All My Sins Remembered

by Rosie Thomas

  Clio knew that she must align herself. She said tentatively, ‘In a way, Aunt Blanche, Grace is right.’

  Blanche pushed Grace away. She went to her chair and sat in it with her head up and her back stiff, as if the seat were a throne. To Clio’s eyes she suddenly looked smaller, a plump little woman with greying hair and too many heavy jewels. She was stranded in a corner of her great cold house, defended by the ageing rump of an army of footmen, an anachronism. Immediately Clio thought of her own mother. Eleanor was getting old too, and Nathaniel, and the tide was beginning to flow away from the Woodstock Road. She had seen it, without recognizing it, but now as she looked at Blanche it was clear.

  Her mother and father had always been pillars in Clio’s life, and in their own way so had her aunt and uncle. To see this diminishment was painful, and it left her feeling cold and exposed. She found herself wanting to cry, and she blinked angrily.

  It was Grace who had been widowed, and Grace who was striking out. For herself, she was newly married and at the beginning of a partnership. She had not yet discovered what kind of partnership it might be, but there was no need for tears. Old age came to everyone, if they were lucky, luckier than Anthony had been.

  ‘What will you do about money?’ Blanche was asking in a cold voice.

  Grace sighed, and sat down again. To Clio she said, ‘There is some problem about Anthony’s estate. Did Julius tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  Julius had said nothing at all. As always, he was secretive where Grace was concerned.

  ‘Anthony lost a lot of money in the American crash. Cressida and I are his beneficiaries, of course, but as it happens there doesn’t seem to be much left. The disentangling isn’t quite finished, but it looks as if we shall be quite poor.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’ Clio doubted that Grace’s notion of poverty would quite correspond with her own. ‘What will you do?’

  Grace shrugged. ‘Whatever I have to do. Sell South Audley Street and buy somewhere much smaller, perhaps nearer to Westminster. Practise stringent economies, that sort of thing. Might even be rather fun, don’t you think?’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. Think of Cressida.’ Blanche was angry. Grace had been almost teasingly calm all through the evening, but now she showed an answering spark of anger.

  ‘There is nothing ridiculous about my intentions. I have thought of Cressida. Being a Member of Parliament is paid work, you know. Would you rather see me selling tea-gowns in Selfridges?’

  Blanche had never been good at arguments. Her cheeks wobbled and the soft creases deepened at the sides of her mouth.

  She’s a bewildered old lady, Clio thought. She doesn’t understand any of this.

  ‘You know it would never come to that. If you would only listen to your father, if you would come home with Cressida for good …’

  Grace turned to Clio. She looked tired now. ‘If I do what is expected of me, Papa will provide. If I do not, then Cressida and I can’t expect any financial assistance from his lordship. That’s it, stripped of the polite verbiage, isn’t it?’

  Blanche put her hand over her mouth. ‘You are so hard, Grace. What have we done that you should have become so hard?’

  Grace went to her again, and took her hands. She turned them over in her own, and her red-varnished nails tapped against her mother’s rings.

  ‘What would you really like me to do?’ she asked softly.

  ‘I would like you to come home again, to live with us.’ Blanche gestured with their linked hands and all three of them looked upwards, as if into the dark and draughty recesses of the great house. ‘And then, after a decent interval, I would like to see you marry again, some good man who will look after you and Cressida.’

  Grace shook her head. ‘I can’t come back here, you know. I’m not a girl any longer, and you can’t wish me back into one. And Anthony was my husband. I shan’t marry again.’

  Clio shivered at the flat certainty in her voice.

  Grace stood up, laying her mother’s hands back in her lap. Then she bent over and kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t worry. You never know, you might even end up feeling proud of me.’ She had recovered her calmness, but she made it clear that there was no more to say.

  ‘Clio, we are neglecting you. Would you prefer tea or coffee? Mummy, shall I ring for the tray?’ Then she laughed, apparently with real amusement. ‘One might as well command while there are still those to be commanded, don’t you think? Or would you rather have a proper drink, Clio?’

