Eden Falls

by Sanderson, Jane

‘Not really,’ said Tobias. ‘Not at all, actually. Not entirely my thing, boats.’

  Only after he’d spoken did he realise the insensitivity of his remark, but Carruthers turned out to be one of those fellows who asked a question but didn’t hear the answer. He smiled broadly and said, ‘Splendid. HMS Warrior across the water there, poor old thing; not what she used to be. Top of the range warship middle of last century, then obsolete before ten years was up, y’know.’

  He set off at almost a canter as he talked, and Tobias sauntered behind him, smoking the damp cigarette and looking – he hoped – moderately interested.

  ‘That’s the trouble with shipbuilding. Advancements all the time. Not so bad for us, but the poor old Royal Navy’s always on the hop, keeping one step ahead of the kaiser.’ He looked round at Tobias. ‘Have you seen Dreadnought?’

  Tobias looked at him, baffled.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘HMS Dreadnought. Battleship. Fastest in the world on account of her steam turbines. Have you seen her?’

  ‘No, why – have you lost her?’ Tobias said, and laughed.

  ‘Ha!’ said Mr Carruthers, a little uncertainly. He fell silent for a moment, and Tobias said, ‘Do you drive a motorcar, Mr Carruthers? I used to favour a Daimler, but the new one’s a Rolls-Royce. Silver Ghost. Best car in the world, bar none.’

  He smiled. A taste of his own medicine, he thought. Then Mr Carruthers stopped by the long, sleek navy blue hull of a two-hundred-foot yacht whose masts towered majestically in the blue Portsmouth sky and said, ‘Here we are. Isn’t she a beauty?’ and Tobias was silenced. Silenced, and humbled.

  Tobias was spending that night at Denbigh Court, and he desperately underestimated the length of the journey, turning up so late that there was a sense of crisis about his arrival, like a doctor called in the night or an intruder caught red-handed. He had pulled on the bell rope fully five hours after the time he had given them; everyone had long retired, assuming that his plans had changed. His mother’s husband, the Duke of Plymouth, received him in pyjamas and a paisley dressing gown, but the duchess had been hastily buttoned back into her gown by Flytton – the maid having been dragged, herself, from deep sleep – and was now torn between joy at seeing her best beloved eldest son and profound irritation at the disruption. Tobias was characteristically oblivious. He was all animation as he drank his glass of claret and wolfed his Welsh rarebit, and all he could talk of was his new yacht.

  ‘You should have sailed here, darling,’ said his mother. She stifled a yawn, conspicuously. ‘Perhaps, then, you might have arrived at a more sociable hour.’

  He grinned at her. ‘Sail? Not I,’ he said. ‘Don’t know my anchor from my elbow.’

  ‘Can’t trust the water if you haven’t grown up by it,’ said the duke. He wagged a knowing forefinger at Tobias. ‘Can’t always trust the damn crew, either. I come from a long line of naval men, of course, but I’m a cavalryman myself. Put me in the saddle and I’ll give anyone a run for their money.’

  ‘Once upon a time, perhaps, Archie,’ said the duchess. He was older than her by fifteen years and she never let him forget it. ‘Now, I should say you’re more of a steady plodder.’

  He smiled vaguely, but Tobias thought the old boy looked a little sad.

  ‘Egypt, wasn’t it, Archie? The last campaign?’

  The duke’s face brightened. ‘Tel-el-Kebir,’ he said, sitting up in his wing chair. ‘Dawn attack on Arabi Pasha’s lot, then a thirty-nine-mile dash back to Cairo to put the Khedive back on the throne. More claret?’

  ‘Oh, let’s not meander back to Egypt, Archie,’ said the duchess. ‘So pointless, and so dull. What news of Henrietta, Toby? Is she still bringing the family name into disrepute? Throwing eggs at Mr Asquith? Mining for coal?’

  Tobias laughed. ‘She’s a brick, Ma. Steady hand on the tiller, that’s Henry. She keeps an eye on the bailiff’s accounts and walks the estate twice a week with Mr Arkwright. If she occasionally disrupts public order … well, everyone needs diversion of one kind or another.’

  ‘Dickie wrote,’ his mother said. ‘From Verona this time, though he’s based on the Italian Riviera, I believe. I do think it odd, don’t you?’

  ‘What, the Italian Riviera?’

