‘I heard the door open,’ she said.
He turned to look. ‘There’s no wind. Curious,’ he said. ‘It must have been Mrs Barney. I must find her. We must leave soon. You’re shivering. Let’s retreat and find our snack.’
Nine
12 Mermaid Street
Strand
December 22nd, 1913
My dear Mrs Grose,
I have great pleasure in enclosing this note with the small package my sister sends you and in wishing you sincerely a very happy Christmas. We have decided she is fit to face the outside world again, in the shape of Strand post office, so I am pleased to report that the parcel will be despatched from there by Elaine herself. When I say ‘we’ have pronounced her fit I mean the unofficial committee consisting of myself and the resolute Mrs Constantine. Elaine’s frustration at being denied the pleasure of outings in this very charming small town has been great. But at last the moment has come and this afternoon we will surge forth in high spirits to post our little gifts and cards to you and to our sister Harriet and her husband and our numerous little nieces and nephews. We shall take tea at Mrs Donner’s teashop in the High Street.
Well, we had looked forward to a quiet Christmas – to be honest perhaps a quietly melancholy one. One would be foolish to think that two ladies living alone in a strange place would create for themselves the most jovial of occasions! But dear Mrs Constantine has kindly insisted we join her downstairs for the Christmas dinner. She expects her brother and sister-in-law, though without their two sons, one of whom is a captain in the Royal Navy, who is at sea, and the other a clergyman, who will of course be occupied in his parish. The servants will leave us at eleven in the morning. We ladies between us will be in charge of the goose and the pudding! How kind Mrs Constantine is and how much we look forward to the occasion.
I must break off now. Elaine (who looks so well, you would be delighted at the colour in her cheeks) has arrived in the sitting room doorway with paper and string and sealing wax, keen to do up her parcel. She sends all her best wishes – as do I.
Yours,
Marguerite Selsden
Ten
The party for Fosse Hall left two days before Christmas from Bedford Square.
Even as Justin and Flora reached Fosse, Lady Kilmoyne’s invitation to the Bennetts to join the Kilmoynes’ Christmas party at the house reached Beth Bennett. The letter said that Lady Kilmoyne knew the invitation came at short notice but the young people had, of course, only just announced their intention to marry and if Mr and Mrs Bennett had no other plans she would be very happy to welcome them to Fosse.
The invitation threw Beth Bennett into confusion. It was no small thing to be asked to the house of such a notable family for Christmas and having to make preparations for such a visit, so rapidly, put a strain on her organising ability. Geoffrey, a little gloomily, said that, since they had no plans for Christmas other than staying at home quietly, there was little alternative to going. To refuse might give offence. In any case, he pointed out, they were at the start of a long relationship with the Kilmoynes and it was best to get off on the right foot. He would need to see Justin’s father at some point, he said, and Beth would need to discuss arrangements for the wedding with Lady Kilmoyne. The Christmas visit would supply a good opportunity. The invitation was accepted.
Next day, dressing in the grey light of a December dawn, Geoffrey said, as he forced a stud into his collar, ‘Buy yourself a new evening dress, Beth, and a shawl. It may be cold.’
Beth said stoutly, ‘For my part I look forward to seeing a little more of the world. And it will be good to be there to give Flora our backing on her first prolonged visit to the family she is joining.’
‘Just as well we will be,’ said Geoffrey. ‘She’s in a dream half the time.’
‘That is natural, in a girl so recently engaged.’ Beth was pushing pins into her coiled-up hair. ‘And Bly, Geoffrey?’
‘I’ll think about that. Just now I’m more concerned with having to leave the office a day earlier than I anticipated. Can you remember to send Bradley for the railway tickets?’
In the train Flora, bundled up in a big coat with a fur collar and a large fur hat, sat gazing out over the passing landscape with enjoyment.
‘Thank goodness we’re in a warm and comfortable train,’ Beth observed to Flora. ‘Not making a harum-scarum carriage drive down as you did with Justin the other day.’
‘Are you nervous about meeting your new relatives en masse?’ Geoffrey asked with a smile.
