Her distress was too plain to be ignored. ‘Could I help you in any way?’ he offered.
‘You’d need to be a genius to understand all this,’ she said, stirring the paper about in anger. Her white hair sprang above her forehead in furious curls, and the two deep frown lines above her brown eyes were thunder black. ‘A nice, simple summary. That’s what we need. Something to tell us where to send our merchandise and when, so’s I don’t have to go a-rummaging all through this lot every day. My heart alive, ‘tis enough to make a saint wild, so ‘tis.’
‘I can’t claim to be a genius,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘but I could look at it if you’d like. See if it made sense to me. I’ve a good head for mathematics.’
’Do as you please,’ she said ungraciously. ‘’Tis all one to me. I’m sick to death of the blamed things. I’m off to the warehouse to see Billy.’
And she was gone before he had a chance to say anything else, leaving the room in a sudden silence, with the fire licking in the grate and the folders sliding from her desk.
He should have been shocked by her bad temper, but he wasn’t. He was full of admiration for her, because she was renowned for being old and tough and yet she could admit defeat and weakness. If I can help her, I will, he thought, for she is a very great lady.
He spent the rest of the afternoon poring over John’s careful plans, following them from the very first entry on the very first page. When the clerk came tip-toeing in to light the lamps and bank up the fire he was so immersed in their complications that he didn’t even look up, and when the building closed for the night he gathered up all the folders and took them home with him, leaving a note for Nan to explain what he’d done and to promise he would return them in the morning.
They kept him awake all night, following the thread of each timetable year by year, and gradually unravelling the pattern of John Easter’s plan. Although Henry had suffered from John’s intransigence, the further he read the more he understood the man. Secretive and biased, certainly, but painstaking too, and as determined in his own way as his daughter was in hers. It was an admirable, adaptable plan, and would run as well in 1846 as it had done in 1820. As daylight dimmed the candles and he finished the last page of the last book he realized that he not only understood the plan but could put it into operation. Mathematics had always come easy to him but until that moment it had never occurred to him to value that particular skill.
‘My heart alive!’ Nan said, when he told her. ‘Could ‘ee so? Then I suggest you do it, my dear. I’d be uncommon grateful to ‘ee. Providing you can spare the time from your poetry.’
‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I ain’t so much of a poet as I thought.’ Somehow or other it was possible for him to confess it to her, especially now that he could see that there might be another way to make his mark on the world.
She grinned at him like a conspirator. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I thought as much. Well then, there’s a job tailor-made for ‘ee if ee’ll take it.’
He hesitated, even though he knew it was what he wanted. ‘I’m honoured to have such a position offered,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘but I wouldn’t want to cause any difficulties.’
‘Difficulties?’ she said, as though such an idea was ridiculous. ‘Why should there be difficulties?’
‘It is a post of some responsibility,’ he said. ‘It might be more proper for it to be given to a member of your immediate family.’
His delicacy pleased her. ‘None of ‘em want it, my dear, or they’d have took it long before this. And besides, if you en’t a member of my family now, you very soon will be.’
So he accepted her offer, moving in to John’s old office, and with a salary the same as Will’s had been when he started in the firm. For as his new employer said, ‘We must all be fair, square and above board in this.’
To his relief Caroline was very pleased with the decision, welcoming him into the firm as her equal and saying she couldn’t think of anything more fitting, and by the time Will came home from Ireland at the beginning of April he was settled and almost entirely accepted. Only Edward and his two discontented cronies on the regional board had reservations, and for the time being they were keeping them to themselves.
Chapter 18
‘I’d almost forgotten what I looked like out of mourning,’ Caroline said, admiring her reflection in the cheval mirror. Her grief for her father’s death and the custom which required her to wear ugly clothes had always been two quite separate things in her mind, one an intense daily misery and the other merely a social necessity she was glad to be done with. ‘We’ve been in black for ages.’
