Secrets of the Heart Read online

  Upstairs in the stuffy main bedroom of the farmhouse, the alarm clock ticked away in the dark. Andrew pulled back the bedcovers and encountered the patchwork quilt, made by Penny’s mother. This was strange. Always, without fail, Penny removed it from the bed and folded it carefully. He put out a hand, felt across the quilt for the warm hump of Penny and found nothing.

  He snapped on the light. The bed was empty and so was the room. There was a note on the pillow, which he snatched up. ‘I’ve left you,’ Penny had written, ‘for Bob, who wants me. You don’t and you never have. I’ll fetch my things another time. Good luck with the fight.’

  Andrew lurched into the bathroom and was violently sick.

  When he finally managed to drop into a twitchy sleep, Andrew dreamed of Jack. He pictured him, tall and short-sighted, ranging the moor and thinking of Mary. He was a man who would have known how to calculate time and distance from the sun and moon, a man whose power and presence were growing as Andrew wrote him into the letters and prepared to deceive as many people as possible to save his farm.

  Who sows a field or trains a flower

  Or plants a tree, is more than all.

  5

  Early in February Agnes received a packet from Andrew Kelsey containing seventeen letters from Jack to Mary and dropped everything to read them.

  She held them gingerly. These were fragile artefacts from which secrets must be coaxed. Written on various kinds of papers, they were mottled and foxed with age and, in places, worn almost into transparency. Some were in thick lead pencil, some in watery navy blue ink. The handwriting varied in its legibility, and showed signs of stress and cramped conditions. The sifting and making sense occupied Agnes for a whole afternoon.

  Afterwards, shaken and moved, she sorted them into date order. It appeared that Mary had left the farm without an explanation and, vague as to where she was going, abandoned the lover who was too old? medically unfit? to fight. To reassure her, remind her, perhaps, Jack wrote in minute detail of life on the farm and, always, of his love for Mary. The list of her beauties was tenderly couched – the shape and colour of her eyes, her slender back and arched feet. A man of deep emotions and some poetry, he described over and over how he had fallen in love with her at first sight. ‘I had no idea,’ he wrote, ‘how completely and utterly you know within the instant. How mind, body and spirit fuse as the spear strikes into the soul.’

  After she had finished, Agnes paced up and down her uncle’s study, which was large enough to allow her to do so. Her study now. The letters had convinced her that this was a subject which would work. But how? She picked up the phone and put a call through to Dickie, a commissioning editor at the BBC with whom she had collaborated on several projects.

  An hour later she was checking over her diary when Maud appeared in the study doorway. ‘There’s someone on the phone who wants to speak to you,’ she said, in the ultra-polite manner that always gave Agnes pause.

  ‘What are you up to, Maud?’

  ‘Rien,’ said Maud, and disappeared.

  Agnes picked up the phone. ‘Will you come out for a drink with me?’ said Julian Knox. ‘Please.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you?’ he replied. ‘Six thirty at Buzacki’s on Tuesday next week?’

  Agnes sighed. ‘I suppose you’ve been talking to Maud.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I have.’

  ‘Then I must come and put the record straight.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  At Buzacki’s there was a discreet clink of glasses, the glitter of mirror and chrome, and bowls on tables heaped with expensive nuts and handmade crisps.

  After a moment or two’s study, she modified her first impressions. This was a different man from the successful opportunist prowling around the walled garden. He was still as sleek and groomed, but more fatigued, troubled, and she wanted very much to know why.

  ‘Within the instant,’ it had said in Jack’s letter. Agnes helped herself to the nuts. ‘I gather you laid siege to my aunt again. It wasn’t very honest.’ She gave him a direct look. ‘Was it?’

  ‘Honest? Yes and no. Your aunt was very keen that I had a go at changing your mind. I was interested in seeing you again. Ergo. Is that dishonest?’

  She leaned forward. ‘Preying on an old lady?’

  ‘Is that what you call it?’ He ran his fingers through his red-gold hair, which destroyed the sleek look and replaced it with a boyish one. ‘I was practically kidnapped over the phone by your vigorous aunt and I had to swear on the blood of Julie Andrews that I would try to talk you round.’

