When he died, I was no longer whole. That was it, pure and simple. Regi might hold me, kiss me, claim his right as a husband, and he was not ungentle in that way, but he was never of me as Leo was. When he was gone from this world, I was less.
I don’t wish to indicate that I was not fond of Regi. I was. He was a consistent soul whose only fault was that he was not Leo; a gentle man who rarely gave me reason to quarrel. If he did occasionally indulge himself in the way most men of his class and generation did, at least he did it more or less discreetly, and always made up for it after with a trip to the jeweler, with whom I had an understanding. (Regi’s tastes tended to the gaudy, unfortunately—he once bought me a turquoise ring; imagine! Mr. Solomon, however, soon learned to steer him toward more understated gems, such as amethyst and emerald.)
I could not complain overmuch; God knows I was not the most affectionate wife, although I was, truly, grateful to him for rescuing me.
For finally, his were the hands that spirited me far away from Oxford, to a Wonderland where no one knew me except as Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves. Regi afforded me a fine country house, Cuffnells, in the village of Lyndhurst, right in the middle of the Hampshires; 160 acres belonged to us, and the house was situated in the middle of lush, fertile earth with a view of the Solent from the upper floor. We even had a small lake, fully stocked; the boys loved to camp out there during summer holidays and skin and fry the fish themselves for breakfast.
The house itself was grander than anything Mamma could have wished for, even if the first time she saw it, she merely sniffed and told me I had done fairly well for myself. I cannot deny that I gloated a bit when I showed her the two stories of pale stone, the balcony running along the upper floor; the huge orangery, impressively wide staircase, billiard room, library, and cavernous dining room; the drawing room decorated with a frieze of peacocks painted by an Italian artist. All of this was mine, simply for agreeing to marry a man I did not love but who was, in the end, the only man who had ever asked.
It seemed a fair exchange, on the whole.
I was in charge of a large household staff—finally I could boast of my own servant problems!—and it took a great deal of my time, for which I was secretly grateful. It was very quiet in Lyndhurst; the days seemed to pass more slowly here. There was no constant buzz in the air, like at Oxford; more like a somnam-bulant snore. There was too much time, if one was so inclined, to reflect—upon the past, the present, the future.
I was not so inclined. So I threw myself into entertaining, making Cuffnells a gay, vibrant center of culture and sophistication to rival Mamma’s efforts at Christ Church. She might have a string quartet playing on the landing of the Deanery; I arranged to have an orchestra perform in the orangery, musicians hidden among the illuminated trees like so many sprites. She might have entertained the Queen for tea; at Cuffnells, I took great delight in showing my guests a room, furnished entirely in gold—gilded furniture, gold brocade curtains, carpets—in which King George III stayed for one night, and which has remained untouched, to preserve the privilege for future generations.
While Mamma had to content herself with arranging rowing parties on the Isis, I once outfitted a schooner with fairy lights and had my guests dress as characters from Shakespeare for a Midsummer Night’s cruise across the Solent, culminating in a midnight picnic on the Isle of Wight. Even Ina was charmed by that evening, although she insisted upon dressing as Titania, resembling nothing more than a plump bumblebee instead of an ethereal Fairy Queen.
Regi, being so sociable, was happy to fund my extravagances even if he would have preferred quiet hunting weekends to Shakespearean fetes; he was, in his simple way, proud to have such a socially accomplished, intellectual wife.
Thirty-four years, gone in the blink of an eye, a blur. I could recall details of talks with Leo, walks we had shared, minute images that still appeared as vivid to me as the day I saw them—the odd stone path we discovered once that led away from the river, for instance; all the stones were of the same white color, the same circumference, and had been placed with great care, yet it ran for only about ten feet, ending abruptly in a ditch.
My life with Regi, by contrast—and despite our extravagant entertainments—seemed all of one color, one speed. At times, I wondered if I could even remember what he looked like if he didn’t happen to sit across the table from me day after day.