‘Six months,’ Euphemia corrected mildly.
‘Well, it felt like ages,’ Caroline said. ‘And now it’s summer and we can wear some of our pretty things again. I feel like a new person.’ And it was true, for even her misery had lifted. The dress she had chosen for her first day out of purdah was a lovely thing, a creamy muslin with a triple-tiered skirt delicately printed with tiny lilac leaves. It had been a favourite when she first had it made three whole years ago, and she liked it more than ever now that she was in half-mourning after all that depressing black. ‘Ain’t you glad it’s June, Pheemy? I shall wear my white silk for dinner tonight.’
Euphemia had chosen a lilac and white striped cotton for her afternoon at the ragged school and she’d been dressed and ready a good half an hour before her cousin. Now she sat beside their bedroom window enjoying the green of the gardens. ‘I suppose you and Henry will be married soon,’ she said.
‘Oh, I’m in no hurry,’ Caroline said lightly, smoothing the frills on her skirt.
‘But he is, I daresay.’
‘He don’t say so. No, no, Pheemy. It’ll be time enough to think of marriage when I’ve got all these deals settled. Mr Chaplin is the major shareholder of the London and North Western, you know, and that’s bound to be a help to us. Even so, it’s a very big company. It could be difficult. Do I look business-like, do you think?’
‘He loves you so dearly, Carrie.’
‘Yes,’ Caroline admitted. ‘I know he does. He’s a dear loving creature even if he does have a short temper, and the firm couldn’t run without him. I daresay we shall marry by and by and be very happy together. But not just now. I’ve a deal too much to do.’
‘You sound just like Nan,’ Euphemia said, intending a gentle rebuke.
But Caroline took the words as a compliment. ‘Do I?’ she said, grinning at the thought. ‘Well, if that ain’t the nicest thing you could say to me then I don’t know what is. Especially now with this North Eastern deal to manage. If I can be like Nan in Mr Wellborough’s office this afternoon, then I shall do well enough.’
‘Poor Henry,’ Euphemia said. ‘I don’t believe you want to marry him at all.’
Caroline left the mirror and walked across to the window to join her cousin. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she admitted seriously, ‘I don’t really know what I do want. Sometimes I think I love him dearly, and I’d marry him tomorrow, if he asked me, and sometimes I’m so busy I barely give him a thought. When he first said he loved me, I was so happy it made me tremble, but now I feel so little emotion, even when we are sitting side by side at dinner or the theatre. I sometimes wonder whether I ain’t gone cold towards him.’ All that wonderful, tremulous excitement was missing. He could take her hand and raise it to his lips when they said goodbye and she felt nothing. It was so disappointing she preferred not to think about it. ‘Oh dear!’
Euphemia caught those hands and squeezed them comfortably. ‘Grief turns the world topsy-turvy,’ she said. ‘That’s what it is. Things will come to rights now that we are out of mourning. When we go to the Vauxhall Gardens, perhaps.’
* * *
Will and Henry decided against their proposed trip to the Gardens. They wanted to go to Richmond instead, to meet the Four In Hand Club at the Star and Garter, because they both drove a four in hand and this was the first meet of the season.
&n
bsp; ‘Well, why not?’ Caroline said, when the change of plan was mooted. ‘Vauxhall will wait and it will be a treat to be driving in the country.’ Her meeting with Mr Wellborough had been extremely successful and she was in an expansive mood.
So they went to Richmond, with Tom Thistlethwaite riding as footman and chaperone to the ladies.
The Star and Garter always served the best lunches they could contrive for the Four In Hand Club, for they were valued customers with plenty of money to spend, and the better they were fed the more often they came. On that Saturday the cooks had excelled themselves. There were oyster patties, and eel pie with brown bread and butter, there was lobster salad, and pickled herring, there were veal pies and honey-roast hams, little roast capons and a side of beef big enough to feed an army, and port and claret and hock and moselle on every table. It was, as Will said when he proposed the toast, a reward for the hard work they’d all been doing during the winter.