  Agnes almost felt sorry for him. ‘So she mentioned The Sound of Music?’

  He opened his hands in a gesture that said, I quite understand, enjoy even, the absurdities of human nature but this was a tough one. ‘Put it this way, I hadn’t appreciated its merits before. But by the time she had finished I did.’

  Kindness to elderly ladies what not what she had expected, or the humour. Perhaps he was a Jekyll and Hyde character, a fiend in the boardroom, wise and tolerant at home. They did exist. Whatever, he was a little mysterious and that always appealed to her. Agnes rolled the wine-glass idly between her fingers. It never did to make assumptions and she should know that by now.

  ‘Decent homes mean decent lives,’ he said, laying out his case like gems in a jeweller’s window. ‘We need profit. Why not combine the two?’

  ‘Flagge House is not a proposition.’

  ‘Of course.’ He poured out more wine. ‘I quite understand. But situations have a way of changing, believe me. And you will be saddled with its upkeep.’ He paused. ‘Not to mention fending off everyone who wishes to give you advice.’

  ‘Tell me, who should I trust?’

  Again the quick, ironic smile. ‘Obviously not me. But now that that’s been said, and I have done what I promised your aunt, shall we change the subject?’

  His capitulation was too easy and Agnes was immediately suspicious. She put down her glass and leaned on her elbows. ‘Shouldn’t you come clean?’ she asked. ‘About what you want from me?’

  ‘Not a bad idea.’ He captured the last nut from the bowl. ‘You look like a schoolteacher,’ he said. ‘A divine one.’

  She had forgotten the feint and counter-feint of pursuit, and lust, and the exhilaration of both. The tiny little pricks of anticipation, and the responses resurrected from their semi-death. Only a few weeks ago she would not have thought it possible but perhaps, perhaps, the spectre of an old and done-with love was, finally, banished.

  ‘Will you come sailing with me some time?’

  ‘Yes. If you don’t mind a novice.’

  He must have been watching her very carefully for he reached out with his hand and covered hers. Thin fingers that she liked. A texture of skin that she liked. ‘I wanted to know if you’re getting over your uncle,’ he said. ‘Does it hurt less?’

  She looked down at their hands. ‘I will be fine.’

  ‘Good.’ He removed his hand and desire washed through Agnes so powerfully that she was literally breathless.

  After a moment, he asked if she was working on a project, and she told him about the letters and Andrew Kelsey. She also admitted that they had a problem in verifying who Jack and his lover Mary actually were. It was particularly difficult as there were no letters from Mary. ‘She seems to have disappeared completely, leaving Jack in the dark. But it is odd because Jack is so besotted and what he writes suggests that she is too.’

  ‘There could be hundreds of reasons,’ said Julian. ‘War was like that.’

  ‘But to be so secretive.’

  ‘Secret work, perhaps.’ He refilled their glasses. ‘For instance, the SOE made a point of using women during the war for undercover work. Jack sounds as though he was educated, and perhaps Mary spoke a language and was used in intelligence. I’ve been reading about it. If you make the assumption that Mary was sent into the field – for instance, France – she could not possibly have
written any letters home.’

  Not bad, thought Agnes, fascinated by the way he held the wine-glass.

  ‘Can you imagine how lonely and isolated it must have been, knowing that you were living in a different box from everyone else? Being apart.’ He spoke matter-of-factly but his body language suggested to Agnes that he had experienced this.

  Within the instant.

  Being apart and lonely was Agnes’s main memory, right from the beginning. In fact, she had made a speciality of being miserable. ‘Yes, I can,’ she said. ‘Very well.’

  ‘It’s only a supposition but I’ll send you a book I’m reading on the subject, if you like.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get my colleague, Bel, on to it.’

  He did not seem to hear her. ‘Think,’ he said. ‘On the run, pushing your response to the limit. Diving into yourself. Digging into yourself.’

  Not bad, not bad at all.

  The air between them seemed charged, and the chemistry fizzed in the pit of her stomach. Agnes struggled to be sensible.

