Oh, God. I paused with one hand on the doorknob of the library door. Was he regretting his impulses of last night, and trying to dispose of the evidence (i.e., me) before I could fling myself at him again? ‘I didn’t mean to lead her on,’ I could hear him saying to a mate over a pint at the pub. ‘It was just…she was there. Female, y’-know.’ The friend would nod sagely in return, saying, ‘Don’t know where they get these ideas.’ And they’d both take a long pull of their beers, shaking their head over desperate women. Then they’d probably top it off with a long belch.
It made me cringe just thinking about it.
Five minutes gone. I tabled that thought for later and sprinted to my borrowed room, flinging clothes haphazardly back into my overnight bag, yanking on the same tweed pants I had worn yesterday with an unworn beige sweater. Cursing, I tore the sweater back off over my head, accidentally sending my glasses flying in the process, added bra, replaced sweater, and fumbled around for my glasses, which had scooted all the way under the bed in that way inanimate objects have when you’re in a hurry. Had I put on deodorant? I couldn’t remember. I yanked up my sweater and lavishly slathered white goo anywhere but where it was supposed to go, most of it onto dry-clean-only cashmere.
Twelve minutes gone. There was no time to put in my contacts. Wiping my glasses clean on a corner of my much-abused sweater, I made sure the lids on my contact lens case were screwed tight and shoved them, my glasses case, and my bottle of contact lens solution into my bag. Tearing a piece of paper out of the back of my notebook, I fished a pen out of my bag, and scribbled a quick note. ‘Serena, Thanks for the loan of the clothes! Hope you don’t mind. Will be glad to return the favour sometime. Yrs, Eloise.’
That was the last of my allotted time. I ran a quick scan over dresser, night tables, bed; rescued my almost-forgotten watch from the dresser top; wriggled into my coat, slung my bag over my shoulder, and bolted for the stairs.
Colin was already in the car, the engine running, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel in an anxious tattoo.
‘That was speedy,’ he said approvingly. The car lurched into action before I heard the comforting click that told me my door had latched.
‘Well, you know,’ I gasped, flinging my satchel into the backseat of the car, and turning around again to yank down my seat belt. ‘I didn’t have much with me.’
‘Right,’ said Colin, leaning over the wheel in that strange way men have when they’re intent on emulating the Grand Prix, the automotive equivalent of air guitar. As though sensing that might not have been adequate as a response, he added, ‘Good.’
All the tension that had fizzed between us last night had gone as flat as champagne left out overnight.
I subsided back against my seat. It belatedly occurred to me that I’d never brushed my hair, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to care. Outside the window, the countryside jounced past, clothed in morning mist. Had I been in a different sort of mood, I might have waxed rapturous about the mysterious quality of the early morning light. As it was, it just looked grim and faded, as if the tired landscape couldn’t muster the energy to clothe itself in its usual colours, but had let itself dim into an indifferent blur.
I glanced at Colin, but he was far away – away with the fairies, as the local idiom goes, only, judging from the worried line between his eyes, these were hobgoblins he was hobnobbing with. No kinder to him than the trees, the grey morning light transformed him into a sepia photo of himself. His healthy tan had gone the sallow taupe of old parchment, and his skin seemed too tightly drawn over his cheekbones. The pouches that bagged beneath his eyes reminded me of old photographs of the Duke of Windsor, who always looked as though he were perpetually recovering from a hangover.
With all my hyperawareness, I had seen how much Colin had consumed last night. It wasn’t a hangover.
As I watched, he rubbed two fingers over his temple as though to scrub away a headache. The homely gesture hit me like a kick in the stomach – no, not any other organ. Obviously, Colin had things on his mind other than aborted smooches and unwanted house-guests.
