The River Within

by Karen Powell

  ‘It is a beautiful room,’ said Venetia, thinking of the gilded mouldings around the doorways, the light flooding in through the windows. ‘I rather love it.’

  ‘All in the proportions, apparently.’

  With Freddie and the rest of the houseguests yet to arrive there was time for riding the next morning. James and Angus met her in the hallway after breakfast, where Venetia was looking at the many portraits that adorned its walls.

  ‘That’s Thomasina and Teddy when they were young,’ said Angus, pointing to a fading formal portrait of his grandparents, with a just recognisable Sir Laurie at their side, all knickerbockers and scraped down hair, his baby sister in their mother’s arms.

  How solemnly his grandparents stared into the camera, yet they’d been renowned for their extravagant parties, Angus said, throwing open Richmond Hall to all comers before the century had turned and that kind of life had been destroyed forever. There were photographs of Angus and James as children too; of their parents’ wedding day. Venetia would have liked to stay longer but the boys were keen to make the most of the day.

  James was a far better rider than his elder brother, who rode the way he drove, slightly too fast for anyone’s comfort. Angus was turned out rather more carelessly too, yet it was hard to take your eyes off him. There was something mesmerising about the way he went at things with no half-measures, taking a kind of joy in imperfection.

  There was a joyousness to that whole weekend in fact; something to do with the chaos of Richmond Hall, where extravagant meals were served but no-one minded if you arrived late or did not feel like eating—Sir Laurie at the table roaring for more wine—or whether you turned up at all, and where everyone seemed to do precisely as they wished at any hour of the day or night, whether it was playing the gramophone in the early hours of the morning or making raids on the wine cellar for some rare vintage. Groups of guests and near-neighbours drifted in and out over the course of the next few days. Some of them seemed to have been invited and others not, and Venetia, who knew only the comfort and order of home, a mother who ran the household with a firm, parsimonious hand, found everything delightful—modern and at the same time immersed in some glamorous past.

  Angus was to drive Venetia home at the end of the weekend. She was waiting in the hallway with her bags when she heard hurried footsteps and then James came out. He stood by the doorway with his back to her.

  ‘We’ve hardly had a chance to talk,’ he said. ‘And now you’re leaving.’

  ‘It’s been wonderful,’ she said again, having already said goodbye earlier, at breakfast.

  He shook his head, as if in disagreement, turned around. ‘I thought you might like something new to read,’ he said. In his right hand, she saw, was a slim, cream-coloured book.

  ‘Thank you.’ The title of the book was Prufrock and Other Observations by T.S. Eliot. It looked serious and rather terrifying.

  ‘Modernism, you know,’ said James. ‘We talked about it the ball. You might not like it but . . . ’

  Venetia thanked him again. There was the roar of the car engine outside.

  It was too noisy to talk during the journey and though lunch was perfectly edible this time when they stopped, both she and Angus were quiet. When they got back in the car, he turned to her, took her by the shoulders and kissed her. It was not as she had been kissed before, by boys who weren’t sure what they were doing or why. It was only when she reached home that she realised that she had left James’s book behind on the hall table.

  The following year Venetia turned eighteen and she and Angus Richmond were married.

  CHAPTER 15

  Danny, September 1954

  One Saturday afternoon he took the train to York. He went to Coney Street first but the shop there couldn’t help him.

  ‘Try Ebor Books,’ said the assistant. ‘On Fossgate.’

  It was just off Fossgate as it happened, and Danny would never have found it if it hadn’t been for the sign pointing down the narrow alleyway.

  EBOR BOOKS: NEW AND SECOND-HAND BOOKS COLLECTORS’ ITEMS

  ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson,’ he said to the girl behind the counter. His voice was too loud and he waited for her to give him a look, wondering what someone like him would want with a book of poetry, but if she was surprised she didn’t show it. He was still doubting himself—shouldn’t it be Lord Alfred Tennyson and maybe he’d got it all the wrong way round—when she handed him a copy, second-hand and the spine all broken. And yet still it was half his apprentice’s wage. He’d worry later about how he would explain it to his mother, who wanted money for board now that he was earning.

  With an hour or so to spare before his train home, Danny walked back along Coney Street, stopping to look at the ruins of St. Martin’s, demolished in the Baedeker raid, and the Guildhall still covered in scaffolding from the damage. He drank a pint in the first pub he came to, the weight of the book like a stone in his pocket as if he’d not bought it with his own good money but stolen it when the shop girl’s back was turned.

  On High Petergate, dusk was drawing down between the narrow streets and settling over the Minster like a hood, shadows gathering in its great folds. A couple hurried by, dressed up for a dance and laughing together, as if they lived in a secret world of their own. Lights came on in a hotel over the road, where tables were already set for dinner. Between the waiters dressed in black and white, Danny could see white tablecloths; glowing cutlery; complicated glassware that caught the light.