Caroline tried every dish, to Will’s delight and Henry’s astonishment. And even Euphemia had a good appetite for once, although she said it upset her to think how well they were eating when the children of the ragged school had so little. And after the meal they went strolling out into the gardens to admire the view.
The Star and Garter was a solid Georgian building, three storeys high and two colonnaded entrances, a central semicircular bay and its own artesian well, no less. It stood at the top of Richmond Hill opposite the park gates and its gardens sloped down to the river in a series of well-kept terraces. The view from the top terrace was spectacular. After the speed and excitement of their ride and the cheerful company of their meal Caroline and Euphemia were quite stunned by it.
Below them the River Thames curved between lush meadows, here skirting a green island with a froth of foam, there providing a gentle watering place for a herd of brown-backed cattle. Its waters mirrored the blue of the sky above it and the luscious greens of the trees beside it, and were dappled with olive-coloured waves that fanned out from the triangular wakes of the skiffs and barks that drifted lazily upon it, their sails cloud-white and their hulls bright with rich colour, chestnut, scarlet, royal blue, grass-green, gold and purple. Between them, scores of swans trailed their lesser wakes like black-edged darts, and the air was shrill with black and white housemartins swooping over the water.
Beyond the river they could see the entire valley of the Thames, spreading for mile upon mile, from the heaths and downs of Surrey to the beechy hills of Buckinghamshire and the haze-blue heights of Berkshire, countless meadows, where sheep and cows wandered at will, thick woods and copses, the variegated green of their foliage shadowed with purple and indigo blue, and here and there among the trees the turrets and towers of new villas and ancient palaces, the dark shapes of Hampton Court, the Queen’s white house at Kew, the long chestnut avenues of Bushey Park. Neither of the two girls had ever seen so far, so clearly.
‘Why, it’s wondrous,’ Caroline said, ‘and so beautiful. Don’t you think so, Pheemy?’
‘It is so peaceful,’ Euphemia said. ‘What a marvellous thing it would be to live in a house on this hill, and see this view every day of your life. It would be a daily blessing.’
‘Better than travelling the world?’ Will asked, teasing her.
‘Oh much, much better, although I don’t suppose you would agree with me.’
‘When I was young,’ Henry confessed, ‘I used to look at the view from my room at Ippark and think how wonderful our estate was. I used to wish the land could be mine, you know, so that I could live there for ever and never move away from it. Land you see. Has a hold on you.’
Caroline glanced sideways at him and was moved to see that his face wore the same haughty expression she’d seen on the day they first met. And she understood, without words or conscious thought, that she was looking at sadness and vulnerability, not hauteur, and suddenly she yearned to comfort him.
‘But this view is even better,’ he said, making an effort to recover his humour, ‘damn me if it ain’t.’
‘I don’t see why the older brother always has to inherit,’ Caroline said, springing to his defence. ‘Why couldn’t the estate have been shared between you?’
‘Never is,’ Henry said, with studied cheerfulness. ‘The eldest always inherits. That’s how it is. Always was, always will be. Younger sons have to fend for themselves.’
‘Well, it’s not fair. Papa divided his capital in two equal halves.’
‘That’s capital. Land is different.’ And again that vulnerable hauteur.
Affection for him welled up into Caroline’s throat like tears. How terrible to be treated so, denied an inheritance and left to fend for himself. How unfair. He should never have been treated so badly. She would make amends to him, here and now. ‘When we marry,’ she said, ‘this is where we will rent a house. Right here on this hill. And you shall have this view to lift your spirits every single day. That’ll be a jolly sight better than Ippark, now won’t it?’
The haughty expression was gone, washed away by a current of other emotions, amazement, disbelief, hope, love. He caught her hands in his, crushing them, his eyes suddenly moist and his mouth as red as wine. The patience of that long, long mourning was breached beyond repair. ‘When?’ he said. ‘Oh my dearest girl, when will it be?’