  ‘No. Well, yes. I mean the fact that your brother seems to prefer Italy to England.’

  She said this as if he preferred cold tripe to hot buttered toast.

  ‘Climate’s marvellous, of course,’ said the duke, venturing an opinion. His wife glared at him and he shrank back in his seat.

  ‘I think Dickie feels at a bit of a loss in England,’ Tobias said. Dickie Hoyland, Tobias’s younger brother, had bravely borne the disadvantage of being a second son until a proposal of marriage had been coldly rejected for lack of a title. The resulting bout of heartbreak had sent him to the Continent three years previously and he was yet to return. ‘In Italy, he has cachet.’

  His mother wrinkled her small nose, as if she doubted this were possible. ‘And Dorothea?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t she want to travel with you? Such a pity.’

  This was disingenuousness of the highest degree, thought Tobias. His mother’s loathing of his wife was immutable, and the one thing that made him feel protective towards Thea these days.

  ‘Thea’s in Yorkshire, having her portrait painted,’ Tobias said, and regretted it at once. His mother arched a brow.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘American chap, Eugene Stiller. Comes highly recommended.’

  She smiled ruefully.

  ‘One worries for her,’ she said. ‘That chin.’

  ‘Oh tosh, Ma. Thea’s considered very beautiful among our set. She has the modern look.’

  ‘Really? I would have thought a recessive chin could never be in vogue.’

  ‘Cracking filly,’ said the duke recklessly. ‘Can’t half dance.’

  The icy silence following his remark was broken by the sound of someone rushing pell-mell along the first floor landing and down the stairs. The door of the drawing room burst open and there stood Isabella. Her face was flushed from sleep and she was barefoot. The ribbons of her nightdress were untied, and her charming décolletage artlessly exposed. She had blue cotton rags tied and twisted all over her head, performing – no doubt – some mysterious feminine function, the effects of which would only be seen tomorrow. She was seventeen years old and as lovely as her mother had once been, but kinder. Her mother’s face and her father’s heart, thought Tobias. He stood and she hurled herself across the room at him.

  ‘Tobes,’ she said. ‘Tobes.’ She hugged him, hanging about his neck, and it struck him that it was a long time since Thea had greeted him with anything approaching this sort of warmth; Thea, or anyone else for that matter. The love in his life these days was the kind he had to pay for, in one way or another.

  ‘Isabella!’ said the duchess, speaking sharply. ‘Put Toby down and fasten your nightgown. You’re behaving like a child.’

  Isabella stepped away from her brother, though she still held his hands in hers. He saw her so rarely since their mother had remarried; she had gone away to Devon three years ago, and each time he had seen her since some improvement in her appearance seemed to have taken place, so that his pretty little sister was now possessed of the sort of head-turning, show-stopping looks that blessed only a handful of girls in each successive generation. She was coming out this summer. London had better brace itself.

  ‘Izzy,’ he said. ‘Look at you.’

  She widened her eyes at him.

  ‘How’s the boat?’

  ‘Magnificent. It’s a yacht, y’know, not a rowing boat.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘She. You have to say she, not it. Not sure. Undecided.’

  ‘Call it Dorothea,’ said Isabella. ‘Or Thea. But that seems a bit short.’

  ‘I say,’ said the duke, suddenly seeing a way out of the dog house, ‘what about Clarissa, after your mother?’

  The duch
ess gave a coy squeak of protest, but looked immensely pleased. Tobias thought what an almighty nail it would be in the coffin of his marriage if he named the yacht for his mother. Dorothea wouldn’t do, though. Only his mother ever used it, and then only to wound. And yet, he was in no mood to be painting ‘Thea’ on the side of his yacht either; these honours had to be earned. He felt backed into a corner.

  ‘Lady Isabella,’ he said, suddenly inspired. ‘How would that be?’

  The duchess never rose for breakfast – never had, even when the king had been a guest at Netherwood – and the duke was with his nurse, who came three times a week to manipulate his leg joints, so Isabella and Tobias had the dining room to themselves. He was dissecting a kipper; she was dipping fingers of toast into a soft-boiled egg and pleading with her brother to take her to Cowes. He would see, he said, but it would be up to Mama in the end.

  ‘Oh Tobes, that’s such a tedious, adult response,’ she said.

