‘I understand your feelings,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry, but Flora rushed out into the rain. I’m afraid something I said upset her. Although I followed, I could not find her.’
‘She ended up in a dockside tavern,’ Beth told him. ‘A horrible place. She was practically incoherent when she got back. No – worse – she was practically speechless. If this goes on we shall have a mute on our hands, as before, when she was a child. Flora is not robust. What is she saying to you, Father Rawley? What are you saying to her? It cannot go on. She is to be married in three months.’
‘She tells me she wishes to marry her young man,’ Father Rawley replied steadily, ‘but also that she feels distracted from everything, as though in a fog, or a dream. That is about all I can really tell you. I apologise again for losing her. The plain fact is that I asked her some questions and, regrettably, she was upset by them. Mrs Bennett,’ he appealed, ‘there is something wrong, and I sincerely believe it is not my doing.’
‘Then it is very strange that her visits to you do not improve her spirits. Quite the reverse, in fact,’ Beth said coldly.
He responded mildly, ‘When a doctor probes a tender spot and the patient flinches or cries out, you do not blame the doctor. Flora comes to me because she is distressed. I am worried that I cannot help, but I am not the cause of the distress.’
‘We speak of an ordinary girl with the ordinary fears of a girl about to be married, about whether she will be able to carry out the duties of a wife. These anxieties may be made more acute by the nature of the family into which she marries. She will occupy a greater position than she is used to. It does not seem to me, Father Rawley, that you are reassuring her about these difficulties. You ought to be able to help, but you are not doing so. I assure you I am speaking for my husband as well as myself.’
‘I am sure you do,’ he said. ‘This conversation moves swiftly. Do you mean to ask me to see less of Flora?’
‘I intend to ask her to visit you no more.’
‘I urge you, for her sake, not to do that.’
‘I believe, for her sake, I must,’ Beth Bennett said stoutly. ‘I shall not tell her of your visit or our conversation. I shall say only that after today’s muddle she must not visit you in future. It is an unsuitable area to go to alone.’
‘Would you allow me to visit her here?’ he asked. ‘You might stay in the room with us if you wished.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘These contacts are unwholesome. They must cease, as long as she is under her uncle’s roof. I am sorry, Father Rawley. I act only in Flora’s best interests. I am sure you are doing what you think is right – but it is not.’
Flora woke from her restless sleep as the heavy front door closed behind the clergyman. As he walked away from the house her head turned from side to side on the pillow. Faintly she asked aloud, ‘Miles? Miles? Are you there? Miles, where are you?’
Twenty-Two
In spite of his duties in one of the poorest areas of London, Father Rawley could not let the matter of Flora rest. He wrote to the Bennetts, in the hope that Geoffrey would moderate Beth’s decision. The letter said simply that Flora had been visiting him in some distress of mind. He did not think he had been able to help her so far but believed that she badly needed some assistance and comfort, if not from him, from someone else. He was sure the Bennetts must themselves be alarmed at their niece’s loss of energy and spirits in the face of great coming happiness. He apologised for his negligence in allowing her to leave his house and get lost in such an unfortunate way, but if her visits resumed he would make sure such a thing never occurred again. Or, if they preferred it, might he visit Flora at home? And if neither, he said firmly, he advised them to call on her own minister to visit her.
Geoffrey Bennett opened the letter at breakfast the day after Father Rawley’s visit. Only Beth was at the table, for Flora was still in bed upstairs on doctor’s orders. He read the letter with a sinking heart. Then he reread it. Beth, opposite him, already sensed he was not pleased. By the time he handed the letter to her she had already guessed from whom it came.
She read it without comment, merely laying it down, saying ‘Oh dear.’ Beth had greeted Geoffrey with the account of Flora’s visit to Father Rawley when he had arrived home from his office on the previous evening. He had accepted Beth’s version of events and approved the action she had taken. The letter, though, made him thoughtful.
‘What can the man mean?’ he mused.
‘It’s all nonsense, Geoffrey. Rawley is just an eccentric clergyman with too much sense of his own importance. And Flora is to go to Mr Ratcliffe’s dinner tonight.’