With a sigh, I folded up the newspaper and placed it neatly beside my plate, for I could not focus on anything other than the distressing number of headlines related to the chances of war. Moodily, I sipped my coffee. “Regi, will Alan come home for leave, then? If there is talk of war, I would hope that he would, instead of going off doing some reckless, foolish thing like racing pigs in India or whatever he did last time. Don’t you agree?”
“My dear, you’re really worried, aren’t you?” Again, he looked so childishly surprised, yet that did not prevent him from throwing down his paper and attacking his fresh kippers with gusto.
“I am, rather. We already went through the Boer War with him; I thought we had reached an age where we would not have to worry about our sons anymore, and then this comes along. Of course if Alan is mobilized, what will happen to the other boys? It would be entirely like Rex to join up just to vex me.” I stirred my coffee with such force it nearly splashed onto the saucer; Rex had been doing his level best to vex me ever since his birth.
I sometimes reflected how ironic it was that one of the three little princesses of Christ Church had borne three little princes of her own. Alan, Rex, Caryl; three little men, all in a row. So used to the company of my sisters, I wondered, at first, what on earth I would do with boys? Sportsmen, hunters, reluctant scholars, just like their father?
Yet Alan, the eldest, the sturdy leader, gave me little trouble; Caryl, the youngest, was so anxious to please as to be slightly irritating, but he was easily placated with a smile or a look. But Rex! Oh, Rex; the middle child, the one of whom my father had said with a fond chuckle, “God Himself broke the mold when it came to that one.”
The child who was, to my mother’s everlasting amusement, as she never wearied of pointing out the resemblance, exactly as I had been at his age.
“Whatever can I do with your cowlick? It simply won’t stay down,” I found myself saying nearly every Sunday when he was small, as we stood waiting for the carriage to take us to church. “I should cut it all off and be done with it.”
“Go ahead,” he would reply with an unconcerned shrug. “It’s only hair. Although I’ll look like a convict, which I’m sure I wouldn’t mind a bit. In fact, I think it might be quite interesting. So go ahead, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course I mind! Only hair? A convict? I think not! Go inside and wet it as you should have done. This instant!” And Rex would do so—after first giving me a look of such ill-concealed amusement, I had to ball my hands into fists so as not to run after him.
Or another time—
“Rex, how on earth did you manage to get plaster in your shoes?” I stared at him, aghast, as he calmly sat upon my best Chippendale side chair and removed a sodden, heavy shoe with a triumphant smile, watching as the gooey bits of plaster rained down upon my Aubusson carpet. “How does this even happen to a child?”
“I don’t wonder that you wouldn’t know,” he said with a small, worldly shake of his head. “I can’t imagine you ever were a child yourself.”
“That’s a very impudent thing to say, young man, and I assure you I most certainly was—but do not change the subject! Answer me!”
“He was trying to jump over the new wall that the men are building in the garden, and got stuck,” Caryl, who had been watching the scene with interest, piped up helpfully.
“Rat,” Rex retorted with a sneer.
“Rex! Apologize at once, and go up to the nursery and change—and for heaven’s sake, don’t take off your other shoe until you’re upstairs!” Whereupon he slid off the chair—leaving mud stains—and grinned like a little
devil, saluting me sharply and running off before I could sputter anything further; running off before I could give in to a sudden, wild desire to laugh out loud. The child always prompted such conflicting emotions in me! Why couldn’t he simply behave like his brothers, Alan in particular, who always managed to keep his clothes so neat and clean—
Pressing my lips together, clutching the folds of my skirt as if to physically restrain myself from chasing Rex up the stairs, I would survey the ruined chair—or broken vase, or torn drape, or whatever havoc he had managed to wreak this time—and ring for Mary Ann to clean it up. Then I would flee to the refuge of the drawing room, where I would attack a petit point pillowcase with my needle until I nearly shredded the fabric, not entirely sure with whom I was angrier—Rex, or myself.
I nearly shredded my breakfast napkin now, remembering. Try as I might to fill my life with activity, I found that lately, with the boys all grown, I could not always keep the past at bay. Nor the future; it suddenly occurred to me that if Rex enlisted, wouldn’t Caryl surely do the same, just to keep up?