  ‘I’m going away for a week or so,’ he said eventually, ‘but can we meet again?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, and felt the pulses beat in her wrist and at her throat.

  The following week, she and Bel waited in the reception of Television House. ‘Tell you what,’ said Bel, ‘if this goes through and the figures are right, we’ll go shopping.’

  Bel was always trying to smarten up Agnes and it was true that she had not bothered much lately.

  ‘I’m sick to death of you in those trousers and refusing to take an interest in what you look like. Pierre was a pig and you’re over him, and it’s time you got your hair cut.’

  ‘You sound like him,’ she murmured.

  Pierre had berated Agnes for her lack of chic and her English indulgence in imperfection, and she had argued that what lay underneath was what mattered. He had said, ‘You are so young, Agnes, so innocent. Do you want to succeed?’ She had been so angry and so sure she was right… Agnes was brought up short. For the first time she was thinking about Pierre without the accompanying hobgoblins of pain and humiliation. Good.

  ‘OK,’ she said, taking Bel by surprise. ‘Let’s go shopping.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dickie, opening the meeting. ‘What have you beauties got for me today?’

  They were in one of the conference rooms with huge plate-glass windows, no air – or, rather, only the conditioned kind swarming with menacing bacteria – and rows of bottled mineral water. Providing you nailed him in the mornings, Dickie’s nose for a popular programme was infallible and Agnes trusted him. She outlined a couple of ideas: the Jack and Mary letters, a forty-minute exposé of the DDT breastmilk scandal in India.

  ‘Breastmilk, great,’ said Dickie. ‘Just what we should be doing. Nice and PC. That will jack up the Brownie points. The other one…’ He shook his head. ‘I know we said we wanted history, but I’m not quite sure. Not sexy enough.’

  Agnes said, ‘Actually, there is a handle on this one. The farmer is about to be evicted by a landlord who wants the land back for development. There’s a row brewing in the local community. The farm’s been there since the sixteenth century.’

  Dickie brightened. Bel, like lightning on the uptake, shoved the list of figures over the table. He glanced at them. ‘Don’t try and pull any wool over my eyes.’

  ‘Why should I?’ asked Agnes, softly.

  ‘Because you’re unscrupulous, sweetie, that’s why. As I well know.’ Dickie read on. ‘Who’s Mary?’ he asked.

  ‘His lover. We think she went off to fight somewhere. One theory is that she was an agent.’

  ‘Oh, well, then,’ Dickie said, ‘that’s great. I like it. Battlefronts, women in the front line, Mata Hari, injustice, war. Great.’

  Despite working late into the night on budgets, Agnes woke fresh and clear-eyed at Flagge House. Today she had three meetings in London, a catch-up with Bel and a drink with Jed, her favourite cameraman. She stretched and her head fell back. It was too soon to jump to conclusions, and one crackling strike of attraction over a glass of wine did not a new life make.

  She padded into the bathroom and endeavoured to concentrate on the meetings. The breastmilk project required more money. How could she arrange it by the autumn? More worrying, Jed had been booked for another project. But instead of solutions presenting themselves, the image of a blue, sunlit sea danced across her vision in an enchanted wash of colour and light. A wine-dark sea, over which she would speed with the freedom of the released.

  Downstairs, she located a spare copy of the letters, which had been typed up and bound into a file, and packed them carefully into a padded envelope with her business card. On it, she wrote, ‘I thought you might like a copy.’

  This she sent to Julian Knox.

  6

  The card lay on top of Julian’s papers in the kitchen of Cliff House. Kitty noticed it at once. She picked it up. ‘Who’s Agnes Campion?’

  Julian was stowing a bottle of wine in the picnic cooler. ‘Possible business.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Kitty scrutinized the card for further clues. Was his answer the usual ducking away from confrontation? She knew him so well, from back to front, from side to side, and she knew that he would work all night rather than face her questioning. And, oh, how he hated confrontation, particularly where feelings were concerned. But wasn’t that like all men?