I remembered that phone call last night, as we returned from the party, and wondered if it had been bad news of some sort. The part of my imagination bequeathed to me by my mother instantly set about producing grisly disaster scenarios. A friend might have been in a car accident: a sudden flash of lights, a twist of the wheel, a car careening out of control on a dark road. His aunt might have had a heart attack. Mrs Selwick-Alderly looked fairly hale, but one never knew what might lurk in someone’s arteries after a lifetime of roast beef and sticky toffee pudding. Of course, these days, it was more likely free-range eggs and doner kebabs, but Mrs Selwick-Alderly had been raised in an age when meat was brought to your plate still mooing, accompanied by a side of vegetables stewed in butter. And then there was Colin’s sister, Serena. She had been suffering from a minor case of food poisoning on Thursday night. What if it hadn’t been food poisoning at all, but something far more serious? Cholera, perhaps. Could one even get cholera in England? Even if one couldn’t, I was sure that there were plenty of other grisly diseases ripe for the catching. Not to mention all the perils involved in crossing the street, operating a hair dryer, and drinking very hot beverages.
Envisioning Serena strapped to a complicated system of wires and tubes, an oxygen mask covering her mouth, one limp hand protruding from beneath the threadbare hospital coverlet, I felt like a worm. A selfish worm, at that.
‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.
‘Hmm? What?’ Colin dragged himself back from the dark lagoons of Never-Never Land with a visible effort. ‘Yes.’
I had never heard such an unconvincing affirmative in my life.
Before I could decide whether or not to press further – to pry, or not to pry? – Colin spoke again. ‘I’m sorry to toss you out like this.’
‘That’s all right,’ I lied. ‘I don’t mind the train.’
I waited. Patiently. Of course, what I really wanted to do was grab his arm and howl, ‘WHY?’ Now, I thought, would be an excellent time for an explanation as to why I was in his car, heading for a train station unknown, at an ungodly hour of the morning. Wasn’t virtue supposed to be rewarded?
Colin’s eyes snaked towards mine in the rear-view mirror. I schooled my face into an expression that was supposed to be bland yet encouraging, welcoming without displaying unwarranted levity. It came out as a lopsided grimace.
Colin frowned again.
Not exactly the reaction I had hoped to elicit.
‘I’ll pay your train fare, of course,’ he said abruptly.
Urgh. So much for an explanation. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘It’s the least I can do.’
‘I’m quite capable of paying for myself.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said Colin tiredly.
‘Give it to charity,’ I suggested. Feeling slightly guilty over my snippiness, I added, ‘There must be a fund for indigent phantom monks somewhere.’
Colin half-raised an eyebrow, as though he couldn’t even be moved to sarcasm. With an efficient movement of his hands on the steering wheel, the car swung around a turn and skidded to a stop in front of Hove Station.
Leaving the engine on idle, Colin turned and snagged my bag for me from the backseat. It took a bit of snagging, since, in the infuriating way of inanimate objects, it had chosen to wedge itself in the cavity beneath the seats. Naturally, it had fallen upside down. Just envisioning what might have fallen out – next time, I’m buying a bag with a zipper – I lurched over the seat to help.
Naturally, I dove over the gearshift just as Colin straightened, bag in hand. If you think this is one of those scenes where the heroine manages to fetch up pressed against the hero, his lips a breath away from hers as she rests stunned – but unhurt – against his manly chest, think again. My elbow whapped painfully into Colin’s chest. Dropping my bag, he let out a pained grunt, like a quarterback being hit in the stomach w
ith the ball. I reeled back, clutching my elbow and making incoherent mewing noises. Those blows to the funny bone hurt. But not, I imagine, quite as much as a direct whack to the solar plexus with an object just slightly less pointy than Miss Gwen’s parasol.
Great. If he wasn’t glad to get rid of me before, I’m sure he was now.
‘Sorry,’ I babbled, snatching my bag up off his lap and haphazardly scooping clothes and toiletries back into it. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
Colin reached down, and produced yesterday’s bra from the floor of the car.
‘Yours?’ he asked with a crooked smile.
‘Thanks.’ Redder than my hair, I snatched it out of his hand and shoved it into the bag. ‘I’ll just be going now. Before I injure you again.’
‘Anytime,’ said Colin, as I scrambled ungracefully out of the car, my bag bumping along behind me. I couldn’t tell whether he meant I should be leaving anytime now, or to keep the injuries coming. The former sounded far more plausible.
