Glittering Fortunes by Victoria Fox Page A

when they returned, poring over stills he had captured of bridges, cathedral spires; a stray dog they had encountered on a street corner. He’d unveiled the room to her weeks later, holding his hands over her eyes as they had stumbled into the uncanny light; red glow bathing the benches and worktops in fire. They’d kissed, hard against the wall; papers swiped from surfaces, her knees hoisted up around his waist. Charlie had made urgent, passionate love to her against the cabinet, reels of negatives hanging between them like wilderness threads, the blackout curtain torn by a sweat-drenched hand so that his day’s work had been flooded with frozen daylight. It was how her love had made him feel: as if every slate could be wiped, every book rewritten, every bad memory erased...
    Except for the memory of her.
    It had taken a blind leap to open up to Penny in the way that he had. He should have known better. To trust her had been foolish.
    To this day he could not forgive himself for allowing Cato into their lives. Everything his brother touched turned to dust.
    Charlie pegged the images and emerged into the chill cellar, closing the door behind him. Along the walls were the powder-covered graves of vintage wines and ports, dusty hollows where the bottles had been removed and sold, leaving only cobwebs behind. Above him neat rows of Hungerford bells lined the passage, a remnant of life below stairs, the labels faded and tarnished: her ladyship’s room. grand staircase. library.
    What must it have been like in the servants’ day, at the height of Usherwood’s glory? Hard to conjure it now: the energy, the bustle, the rush and spill of household secrets. His father had told him a story once about how as a boy he had crept underground for the servants’ Christmas party, had danced until he could no longer stand, and had to be carried to bed by a butler called Ashton. But by the time Charlie came along, servants were only good for gossip , my boy . No wonder the remaining few he could remember had been dismissed before Harrow.
    Sigmund and Comet were panting at the top of the stairs, fur still damp from an afternoon on the moors. They wagged their tails when they saw him.
    ‘Hullo, pups.’
    ‘What’s that God-awful stink ?’ The quiet of the afternoon was obliterated.
    Cato stormed into the hall with a hand clamped over his nose and mouth. His brother had taken to just appearing , cropping up unexpectedly like a grim rabbit out of a hat. The house was so big that it was possible to forget he was there.
    ‘Oh.’ Cato landed on the dogs and said disgustedly, ‘There’s my answer.’
    ‘They’re animals.’
    ‘Precisely my problem.’
    ‘This is the countryside, not downtown Los Angeles.’
    ‘Just because we’re in the countryside doesn’t mean we have to be in the countryside,’ came the riposte. ‘We might as well be rolling about in the bloody paddocks.’ Cato was wearing several bulky sweaters to drive home the fact he was cold, and had irately suggested over lunch that he would organise a cash injection to land with the estate by morning. Then we can get this wretched heating sorted at last! This sort of sporadic, mood—dependent handout was typical. Charlie had endeavoured on several occasions to secure a long-term solution to the invading damp—Cato matching every pound Charlie put in, for example—but such temporary measures were part and parcel of his brother’s warped sense of obligation: the sun had to be shining wherever Cato was, and everywhere else could languish in the rain.
    ‘Susanna’s awfully distressed over the beasts.’ Cato took a cigar from a box he had positioned on the mantelpiece and lit it. He ejected a billow of smoke. ‘She’s allergic to your menagerie; I knew she would be.’
    Charlie glanced out of the window. His brother’s girlfriend was under a parasol, fanning herself against the thunder flies.
    ‘I’m sure she’ll survive,’ he said.
    ‘She’s very sensitive.