  Julian fastened the cooler and placed it on the floor. Then he reached over and prised the card out of Kitty’s hand. ‘Business, Kitty. That’s all.’

  He was lying, she knew he was, but she had to carry on as if it did not matter a jot. Kitty put her head on one side in a manner that always made Julian uneasy. He had told her it made her seem arch, but she couldn’t help it. ‘Don’t be a bully.’

  ‘Then don’t pry.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Kitty picked up her expensive pale blue jacket and shrugged it on. ‘Why do you insist on picnicking in mid-winter? Why do I let you bully me?’ They were en route for Lincolnshire, where Julian was going to make one of his weekend site visits which, as chief executive of the company, was not strictly necessary but, as he explained to Kitty, only unwise emperors never visited the empire.

  ‘It’s nearly spring. It’s good for you. For me.’ Julian grinned and kissed her cheek lightly. ‘Let’s go.’

  Everything was all right, really.

  Nevertheless, the card cast a darkening shadow over Kitty as they drove north to Lincolnshire. It was always the way, she had discovered. Small things possessed a power to disturb out of proportion to their size.

  Agnes Campion.

  They drove across fenland, so flat that Kitty felt giddy, through which were threaded drainage ditches as straight as tram-lines. A ferocious wind buffeted the car and whipped over fields so large that Kitty wondered if she had strayed into the Russian steppes.

  Mile after mile, the countryside was quite different from the pink-bricked, graceful landscape she was used to, but she had had the forethought to read up on it a little. Here had been traditional farming communities, governed by rote and season, by husbandry and tilth – she liked that word – but they had been invaded by new techniques. She peered out of the car window. If you looked carefully at the rich-soiled fields, said the guide, it was possible to see traces of the old ways.

  Suddenly, miraculously, the fens folded up into the wolds and the road was tugged upwards by the swell of the land. Kitty was entranced and she reached for the guidebook. ‘“Once the wool market for England,”’ she read out, ‘“the county is dotted with substantial grey stone churches and large houses built in a more prosperous age. The poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, lived and wrote in the area and called it the ‘Haunt of Ancient Peace’.”’

  At Horncastle, Julian turned right towards Skegness and drove several miles. On the outskirts of Loutham, where the sea was just discernible in the distance,
he stopped the car beside a field in which the skeletons of new houses were already in place. ‘Welcome to the Tennyson housing estate.’

  They got out of the car, Kitty already shivering inside her pale blue jacket. ‘Why here? It’s so windblown and… ugly.’

  ‘Well, for one, Bristling’s have built a large factory this side of Boston and it’s a perfect dormitory site for its executives.’

  ‘And where,’ asked Kitty, surprising herself, ‘will the badgers and foxes sleep?’

  Julian hunted for his jacket on the back seat. ‘I didn’t know you were a naturalist, Kitty darling.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Kitty fought to tie a headscarf over her hair, ‘but I could be.’ She looked over to the sea. Dotted with only a few trees, the outlook was bleak, desolate, and she turned back thankfully to the car.

  While Julian had his meetings with the group who had been assembled already by the Portakabin, Kitty drove herself to the nearest village and amused herself in a couple of junk shops. She bought a blue and white plate for her collection, a mirror for the staircase in the cottage, and a wooden coal scuttle banded in brass as a present for her mother. Signing a cheque always brought a satisfactory rush of blood to her head.

  Eventually, she drove back to retrieve Julian, who was still occupied with the architect. Feeling more acclimatized, Kitty hauled on a pair of Wellingtons and wandered around the estate, which was well over a mile in circumference. On the sea side, the foundations for a perimeter wall had already been dug, but Kitty felt instinctively that it would be no defence against the winds roaring in from polar regions, or rain lashing in from the sea.

  She walked along the rudimentary roads and closes to the furthest end. It was part of her self-imposed mission to be curious for, lately, she had been feeling the lack of it in herself and had wondered fearfully if it was a sign of ageing.

  At the end of the final close, one of the houses, much smaller than the others, was set at an angle to the rest. It faced in the direction of the coast, and the pale winter light illuminated its carapace of scaffolding and empty window arches.