Wakefield Hall

  WAKEFIELD HALL

  Francesca Stanfill

  STORY MERCHANT BOOKS

  BEVERLY HILLS

  2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Francesca Stanfill All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

  www.francescastanfill.com

  Story Merchant Books

  9601 Wilshire Boulevard #1202

  Beverly Hills CA 90210

  http://www.storymerchant.com/books.html

  ALSO BY FRANCESCA STANFILL

  Shadows & Light

  PART ONE

  1

  June 14, 1986

  I would have arrived much earlier if I hadn’t lost my way three times. What a strange road it was to Wakefield Hall! More than once I’d been tempted to turn back, certain that the twisting lane, with its sudden pitches and misleading signs, could not possibly be right. It was all the more bewildering as the directions had seemed so explicit.

  Shortly before noon I came to the walls encircling the estate, to a gabled carriage house next, and finally to the entrance—very tall, very grand, in black wrought iron. I stopped the car, relishing the silence for a moment as I caught my breath. A slight breeze blew, ruffling the trees and blowing my hair about my face.

  Double gates loomed before me, their massive stone posts carved with a pattern not easy to decipher: arrows entwined by lilies, it seemed. For many moments I sat quite still, gazing at the motif embedded in the stone—it was carved in such a way that the serpentine flowers appeared strangely animated and powerful. Then I got out of the car and stepped forward, toward the speaker, to announce myself.

  Only at that instant, with a peculiar rush of sense-memory, did I realize how many times I had imagined arriving here—how many times, since first meeting Joanna Eakins on that summer afternoon, I had visualized the road, the gate, the house itself. I tried to remember whether, in my fantasies, the gate had opened to me; it seemed it had. Yet now I felt almost intimidated, hesitant to say my name and enter.

  I pressed the bell again and once more announced myself. The gates opened; I drove through.

  At first the landscape seemed barely cultivated—meadows of wildflowers that gradually gave way to fields of blue iris. An allée of immense maple trees followed, their green-tinged limbs twisting upward to form a canopy of heavy branches. I remember how cool it was as I drove beneath them, a respite from the unseasonably warm June sun.

  At last, in the distance, I glimpsed Wakefield Hall. With its august proportions and columned portico, it was startling in its Englishness (this being Massachusetts, after all!). To the left, down a sloping lawn, I saw a trio of weeping willows where several people were gathered—having drinks before lunch, it seemed. A Saturday ritual, perhaps, unchanged since Joanna Eakins’s death.

  I glanced into the visor mirror, wiped some dust from my cheek, and ran a brush through my hair. Then I took out my compact and fixed my lipstick, thinking how pale I looked in the stark noon light, and how disheveled, for my linen skirt was very creased.

  I got out of the car and walked up the stone steps to the entrance.

  A slender, dark-haired young woman approached, her face partly obscured by sunglasses. Evidently she had just returned from riding, for she was wearing boots and jodhpurs, both of which caked with dirt; her cheeks looked flushed. Clutched in her left hand was a riding crop that she flicked against one thigh. She was small, but so perfectly proportioned that, at least from a distance, she appeared taller. There was a brittle elegance about her, an aura of command, all the more striking in someone so dainty. We were about the same age, I guessed.

  “Rosalind Bennett,” she announced, extending her hand. “Joanna Cassel’s—or should I say Joanna Eakins’s—stepdaughter.”

  She took off her sunglasses and fixed her dark, almond-shaped eyes on me, the next instant wiping her perspiring brow with a red kerchief. Her fine, almost Florentine face, with its high forehead and long, graceful brow was marred by a purplish bruise on one temple—from a recent riding accident, I assumed. I noticed a slight flaccidity to her skin, particularly under the chin, the kind that comes from having suddenly lost a great deal of weight.

  She continued to examine me, one hand with sunglasses still on her hip.

  “Elisabeth Rowan,” I replied.

  “Of course.” She paused, as if her thoughts had momentarily wandered. But then, just as quickly, she focused on me again. “No problem getting here?” she asked.

  I said lightly enough that I had gotten lost, though in fact losing my way had disturbed me, for I had always prided myself on my sense of direction, on being the sort of person strangers stopped in the street.

