by Rose Lerner
They traversed the home farm now. There was the old elm where he and the coachman’s son used to play at Robin Hood, and here was the gatehouse, where they were obliged to stop for tea with Mr. and Mrs. Halfacre, who’d known John since before he was born. Mrs. Halfacre fussed over Sukey, calling her a “pretty young thing”.
Sukey expanded gratefully under the attention, but she still didn’t really look at John. She ignored him subtly enough that the Halfacres didn’t remark it, but John knew his mother would.
He’d been looking forward to showing her off. But when he’d pictured the scene, he’d put Sukey hanging on his arm, teasing him, their happiness glaringly obvious. That must be what every delusional middle-aged man imagined when he took a beautiful young wife.
Pull yourself together, he told himself. She’s just upset about her father. Things were going wonderfully until this journey. But somehow, knowing his parents were going to be looking at them made every hair-thin crack in their marriage gape and yawn in his mind.
What if she—what if everyone—thought Sukey was a pretty young thing who’d married an older man to get ahead in the world, and didn’t have the time of day for him now the ring was on her finger?
And wasn’t it true, in a way? She’d never have married him if she hadn’t been dismissed from the boarding house.
He’d been selfish to accept her change of heart. He should have told her she’d feel better in the morning and escorted her home, and talked Mrs. Pengilly into having her live in. He should have had some damned self-control, but she’d put her hand on the front of his breeches and he hadn’t been able to rush her into things fast enough.
John worried his way through tea (just enough time for the snow on their coats to melt and soak through the lining, not enough for it to dry again) and down the drive to the Hall.
Sukey gasped when they turned the corner. “It’s enormous,” she breathed. “Bigger than Wheatcroft.”
Abe snorted, having adopted wholehearted the rivalry between the Whig Tassells and Tory Wheatcrofts. “Lord Wheatcroft’s a country squire. The only place in Sussex bigger than Tassell Hall is Goodwood.”
Goodwood was the nearby seat of the Duke of Richmond. Abe was probably exaggerating, but Sukey looked suitably impressed. Certainly Tassell Hall was huge, but only when judged—as Sukey no doubt did—as a home for a single family. John saw it rather as a small fiefdom. It had grown up around the lord and his family, who spent a part of their year occupying the state apartments and filling every room with their guests, but it had a rich and active life of its own. The main house with its bay windows and Dutch gables was blank, the snow on the drive undisturbed by carriage wheels, but smoke drifted up from chimneys in the servants’ wing and the hothouses. Before John began to travel with the family at fifteen, he’d loved times like these when the servants had the house to themselves.
Abe drove them around the side and deposited them at the kitchen door, opened by Mrs. Toogood before they could reach it. John swept his mother off her feet, grinning, for the moment just happy to be home.
“Johnny! Oh, it’s so good to see you. Here, put me down before I start to cry. Are you hungry?” She kissed his cheek, smelling of charcoal and the kitchen, and John’s own eyes stung.
“We had tea with the Halfacres, thanks. Mama, this is my wife.” He drew Sukey towards him, hoping she wouldn’t push him away.
She nestled closer and held out her hand shyly. “It’s an honor, ma’am.”
“Oh, please, call me Amanda,” Mrs. Toogood said, her manner so unaffected and motherly and welcoming that John felt a rush of pride and gratitude at his mother’s superiority over other people.
“Then you shall call me Sukey,” his wife said, sounding pleased.
John prayed his mother wouldn’t say, Oh, wouldn’t you prefer Susan? It’s so much prettier and more feminine. She had rather a bee in her bonnet on the subject of nicknames, refusing point-blank to let anyone call her Amy.
“Come inside and let me get a good look at you.” Mrs. Toogood took John’s other arm and led them into the kitchen. John went and hung Sukey’s coat and hat by the fire in his mother’s sitting room, thinking it was time he gave her boots a thorough cleaning.
When he returned, Sukey was still gazing about the great kitchen, awestruck. John’s pride in the Hall mingled with a sort of unease. This was his home, but to her it might have been one of the wonders of the world.
And John knew the look on his mother’s face. She was, thus far, highly skeptical. His stomach lurched. He should have bought Sukey a new dress, and those boots…he loved them, but to his mother… At least he might have cleaned them.
Mrs. Toogood’s expression melted into a warm smile as Sukey turned towards her. “You must come and meet my husband, and then I’d love to give you a tour of the old pile. I show visitors about as part of my duties, you know, and I can tell you the whole history of the place.”
In the butler’s pantry, Mr. Toogood was in the midst of a careful inventory of the silverware, polishing tarnish off a fork with a pronounced look of distaste. But he took off his glasses, smiled and embraced John.
His father had been of a height with him until a few years since, when he was abruptly two or three inches shorter. It always amazed John that a human being could shrink. “Mrs. Toogood, this is my father.”
“Mr. Toogood.” Sukey bobbed a curtsey.
“So you’re the young woman who finally turned my sensible son’s head,” Mr. Toogood said with a smile. The underlying message—so you’re the hussy who ruined his career—was probably obvious only to John and his mother, so he tried to ignore it. “A pretty little thing you are too. Are you sure you’re not too good for him?”
