Fire in the Blood

Chapter One - 1898-1

Chapter One

1898Pandia put the holly wreath she had made on the grave, realising as she did so that the December frost had already killed all the flowers that had been placed there the previous day.

There had been only a few of them, mostly little bunches of paper roses or mistletoe from the people in the village, a wreath of white chrysanthemums from the Vicar and one of yellow from the doctor who had attended her father.

She could not help feeling it was not a very impressive tribute to a man who she believed had given to those who were prepared to listen so much inspiration and creative thought.

Then she told herself somewhat cynically that nobody these days seemed interested in a Greek scholar or a man whose intellectual powers were far out of the ordinary.

She had loved her father and thought how handsome he looked, even when he was dead and before he was lifted into his coffin.

She could understand how her mother had been brave enough to run away with him, incurring not only the wrath of her family, but ostracism as far as they were concerned for the rest of her life.

Her mother and father had been very happy, which to Pandia was a consoling thought and she believed fervently that they were together now and nothing would ever separate them again.

It was, however, difficult for her to feel anything but lonely as she left the churchyard to walk slowly back to the small Tudor house on the edge of the village where she had lived ever since she was born.

It was not a large house but beautiful and filled, when her mother had been alive, with the love and happiness which Pandia felt now she would never find again.

It had been such fun and she almost expected as she opened the front door to hear her father and mother laughing in the tiny room which he called his study and in which he worked and then to see her identical self come from the sitting room.

Even to think of Selene, which she did as seldom as possible, made her feel unhappy.

Although she had half-hoped that her twin sister would come to their father’s funeral she thought when it was over and there was no sign of her that it had really been a ridiculous idea.

Now Pandia took off the cloak she had worn over her shoulders which, heavy though it was, had not prevented the biting December wind from making her shiver.

She went into the study because, being the smallest room downstairs, it was the easiest to keep warm, to find as she expected that Nanny had lit the fire while she was out.

The flames were leaping above the logs sending a glowing light over the worn leather armchair in which her father had always sat.

For a moment she almost imagined she could see him there.

Then she told herself that people who were bereaved always thought they were seeing visions or hearing voices and she must be sensible.

As soon as she was a little warmer, she would settle down to copying out in her neat and elegant handwriting the last translations from the Greek her father had done before he was taken ill.

She was praying that the publisher who had accepted two of his other manuscripts would like this one.

Even so, it would make very little money.

At the same time she felt it would please her father to know there was another thin volume of his work ready for the public, if they were interested enough to buy it.

‘I wonder why it is,’ Pandia asked herself, and it was a question she had asked many times before, ‘that Papa’s work which is so moving and inspiring should remain unsold, while people buy the most terrible trash that would not inspire a frog!’

Then, because she knew the answer, she laughed.

“At least, Papa,” she said aloud, “I loved everything you translated, and so did Mama, and perhaps one day you will be discovered as so many other great writers have been.”

It was a fantasy she had often told herself in the past, imagining that suddenly, out of the blue, like Lord Byron, her father would become famous overnight.

People would flock down to the village where they lived to tell him how much they admired him and perhaps offer him a position at one of the Universities.

Then, because the Fairy story had to go on in her mind, Pandia imagined herself entertaining other scholars of the same brilliance as her father, and perhaps a number of undergraduates would look up to him in admiration and become his pupils.

It was a story that was never to become reality because her father remained unnoticed.

There was no enthusiasm for the books he wrote, and on the publisher’s part only an indifference that was somehow more hurtful than if he had definitely said he had no wish for any more volumes.

The amount of money they brought in was infinitesimal and Pandia often thought they would really have starved if it had not been for the small income that came from a legacy to her mother.

This she had left to her twin daughters before she died.

In a way, Pandia thought, it was lucky that Selene did not want her share and had left home two days after her mother’s death.

Even now, after three years of silence from her twin, Pandia could still feel bewildered that she should have gone away without saying goodbye and leaving only a note.

She could see the expression of consternation on her father’s face as vividly as if it was etched on her memory.

She could still feel the kind of emptiness within herself she had felt when she read what Selene had written.

“I have gone to find Mama’s relations and ask if I can live with them. I cannot stand this boring little village any longer and being so poor and miserable.

Please don’t try to get in touch with me as I have made my decision and will not alter it.

Selene.”

That was all!

There had been no word of affection, no vestige of regret for the father who had always loved her or for her twin sister who had thought they were indivisible.

In fact Selene had never loved them, Pandia had realised bitterly.