‘It’s been nice,’ I said lamely, rocking from one foot to the other just outside the open door of the car as I hauled my bag onto my shoulder. ‘Thanks for having me. It was really, um, nice of you.’
When I would have swung the door closed, Colin stretched out across the empty passenger’s seat, one hand resting on the handle of the open door. ‘I am sorry about this.’
I shoved my hair out of my eyes, sending my overnight bag plummeting from my shoulder to a painful halt in the crook of my elbow. ‘Not as sorry as I am,’ I said, glancing ruefully at his chest.
‘We should have drinks sometime.’
‘That would be lovely,’ I said, trying to hoist my bag up again and fervently hoping nothing else embarrassing was sticking out. All I needed was for him to get a good look at those poodle pyjamas.
He nodded. ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be away, but…I’ll call you when I get back to London.’
‘Great!’ I exclaimed, but my show of enthusiasm was, mercifully, cut off, as Colin slammed the door shut. The car swung away, leaving me standing there, repeating, ‘Drinks…I’ll call you…’ over and over in my head, just to make sure they’d really been said, until the impact of my bag hitting my foot shook me out of my bemused reverie.
Fumbling with the buttons on my coat, I staggered towards the train station, hitching my bag up as it began to slip slyly down my shoulder. It promptly fell again. I didn’t care. Drinks. I had assaulted the man, and yet he was still willing to have drinks with me. Who said true heroes were a thing of the past? Shoving some money through the window of the ticket booth and wishing the nonplussed ticket agent an exceptionally good day, I shambled towards the platform, trying to filter pound coins into my change purse and shove the purse back into the depths of my bag without dropping my ticket or tumbling onto the tracks like an absentminded Anna Karenina.
I had no desire to fling myself upon the train tracks of thwarted love. On the contrary, I joyously concluded that the offer of drinks must mean he hadn’t been trying to get rid of me! Something must have genuinely come up, something urgent and dreadful. Hey nonny nonny and tra la la! Belatedly, I remembered that taking joy in someone else’s misfortune was a Bad Thing, and clamped down on the carolling, even if my heart was secretly singing ‘tirra lirra’ like Sir Lancelot in the poem.
Visions of intimate dinners à deux danced through my head. I imagined a cosy little restaurant somewhere away from the bustle that surrounded my flat in Bayswater. South Kensington would fit the bill, or the less-travelled bits of Notting Hill. I pictured a little box of a place with brick walls and those tiny tables where you couldn’t fit more than two, and that only with knees brushing. The music would be as low as the lights, and the waiters would be the sort who didn’t barge by every two seconds asking if you were enjoying your meal. There would be no Sally, no Pammy, no Phantom Monk. Just two large-bowled glasses filled with dark red wine, me, and, of course, Colin.
And I would make double sure to turn off my damned cell phone.
While I was at it, why not just add some violins as well? I made a hideous face at myself, and then glanced guiltily around the platform to make sure no one had noticed. No one had, largely because there was no one else there. Thank goodness. I hate it when my inner monologue escapes into my face.
At seven-thirty on a Sunday morning, there were no commuters waiting to go into London. There was just me, alone on the open platform. It was so early that even the ubiquitous AMT coffee stand hadn’t yet opened its doors – or whatever you call the opening in an outdoor kiosk. I would have killed for a cup of coffee, as much for the warmth as for the caffeine. The wind scraped at my cheeks, as sharp as memory, wearing down through skin all the way to the raw nerves beneath.
I shoved my bloodless hands into the sleeves of my jacket, and rubbed them against my forearms, but it was about as much use as trying to warm up next to an unplugged space heater. The cold came as much from within as without, that bone-deep chill that comes of lack of sleep and food, and can only be driven off by several dreamless hours under a pile of quilts, with the alarm conveniently turned to off.
For a wonder, the train was actually running on time. The seven-thirty-two chugged its leisurely way into the station, as if preening itself on not having broken down along the way. It was the sort of train you never see in the States, door after door after door, each set of seats with its own personal portal. I suppose it does make for efficiency in getting in and out, but there was something slightly dizzying about that endless line of identical doors, one after the other. You know you’re overtired when you start viewing commuter train construction as an allegory for Life. The train compartment less chosen?