  ‘I will have a large whisky and soda. Very large,’ Clio smiled, choosing not to see Blanche’s shocked expression.

  ‘And I shall join you.’ Grace strolled to the decanter that had been placed ready for the men.

  When they had their drinks Grace lifted her glass to Clio.

  ‘To the adoption meeting,’ she proposed, and Clio took a deep gulp.

  The adoption meeting was in Ludlow. Grace drove them there, with Hugo sitting stiffly beside her and Clio and Cressida in the back. John had refused to mention the meeting at all, and Blanche had miserably divided herself between supporting him and recognizing the inevitability of Grace’s progress towards Parliament. But at the last minute, as they were preparing to leave, Hugo appeared in his hat and coat.

  ‘I can’t sit here and let the two of you and the child go on your own,’ he grumbled.

  ‘We won’t be on our own, Hugo,’ Grace smiled. ‘There will be the Conservative Party Association of West Shropshire. But thank you. I would like it very much if you were there.’

  The hall where they met was dusty and wooden floored, with rows of seats lined up in front of a low dais. A Union flag and a picture of the King and Queen hung above the platform. Grace was ushered in by her campaign manager, the red-faced man with the bowler hat who had also worked for Anthony. She stepped up on to the dais in her silvery furs and then turned to survey the crowd.

  As soon as she came in, the dingy room seemed to lighten. People leant forward in their seats and the buzz of conversation grew louder. Grace evidently knew many of the members. She nodded and smiled to them as she took her seat in the middle of the row of officials, apparently completely at ease. Clio and Hugo were placed to one side, with Cressida a little in front. Clio took a quick sideways glance at her. The child sat still, with her feet and gloved hands pressed together, looking straight ahead into nowhere. She was wearing a felt hat that even Grace’s dexterity had failed to tweak to a flattering angle, and a mushroom-coloured coat with a big blue rosette pinned to the brown velvet collar.

  The chairman of the local party called the meeting to order. Clio felt her stomach suddenly pitch with anxiety. She focused on the faces in front of her. There were women as well as men, most of them with reddened farming complexions, people of all ages, sitting quietly on their wooden chairs and looking at Grace.

  Grace’s campaign manager made a short speech. There was no need, he said, for him to make any introduction. Lady Grace Brock was known to them all as a staunch party supporter, as her late husband’s loyal champion, and as a friend.

  Grace stood up. Her hands holding her notes were steady, and her smile was warm, but inside herself she was afraid. Platforms and speeches had been easy when she was only expected to sit at Anthony’s side, in the safety of his limelight. Now she was here alone. The room seemed huge; she was conscious of Hugo with his leg stretched out at an awkward angle, and Clio’s intent face, but they seemed a long way away. She could feel Cressida watching her back.

  Her adoption speech had been carefully worked out with her manager and supporters. She looked down at the notes, and saw a series of hieroglyphics. Then she raised her head and saw a woman sitting in the back row, a little woman in a hat like a bun. She remembered that she had talked to her at some party function, and the woman had patted her arm and confided, ‘I’ll vote for you. A vote for your husband is a vote for you, isn’t it?’

  Grace abandoned her notes and began to extemporize.

>   Once she had begun, it was easy. The sentences seemed to unroll before her eyes, like ticker-tape, and she had only to read them off.

  ‘Don’t look at me as a woman,’ she ordered them in her ringing voice. ‘Don’t look at me as Lady Grace Stretton, or as Mrs Anthony Brock. Look at me as a candidate first. Look at me as a worker, who will work for you and the constituency. I will represent each of you, every one of you, to the best of my ability. Let me go forward to fight this by-election for you; and as my husband did, so will I do. You have my word.’

  There was a single cheer, and then a ragged chorus of cheering that gained strength and confidence.

  Clio listened, amazed. Her anxiety evaporated. This was Grace, standing up in front of her in her furs and Chanel, but it was also not Grace at all. She saw, for the first time, a politician.