‘Confound Ratcliffe’s dinner. Let’s face facts, Beth. If Flora gets worse we’ll have to cancel the wedding.’
‘That would be dreadful.’
‘Haven’t you considered it?’
‘I pushed the thought away,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll talk to her this morning. In any case I must tell her we do not approve of any more visits to Father Rawley.’
‘Perhaps I should talk to him—’
‘Geoffrey!’ she said indignantly. ‘All Flora needs to do is pull herself together. That man Rawley is encouraging her self-absorbed state.’ Geoffrey said nothing. Beth stood up. ‘I’m going up to see her,’ she told him. In the doorway she turned and said quietly, ‘Geoffrey. I became Flora’s mother when she was eight years old. She could not even speak. It was not easy.’
‘No one could have tried harder or done better, Beth,’ he told her.
‘This marriage is Flora’s great chance,’ she said, and left the room.
Flora was sitting up in bed, her breakfast tray beside her. She had brushed her hair. Her cheeks were pink. Beth picked up the tray, and put it on the table by the door. ‘I’m glad to see you managed a little breakfast,’ she said. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Very well, Aunt Beth. I think I’ll get up.’
‘Not until the doctor’s seen you,’ Beth said, though much relieved to see the fresh colour in Flora’s face and her new air of animation.
‘There’s so much to do – and the dinner tonight.’
‘I know. But your health must come first. Nevertheless, you do look very much better.’
‘I long to be out of bed,’ Flora told her. ‘And I’m overdue for a fitting for my wedding gown and then there are the other dresses I shall need. Very soon, you will have to invite our guests. And I so much want to go to the dinner for Mr Ratcliffe.’
‘For any particular reason?’ enquired Beth.
‘Chiefly to see Justin, who will be there,’ responded Flora gaily.
‘The doctor will be here at ten,’ Beth promised her. She went downstairs and found Geoffrey in the hall, Bradley settling his coat round his shoulders, then brushing them.
‘Is she any better?’ Geoffrey asked Beth.
‘Infinitely. Chafing at the bit. Can’t bear to stay in bed another minute,’ Beth reported.
‘Thank goodness,’ he said.
‘Do you still think you should see Rawley?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said
There were ten guests for dinner at Grosvenor Square that night. Mr Ratcliffe was there, of course, for the dinner was for him, to celebrate one of his rare visits to London. The others were Lord Kilmoyne’s cousin, Harry Flood, Colonel of Thomas and Justin’s regiment, his sister, Julia, and her husband Lord Tyne, and three of Mr Ratcliffe’s oldest friends, the widowed Lady Carolina Henry, Mrs Serena Jenkins and Jeremy Jones.
By the time the whole party had assembled there was only time in the drawing room for introductions to be made. Then they went in to dinner, in a small, rather dark, panelled dining room, whose side was dominated by an enormous Italian painting depicting the battle of the Romans against the Carthaginians, all hand-to-hand fighting, elephants and rearing horses. Lady Kilmoyne, neutral and icy as ever, was at one end of the table, Lord Kilmoyne at the other. Ratcliffe, seated opposite the painting, said to Lady Carolina in an und
ertone, as the party seated itself, ‘I’m afraid all that bloodshed will put you off your dinner, dear.’
‘Not me,’ she murmured. ‘But a more sensitive person might quail.’ Harry Flood, though, was blunter: ‘That’s a very fierce painting for a dining room,’ he said loudly to Lady Kilmoyne. ‘Was it there last time I came?’
‘I can’t recall the last time you came to dinner. It was some time ago,’ she told him repressively.
Flora, who was looking radiant, her eyes sparkling and cheeks flushed, said, ‘Is it not a painting which once hung in Prince Venturi’s palazzo in Venice?’
‘Why yes, it did,’ Kilmoyne said in some surprise. ‘Did you see it there?’
‘I only saw a picture of it in a book,’ she told him, ‘with the other painting – The Triumph of Pompey – which is equally admired, I understand. Have you the second painting also?’