  The big window at this end of the Minster was empty, a gaping mouth with boards for teeth, elongated like an old person’s, but he knew the East Window had been put back in last year—there’d been an article about it in the paper. He took a wide loop round to the other side of the cathedral, passing by a sign for the glazier’s workshop on his way. Outside the workshop door stood a man in dog collar and an odd-looking black hat, talking to an older fellow in a flat cap who wore an apron over his clothing. Danny wondered if this clergyman was the Dean himself, the one in the paper. The Minster’s windows had been scattered across the county during the war, the article had said, locked away for safekeeping in the cellars of the big country houses. The Dean was determined to get them all back again. The story had caught Danny’s attention because two of the smaller windows had been stored at Richmond Hall.

  He walked on, crossing a small green, the bulge of St. William’s College at the edge of his eye-line. At the foot of the Great East Window, Danny stopped, stared upwards. The structure soared above him, an elegant, black arch to the heavens. The dark glass glittered and shone in the cold light of a new moon and, standing beneath, he felt small and full of possibility all at the same time.

  He dared to wonder what it might be like to leave his home behind and come to live somewhere like this. He could not imagine himself working at the glaziers’ workshop, with the grave clergyman barring the door like that, but perhaps he could secure a place in the Minster stone yard and learn to carve gargoyles and suchlike. Of course, they’d start you on easier jobs but right from the beginning you’d be creating history, something important, which people might admire. Stone dust was better than wood, he felt sure of it. The sky was wide and clear above him and he allowed himself, just for a moment, to think how it would be to have Lennie here by his side. As his love, he meant, and no-one giving it a thought or finding time to wonder about it because in a city people don’t. She would be happy here, because no-one could feel trapped in a place like this, where there were bookshops filled with new poetry to discover, and the air was sweet with the rich smell of chocolate from the nearby factory. He would take her to the theatre and to the cinema, to the big tea rooms with the plate-glass windows and silver teapots and shelves full of fancy cakes. It was easier to make things beautiful in a city, where there was no dirt or wood dust ruining everything. People lived this way because they wanted their lives to feel better. Even the river, darkening benea
th him as he crossed the bridge on the way back to the station, seemed more civilised than a country river, keeping the noise down the way it did and staying put between its banks.

  Danny didn’t dare open the poetry book on the train home. The man across the carriage was reading The Times, turning the pages in an impatient way and looking put out by the space that Danny’s long legs took up, so he had to wait all evening, until his mam put down the sewing she took in and said goodnight, reminding him that he had work tomorrow. When the floorboards creaked above him, he fetched the book from his jacket pocket and, with urgent fingers, began turning the pages. The fire pulsed and blackened as he found what he had been looking for and then his lips moved silently as he read the poem Lennie had chosen in class that day:

  She lives with little joy or fear.

  Over the water, running near,

  The sheep bell tinkles in her ear.

  Before her hangs a mirror clear,

  Reflecting tower’d Camelot.

  And as the mazy web she whirls,

  She sees the surly village churls,

  And the red cloaks of market girls

  Pass onward from Shalott.

  Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

  An abbot on an ambling pad,

  Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,

  Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,

  Goes by to tower’d Camelot:

  And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue

  The knights come riding two and two:

  She hath no loyal knight and true,

  The Lady of Shalott.

  Hearing a movement on the stairs, he slammed the book shut and returned it to the pocket on the inside of his jacket, before climbing the stairs to bed, all the hope of the day gone out of him. Lennie had chosen this poem out of all others because she had wanted someone to rescue her, he felt sure of that. She was like an angel to him but what was he to her? A village churl, said the unkind voice in his head. Or worse still, nothing whatsoever.

  CHAPTER 16

  Lennie, August 1955

  Helena!’

  For a moment she did not move. The silver dress lay in a heap on the bedroom floor beside her. Her mother’s dress. There was a rip in the hem where it had snagged on a bramble. A piece of the past had been ripped apart and it was her own fault. The future in tatters too, but now Alexander was here, calling to her, his voice soft beneath her window.

  ‘Come downstairs.’ She could smell foreign cigarette smoke drifting up to her on the night air, dry and pungent. ‘Please, Helena. I need to talk to you.’

  Lennie rose from the bed and took up the cotton dress she’d been wearing earlier that day, which hung over the back of the chair like another discarded version of herself. Her feet were sore and cut in places from running down the driveway, yet it did not occur to her to refuse Alexander.

  He was waiting by the door of the cottage, his cheeks hollow as if in pain.

  ‘Oh my darling, I’m so sorry.’ He grasped her hands. ‘Forgive me. It’s not your fault. I was just shocked to see you.’

  ‘It was my mother’s dress.’ Her voice so small it seemed to disappear even as she spoke. ‘I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘I did. I do. You are so beautiful, you can’t imagine. I’m an idiot.’

  She could feel him vibrating with emotion. She went to speak, to reassure him, as if it were him in need of comfort, but Alexander continued. ‘For drinking too much. For being bloody to you. I didn’t want those people looking at you, I can’t explain. Such an awful evening with mother carrying on as though nothing had changed and Uncle James looking so fucking proprietorial.’ He put his hand to her cheek, gave a pained smile. ‘Do you know, I like this dress better.’

  Lennie shook her head in puzzlement. It was a workaday dress she was wearing.