  ‘I am, I’m sorry to say, a tedious adult.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re an irresponsible gadabout. Everyone says so.’

  ‘Do they? Splendid. I was concerned that my reputation was on the wane.’

  ‘I should so love to come, though.’ She cupped her charming chin in her hands and fixed her wide blue eyes upon him. Last night’s rags had produced a mass of soft curls that dropped on to her shoulders and made her look very beguiling. She’d done it for fun, she said; for something to do. This evening she would straighten them out again. ‘It’s what passes for entertainment at Denbigh Court,’ she had said, affecting resignation to her dismal fate.

  ‘Archie and Mama will be going to Cowes, darling. Archie’s from a long line of naval men. He told me so himself.’

  ‘Yes, but with you and Thea I might actually enjoy myself,’ she said, and Tobias grinned. ‘When do you go to Park Lane?’ he asked.

  She set about her egg again, mining the shell with a tiny spoon for the remains of the white. ‘We’re obliged to wait until Perry and Amandine return from Marienbad,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why. Everyone’ll be up by the time we trickle along.’

  ‘Is Perry as fat as ever?’

  ‘Fatter. It’s blamed on his thyroid gland, but I’ve tried to share afternoon tea with him at the Savoy, so I know better. Marienbad’s waters are miraculous, I hear, but there’s nothing they could possibly do for Perry.’

  Tobias laughed. Peregrine Partington, the Marquess of Hampden, heir to the dukedom and the Plymouth estate, was the sort of man who blamed his ailments on everything but his own behaviour. Amandine, his wife, was a vapid creature whose name, Isabella assured Tobias, was absolutely the most interesting thing about her. It meant ‘she who must be loved’, and Isabella said it was just as well she came with the instruction.

  ‘Poor you. Not much company, is it?’

  Isabella grimaced and rolled her eyes in answer.

  ‘End’s in sight,’ Tobias said. ‘You’ll be fighting off dashing young men with a stick by the end of June, let alone the end of the Season.’

  ‘I wish Daddy was alive,’ Isabella said out of the blue, and to his absolute shock Toby’s eyes filled with tears. His sister regarded him gravely across the table.

  ‘Could I come with you, to Cowes?’

  Tobias felt, suddenly, the benign and interested presence of his father. Isabella had always been Teddy Hoyland’s darling; of all of them, she had felt his loss the most keenly. She had lost her greatest admirer, and the safe and steady flow of unconditional paternal affection. Now, thought Tobias, she had the Duke of Plymouth on one side and on the other the fat and foolish Perry Partington. Small wonder that Teddy felt a visitation was in order: he only ever returned – in Toby’s experience, at least – to prod his son into the correct course of action. Now, thinking of their father, imagining him listening, he said, ‘Of course, you can, Izzy. And I’ll tell you what…’ – he paused and smiled; she was all eager attention – ‘…I’ll take you back up to Netherwood with me when I leave tomorrow. How would that be? You can travel down to London with us in May.’

  Ah, the joy of giving true pleasure. Isabella pushed back her chair and danced around the table to where Tobias sat, and then she pulled him to his feet and made him dance too, an awkward polka from which he immediately tried to extract himself. After all, the butler was watching, as well as their father.

  Chapter 6

  There were visitors in the grounds of Netherwood Hall: two men in dark suits and black Homburgs, holding measuring wheels and Box Brownies. They paced up and down the outside of the old glasshouses, and in and out, with expressions of grim satisfaction, as if what they saw was disappointing, but no more so than they had expected. Daniel MacLeod, head gardener, watched from a distance as the men performed their cogitations and calculations. He had told them what he wanted, and now Messrs MacAlpine and Moncur were deciding what was possible. Behind him he heard the click of the gate from the kitchen garden, and he turned. His wife, Eve, was crossing the grass with their little son, Angus. The boy had a bucket in one hand and he talked as he walked. He talked much of the time, in fact; there weren’t enough hours in the day for all that Angus MacLeod had to say.

  ‘Found this urchin in among t’vegetables,’ Eve called to Daniel across the lawn. She’d been away for two days and he feasted his eyes on the sight of her: small, slight, effortlessly lovely. When he’d first met her she didn’t seem to know she was beautiful. She had no mirror at home, she’d said, and wouldn’t have time to look in it anyway.