He loves me so much, Caroline thought, dazzled by his emotion. There was only one possible answer to such a question and she gave it at once. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘As soon as we can. We will find the house this afternoon.’
‘Oh Carrie,’ Will said, laughing at her, ‘you can’t just walk off and find a house, just like that.’
‘Yes, I can,’ she said.
And being Caroline Easter, she did.
It only took her one visit to one estate agency to discover that there were three suitable houses available on Richmond Hill and that she could inspect them all that afternoon. Will protested that this was not the way he’d intended to spend his time, but they all went along with her just the same because she was so determined. And the second house she saw was ideal.
It was a corner house, and from the front it appeared to be rather plain, three storeyed and double fronted with the rather dull balance of all Georgian buildings, but the interior was a revelation. Because of the slope of the land the rear of the house had four storeys, not three, and in order to make the most of the view all the most important rooms were at the back and designed around sweeping bow windows. There were twelve bedrooms and a nursery suite, a vast kitchen and very adequate accommodation for housekeeper and butler, servants’ quarters in the attics and the basement. And in addition to all that, three superlative rooms in which to entertain, a dining room with two dumb waiters in cupboards on either side of the fireplace, a withdrawing room and library lit by that splendid bow window, and a ballroom with no less than three bow windows all giving out to a paved terrace where steps led down to the garden.
‘With new decorations and suitable furnishings it will be perfect,’ Caroline decided. ‘Don’t you think so, Henry?’
Henry really didn’t know what he thought. The speed of her decision had left him far behind. He had a vague feeling that he would rather have found their house himself and told her about it afterwards like any other husband would have done; and he wasn’t at all sure that a home as expensive as this one was really within his pocket, even on the salary Nan was paying him; and for a few wistful seconds he found himself wishing for a reappearance of the vulnerable Caroline he’d loved so much and so easily when her father died, so that he could look after her again and make decisions on her behalf. But there was no time for such thoughts. So he said yes, it was a magnificent house, but shouldn’t he have spoken to Nan first?
‘Whatever for?’ she asked, laughing at him.
‘Why,’ he said, speaking as softly as he could because he was mindful of the ears of the estate agent, who was trying to make himself unobtrusive over by the bay window, ‘to ask for your hand.’
She laughed
more than ever. ‘Why, we’re long past that,’ she said. ‘Ain’t we, Will? You’ve been my accepted suitor for months and months, Henry Osmond. All we have to do now is to decide where we mean to marry and to agree upon the date. Now, shall we take this house?’
So the house was taken and then the four of them set off for a drive about the town, down Richmond Hill to the green, which was a wide grassy square surrounded by elm trees, and bordered by a terrace of fine red brick houses called Maids of Honour Row. Sheep grazed quietly in the sunshine and blackbirds sang among the leaves as the four in hand trotted past, heading towards the parish church and the centre of the town, where there were several shops that Caroline said looked ‘most promising’.
‘Would you wait here for us,’ she said to Will, ‘while Henry and I take a little look?’
So Tom put the chocks down and looked after the horses while Will and Euphemia took a stroll towards the river and their two companions went striding off along the High Street.
‘She’s so quick,’ Euphemia said, adjusting her. parasol against the glare of the sun. ‘I can’t keep up with her.’
‘She always was,’ Will said. ‘Even as a little thing she was always making snap decisions. She ran away from home once in the middle of a blizzard. It was nothing short of a miracle she wasn’t killed. Still, there it is. We shan’t change her now, even if we wanted to, and I’m not at all sure we’d want to, would we? She’s darling as she is. We must just hope rashness don’t lead her astray, that’s all.’
‘She has made the right decision today, surely?’
‘To marry?’ he said wryly. ‘Well, you know my views upon that subject.’
Sixpenny Stalls Page 27