  ‘The other one was beautiful,’ Alexander said. ‘But it looked wrong on someone like you. Vulgar almost. It’s the contrast, you see.’

  ‘Oh.’ He must be right and yet for a moment she had felt powerful in that dress, striding across the damp grass towards the house, ready to claim the man she loved from the girl with the hungry mouth and horse’s teeth.

  ‘You’re such a good girl, Helena. You didn’t deserve any of that.’

  ‘You said I was a whore.’

  ‘Sssh.’ Alexander dismissed it with a wave of his hand. ‘Promise me you’ll stay like this always.’

  His voice was gentle and full of ardour. She was still his; everything she’d thought broken was still intact. Yet the world remained tremulous, as if it might shift and alter at any moment.

  He caught up her hands again. ‘Come with me to the grave.’

  She stiffened. ’Whose?’

  ‘My father’s of course. People die around here and no-one seems to notice. I can’t go on my own.’

  ‘It’s late, Alexander.’

  She felt guilty for denying him, did not want to anger him either. How quickly they reverted to form, even after tonight’s behaviour.

  Alexander’s hands went to his temples, pressing as if trying to contain chaos. ‘I can’t bring myself to go there. My mother and Uncle James . . . ’ He grimaced into the moonlight. ‘They spend so much time together and the way he looks at her is . . . I should do something about it. Only months since my father died and now it’s like he didn’t exist.’ He looked at her. ‘I’m starting to believe she’s glad about it.’

  ‘Oh no, Alexander.’ Lennie tried to think in some kind of practical way. ‘There must be so much to talk about with the farm and the estate, for both of them, I mean, there are all the new taxes. Father’s been talking about them.’

  ‘Why should it bother him? Come with me, Helena. Let’s go right now.’

  The moon sat high over the beech tree, leaves the colour of old blood, and all around, the call of the woods and the river, black and cold in the distance.

  ‘I was afraid to see him die and then it was too late and now I can’t even stand alone at his graveside. What a coward I am.’ Alexander’s voice rose with bitterness. ‘I thought it was better after Greece but I keep dreaming about him and it’s all mixed up with mother and everything else that’s happened . . . ’

  He kissed her suddenly, as if it were the only way to put a stop to such thoughts. After a moment she felt his hands moving down to her waist and pulling her closer. More than anything Lennie wanted to go with him right then, out into the night where death and love waited. But whore. That word, ugly and angry. Had he really meant it or was she his good girl again?

  He pulled away abruptly, as if confirming her fears.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  Lennie followed his gaze along the garden path to the gate. It was a quarter of an hour since the bells had chimed eleven and Peter Fairweather was home.

  CHAPTER 17

  Venetia, 1955

  Jealousy.

  Even now, Venetia could recall its precise geography, though she had not thought about it for years, not properly. The name Marina had simply announced itself in her mind when she’d been discussing future plans for the Hall with James, up in the office on the day of her birthday.

  All the fuss with Alexander and Lennie out on the lawn last night:

  ‘Leave us alone, mother! You don’t understand.’

  If jealousy had been at the root of Alexander’s behaviour, she understood more than he imagined but must speak to him, she supposed, if only to mollify Fairweather, who seemed to have got wind of something. His face had been rigid when he had come to collect her morning tea tray just now. He studiedly ignored the cigarette smoke unfurling from the ashtray beside her and opened the window when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. She’d not smoked for years but she’d found an old packet of Angus’s in the office that morning. Now was as good a time as any to start again.

  She
was not unduly worried on Lennie’s behalf. Venetia disliked ungentlemanly behaviour and public spats as much as Fairweather, but the young people were, well, young, not in control of themselves yet. Lennie would have to learn to speak up for herself or Alexander would think it fine to bully her, like her father and brother did. All of that would sort itself out in time. Still, something about the little scene had left her uneasy. In the quiet of her private sitting room, a room which once had belonged to Thomasina and which she’d made her own—she closed the window to keep the smoke safely in, as if it might help her settle upon what it had been. That extraordinary dress, of course—which she herself had passed onto Jenny Fairweather all those years ago, having grown too thin for it after Alexander’s birth and thinking it would suit her better. That, and every man at the party turning to stare at Lennie’s beauty. Little wonder a drunken Alexander had felt jealous and behaved so badly. Venetia reached for the cigarette packet again. She had forgotten how much she loved to smoke.

  Marina had arrived almost unnoticed in 1948, the year after Sir Laurie’s death. Sent down from London by the bank, Angus said. Some relation of the manager who’d graduated from a provincial university several years ago, done something worthy for the war effort and was now back at the bank and ‘working her way up.’ Angus quickly pronounced her ‘damned good’ at her job but only her ordinariness had struck at first—thin limbs, puppy-fat torso; indistinguishable black clothing. On that first visit, Venetia invited her to dine with the family—Alexander being home from school for the holidays—but it soon become clear that the girl preferred to take her meals in her room and Venetia forgot about her almost. In retrospect, the only emotion Venetia could recall was a vague pity for this earnest young woman who seemed to have some kind of unhappy, ongoing situation with a fiancé back in London. Venetia registered this just enough to wonder if there was some unspeakable war injury to think about.