‘No, Uncle,’ Flora replied ‘I’ve met Justin’s parents quite often, and Thomas, too.’
‘I wish I felt quite so calm,’ Beth said, conscious that she had not had as much time as she would have liked to prepare for a stay with the nobility.
At the station that served Fosse Hall a car met them. A round, rosy man of between forty and fifty also got into the car. He introduced himself as Edward Ratcliffe, Lady Kilmoyne’s brother. He had come over from Ireland in choppy seas the day before, he said, and he confessed he was weary of travelling. He added courteously that he much looked forward to the wedding of Justin and Flora. ‘I am so happy for both of you. And will it be soon?’
‘If the young couple have their way,’ Geoffrey said. ‘But we must have our talks about it.’
‘Have you any preferences as to forms and observations?’ Edward Ratcliffe asked Flora. Flora said she had none. ‘It can be a bewildering time for a young lady,’ he remarked.
‘Will you be staying long at Fosse Hall?’ Beth asked him.
‘A week is all, I think,’ he replied. ‘I have little taste for big parties these days. My sister, though, adores them. You will find twenty-five people in the house, no less. Possibly more. The house is very big of course.’
They had travelled two of the five miles to the house and the mist was increasing. The car went more and more slowly; trees were obscured; even the hedges by the roadside became partly invisible. The driver could see no more than four yards ahead. Flora sat calmly in the chilly car, looking from the window. The Bennetts, however, became concerned. ‘It’s only a few miles now,’ Mr Ratcliffe said reassuringly. He banged on the glass window separating passengers and driver. ‘Arthur,’ he said. ‘Shall I get out and walk ahead?’
‘It wouldn’t do any harm, Mr Ratcliffe,’ the chauffeur replied.
‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Stop the car. It’s the ditches,’ he reported to the others. ‘It’s very flat, and they dig ditches for drainage, but in conditions like these there’s the danger of going into one. That’s where you’re better off with horses. A sensible horse won’t go near a ditch. Ah well, progress, progress. We must go along with it.’
The car had stopped on the long straight road. Flora asked, ‘Mr Ratcliffe, may I walk with you?’
‘By all means,’ he said, a little surprised. ‘But you must get back in the car when you start feeling too cold.’
Ratcliffe and Flora descended from the car into the chill, misty air and began to walk along, the car travelling slowly behind. It was very quiet. The only sound in the still air was the subdued hum of the engine. As they went visibility reduced even further. They walked on into a grey curtain. Bare, skeletal trees loomed suddenly by the roadside.
‘Eerie,’ commented Edward Ratcliffe to Flora. ‘What a welcome for you. Have you been to the house before?’
‘Justin and I visited it only yesterday,’ Flora replied.
‘And how did you find it?’
‘Very grand. It was rather cold, being half shut up, so there was little chance to linger and look.’
‘It’s always cold at Fosse, whether it’s shut up or not,’ Mr Ratcliffe said.
The younger people were dancing in the long drawing room on Christmas night. A huge fire blazed in the hearth. The village band, drums, pipes, a violin and an accordion had been called in to play.
This music could be heard clearly in the smaller drawing room opposite, where some of the staider guest
s, including Beth and Geoffrey Bennett, were sitting talking. They had been at Fosse now for forty-eight hours. That morning the Fosse party had walked to morning service. There had been twenty at dinner that evening. Geoffrey and Beth now sat together in the window seat talking softly. Geoffrey’s anticipated conversation with Lord Kilmoyne had taken place in the study after lunch.
It had been a polite enough meeting. The two men had sat in big armchairs by the fire, brandies in hand, but Lord Kilmoyne, a thickset, tweed-suited man in his late forties, had not been tentative in his comments. Geoffrey soon understood that when two men meet to discuss the wedding of their children one being the owner of many broad acres – not to mention coal mines and part of a gold mine in South Africa – and the other with no such advantages, the less advantaged man is liable to have an uncomfortable time.