Sukey ducked her head. “Oh, it’s more likely to be the other way round.” Her accent thickened with shyness. He saw his parents exchange glances.
“Not at all,” John said rather sharply. “My father has the right of it.”
Mr. Toogood laughed. “I should thank you. That’s probably the first time my son’s ever said that.”
Sukey twinkled at him. “Make the most of it, for it’s too good to last.” A few more tired puns were exchanged before Mrs. Toogood shepherded them out for the tour.
“I never knew you were such a punster.” John was instantly sorry he’d said it, and sorry for the edge in his voice.
“They do spring to mind now and then, with a name like yours,” Sukey said rather tightly herself.
He’d always been glad she didn’t joke about his name, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she was actively resisting temptation, to be kind. He leaned down to whisper in her ear, “You’re too good to me.”
He wanted her to smile, and she did. But the expression was uncertain, her face turning to his with wide, startled eyes. It tugged at his heart, took him by surprise, made him see her as if for the first time: how slight and angular she was, how elusive, how beautiful. How likely to melt away with one last over-the-shoulder smile.
He wanted to tug her around the corner into a library alcove and kiss her, gripping her hips hard enough to bruise—something to prove that she was a flesh-and-blood woman and that he had touched her. He wanted to tease her until she lit up.
“John?” his mother said.
“Sorry. Shall we start in the great hall?” It was strange walking with his mother and his wife. Offering his arm to both would be awkward, and he could hardly leave Sukey. But it made him feel sorry and distant, not to do what he would have always done before as a matter of course.
He kept on expecting his mother to need his arm, but her carriage was as brisk and graceful as it had ever been. He hoped desperately that it would last. “Tell Sukey about the inlaid floor,” he said as they entered the hall. “I love that story.”
“Well, the present earl’s grandfather had it put in. The workman was a French fellow…” John listene
d with half an ear, crossing to the staircase to run a hand over the handsome carved banister and down the corkscrew posts of the railing.
It came away dusty.
He looked closer. Dusting corkscrew spirals took time, and time had not been taken. There were innumerable pockets and streaks of dust, a week’s worth at least in some places. Examining the room, he saw that though the furniture was safely covered in dropcloths in the family’s absence, the tall mirrors had not been cleaned to the edges, and dust clung to the plasterwork reliefs on the walls, dulling the gilt.
He waited until the final joke of the French inlayer story. “Mother, there’s probably no need to bring Father into it yet, but you ought to speak to whoever’s been dusting in here.”
His mother’s face twisted unhappily. “Is it dusty?”
He nodded. “The plasterwork—”
His mother made an anguished sound. “Oh, Lady Tassell loves that plasterwork!”
John was taken aback. Of his parents, she’d never been the one who ranked cleanliness just above godliness in the catalog of virtues. But if she was upset, there was an easy solution. “It’s all right. I’ll take a paintbrush to it and have it clean in a trice.”
“Thank you.” She twisted her hands together. “I don’t think it’s just in here, though. Your father…well. His eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and his back and knees have been bothering him so he can’t always bend down or get at things the way he did. I think the servants take advantage.”
John couldn’t reply. He felt as if he’d been winded by a swift kick in the stomach. Everyone had warned him, but all at once it was real, and it was dreadful. His father had always been so proud, such a petty tyrant, and now he had lost the power to exact obedience. When he met his mother’s eyes, tears swam in hers.
What was he going to do?
As Mrs. Toogood led them into the enormous dining room, its long table swathed in white sheets, for a moment John saw ghosts. Gentlemen and ladies of summers past talked and laughed; silver clattered and china clinked. He remembered laying out piping-hot dishes on that table according to his father’s design, and woe betide him if Mr. Toogood’s eagle eye detected an inch’s asymmetry.
He had loved those evenings, flanking the sideboard or standing behind Lady Tassell’s chair, listening to talk of politics and the opera. “Do you remember when Mr. Sheridan thought the roast was overcooked?”
His mother sighed. “That roast was perfectly tender.”
“What happened?” Sukey asked, charmingly ready to be fascinated by the answer.
“Oh, it’s not a very interesting story. John has such a memory for trifles.” Mrs. Toogood waved it away. The animation faded from Sukey’s face for a moment before she pasted on a determined smile. John gritted his teeth and did the same. “This fireplace was preserved from the Old Hall…”
After the tour, Sukey went to help his mother with her pickles so John could be initiated into the mysteries of buttling at Tassell Hall.
“And this is where I record each social occasion for which invitations are sent, who attended, the menus and entertainment provided, and what could be improved in future.” John’s father flipped open a notebook to show him closely written pages. “I keep separate notebooks for occasions above a certain size. And here in this box is an alphabetical list of guests with their preferences and a history of their visits…”
John wondered what the women were talking about in the stillroom. He pulled the first book off the shelf and opened it at random, finding a menu card in his mother’s writing attached to the page with a bit of thread. He lifted it to read his father’s notes.
Mrs. L’s gravy-soup much admired; refilled tureen in kitchen. Next time, 2 tureens. Ices: 2 per guest too many, 1½ will do. Bread well handled, served warm, compliments.