She had thought that she and Selene were so close that they would be miserable without each other and she had always believed that twins were different from other people.

Because they looked so identical that no one could tell them apart, it was hard for Pandia to face the truth and know that in every other way there was no resemblance between them.

Thinking back after Selene had gone, she supposed she had always known that her sister was ambitious socially and bored by the quiet life they all lived because they could not afford anything else.

When they were alone, Selene had often said,

“How could Mama have been so stupid as to run away from her home and give up the rich comfortable life she had there?”

“She fell in love with Papa,” Pandia said.

“But he was only a Tutor to her brothers!”

“Papa comes from a noble family in Hungary,” Pandia argued. “They may not be rich, but their blood is blue, if that is what interests you.”

“How could it interest me?” Selene had snapped. “It is no consolation to think that Mama threw away her rich blue blood for a very inferior brand of poor Hungarian!”

Pandia had been shocked.

“You should not talk like that, Selene! It is very disloyal to Papa, who is so clever. His translations from the Greek are brilliant!”

Selene shrugged her shoulders.

“Who else thinks so except you and of course Mama?”

She spoke scathingly and Pandia knew most uncomfortably that Selene looked at their mother disparagingly because in her eyes she had done something incredibly foolish that had unfortunately affected them all.

Often when her father was not present, they would beg their mother to talk of the old days when she had lived in the large Georgian mansion in Oxfordshire.

Her father, who was Lord Gransden, had been of great importance not only in the County, but also because he had a place at Court.

He was Master of his own foxhounds, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, and a man, her mother told them with pride, whom everybody looked up to and respected.

Because of the way her mother described him, Pandia’s grandfather became so real to her that she listened wide-eyed to the tales of the garden parties, lavish dinners and Hunt Balls that took place at his house.

Then there were the dances to which her mother was invited both in Oxfordshire and in London and, as soon as she became a debutante she had made her curtsy at Buckingham Palace.

It was all like a Fairy story to Pandia and it was only afterwards she realised that to Selene it would have been a paradise which she resented she could never enter because her mother had deliberately left it and closed the door behind her.

“I want to go to balls when I am old enough!” Selene had raged when they were alone in their bedroom after one of their mother’s reminiscences. “I want to live in a huge house, have horses to ride, luncheon and dinner parties every day and of course I want expensive gowns!”

She walked across the room as she spoke to stare at herself in the mirror.

“I am beautiful! I know I am beautiful, but who sees me here? Only a whole lot of village idiots and giggling choirboys!”

Pandia had no answer.

She was only afraid that Selene’s outbursts would be overheard by her mother who would be deeply hurt.

When her mother fell ill, and it was obvious she was growing weaker and weaker, it was then Selene must have made up her mind to leave home and only waited until the funeral was over to do so.

When she was alone in her room, Pandia wept bitterly.

‘How could she do anything so cruel and unkind?’ she asked herself, and hoped passionately that Selene would change her mind and come back again.

But there was no sign of her and, because she appeared not to need money, Pandia supposed she must have succeeded in persuading her mother’s family to accept her and was now living the way she wanted to do.

At that time Selene had been nearly sixteen and now Pandia remembered that on their next birthday, which was in two months’ time she and Selene would be nineteen.

She had hesitated for a long time before she had written to her to say that their father was dead.

She had addressed the letter to her grandfather’s house in Oxfordshire, hoping that if Selene was not there the letter would be forwarded on to her.

She wondered if she had changed very much from the rebellious young girl who had resented living in obscurity and longed for a different kind of life altogether.

‘Perhaps she no longer looks like me,’ Pandia told herself.

She sat staring into the mirror, knowing without conceit that in the intervening years she had actually grown far more beautiful than she had been at sixteen.

The red lights in her hair, which came from her father’s Hungarian blood, made a striking contrast to her pale translucent skin.

Her eyes had always seemed enormous and, now that she had lost what her mother used to call the ‘puppy fat’ of childhood, her face seemed almost too small for them.

She had a straight little nose and perfectly curved lips, which were never noticed because people looked first at her large eyes.

Fringed with dark lashes they were, in some lights, a strange green and in others mysterious with the darkness of dusk.

They were very expressive eyes, mirroring her emotions, her feelings and even her thoughts.

She was quite sure that Selene’s would be the same.

In the past she had always known exactly what her twin was thinking and when Selene was angry her eyes would seem to flash with a fire that smouldered in the very depths of them.

When she was happy, her eyes were not only green but filled with sunshine.

‘I hope she is happy now,’ Pandia told herself as she walked through the hall towards the kitchen.