The Soldier's Dark Secret

Celeste Marmion had also been unable to sleep. Attracted by the soft light of the English morning, so very different from the bright blaze of the Côte d’Azur where she had been raised, she had dressed quickly and, grabbing her notebook and charcoals, decided to reconnoitre the grounds of Trestain Manor before facing her hosts at breakfast. Arriving late last night, the brief impression she had had of her new patrons, Sir Charles and Lady Eleanor Trestain, was pretty much as she had expected. He was the perfect gentleman, rather bluff, rather handsome, his smile kind, though his manner veered towards the pompous. His wife, a slender and very tall woman with a long nose and intelligent eyes, reminded Celeste of a highly-strung greyhound. Lady Eleanor was a good deal less welcoming than her husband, giving Celeste the distinct impression that she was placing her hostess in a social quandary, for although Sir Charles had welcomed his landscape painter as a valued guest, Lady Eleanor seemed more inclined to treat her as a tradesperson.

‘Which is perfectly fine by me. I am here for my own reasons, not to play the serf in order to placate a social snob. Lady Eleanor is really quite irrelevant in the grand scheme of things,’ Celeste muttered to herself as she made her way through a magnificent but dreadfully neglected Topiary Garden.

She could hardly believe that she had finally made it to England. It had been her goal ever since January, when she had received that fateful letter. It had been a terrible shock, despite the fact that they had been estranged for years, to learn that she would never see her mother again. She had thought herself completely inured to Maman’s coldness, but for a few days after learning of her death, Celeste had been left reeling, assailed by a maelstrom of emotions which struck her with a force that was almost physical.

She had, however, quickly regained her equilibrium. After all, her mother had been more of an absence than a presence in her life for as long as she could remember, even before Celeste had been callously packed off to boarding school at the age of ten. It should make no difference to Celeste that the house in Cassis was closed up, for she never visited. It should make no difference that there was now no possibility of any reconciliation. She had never understood her mother’s attitude towards her, the cause of their gradual and now final estrangement, but she had long decided not to let it be a cause of hurt to her. Until she had received that blasted letter which hinted at reasons, mysterious reasons, for her mother’s heartless indifference.

Celeste had tried very hard in the weeks after that letter to carry on with her perfectly happy, perfectly calm and perfectly ordered and increasingly successful life, but the questions her mother had raised demanded to be answered. Until she knew the whole story, until she knew the truth behind those hints and revelations, Maman’s life was an unfinished book. Celeste had to discover the ending, and then she could close the cover for ever. It was an image she found satisfying, for it explained away quite nicely that churning feeling which kept her awake at nights when she thought of her mother. Guilt? Hardly. Her whole life she had been the innocent victim of a loveless upbringing. And of a certainty it was not grief either. In order to grieve, one had to care. And she did not care. Or, more accurately, she had taught herself not to care. She did feel anger sometimes, though why should she be angry? She did not know, but it did not sit well with the self-contained and independent person she had worked so hard to become. And so she had come to England to find some answers and close an unhappy chapter in her life.

Napoleon’s escape from Elba in March earlier in the year had put paid to Celeste’s original plans for her trip here. As France and Great Britain resumed hostilities, she waited restlessly for the inevitable denouement on the battlefield, guiltily aware that her impatience was both unpatriotic and more importantly incredibly selfish. She knew nothing of war save that she wished it would not happen. She cared not who won, provided that peace was made. Until Waterloo, like almost every other person of her acquaintance, she managed to close her eyes to the reality of battle. After Waterloo, the full horror of it could not be ignored.

But peace was finally declared, and that, despite the defeat of France, was a cause for celebration. No more war. No more bloodshed. No more death. It also meant that Celeste was finally free to travel. The commission from Sir Charles Trestain to paint his gardens for posterity before he had them substantially altered had come to her by chance. A fellow artist of her acquaintance, who had been the English baronet’s first choice, had been unable to accept due to other commitments and had recommended Celeste. She could not but think it was fated.