  ‘I have heard it said that mothers of young children should not put themselves forward in the political world. That a woman who has children should stay at home to care for them.’

  From somewhere, a man’s voice called, ‘Hear! Hear!’

  Grace swung in his direction. ‘I believe that to be true, sir, wherever you are. This is my daughter, here on the platform with me, and I believe that it is my responsibility to care for her. But I feel that someone ought also to be looking after the less fortunate children. My child is one of the lucky ones, and because I know that I want to go to the House of Commons to fight. To fight not only for the men, not only for this constituency, but also for the women and children of England. That is my care, and my responsibility.’

  The cheering became a roar.

  Cressida’s heavy face burned a dull red. Even her ears were alight under the felt brim. She dropped her eyes to her lap and pulled sharply at the cuff button of one of her gloves. Luck. The word reverberated as if a cracked bell had been struck. She did not know how to manage the welter of shame and disbelief and rancour rising inside her.

  Grace called out, ‘Adopt me as your candidate. I will serve you, each and every one of you, to the best of my ability.’

  Cressida sat mute, trying to hide her boiled cheeks. Clio was applauding with everyone else. Beside her Hugo’s face showed his startled and embarrassed pride.

  ‘Bravo,’ he muttered, as if afraid that he might be overheard.

  The meeting belonged to Grace. There was another candidate for the nomination, but even before he stood up to speak it was clear what the outcome would be.

  Grace was unanimously adopted as the Conservative candidate for West Shropshire. She would fight her campaign against the same candidates who had opposed Anthony. Polling day was to be December 18, just a few days before the House retired for the Christmas recess.

  Clio stayed at Stretton for four more days, accompanying Grace as she threw herself into her campaigning. The big black car with its blue ribbons and rosettes went everywhere. Clio heard Grace speak in village halls to Mothers’ Unions and working men’s groups, and to clusters of people gathered in the windswept cold of market squares.

  Sometimes Cressida came with them. Grace had given her a jaunty little pennant with ‘Vote for Mummy’ printed on it. She held it in the back of the car, and on the makeshift platforms, but she would not wave it.

  Each time, everywhere they went, Clio was impressed by Grace’s freshness, her willingness to answer questions if she knew the answers, and her adroitness in deflecting them if she did not. She handled hecklers with wit and good humour.

  ‘I didn’t vote for your husband and I won’t vote for his wife,’ a man yelled.

  ‘More fool you not to vote for my husband,’ Grace shouted back. ‘He was the best MP you’ll ever have. And I don’t want your vote if you don’t want a woman to fight for you.’

  Grace crackled and shone with vigour. Every day she was up early, eagerly waiting for the car to be brought round. She never flagged or complained of the cold or the bad roads or a hostile reception. Watching her, Clio thought she looked not like a widow but a bride.

  When it was time for Clio to go home Grace herself took her to Shrewsbury station. She swept through the ticket hall and booking office, shaking hands with porters and passengers and clerks. When the train came in they kissed each other with genuine affection.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Grace said.

  ‘You didn’t need me,’ Clio answered.

  ‘Yes, I did. Wish me luck.’

  ‘Good luck, Grace. But you don’t need that either.’

  Back at Gower Street, Clio found Miles sitting in an armchair, like some hibernating creature in a nest of manuscript pages and cigarette ends and unwashed plates. He was wearing braces over a dirty grey flannel shirt and his hair stood up in a crest as if he had slept too long on it. The small rooms had a musty, vegetable smell.

  ‘How’s the work?’ Clio asked.

  Miles shuffled some manuscript pages into a heap. An ashtray rocked on the arm of his chair and then overbalanced, spreading its contents on the floor.

  ‘All right. Just starting to get somewhere, actually.’

