Meanwhile, I had to find my way back to the present. By way of 1968.
Isabelle was in the Orangery when I found her, arranging another condolence bouquet into a vase. She didn’t look up as I came in.
“So, you’ve found it then.” She dropped the last of the flowers onto the low table between the sofas and stared out of the glass at the woods beyond. “I can’t imagine that you would have sought me out, otherwise.”
I sat gingerly on the edge of the other sofa. “I spoke to Therese. She told me a little about what happened the summer you moved in here. I wanted to be sure that I had the story straight before…”
“Before you confronted me.” Isabelle looked up at me sharply, then. “I know what she will have said. I don’t care. I want to know what my husband wrote about me. About me…me and Matthew.”
“He didn’t.” It came out more bluntly than I’d intended. “There was nothing in any of his notes about you having an affair. He hid his journal from that year. And when I found it… He wrote everything that happened at the party where Matthew died as a story. With two possible endings.” In fact, I was starting to think that even he didn’t know what happened that night. Wouldn’t it be just like Nathaniel to set us up a murder mystery?
Isabelle’s face turned grey under her make-up. “What? Then why…”
I still wasn’t feeling great about this part, so I looked down at my shoes as I replied. “We knew that there was something you were afraid would be in there. I needed to know what it was, before I could make a decision about whether or not to publish the memoirs. When we couldn’t find it…”
“You went and asked Therese.” My grandmother’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile, something I’d never seen on her face before. “And of course she was more than happy to give me up. She’s been waiting forty-eight years for the chance to make me pay for what I did. So. What are you going to do now?”
“Was Granddad really never unfaithful to you?” I asked, tangentially. “The diaries say not, but…”
“No.” Isabelle sighed. “In fact, I imagine that everything he has written there is the truth. It was messy and ugly enough without any embellishment.”
That much I could agree with. “If he wasn’t, then…” I trailed off, unable to finish the question. This was, after all, still my grandmother’s sex life I was talking about.
“Because I knew he could. Because I worried he might. Because I was twenty-four and insecure and there were all these beautiful girls who wanted my husband.” She turned back to look out of the window, then went on. “Because I was jealous. Because even after everything – the grand romance, the book, the elopement, the house – he still spoke to his little sister more than me. I started to think that maybe all it had ever been was a literary pretension – that he loved the story of loving me more than the person I was.”
“He didn’t.” The power with which Nathaniel Drury had fallen in love with his wife was obvious in every scrap of paper he’d left behind, even if it hadn’t always been clear by his actions.
“I know that now.” Isabelle’s voice was sharp. “Fifty years together – don’t you think I learned something about the man? But back then…”
“Why Matthew?” Even Therese, who had clearly adored the man, hadn’t really said much of substance about him. From Nathaniel’s journal, he appeared the sort who showed up for parties, caused trouble and left before anyone had to deal with the fallout.
“If I’m honest, I don’t even know any more. Partly because he was making a play for Therese, and I blamed her for the lack of conversation between me and my husband. Partly because he was easy, and I knew it would mean nothing at all to either of us in six months’ time. It would only matter to Nathaniel.”
“And yet, he left it out of his notes for the memoirs. He barely even mentioned it in his journal.” Which still baffled me, a little. Yes, I could understand Nathaniel wanting to spare Isabelle the scandal, or even not wanting his own cuckolding to be common knowledge. But then why wouldn’t he tell Isabelle that he wasn’t including it? Why wouldn’t he set her mind at rest?
“Yes.” Isabelle picked up a rose stem and twirled it between her fingers. “I can’t quite decide if that was a kindness, or a cruelty. After all, he obviously wanted me to worry, to reflect on my sins, or he would have told me. The fact he’d made plans for what would happen in the event of his death… He obviously suspected it was coming. He must have known how I would react.” She touched a thorn with her fingertip. “Perhaps he wanted me to confess.”
“I’m starting to think he wanted us all to confess,” I admitted. “That he wanted us to get all our secrets out in the open so we could see that we were none of us blameless.”
“And then we’d all forgive each other? Have a big group hug?” Isabelle had one incredulous eyebrow raised. “Do you really believe that?”