The date was some two years before John’s birth. It took him a moment to recognize “Mrs. L” as his mother, before their marriage, the Mrs. a courtesy to a head cook.
John had seen his father’s system before, and since he left the Hall had always used a similar one when entertaining for his employers. But there could be no comparison between this and chronicling Mr. Summers’s rare dinner parties. The thought of continuing his father’s labor of love, spending hours closeted in here writing, filled him with something like dread.
His father cleared his throat emphatically. “This is important, John. Stop your woolgathering.”
“I beg your pardon, sir. It’s just strange to think of you and Mother working together before your marriage.”
“The situation had charms of its own.” A reminiscent smile briefly illuminated his face, rendering it curiously soft and amorphous. Only when he frowned did the features come into focus, the broad planes of his cheeks and forehead acquiring shape and purpose. John wondered if that was innate to their shared lineaments, or if over time an accustomed expression had engraved itself. “Which is not to say we didn’t get impatient from time to time. Still, you might have learned from our example.” Mr. Toogood turned back to his boxes, pulling out a roll tied with ribbon. “This is—”
“Father, I’m forty. How long was I supposed to wait?”
“Until you were established in your profession! At least you might have chosen someone who wasn’t a hindrance to your advancement. It’s plain you got her with child, but I shall undertake to act surprised when you break the news to your mother.”
“Sukey is not with child. And she has helped me to my present situation, and in it. Our employer adores her.”
His father shook his head, looking sorrowful. “I’ve always been so proud of your levelheadedness, your ambition, your love of good hard work. And now to see you risk what you’ve worked for… Marriage is the gravest decision a man makes in his life. I don’t want you to see you regret yours.”
“Proud of me? When were you proud of me?” He swallowed the rest. Forty years old, and he still allowed his father to provoke him. Perhaps they were too similar, too quick to quarrel and too eager to be in the right.
Mr. Toogood sighed. “I know I’ve been hard on you. I haven’t enjoyed it any more than you have, but I never shrank from it, because I knew it was all to your good. The proof of the pudding’s in the eating, John. Look at you. Not every man could take this over, but you’ll do it superbly.”
John felt, all at once, an overwhelming sadness at the decisions his father had made, and their consequences. A man’s son should be a comfort to him when he was old. But while John did love his father, it was not much like the way he loved his mother or Plumtree or Sukey. It had little of joy in it, no rushes of affection or desire for nearness.
I’ve always been proud of you. His father had never said it when it would have mattered; now John felt nothing when he heard it. He remembered Sukey sobbing and railing, I want him to say he loves me. But it was too late.
Yet Mr. Toogood was no monster. He was just an old man who’d valued perfection and correctness over people. A man who had thought he could turn a home into a clock.
It hadn’t been easy to be his son, to hope for his love and pride. After a while, John had kept himself braced for the criticism or anger he knew would come eventually, unable to adapt himself to his father’s moods the way his mother did.
But plenty of the other servants, even, liked Mr. Toogood, leavened with casual wariness and a wry acceptance of his faults. They shrugged and said, That’s just his way.
And John remembered now—his father was at his worst when the Tassells were in residence. He’d forgotten, because from the age of fifteen he had traveled with the family and come to the Hall with them, but in between the strain and bustle of public days and balls and house parties were periods of calm and kindness, punctuated only by occasional outbursts.
He might like to think that he had become the man he was in spite of his father, but it was far from the truth. His father had taught h
im discipline, and the quest for beauty in small things. He had taught him how to perform domestic service, and that there was honor, even glory in it.
“I know I owe you a great deal,” John said quietly. “I love this work that we do.”
His father clapped him on the back, and he tried not to wince.
He thought of Mrs. Khaleel and Molly and Larry and Thea, of how happy it made him to have earned their trust at last. The house was cleaner and more cheerful now that they worked by lists they had written themselves. The difference had been immediate and palpable. The only place in Tassell Hall that felt like that was the kitchen. His father had never experienced it, and John wished—he wished he could show him what it was like.
I could bring that to the Hall, he thought suddenly. I could make it shine.
But could he? Or, shut up in this pantry surrounded by plans and papers, putting on dinners for two hundred on which rested the fate of the nation, would he grow ever more crabbed and disappointed and fanatical until there was no generosity left in his heart?
* * *
Sukey could not stop watching John’s parents at dinner. Mr. Toogood made up his wife’s plate with the fussy deliberateness of an old man and handed it to her with the devotion of a lovesick youth. They clinked glasses before drinking their wine, finished each other’s sentences and smiled at each other with the matter-of-fact comfort that came from loving each other for…well, at least since John was born forty years ago.
Sukey stole a glance at her husband, who didn’t look much moved by his parents’ affection. He took it for granted, she supposed. No—now he sighed with impatience, his forehead wrinkling. He was annoyed by it.
In forty years, where would she and John be? She supposed if they strove for it they could be right here, clinking wineglasses. But she couldn’t believe in it. John, for all his flowery speeches, had never said so much as one word about the future, until he said that if he went to Tassell Hall, they could live separately.