  Rosalind merely continued to examine me in her cool, implacable way before remarking, “But you don’t look any the worse for wear.” With another flick of her crop, she said, ‘‘I’ll show you to the house,” and motioned me to follow her. “Then we’ll get your things. You must be tired—” she looked at me intently again, “thirsty.”

  I followed her up the wide steps, banked with huge terra cotta pots spilling with purple primroses, and then along the east facade to the formal Italianate terrace, its stone balustrade punctuated with classical statues of armless nymphs and helmet-clad warriors. From this vantage point my eye encompassed the whole splendid vista, half familiar to me then, for I had seen it in photographs. Four sets of broad shallow steps led to the vast ornamental pool of water in the distance, its surface trembling with the reflection of flowering azaleas in surreal, variegated purples, its oval shape guarded by a pair of statues of Pegasus that led one’s eyes further, to the central Triton fountain. Towering spruces and hemlocks lent their blue-green to the palette of this ravishing landscape, which seemed to extend almost endlessly to the high, rounded shapes of the Berkshire hills in the distance.

  “So—what do you think?” she asked, interrupting my reverie.

  “It’s even more beautiful than I’d imagined,” I carefully replied.

  “More beautiful than the photographs.”

  “Well, it’s all Joanna’s creation, this,” she said perfunctorily.

  “No one could deny that.” There was a distinctly proprietary edge to her voice, however, for she was clearly very proud of Wakefield Hall. Then, with another flick of her crop: “Have you got any idea of the slant of the book you want to write?”

  I said I hadn’t—which wasn’t quite true—and that I had merely come to discuss the possibility of writing the biography of her stepmother, Joanna Eakins.

  “I see—a biographer in search of an actress,” she murmured, mulling this over. “You should know that I’m not exactly enthusiastic about the idea of a book on Joanna.” Then, more sharply: “You should also know that this is very difficult for David.”

  “1 can understand your father’s feelings.”

  “He isn’t my real father,” she replied, with an exasperated glance.

  “I’m Joanna’s stepdaughter by a previous marriage. My own mother and father died years ago. Joanna just sort of kept me on.” She paused before continuing in her staccato way: “But I’m very close to David. And I can tell you this is damn difficult for him. Damn difficult for everyone, Joanna’s dying like that.”

  “You were close to Joanna, then?”

  “As close as anyone could be,” she replied, almost imperceptibly raising her brow. “We had our own relationship.” A pause before she flicked her riding crop again, newly impatient. “Where are your things?”

  “Still in my car,” I told her. “Let’s go get them.”


  We walked back across the terrace and down the steps, toward my car. All the while I wondered what to make of her brusqueness, and why it was she who, like some dark, unnerving archangel, seemed to have been appointed my guide.

  A tall, balding man with pallid eyes and an impeccably cut black jacket—the houseman, I assumed—had preceded us and stood rather stiffly by my car.

  “This is Miss Rowan, Kurt,” Rosalind said, barely glancing at me.

  I felt the butler’s practiced eye assessing my car, my clothes, and—as I searched for the car key to open the trunk—my handbag. I could feel

  Rosalind’s curious gaze as well. I think she had noticed my sapphire ring and my expensive luggage, neither of which was the sort one would associate with a writer or journalist. Both had been presents from my lover.

  Kurt took my bags and disappeared with them into the house. I looked about, still expecting to see David Cassel, for it was he who had invited me here, after all, to speak with him about the possibility of writing the authorized biography of his late wife. I noticed that the people gathered near the stand of weeping willows had vanished, and proceeded to ask where Cassel was. “David always stays in his study until early afternoon,” Rosalind said matter-of-factly. “He’ll meet with you after lunch.”

  She plucked a flower from one of the stone urns that lined the steps, crushing the purple blossom in her hand. “Let’s go,” she announced, motioning to me to follow her up the steps to the portico. She stamped the dirt off her boots, set down her crop on a nearby bench, and led me inside.