Then I would have three little soldier boys, all in a row.
Sensing my anxiety—I must have sighed—Regi actually set aside his fork and knife to reach across the table and grab my hand with his rough, dry mitts. “But they’re not young men, remember—not as young as the military likes them. Don’t imagine they’ll see much of the show.”
“You don’t?” Rarely did I need my husband to reassure me of anything, but I did at that moment.
“I don’t. Also, it can’t last long! Feller down at the club tells me that the Germans all hate the Kaiser and there’ll most likely be a civil war, instead.”
“Really?” I didn’t believe that; it sounded exactly like the kind of preposterous hope a man would offer to a woman just to keep her calm. But I so wanted to believe it that I nodded anyway, trying to convince myself.
“Really. Now, why don’t you go order a new dress or hat or something? That’ll perk you right up.” He beamed at me, so pleased to have come up with a remedy for my distress.
I did not quite manage to stifle a sigh. “I don’t believe the purchase of a new frock will prevent the Kaiser from invading Russia, unfortunately.”
“Never said it would,” Regi grumbled, his face falling. I felt an irritating little prick of guilt. He was being very kind; he was trying, in his own uninspiring, typically Regi way, to distract me from my worries.
“But I do thank you, nonetheless. Now I must talk to Cook about dinner, and then I’m to meet the committee about the flower show. You don’t imagine anything will happen by then, do you? I would hate to have to cancel it; the villagers do so look forward to spending an afternoon here at Cuffnells and viewing the grounds. It’s such a treat for them.”
“Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll let the old Kraut cancel my flower show! No, go on. We’ll have it, no matter what. But I don’t think anything will come of this, after all. Don’t fret so—you’re getting that little pucker between your eyes again. Can’t have my girl looking worried now, can I?”
“No, you can’t. Shall I order lamb for dinner?”
“Capital!”
Rising from the table, I started toward the door. I paused, however—that little prick of guilt was still lingering, as if looking for a more permanent residence—and turned around. Swiftly I walked back to my husband and kissed him on the cheek. He looked up; surprise, then delight filled his cloudless brown eyes. “Well, what’s the occasion, Mrs. Hargreaves?”
“I do not require an occasion to kiss my husband,” I huffed—but smiled down at him, unaccountably touched at how happy this little gesture made him.
“Not going to complain, I’m not,” he mumbled, reaching for the paper, a satisfied grin upon his face.
Turning to leave, I considered making a vow—perhaps a bargain with God?—to be nicer to my husband. It did not take much to make him happy, after all; nothing that was not already within my power to bestow.
But then I recalled that God had not been very good at keeping His end of bargains in the past. And surely the Kaiser would stop his ridiculous posturing; he and the Czar and King George were cousins, for heaven’s sake. Bargains and vows were for the weak and unfocused; not for me.
I pushed through the dining room door without a backward glance; as I strode down the hall with a sure step, servants flattened themselves against the wall, well out of my way. I could scarcely wait to hear Cook’s excuse for last night’s venison; it was ghastly—as dry and tough as an old straw hat. If she was planning on doing the same with the lamb tonight, perhaps she should start advertising for a new position.
“REX, I DO WISH YOU wouldn’t wolf your soup so. There are many courses left, you know. Or don’t they dine as well as we do in Canada?”
“Mamma, please. Can we not go one day without you finding fault with that poor dominion? I might add you are the one person at this table who has never traveled there.”
“I do not need to see a place in order to know whether or not I approve of it. Red Indians and trees and bears—I do not see what the appeal is, or why you should have to spend so much time there.”
“Mamma is getting on her high horse,” Alan teased, looking quite like my boy again now that he was out of his intimidating military uniform and in an ordinary suit and tie, his hair soft and loose, flopping into his eyes.
“Queen Alice has joined us for dinner,” added Caryl, absently reaching into his breast pocket for a packet of cigarettes—and catching my disapproving eye before sheepishly putting them back.