With no one else at the station, it was impossible to discern which doors were less travelled. Picking a compartment at random, I opened the yellow door and scrabbled across the seats, dumping my bag on one, and myself onto another. I settled gratefully into the battered seat, and leant my head back against the headrest, trying not to think of the heads that might have rested there before. Outside, the countryside began moving slowly by, like the backdrop in an old movie, a checkered landscape of fallow winter fields, interspersed at intervals with clusters of grimy brown semidetached houses, huddling together close by the train tracks. Watching the muted scenery chug past, I let myself drift on a pleasant wave of fatigue and idle thought, mulling over what I had read in the library that night.
Especially that last letter. Blotted and blotched, as though Henrietta had leant too heavily on her pen, she wasted no time in getting to the crux of the problem. The marquise had escaped.
My first thought was that Vaughn had turned traitor. According to Henrietta, however, Vaughn had discharged his duty and delivered the marquise safely into custody. Once there, she had persuaded the guard that there was clearly some mistake; she, after all, was a gently bred lady from a fine old English family and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with international espionage. Her? A wilting flower of womanhood? A spy! The very idea – flutter, flutter, simper, simper – was absurd. Henrietta waxed exceedingly bitter and blotty over the effect of the marquise’s wiles on the unenlightened. The tactic had worked. The guard informed Wickham (who told Miles, who told Henrietta) that the marquise had been most gracious in accepting his apologies. Henrietta had hit the dot on that i in ‘gracious’ so hard that the nib of the pen had pierced the paper. A woman of the marquise’s description had last been sighted taking ship for Ireland.
Ireland. An exceedingly popular place all of a sudden. I didn’t think it could possibly be a coincidence that both the Pink Carnation and the Black Tulip were converging upon the same place. The Black Tulip might, perhaps, as she vamped her way through the staff of the War Office, have got wind of the presence of the Pink Carnation in Ireland (though I had my doubts), but why was Wickham sending Jane there in the first place? Why not leave her in France, where she was well entrenched in Bonaparte’s court, well placed to receive information and commit cunning acts of
sabotage? A logical cause might be to remove her from suspicion – but, as far as I had read, no one suspected Edouard de Balcourt’s cousin of anything other than, perhaps, the odd amour. Being French, they weren’t about to condemn that.
Besides, there were other reasons that excuse didn’t wash. One other reason, to be precise. Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe. If it were a matter of removing Jane from France, why send Pinchingdale to meet her in Ireland? Because that, according to Henrietta’s last letter, was just what William Wickham had ordered. Pinchingdale had been detailed to meet Jane in Ireland, assignment to be relayed en route.
But why Ireland?
It’s a complaint among British historians that, the way the field is parcelled out, people who call themselves British historians seldom do more than study England. From time to time, someone will call for a new ‘British’ history, and there’ll be a spate of papers, perhaps a conference or two, emphasising the interrelations between the three kingdoms, itemising the numbers of Scots and Irish in the British army, or assessing the impact of Ireland upon Britain’s colonial enterprises, but then most of us merrily subside into just doing England again. The word ‘insular’ applies in more ways than one.
I bore out the stereotype beautifully. I didn’t for the life of me know what was going on in Ireland in 1803. I did know – this comes among those basic dates of which no self-respecting English historian can remain in ignorance, or risk extreme embarrassment in the tearoom of the Institute of Historical Research – that Ireland’s government had officially been merged with that of Britain with the Act of Union in 1801, its Parliament dissolved and its legislative independence ended. Scotland had gone that way in 1707. I realised that fact had nothing to do with the state of Ireland in 1803, but it did reassure me that all that studying I had done for my General Exams had not been in vain.
I also knew, and far more usefully, that William Wickham had been, at some point, Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland. Or, rather, it would be useful if I could remember exactly when Wickham had been in Ireland. If it had been 1803… Was that too much to hope for?
The Masque of the Black Tulip Page 44
