Gloria Cook - Leaving Shades

What magic was this? This was not how she remembered it all those years ago, the house and gardens, and the view down to the cliffs and the sea beyond. To her seven-year-old mind it had been always bleak and lonely, sinister even. How could it all now be breathtakingly clear, enticing, an enchanting multiplicity of colours? The magic at work today was an insidious magic, for what other explanation could there be for the banishment of all the cold creeping shadows she had known before? Even on a day as it was now, gloriously hot and in the height of summer, the smallest thing about her old home and its surroundings had seemed cold and disturbing and full of threat.

Beth Tresaile did not want to find Owles House and the waters out in the bay to be an artful seduction of optimism and beauty. The waters, once inky and ominous to her, were a sun-sparkled and inviting greeny-blue, busy with bobbing pleasure boats, a few hardy fishing boats, yachts flaunting gaily coloured sails, and a distant ship or two. The taste of the tangy salt of the sea was on Beths tongue. She found herself breathing in the evocative scents of the newly mown lawn, of lavender and roses and dozens of other superbly healthy blooms. She was aware of the distant timeless wash of the cresting waves, and the gentle mesmerizing buzzing of insects close by. Altogether it was a dreadful beguiling harmony.

It should not be like this! Not now, throwing the purpose of her return into confusion!

She snapped her eyes shut, refusing to be drawn in or to listen to the peaceful sounds. It was foolish to have come back here. To this quiet place. This hated place. But she had really had no choice, for no longer was she able to ignore the memories of what had happened to her here. Memories that haunted her and refused to let her go. So here she was. Unannounced. With a mission. To seek the answers and explanations she deserved. And needed. And would demand. After fifteen years of absence she had returned to her mothers house. To find out why, with such cold indifference, her mother had neglected her and then rejected her.

Chillingly, her self-righteous anger did not count as protection while she was this close to her past and the confrontation she was seeking. In squalid murky glimpses, her mind replayed old frights and anxieties. Her stomach felt it was being dragged down into a bottomless pit and she could hardly swallow past the lump rising in her throat. Another moment and something huge and sinister from her nightmares might come and swallow her up and wipe out the remains of her carefully assembled confidence.

I dont think I can do think this, Kitty. Beth kept one hand on the open door of her Ford Sedan her link to the more comfortable present, her source of indignant withdrawal. Now it might become a hasty retreat.

Kitty got out of the passenger seat and was there beside her. Youve come a long way, Beth, literally and emotionally. Its what you wanted, remember?

I know, but I was wrong.

I understand. Yet its so important to you. Wouldnt it be a pity to leave now?

To run away, you mean?

Its what youd be doing, dont you think?

Beth sighed. Yes, youre right. She squeezed Kittys arm, thankful for her far-reaching advice, for being such a good friend. Kitty always gave support of exactly the right kind, at just the right moment. They were so in sync that strangers might mistake them for sisters. Both were poised with perfect posture. Both wore fashionable knee-length, tubular, drop-waist, cap-sleeved dresses and cloche-style straw sun hats. Both were good looking, although Kitty was outstandingly so with a graceful long neck, and a gleaming Titian fringe on show and soft waves that caressed her cheeks. Beths hidden hair was bobbed and the soft colour of butterscotch.

Dredging up her lost determination, Beths Louis-heeled shoes crunched over the gravelled drive, formerly a small carriageway, until she stopped at the bottom of the three wide stone steps leading up to the front door of Owles House. The house was square and two storeys high. Its wisteria-clad walls were in perfect symmetry and today they seemed to go on and on up into the storybook-blue sky. The outside of the house, like the gardens, had always been kept in perfect order. The same could not be said about the interior.

I dont suppose you remember much about the house, Kitty said, beside her.

Actually I do, even though Ive tried to forget all about it. My private tutor, Miss Muriel Oakley the spinster daughter of the parish vicar talked about it a lot. Owles House had gone through some colourful history. Its mid-Georgian, originally built for the captain of a packet ship, who was supposedly a shrewd smuggler. My father, when he wasnt staying away for days at a time, worked the local tradesmen hard into keeping everything up to scratch. I had it drummed into me that everything had to be left exactly how I found it. I expect theres some good stuff inside. Ill say one thing for She could not bring herself to say my mother. For, um, Christina. She always had good taste in fine art. Good taste that had all too often been reduced to a mess of wall-to-wall smashed ornaments. Christina had quickly replaced them with more of the same suitable antiques.

Beth glanced back at the motor car. Before today the vehicle she had usually alighted from was the vicarage pony and trap. Miss Oakley, a plain, jolly type, always smelling nicely of roses, had collected and driven her home from her exclusive lessons. On winter days the daily excursion had been freezing cold and bleak. The vicars lady very much in the mould of old Queen Victoria, from the pictures Beth had seen of her late Majesty never spoke to Beth or even looked at her. If she encountered Miss Oakley with her solitary pupil, Mrs Oakley would refer to Beth as that child. Beth had come to bitterly resent what she saw as being treated like an urchin by the bogus queen. In later years Beth surmised that financial necessity in the vicarage had led to Miss Oakleys genteel employment as tutor to the richest child in the area. Beth had tried to forget Muriel Oakley; ebullient she might have been, but the stooped, thin womans persona was also cloaked by an unfathomable bareness.

At the end of each school day her mother had not been waiting at the door to take her little leather satchel and ask her how her day had been. There had been no hugs, no treats and no promises, nothing tasty for tea. And after a while, there had been no Daddy finally returning home and no mention of him. He had deserted his family. Beth had learned a few years afterwards that Philip Tresaile, known as Phil, had been killed in the Great War. Beth had been denied her daddy for much of the vital years of her young life, and it was all Christinas fault, according to Grandma. Dear, wonderful Grandma, who had willingly taken over the task of raising her. And now Grandma was dead too.

Marion Frobisher had been Beths maternal grandmother. Im sorry to say, darling Beth, I have no time for your mother, my daughter, my only child, was Grandmas oft sadly related remark. Not after all shes put you through. Running off for days untold, drinking herself to kingdom come, and finally ending up in a ditch for God only knows how long, then having to be thrown into the madhouse because she didnt even know her own name. What kind of mother was that? A rotten, self-serving one is all I can say. She was a bad mother and a bad wife. When I think of how she treated your poor father it was no wonder he was rarely at home. Well, youre better off now with me. Ill take the greatest care of you and well have lots of fun.