  Through the vast entrance we went, moving from the bright noon sun into a serene interior whose filtered light seemed to have been wrested from another country—England, say, or northern Italy. It was a severe but not unwelcoming space of fine detail and proportion. An Adam-style frieze ran below the vaulted ceiling, above the pale ocher walls, which were punctuated, at each corner, by fluted columns whose capitals were picked out in gold. The cool stone floor seemed to mute the sound of my footsteps as I walked tentatively to the left, toward a great marble console overhung with a giltwood mirror that reflected white roses in huge blue-and-white porcelain vases, and, beyond, the massive spiraling staircase.

  Suddenly, I was aware that someone else had entered: the houseman, Kurt. He handed Rosalind a slip of paper. “Mrs. von Shouse called,” he said quietly. “She asked that you call her back.”

  I watched Rosalind’s face as she perused the message, her brow furrowed. “What time did she call?” she finally asked, looking up.

  “An hour ago. While you were riding,” he replied.

  “Did you say Mr. Cassel was in?”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding.

  “Did she give you any idea …”

  They exchanged glances. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Then I guess I should go find him,” Rosalind said almost to herself as she distractedly slipped the paper into the pocket of her breeches.

  Kurt excused himself and left. Still curious about the message, I continued to observe Rosalind’s face: her fleeting expression of preoccupation, even consternation, had already been replaced by her customary severity. “Come on—I suppose you want to see the rest of the house,” she said as I followed her. “The drawing room next.”

  We passed through two great double doors to an immense rectangular room facing the wide terrace, through whose vast windows, hung with weighty gray-green curtains, the summer sky entered. It was a comfortable room but also, perhaps because of the quality and scale of its furniture and objects, a daunting one. The tufted sofas looked formidable; antique busts stared from niches carved like seashells. Stately photographs, framed in silver, enhanced the aura of almost impersonal formality: Joanna Eakins, in evening dress, with Queen Elizabeth, with John F. Kennedy, with Lyndon Johnson.

  Rosalind began to tell me the history of the house. “Wakefield was built just before the turn of the century,” she began. “The original owners were Anglophiles who wanted to create their own little England here. A proper English country house near Lenox, Mass.! Of course, it changed a lot after Joanna bought it—when she married David.”

  I asked how the house had changed. “It wasn’t nearly as polished,” she replied, after hesitating a moment. “Actually, it was in rotten shape—neglected for years.” Her hands in the pockets of her breeches, she strode restlessly about the room, stopping for an instant to take an elastic band from her pocket and twist her long hair into a ponytail. I remember looking at her in profile, struck by the effect of the suddenly severe hair, which almost lent her the look of a Renaissance youth and thus reinforced her aura of enigmatic sexuality.

  “Maybe it took an outsider to bring it all together,” she continued in a tone that, for her, passed for contemplativeness. “At least that’s what Joanna did. With a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, of course!” Then, abruptly, she commanded: “This way,” once more motioning me to follow her.

  We reached a corridor that led to a small octagonal library arranged in distinctly feminine colors—pale blue, mauve, and bois de rose. Very much a European woman’s room, with delicate furniture, clusters of pink peonies, and flower-patterned chintz curtains that framed a graceful bay window looking out to a formal rose garden.

  “This was Joanna’s room,” Rosalind said matter-of-factly. “Her study. Everything has been left as it was before her death—that’s how David wanted it.”

  I looked around in silence for a moment, my eyes drawn to a small needlepoint pillow on a sofa, embroidered with Je Ne Regrette Rien; then to a chess set; and finally to a collection of antique hourglasses that lined the shelves on either side of the fireplace, their fragile, undulating surfaces clouded by time.

  I walked to a table with an impressive array of portrait miniatures.

  “And these?” I asked, turning to Rosalind.

  “Joanna’s collection of Elizabethan miniatures. You know—Shakespeare and all of that.”

  “Was Joanna a patient person?” I asked, glancing again at the hourglasses.

  “Only when she chose to be,” she replied with a tight smile.

  I walked to the desk before the bay window, struck by the variety of writing paper arranged on top, all in pale gray and engraved with black-violet lettering: JOANNA EAKINS, JOANNA EAKINS CASSEL, one with the initials J E C, and lastly, a version simply with JOANNA. Observing me, Rosalind said, her face with an odd detached look, “It’s weird, isn’t it? She had so many names, it’s as if she had none.”