‘Yes, but Colonel Flood might consider that even less suitable for the dining room. It depicts Carthaginians being dragged towards Rome in chains, and the like,’ Lady Kilmoyne said.
‘As to what painting one might hang in a dining room, I’m uncertain,’ Jeremy Jones said. ‘I have a picture of my grandfather, a grim old man, sitting opposite my guests, rather than myself. I sometimes wonder what the effect of his repressive air is on a guest. Is he silently saying, as he would have in life, “Don’t take another peach”; “Is that your fourth glass of wine tonight”? I must take him down. But what shall I put in his place?’
‘I should say a nice Dutch interior, showing calm surroundings with perhaps a bowl of fruit reflecting in a well-polished table,’ Serena Jenkins said. Lady Kilmoyne’s face was growing grimmer at the implied criticism.
‘I should so like to see the other painting,’ Flora said. ‘Will you show it to me one day?’
‘After dinner, if you like, dear,’ replied her future mother-in-law.
By now soup had been served and conversation was taking place round the table. Flora was dutifully speaking to Justin’s brother, Thomas, on her right. ‘Just as well you asked to see that other picture,’ he said quietly. ‘Ma’s very proud of them. They bought them last summer in Italy. But Father’s always saying the one behind us should go elsewhere. Luckily you broke in at the right moment. Luckier still that we’ve got our backs to it, I say – though, Flora, have you found anywhere to live yet, in London?’
She shook her head. ‘No. But I plan to go out tomorrow and every day this week. If I don’t find somewhere by the end of the week, I shall be quite irritable with myself.’
‘I suppose it’s better to set up on your own when you’re married,’ he said a little gloomily, for when Justin went he would be alone at home with his parents.
‘Yes, it is, Thomas,’ she smiled. ‘You must try it.’
She did look charming. He remembered his brother’s anxiety about her seeming coldness. It didn’t seem to square with this pretty, animated creature, flirting mildly with him. Who could tell what went on between couples? he thought. ‘If I’m to marry,’ he told her, ‘I must have someone exactly like you.’
She caught Justin’s eye and they smiled at each other. ‘I shall find you someone,’ she promised.
When the courses changed and the time came to turn, as politeness demanded, to Jeremy Jones, who sat on her other side, he said, ‘I too am looking forward to seeing the pair to the painting behind us. Do you think Lady Kilmoyne will let me come with you?’
‘I’m sure she will.’
‘Are you interested in painting, Miss Bennett?’
‘It is that grand Italian period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries I love. I am fascinated by the colours – the strength of the painting … Oh, everything.’
They had told him they were alarmed by Flora’s child passivity. ‘It goes further, it seems to me, than just being a well-brought-up girl with little experience of life,’ her future mother-in-law had told him. Yet Mr Ratcliffe was seeing a different young woman from the frozen girl who had been at Fosse over Christmas. Here she was, in robust health and looking very happy. Her tactful intervention in the matter of the painting had saved the party from feeling Lady Kilmoyne’s touchy pride. Meanwhile, Lady Kilmoyne, with a mixture of pleasure and enmity, was beginning to think, She may be able to be made to amount to something after all.
After dinner the ladies went into the drawing room while the men stayed at the dining table. However, Justin soon left them, saying he must talk to Flora, and in a hail of bluff comments about the improving effects of love and the dangers of petticoat government, he left the room. He found Flora in the hall with his mother and Mr Jones, examining the pair to the picture in the dining room. ‘It is strange to think that the blue he used was the most valuable colour on the canvas, dearer perhaps than the gold leaf,’ Flora was saying to Lady Kilmoyne. ‘How an artist must have thought hard before he used it. Yet now they have found an artificial substitute and there is no such problem.’
‘One does not imagine that such sublime artists suffered any constraints on their genius,’ Lady Kilmoyne responded.
‘I expect they did, though,’ Justin remarked bluntly, ‘including not offending the Pope, in case they got their heads chopped off.’ He took Flora round the waist. ‘Flora, will you walk round the square with me?’
‘Gladly,’ she said.
‘Oh, I do not think—’ Lady Kilmoyne said.
