Page 24 of The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby
CAROLINE, LONGHURST, 1991
“Welcome to Longhurst,” said Patrick as we turned in at the wrought iron front gate and rumbled up an oak-flanked driveway. So this was it. The house where Juliette had grown up. The house the photograph at the Witt suggested her painting had somehow found its way back to.
Patrick followed my gaze to a huddle of ripped yurts in a distant field. “That’s Philip Willoughby’s doing,” he explained. “One of his many attempts to monetize the estate. Those are from the failed opera festival, I think. The truth is, Philip has had rather more misses than hits, entrepreneurially speaking.”
That seemed an understatement. As we bounced the mile or so up to the house, Patrick pointed out a field striated with sorry-looking vines (a failed winery), the overgrown remains of a go-kart track, and a sign welcoming visitors to an A-Mazing Maize Maze, next to a bare field.
“He’s nice, Philip, although he’ll no doubt regale you with his latest money-making wheeze. His mother—the painter Austen Willoughby’s widow—is still going strong in her nineties.” Patrick made a whistling noise through his teeth, “And she is something else. She was there this one time when Freddie persuaded Harry and me to row over the lake—she must have been in her eighties then—and I have never heard a telling off like it. Even Freddie couldn’t smirk his way through that one. Then there’s Harry’s mother, Georgina....”
He thought for a moment, as we swerved to avoid a particularly large pothole. “Definitely an acquired taste. You’ll know very quickly if she likes you or not. She has always approved of me, for some unknown reason, which means we will probably be sitting near her tonight. Consider this advance warning.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I said, as it dawned on me that, being Patrick’s plus-one, I would spend the evening being appraised and assessed.
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Patrick said with a laugh, waving at a dark-haired woman in an apron who was marching across the gravel. He wound down the window and shouted: “Georgina!”
She shaded her eyes to peer into the car at us.
“Patrick!” she cried, in apparent delight, at considerable volume. “Park up here, would you, and give the keys to the chap in the hall in case we need to shuffle the cars around to make space. I’m afraid you won’t be staying in the Green Room tonight—we were all set up for you and then a bloody pipe burst.”
She pulled a face and raised one hand melodramatically to her forehead.
“The Green Room?” I asked Patrick.
“That’s the bedroom—top floor, green leaf-print wallpaper, view of the lawn and the lake—my dad and I always get put in, when he or I stay here. But not tonight, apparently. That’s the thing with big old country piles like this—there’s always something in need of fixing.”
In illustration, he pointed at the scaffolding erected along one side of the house, partly wrapped in white plastic tarps. More tarps shrouded a section of the roof. Both things looked like they had been there for some time.
Despite these signs of encroaching decay, the house was still imposing. I had done my homework: originally a smaller Georgian manor, it had been purchased by the Willoughby family in the 1840s, then extended and embellished in golden Bath stone in Gothic Revival style, complete with rose windows, flying buttresses, and soaring turrets.
Staff in white shirts and waistcoats were swarming the lawn on one side of the building, some with meadows-full of floral arrangements in their arms, others trays of sparkling glassware. A tower of champagne coupes was being assembled by the entrance. Although Harry’s invitation had requested white tie and promised dinner and dancing, fireworks at midnight and a hog roast at dawn, until that moment, the scale of the event hadn’t really dawned on me. It was clear this would be unlike any birthday party I had ever attended.
“I thought you said the Willoughbys were tight with money,” I whispered to Patrick.
“There are some things that a family like this will always pay for, and a milestone like this is one. It’s no wonder they have my dad looking into selling more of Austen’s paintings.”
“Caroline!” I heard my name called from across the driveway, and turned to see Athena emerging from a Rolls-Royce, already dressed for dinner. I waved hello at her driver, Karl. We had met once before, when he collected Athena and me after a birthday party in London and dropped us at the Galanises’ house in Holland Park. I remember being baffled at the time by how bare the place was. Only later did it dawn on me that this was probably just one of the family’s London houses—and possibly just one of their drivers.
Athena tottered over to join us. I made some remark about turning up in style.
“You didn’t offer me a lift, so what other option did I have?” she said, a little frostily.
“Athena, where exactly do you think we could have put you?” I said, gesturing to the two-seater MG. It was obvious the person she was really annoyed at was Freddie, who had not only refused to drive her here but had also told her that under no circumstances was she to introduce herself to the family as his girlfriend. Clearly, this was neither the time nor the place for me to mention I’d seen him sneaking around earlier at the Osiris clubhouse.
“And here he is,” said Patrick, swiftly changing the subject. “The birthday boy.”
Harry was standing on the porch, greeting people as they arrived, shaking hands, accepting gifts.
“Patrick!” he said. “Welcome.” He shook Patrick’s hand vigorously. “And Caroline, so glad you could make it!”
For a moment I thought he was going to shake my hand too, but instead he gave me a stiff hug. He directed us through to the hallway, where a calligraphed list on a wooden easel detailed who was allocated which bedroom. Ours was the Rose Room, on the second floor, in between Athena’s and the one assigned to a Francis Gore-Wykeham-Fiennes.
“I’m going to find Freddie,” Athena declared, marching off. Patrick handed his car key to a man in a waistcoat, who placed it in a dresser drawer, and then gestured for me to follow him up the stairs.
“Wait here for a second,” Patrick told me when we reached our floor. “I’ll drop the bags in our room and give you a little tour of the house.”
As I waited for him to return, I looked over the marble balustrade at the other guests arriving, the girls with their glossy hair, the boys with their suit bags folded over their arms. When he returned, we descended and poked our heads into a succession of rooms that were clearly designed for entertaining on a grand scale—impressive rather than welcoming. The dining room, with its gleaming candelabras, put me in mind of a ghost ship; one formal living room had sofas so upright and understuffed and uncomfortable-looking it would surely have been preferable to stand.
This was the life Juliette had run away from. I could not say I blamed her.
