push her secret to the back of her mind. Until a bag and a chest were found in a chimney destroyed by lightning.
*
For the four years after her fall Audrey was torn between the promise she had made and the Skye’s right to know the truth of her heritage.
She had always known she would never say anything but she was careful to leave the scraps of paper in her treasures box in the drawer by her bedside table.
When she was dead Skye could do what she wished with what she found. She was not bound by an oath to stay quiet.