“I think he wanted Ellie and me to make up.”
“He wanted you to stop lying to yourself,” Isabelle said bluntly. “Nathaniel always said that fiction could not exist without truth. You have to know yourself first.”
“Maybe he’s right,” I conceded. I’d certainly done a lot of introspection over the last six months. But it wasn’t something I really wanted to discuss with Isabelle. “Will you tell me what happened? The night Matthew died?”
Isabelle sighed, her gaze still focused somewhere past my head. Somewhere in the past, I suspected. “It was the night that Nathaniel found out about us. He was in a rage, of course. I tried to keep him calm, to keep what was happening from all the guests. And that, at least, I managed. Everyone just assumed it was the drink – and God knows there was plenty of that.” She shook her head and looked at me again. “Anyway. He confronted Matthew, tried to throw him out of the house. There was yelling, and Therese overheard us all arguing, realised what had happened.”
“She said she walked out and got drunk.”
“Yes. And Matthew went back out to the party, and Nathaniel and I went back to arguing. It wasn’t until later…” She swallowed, looked away.
“I’d gone outside to get some fresh air. I walked around to the front of the house, and I saw them.”
“Them?”
“Matthew. And Therese. He tried to kiss her, and she struggled, pushed him away. He staggered back, then lurched towards her again. I started running, trying to get to them, and the pillars blocked my view, just for a moment. But then there was a scream, followed by the most awful silence.”
“Therese pushed him? But…she said she was passed out drunk!”
“I don’t know. When I reached them…they were both on the ground, Therese on top of Matthew. His head was cracked open; there was blood everywhere. Therese was barely conscious, but I managed to get her up. I dragged her into the shadows before Nathaniel came bounding out the front door, followed by the rest of the party. We escaped round the back of the house, and I got her up to her bedroom, into bed, before I rejoined the party.”
“So Nathaniel really didn’t know what happened?”
Isabelle shook her head. “Later, he saw blood on my dress. I’d not noticed it, in the dark and the chaos. But…he saw it. And I think… I think he thought I killed Matthew.”
I stared at her. “You never told him the truth?”
“How could I?” Isabelle asked. “When Therese woke up the next morning she remembered none of it. And even if she had…Nathaniel idolised his little sister. If he thought, for a moment, that she might have killed Matthew, it would have broken him. And I don’t know that she did kill him. They were both drunk. Chances are
it was an accident. He slipped and pulled her with him, or vice versa. I don’t know. I only know that I didn’t kill him.”
So nobody knew the truth. I didn’t know if that made things better or worse.
For forty-eight years, Isabelle had been protecting Therese, and Nathaniel, and they never even knew.
“Besides,” Isabelle went on. “I owed her…something. For what I did to her and Matthew. This was a secret I could keep.”
“And one I can, too.” I’d have to tell Edward the truth, I knew, but since the truth was that nobody knew the truth, and that Nathaniel had known even less than us, I felt on solid ground. As long as Isabelle agreed. “So, what do you want me to do about the memoirs now? Publish or not?”
Nathaniel hadn’t known what happened, despite his fictions. There was no story to tell, beyond the one he told me in the tree house, his last day on earth. But Isabelle’s affair… That would hurt her, if the world knew.
“Me?” Isabelle raised both eyebrows, this time, perfecting her ‘artfully surprised’ look. “Darling, I believe the decision was left to you. And to Edward.”
“Yes, theoretically. But I’m not going to publish things that make my family unhappy.”
That gave her pause, and she studied me for long moments before saying, “No. You should publish. Publish everything. If we are going to do this, then we are going to do it properly. A true history of the family.”
“Warts and all,” I murmured, with a smile, getting to my feet. Adultery, betrayal, secrets and lies, just like all of Nathaniel’s novels. Just as long as it didn’t include murder. “Okay.”
“Just one thing, darling,” Isabelle said, as I headed for the door. I turned back to face her. “What about your own truths?”
“You mean Ellie?” I asked, feeling colour rising to my cheeks. That story would not be pleasant to write. But Isabelle was right, just as Edward had been. If we were telling one truth, we had to tell them all.