  They reached his side and Daniel bent to kiss her. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘He came with me to work today. Been out on snail patrol, isn’t that right, son?’

  The child nodded sagely. ‘It’s ’portant to pick ’em off t’plants, because, Mam, if you don’t they just eat your cabbages and that. You can sprinkle lime on slugs and snails, can’t you Pa? I pick ’em off and put ’em in my pail though. I’m not to touch lime.’ He held up the bucket to Daniel. ‘See? They look right fed up, don’t they?’

  Daniel studied the snails: five of them, in shock in the bottom of the metal pail. ‘Good work, Angus,’ he said, and pointed at the largest. ‘See? You’ve caught the ringleader.’ He smiled warmly at his son and then at Eve, and kissed her again. ‘Welcome home, my darling. How was Harrogate?’

  ‘Very grand. A cut above.’ She nodded in the direction of the men by the glasshouses. ‘They look miserable.’

  ‘Aye,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s a necessary prelude to the estimate of costs.’

  ‘Well, if you will hire Scotsmen…’

  He winked at her, a Montrose man himself. ‘They’ll not bamboozle me, don’t you fret. They’re crafty buggers, but it takes one to know one.’

  The men seemed to have finished. They snapped the lids back onto their pens and crunched morosely across the gravel. Daniel’s proposal was typically ambitious: the demolition of all but the finest of the existing plant houses, and the erection of one enormous glasshouse, comprising a wide central palm corridor, two hundred feet long, with subsidiary houses branching off to its north and south sides. All manner of exotics would be grown, but the countess – concentrating, finally, on the new scheme and flicking through a selection of colour plates – had pointed at gardenias, orchids, camellias and ferns. There would also have to be a stove house and another for propagation, but these technical details bored her. She was content, on the whole, to leave Daniel to his own devices; she barely glanced at his plans, meticulously drafted on sheets of paper, before approving them. He found he rather missed his regular skirmishes with her predecessor. The previous Lady Netherwood had always questioned everything he suggested, believing herself a horticultural visionary. She demanded the same from her gardens as she did from her gowns: flounce and flair, dash and glamour. What tended to happen, after each long negotiation, was that he would have his way, and she would take the credit: this was their unacknowledged arrangement. The present countess, whose home before she had come to Netherwood Hall h
ad been a New York brownstone, took a different view. What was a head gardener for, if not for making all the decisions? All she knew was that she had a garden that was bigger than Central Park, and a capable fellow whose job it was to tend it. He could do as he wished. Demolish six plant houses and build a new one? Sure! The cost was never a consideration. Thea Hoyland might have grown up on a limited allowance, but she had quickly adapted to an unlimited one.

  However, the Edinburgh hothouse engineers Mr MacAlpine and Mr Moncur appeared to think they might have to fund the project themselves and were walking towards Daniel like a pair of pallbearers in search of a funeral. Angus and his snails hid behind his mother’s skirts at their approach.

  ‘Gentlemen?’ said Daniel.

  ‘Aye, quite an undertaking,’ said Mr Moncur sadly.

  ‘You’ll be needing a rain-water cistern in every one of the houses,’ said Mr MacAlpine.

  ‘Aye. Welsh slate, sixty gallons apiece,’ said Mr Moncur.

  ‘And eight rows of six-inch pipes all down the central corridor, four rows in your side houses, six rows in your stove house.’

  ‘And ventilation sashes throughout.’

  ‘Aye. And a new boiler house. Your existing one’s entirely inadequate.’

  ‘Aye. Three, maybe four, boilers in a new brick building away out of sight.’

  All of this they intoned as if breaking the worst possible news.

  ‘And when could you start?’

  This was Daniel, defiantly cheerful in the face of their gloom. The two engineers exchanged doleful looks.

  ‘You’d like to proceed?’ said Mr Moncur.

  ‘Of course,’ Daniel said. ‘We’re none of us here just for the good of our health.’

  ‘Only, you’ll be looking at something over four thousand pounds for a scheme of this magnitude,’ said Mr MacAlpine.

  ‘Not far short of five thousand, possibly,’ said Mr Moncur.

  ‘Well,’ said Daniel. ‘Let’s not stand here waiting for it to reach six. Put it in writing, gentlemen, and we’ll take it from there.’

  They nodded, then tipped their hats at Eve and made for their motorcar.