Wild Lily by K M Peyton

put a finger on. You knew whereyou were with Simon, and dreary old John and even dull Cedric, but you never knew where you were with Antony. This lark about the party was, after all, quite mad – in that creepy grotto, and having Helena there among all those crazy Eton boys … and where did she stand in such a gathering? Was she to be Antony’s guest or the serving maid? She did not think he would enlighten her, and how could she ask, when he dismissed her doubts with an off-hand, ‘Of course you’ll come, idiot.’
    While all this confusion was making an upheaval in her brain, Antony reached out for Helena’s hands and placed them on Lily’s shoulders. ‘Stay still,’ he said softly, ‘and she will feel your face, get to know you.’
    The hands were cool and delicate, so soft, slow, into her rough hair, gently down her cheeks.
    Lily felt herself trembling, looking into the blank blue eyes so close to her, feeling her own eyes smarting with tears at the emotions that were almost overcoming her.
    Antony, noticing, said quietly, ‘It’s all right.’
    But it wasn’t – how could it be? Only to forget Antony, which wasn’t possible.
    Helena was smiling. She reached for Lily’s hands and kissed the palms.
    ‘There, she likes you.’
    Lily instinctively put her arms round Helena and hugged her and Helena hugged her back, and laughed. And then Lily felt all right again, back on balance.
    Antony argued with Helena’s two keepers for permission totake his sister for a walk, which they granted with great reluctance. Lily could see how they thought they owned her, and how bad it must be for Helena to be in the hands of such – if not harridans – inward-looking, timid people.
    Antony said they only took her for walks in the grounds, never down to the village, and rarely down to the lake. She had her own garden on the other side of the house.
    ‘We’ll go there, don’t worry,’ Antony said sharply, not wanting an argument.
    Lily knew he would do what he wanted, as usual. Strangely, she had never worked on the other side of the house and her father, in fact, had rarely gone there. It was nearly all gravel drive and grass – which the farmer kept cut. The drive, after sweeping grandly up to the rarely opened front door departed towards the farm. The nearest buildings were a rather grand stable block, which now housed the Rolls-Royce and a more modest ‘shopping’ car, as well as the farm machinery and ten carthorses. Beyond was the farm proper, the threshing barn and the haystacks and the farmhouse, mostly hidden behind a clump of trees. Helena’s garden was at the side of the house and had once been the kitchen garden for the house, enclosed by a wall, but it no longer produced vegetables, only a lot of weeds, some tangled roses and ancient fruit trees. It was, in its disarray, quite pretty, even the broken glasshouses sprouting rampant vines, and there was a seat amongst the unpruned roses whose scent still graced the air. Helena made for this seat unaided. She obviously knew every footstep of the way.
    ‘My mother took her here, when it was a proper garden. It was beautifully kept when my mother was alive. She spent all her time up this end of the house. She hated the rest of it, not surprisingly. If I wanted to see her I used to come up here, but she didn’t want me, I could tell.’
    Antony spoke quite plainly, without a hint of self-pity, but Lily found his words excruciating. This awful bleak house and not wanted by his mother in the only place where there was comfort and beauty … and not much rapport with his largely absent father: it was amazing that he was still a mostly cheerful soul.
    ‘Since she died, those women have taken Helena over. Before, they looked after her, but only did whatever my mother said. They came from the village, live in now, and I can see that this job is their meal ticket, and I suppose they do it well. But they think they have taken my mother’s place, and of course they