Wild Lily Read Free

had been excited about the vast prospect of turning the echoing rooms into a comfortable home, but perhaps the whole thing had been too much for her, for she died of a heart attack immediately after a meeting with a firm of interior designers who came down from London and exclaimed in horror at the task that faced them.
    She had made a pretty flat upstairs for Helena – a prime consideration – but that was all she had managed. Antony had been eight when his mother died and Helena four years older. He had already learned at that early age to live his own life, as his mother – not unnaturally – was almost totally taken up with Helena. How could it be otherwise? Antony accepted the situation without rancour, but tended to avoid seeing too much of Helena – the atmosphere up in her quarters was not to his taste and he found it hard to please her, foundering in his own inadequacy to understand what on earth it was she was saying, or trying to say, or what she wanted, or how to please her. She laughed a lot and he thought she mocked him. He was sorry for her, of course, not to be able to see or hear. How did she imagine the world, he wondered, not ever having seen it?
    His friends were always nosy about her, dying to meet her. He had been in the habit of bringing his Eton friends home in the holidays to stay – but none of them had ever wanted tocome twice after they had found themselves banned from the freak upstairs, and only just managing to survive the discomfort of life in Lockwood Hall. Antony stopped asking them, but at the back of his mind he had always harboured the idea of a huge midsummer party by the lake, using the amazing grotto as a base. That would be quite something, especially if he got an aeroplane. That would impress them. They would come then.
    The grotto was amazing, built a century ago by the master of the original Lockwood Hall – a very beautiful Queen Anne mansion which had been brutally destroyed to make way for the present monstrosity. Old engravings of the original house were displayed in the corridors, but were hard to make out in the ill-lit passages.
    The new house was entirely panelled in dark oak, impressively expensive but also impressively gloomy. Cosy was a word that did not spring to the tongue. Many of the servants gave in their notice quite soon, especially in the winter when the great boilers in the cellar struggled to keep the chill out of the huge rooms. Antony was used to it, but was always surprised that his father seemed fond of the place and never considered moving. It must have sad memories for him, his wife dying so soon after they had moved in, but Mr Sylvester was not a sentimental nor sensitive man. Antony wondered sometimes if he took after him. He rather hoped not, for his father was not much liked, he noticed, not one to spread bonhomie and delight.
    He spoke little, rarely smiled. He was not imposing to lookat, only of average height and build, with fading, disappearing brown hair, severely trimmed, and a large dark moustache that hid most of his lower face. He wore dark suits, impeccably tailored and obviously expensive, and used little round-framed spectacles for reading. Most of that reading was confined to the financial pages of the daily newspapers – Antony had never seen his father reading anything else. It was not surprising that they had little conversation when they did meet, and Antony guessed that his father was relieved when the holidays were over and his son went back to Eton.
    For himself, he preferred being at home and mucking about with his village friends and the wild Lily when she came gardening with her father. He did not work hard at school, got into scrapes, got beaten and harangued that he did not use his intelligence for better things (than making stink bombs and writing rude riddles). He was popular and did not lack for friends, so had no complaints.
    His father showed rather more interest in the impending flying lessons than anything his son