Geoffrey told Beth, ‘It was a little like a creditors’ meeting, where I was forced to disclose the limited nature of my fortune and Kilmoyne, subtly, demanded more.’
‘Surely that’s your imagination,’ Beth told him. ‘He must understand that everyone is not as wealthy as he is. I only hope he does not think Flora is ambitious.’
‘There was nothing like that,’ Geoffrey told her. ‘But he made it fairly plain that he expected something pretty substantial to come with Flora to the marriage. It would all be for the children, of course. I believe he thought poor Will did a great deal better out of India than he did. It’s astonishing what information people will vouchsafe when a person of influence is the questioner. I was forced to tell him Bly was all Will left behind and that half of it was mine. But it was as I expected. When he asked me how much the place was worth in rents and I told him it was not let he raised his eyebrows and said, in a haughty tone, “Not let?” Had it not been for Flora I think I might have told him to mind his manners. I held my tongue. I said Bly would go with Flora on her marriage. And that I would sell it beforehand and give her the price as her marriage portion. I would rather sell it and have done than put it into the Kilmoyne estates and have it managed by Kilmoyne’s land agent. A clean break will be better. You were right, my dear, when you said it must go.’
Now Beth said quietly to her husband, ‘Who will tell Flora?’ and Geoffrey responded, ‘I don’t know. But we can’t turn back – things must fall out as they will.’
Beth sighed and caught an eye across the room, ‘Well. I suppose this must be our work for the New Year.’ She began to stand up. ‘Come – we must go and talk to the others.’
In the Italian room the light from the vast fire played on the ornate ceiling. At the other end of the room the village band went thud, thud, thud through waltzes and polkas, though they were more used to playing at fêtes or in the market square than in ballrooms. Some dancers muttered they would have preferred a gramophone to dance to. However, when it came time for the Sir Roger de Coverley the band gave of its best. Flora, flushed, her hair unruly, came galloping with Mr Ratcliffe down the lines of men and women on the other. ‘Oof!’ she gasped.
‘Let’s escape to the side of the room,’ he said, a little breathlessly.
Against the wall, watching, he said, ‘You’re not a country girl?’ She shook her head. ‘Then perhaps you won’t wish to live here much.’
She shook her head again. ‘No, no – well, that is to say, if Justin left the Guards and really wished to live here permanently, then I would do as he wished.’
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘but since Justin does not wish to leave the army you can live in London.’
‘Or where he is posted, I suppose.’
‘Why, yes,’ he agreed, though privately thinking it was hardly likely Flora could accompany her husband to some rough and dangerous spot, particularly if there were children. He feared, moreover, the country was heading for a war, and not the kind of war Flora’s girlish imagination might be presenting to her.
Some brave dancers muffled up in cloaks and coats had gone out to dance on the terrace. Justin came up to Flora and her companion and asked if she would join him in the frosty dancing. But with a slight shudder she replied, ‘Too cold.’ Soon she was in Justin’s arms, dancing.
Edward Ratcliffe left and found his brother-in-law in the library. ‘A serious young woman,’ he said of Flora when he was safely in a chair by the fire.
‘No bad thing,’ said Lord Kilmoyne. ‘The family is already well stocked with flighty pieces.’ He referred to some family events which had recently given trouble. ‘There’s every reason for a young woman confiding the rest of her life to a man to show a decent sobriety. I wouldn’t call her gloomy …’
‘No, not at all,’ agreed Ratcliffe. ‘She won’t be living down here at any rate.’
‘Did she tell you that?’ he enquired.
‘She very properly said that if Justin wished it she would comply but I got the impression she would prefer not. She’s not country-bred, after all.’
‘I believe she had a country childhood,’ Kilmoyne said without interest.
‘Really! She did not say so.’
‘At a place in Essex – Bly.’
Ratcliffe was silent for a moment. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’
‘Can’t say,’ said his brother-in-law. ‘My God, I’ll be glad when everyone’s gone away. Except you, Eddie, of course, and a few of the others. We might get some decent shooting when the mist lifts.’