  Clio did not miss the implication. If she had not come home to interrupt him, he might have made progress.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said neutrally. When she passed behind his chair and leant over to kiss the top of his head he made a defensive clutch at his papers. Clio said nothing more. She opened the windows, letting in the traffic noise from the street, and began to collect up the dishes and cups. She scraped the food debris on to one plate and removed it to the kitchen, where the smell was even stronger. The sink was a mess of tea-leaves and eggshells. She took a brush back into the next room and began to sweep up the spilt contents of the ashtray.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Miles snapped. ‘Do you have to start doing this the minute you step in through the door?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to clear up if you hadn’t made such a mess in the first place, no.’

  ‘What in God’s name is the matter with you? I’ve been writing, not working as a bloody housemaid. Is the state of a couple of rooms in Gower Street really so important in the great scheme of life?’

  Clio faced him. Miles shrank back into his chair with his manuscript held back against his chest. She saw that the whites of his eyes were yellowish and his unshaven cheeks were grey. The fingers of his right hand were nicotine-stained. It came to her that he looked miserable. His eyes didn’t meet hers. Concern for him replaced her irritation.

  ‘Miles, you don’t look good. Do you feel ill?’

  His head fell against the back of the chair. He glanced up at her, under his eyelids, then closed his eyes. ‘Yes. It’s a headache.’

  She put her hand on his forehead. His fingers fastened around her wrist.

  ‘Lovely cool hand,’ he murmured.

  ‘How long have you been sitting here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ages.’

  Clio sighed. She stroked his hair and he murmured, ‘That makes it much better.’

  ‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She made him his tea and sent him into the bedroom to lie down while she cleaned up the cluttered rooms. She worked with a kind of patient exasperation. When she had finished she looked into the bedroom and found him sitting up in bed waiting for her. He patted the covers beside him and when she sat down he took her hand.

  ‘Dear Clio,’ he said. ‘I missed you, you know.’

  She seized on the words, her heart lifting. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She was looking at her Gilman painting of the bedsitting room, hanging on the opposite wall. The bareness of the little blue room made her think of the spare routines of her life before Miles came, and this solid presence now in the bed warmed her out of her irritation. She did not think that she would exchange now for then. Clio stretched out beside her husband and kissed his cheek.

  ‘I’m glad to be home. Don’t you want to hear about Grace and the election?’

  ‘Not very much,’ he a
nswered, but he said it pleasantly and she laughed at him.

  ‘I’m going to tell you, whether you like it or not. She was adopted, of course. I went out to see her campaigning. She was very good, you know. I was surprised by just how good.’

  Miles lay back against the pillows while she told him about the village halls and the market squares. She even coaxed him into reluctant laughter with her descriptions of the rustic hecklers and pompous party officials.

  When she had finished he looked at her, the same sly glance from under his eyelids.

  ‘You are impressed by your cousin Grace, aren’t you? Do you know how often you talk about her?’

  After a minute Clio said, ‘She has just always been there, that’s all. She is a part of my life. I don’t know if impressed is the right word.’ She tried to sift through the words stacked inside her head, to pin down which the right one might be, but words which had always been her allies faded and crumbled, evading her grasp, and she was left only with a series of images, bright as snapshots.

  Grace in her Chinese robe. Grace walking on the riverbank at Oxford with Jake. Grace in her wedding dress, her ballgown, her chemise in Pilgrim’s studio. Grace under the sea, with her face turned up and her eyes and mouth like black holes.

  Clio shivered.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’ she asked Miles quickly.

  He yawned and stretched. ‘I am, rather. I think I might go and have a bath. I said I might meet some people later on, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh? Anybody I know?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Blue light from the Gilman picture seemed to filter into the room, cooling the precarious intimacy that had sprung up between them.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’

  He gave a little laugh. ‘Do you want to? Would you enjoy yourself, piglet?’

  Something pinched inside Clio. In a bright voice she answered, ‘No, you go. It will do you good to go out after working so hard all the time I’ve been away.’

  A little while later, bathed and shaved and dressed in a clean shirt that she had ironed for him, Miles put on his coat and went out.