‘Come on, Mother. It’s the twentieth century now,’ he urged.
‘More’s the pity,’ she said. ‘Well, you must not be long. It is so impolite. Don’t you agree, Mr Jones?’ she said, turning to him.
‘All is forgiven to an engaged couple,’ he told her.
‘No, it is not,’ she contradicted. But Justin was already drawing Flora towards the cloakroom, where a manservant found Justin’s coat and Flora’s cloak.
In the dark square opposite the house they paced the path, arm in arm. He stopped and drew her towards him. ‘Oh Flora. you look … you’re so beautiful. I could eat you.’
‘You may not eat me, but you may taste me,’ she responded and pressed her body to him, putting her warm lips on his. For the first time he felt some passion in her embrace. Her lips would not leave his, her arms were strong about him. It was he who, astonished, broke free, ‘Flora – my darling.’
But she was back in his arms again. And it was Justin who had to force himself to cut short their embraces and he who had to persuade Flora they must go back to the house. It was not so much for the sake of politeness, or so as not to offend Lady Kilmoyne, as that he did not trust himself not to go further with Flora.
As they entered the brightly lit hall from the darkness, he was suffused with love and delight. And thought with relief, Thank God she is a woman after all.
Twenty-Three
12 Mermaid Street
Strand
April 14th, 1914
My dear Mrs Grose,
Neither I nor Elaine has had any word from you for several weeks. I trust my urgent request for a full account of what took place at Bly so many years ago is not the reason for your silence. I hope this is not so. Perhaps it is still too painful to think about the boy’s death. I know, I have asked Elaine gently if she will tell me of Bly and what took place there. She shakes her head and tells me she cannot bear those memories, vowed many years ago never to speak of them to anyone, and as far as possible to drive them from her own mind. Although she tells me in anguish that she cannot truly forget. As she spoke she twisted a handkerchief in those thin fingers, her breath coming unevenly. It was very distressing to witness. Her health remains good, but I certainly do not think an inquisition by me over events of the past would help her to remain well.
How dreadful that time at Bly must have been for both of you. How terrible for both of you to discover what the boy had done. Perhaps this event explains why Elaine stayed so long with the Bretts, though the employment was uncongenial. Her confidence in her own powers must have been badly shaken after that first employment, ter
minated so horribly. Like a wounded bird she found herself a cage and flew into it, resolving not to come out. And – I confess it – I had allowed myself the luxury of believing that I, the younger sister, living in Russia’s harsh climate, in the unfamiliar and often confusing atmosphere created by the large family of a Russian landowner – and in an environment of political chaos also – to be the less fortunate sister! A little enviously, I imagined Elaine at home in England, in the heart of a congenial family. I was wrong and am ashamed now of those selfish thoughts.
Well, I will go on with our little news. On the way to post my last letter to you, urgently – you will remember its agitated tone – I bumped into Mr Reeve, who was just returning up the hill to his house. I took the chance to cancel an earlier invitation to tea, owing to my sister’s illness. He observed that I was pale, and insisted on accompanying me back to the Post Office and then buying me a cup of tea in our favourite tea-shop, where we talked of this and that. I have to admit it was a great pleasure to be free for a little while from the house and all its anxieties.
Mr Reeve told me he was going to London to meet an old friend but suggested that on his return he accept my invitation to tea, taking it as a postponement rather than a cancellation. I did not tell Elaine of this encounter on my return, not wishing to upset her by contemplation of my relative pleasure as opposed to the constraints her illness places upon her. In the confining life we lead a cup of tea in a cafe in the High Street can take on the glamour of an Imperial ball! I was also a little alarmed about her habit of rising at night and staring into Mr Reeve’s garden. I feared she grew cold while looking, and was disturbing her rest. But, I argue, what has an invalid to do but look out of windows? And if the sights provide some interest and stimulation, surely that is beneficial.
And so we go on, Mrs Grose. The weather improves, Elaine improves, Mrs Constantine remains the same good friend she has always been. But do please write, however briefly, to reassure your friend,
Miles and Flora Page 9