All three boys were home for the flower show; a rare event these days. Alan’s career in the Rifle Brigade kept him so far away from us that his leaves could not always be spent traveling back to England. So to have him back home—my tall, dark-haired boy; he was the one who most resembled me physically, I could see myself in his eyes—was a special treat.
Rex, the spitting image of his father, was in business, and had offices in Canada, where he spent a great deal of time. Yet he, too, made a point of being home this late July; I was delighted to see him, although I managed to mask it in my disapproval over the rough beard he was growing, and the coarseness of his clothes (it appeared there was no decent tailor in all of Canada). I knew, naturally, why he had made the effort; it was the talk of war that brought him back, not the prospect of sitting beside me on the dais as I presented Best in Show to old Smithson of the Post for his lovely azaleas.
As for what Caryl did when he was away, I could not say with any confidence. My youngest son dabbled in a great many things and mastered none of them. He lived in London, coming home for weekends, often with undesirable friends, such as artists and musicians, in tow. Smaller, slighter than his brothers—his hair neither golden brown like Rex’s, nor black like Alan’s, only some mousy color in between—it was almost as if he was a poor copy of them, down to his valiant little mustache; the resemblance was there, but the hand that had created him was not so steady and accomplished. I could allow that, even as I acknowledged that it was my hand that was responsible.
I did not linger on such feelings tonight; the dining table was full again, and I was far too content to eat, which was a blessing. I had quite forgotten what quantities young men in their prime could put away!
“Oh, do stop it, all of you,” I said, but I was not upset about their teasing; I enjoyed being the center of attention, the sole female. Unlike Regi, I did not fret about the lack of daughters-in-law and grandchildren. There was still plenty of time for that.
“Boys, you are irritating your mother, and I’m the one who always pays that price. Do stop. Alan, tell me about the last polo match. How’s your pony holding up?”
“Fine, sir!” Alan’s face lit up, and he looked so young; my heart suddenly ached with an unbidden memory—the day he brought home a tiny owl that he found on a fallen branch in the woods, begging to be allowed to keep it. His face looked the same now as it did then; shining and earnest with good intent. “M
amma,” he had said, so worried and serious, his voice very husky for such a little man. “Can’t I keep him in my room? I promise I won’t neglect him, and I’ll make Rex help me catch mice and things for his meals, so you won’t have to.”
Had I allowed him to keep it? I couldn’t recall, although for some reason, it suddenly seemed very important to me to know. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask—for surely he would remember? But I did not; I swallowed the question, knowing how ridiculous I would sound for asking it. What on earth did it matter? It was twenty-five years ago, at least. The poor owl was long gone by now, regardless.
Sternly, I gave my head a little shake, sipped some wine, and forced myself to join in the general conversation. It was about nothing, really—Rex’s latest business deal involving some innovative method of pulping trees for paper; Alan’s new sublieutenant, who had a wife who insisted he write her three times a day and enclose a lock of hair with each letter, so that now the poor chap was looking quite bald; the dinner party a friend of Caryl’s had thrown at Simpson’s, although the host managed to leave before the bill arrived, prompting Caryl to magnanimously take care of things—Regi’s eyebrows popped up to his receding hairline when he heard that.
All in all, we were determinedly, frightfully, gay and lively, avoiding the one topic that was upon everyone’s mind. Until Regi rose, praised me for the meal, then proposed port and cigars in the billiard room; my boys followed him, abruptly quiet and somber, each one stopping to kiss my cheek on his way out of the dining room.
It was then, alone, drifting through my quiet home—the only sounds those of the servants clearing up dinner—finally settling in the library, where I summoned a footman to light a fire, that I did wish I had daughters-in-law, after all. It would be a comfort to have someone to share this quiet time with; it would be nice to have someone to distract me from my thoughts. It was times such as this when I missed my sisters; I missed Edith, in particular, although at that moment I wouldn’t have minded Rhoda or Violet or even Ina, who was in a London flat now that William had died and her son had taken over the estate in Scotland.
Alice I Have Been: A Novel Page 23