Eleven
12 Mermaid Street
Strand
28th December 1913
My dear Mrs Grose,
I thank you so much for the knitted cap you sent – you cannot have known how beautifully that blue would go with my dark-green coat, or that I have no hat or head covering suitable for winter, other than a large fur cap, necessary for Russian conditions, but not very suitable for the quiet streets of Strand! I wear your gift daily, and thank you so much for your thoughtfulness. Elaine will tell you of her own delight when she opened the parcel from you on Christmas Day. This took place in company, in Mrs Constantine’s parlour, where candles glowed on a Christmas tree in the gloom of Christmas morning. Then came much running to and fro by the ladies, in attendance on the goose. I fear Elaine and I were very hopeless in this respect. We contented ourselves with setting the table and entertaining Mr Charles Lang – Mrs Constantine’s brother – and his wife, Ursula, both delightful and kindly people.
We consumed a cheerful meal, and by early evening a local gentleman, Mr Henry Reeve, paid us an evening visit for a cup of tea, which was all, he said, he could manage after his own dinner, quietly enjoyed, I gathered, with an elderly clergyman who interests himself in antiquities. And after the goose and the wine and the pudding and the mince pies our party was also quite subdued! Elaine was very well during the whole day. It was a joy to see her old unforced smile, that sweet smile I remembered so well, unconstrained by the desire to please or reassure, merely a response to simple happiness. However, by the time of Mr Reeve’s visit, at about eight o’clock that evening, she had retired to her bed, to ensure, she said, that next day she would not be too tired and that it would be as happy for her as this one.
Mr Reeve is a quiet, very gentlemanly man in his mid-forties, something of an antiquarian, owner of the large house at the top of the hill whose garden, indeed, is overlooked from the upper windows here. He seems to be a man with a wide acquaintanceship, here in Strand and in London and elsewhere. I believe he was once in the Colonial Service. Candidly, I was a little surprised to find a gentleman of such distinction on such cordial, neighbourly terms with Mrs Constantine, who is after all a simple woman, whose interests are more domestic and local. Yet a most amiable relationship appears to exist between the pair. Not, I hasten to say, that a limited physical range indicates a limited mind. If that were the case we should all have reason to mourn! Yet, dear Mrs Grose, minds such as your own, interesting and flexible, emanating from such a quiet spot, are rare. You say you are happy. I am sure you tell the truth. Yet, to me, it seems a pity you have never been able to avail you
rself of the opportunity to travel or associate with a wider circle of people. Will you not visit us soon, now we are settled? Would not a change be beneficial? But I will not press you. For many, a quiet existence in a quiet spot, the knowledge of work truly done and peace of mind, are enough, more than enough. The world might be a better place if we could all content ourselves in this way.
To return to Mr Reeve. He gives the appearance of a thoroughly good gentleman. He possesses soft and sympathetic brown eyes, and a low, pleasant voice. He was good enough to ask me much about my life in Russia, about which country he seemed well informed. He regretted not meeting Elaine, who had by then retired, as I said. He had the goodness to invite us both to tea in a week’s time.
That is the history of our Christmas celebrations. And so, with all my best wishes for the New Year,
I am, yours affectionately,
Marguerite Selsden
Strand
January 3rd,
1914
My dear Mrs Grose,
I am upset – please, please do not let my light and perhaps too careless remarks concerning your retired life at Bly upset you. They were more in foolish jest than serious. Of course, dear Mrs Grose, you lead the life you prefer and which is conducive to your well-being. Do not allow my careless remarks to upset you. Forgive your impertinent and contrite,
Marguerite Selsden
January 5th,
1914
My dear Mrs Grose,
Thank you, thank you – I am so happy you forgive me. And as you say, we must agree, for we both have our dear Elaine’s concerns at heart, and she must believe for her own well-being that we are united in our concern for her. As I know we are. And I must avow it would certainly distress me to be without your letters.
So, in the confidence that I am forgiven, and we are again in sympathy, let me tell you of our latest amusement, the tea party to which Mr Henry Reeve so kindly invited us at Christmas.
Miles and Flora Page 4