  A breeze blew the curtains. I felt even more keenly the delicate voluptuousness of the room, the almost mournful quality of its hyacinthine colors. But it was its meticulousness that I noticed and commented upon to Rosalind.

  “She was nothing if not meticulous,” she grudgingly admitted, flipping through a copy of Country Life. “An admirable enough quality, I guess.” Then, beneath her breath: “God knows I wasn’t born with it! Except maybe in my work—”

  I looked at Rosalind’s ethereal pre-Raphaelite face and tried to guess her line of work—photographer? painter?—before finally inquiring what she did.

  “Bond trader,” she said, as if she were accustomed to measuring the degree of surprise this provoked. “Bond trader,” she said again. “Goldman, Sachs.”

  I asked how long she had worked at the investment bank.

  “Since I got out of business school. Harvard.” She took an apple from a porcelain bowl near the writing table and began to crunch into it. “Not a profession Joanna understood …. on the other hand, I have to hand it to Joanna—she did admire my ability to make money.” Another raucous bite into the apple. “It must have been hard for her to have had a stepdaughter who wasn’t a good housekeeper!” Wiping her mouth with the side of her hand, she tossed the remains of the apple core into a wastebasket. “Still, I’ve got to admit that I’m the first one to enjoy the house while I’m here. The funny thing is that Joanna never used to be so orderly. In her previous life, when she was acting, I don’t remember h
er that way at all.” She glanced at her black digital watch. “I’d better find David and tell him you’re here. Then I’ll meet you by the stairs. You’d like to go to your room before lunch, wouldn’t you?” Yes, I said. She left the room, the purposeful sound of her steps echoing through the corridor.

  I couldn’t help lingering, fascinated by what seemed to be the apparent lack of mementos from what Rosalind had called Joanna’s “previous life”—an understated way, indeed, of describing her stepmother’s brilliant career as a classical stage actress. Nearly hidden in one corner was the famous cover of Time, from the fifties, depicting Joanna Eakins as a youthful, lascivious Lady Macbeth—an image that seemed so at odds with that of Joanna Cassel, mistress of this idyllic place.

  In another corner, resting between two diminutive black porcelain sphinxes, were photographs of Joanna in some of her most famous roles—Hedda Gabler, Cleopatra, Desdemona, Medea. There were photographs of family and friends as well: David Cassel, Wall Street lion, receiving an honorary degree; Rosalind as a child, with plump cheeks and a pinafore; and a young Joanna, in slacks, standing by the arched door of a medieval tower.

  I walked to the bookshelves next, feeling a surge of intense curiosity as I did so, for I have always been guilty of judging people by their books. The volumes here were carefully arranged by category: There was an entire section devoted to eighteenth-and nineteenth-century gothic novels, for instance, one shelf lined with leatherbound editions of Frankenstein; below these were arranged volume after volume of critical interpretations of Mary Shelley’s famous novel. The next bookcase was devoted to drama—Chekhov, Ibsen, and Greek tragedy. Relevant critical studies, arranged by subject and author, stood on the shelves below. I picked up The Greeks and the Irrational, glancing at its chapter headings before bending down to examine the last three shelves.

  There I discovered book after book on labyrinths, garden mazes, and mythology. One such volume, much taller and thicker than the rest, stood out: Labyrinths Through the Ages. It was bound in rich green leather, its gilt-edged pages marked with long strips of paper. I picked it up and leafed through it, noting how certain terms in the glossary had been singled out: among them, Black hole (“A maze situation which one can get into, but not get out of”), and its opposite, White hole. I continued to scan both the thick, beautifully illustrated pages and the many notes inserted between them, written in an angular, slanted hand: “Idea for gate”; “Discuss grid with LB”; “Raised pavilion—ask Desmond to send photos”; and “NB: Central tower with twin staircases and statue of Athena” (this, by the illustration of the Italian hedge maze at Stra). How thrilling to see Joanna’s own notations; each seemed a clue to her personality—as if, within my hands, the book itself had become a labyrinth.