The Florian Signet

by John Burke

  ‘Our niece, Mrs Warrington, spent some time in your country. In our country.’

  ‘That is so?’ Jan turned, immediately attentive.

  ‘For such a short time,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Oh, but a lot can happen in a short time,’ said my mother archly.

  Aunt Aurelia, who had implied much the same thing not so many months ago, frowned. ‘Oh, really, Milada, I don’t think . . . such jokes, not in the best taste, really . . .’ Her daughter was now a staid married woman and should be respected as such.

  ‘In my country?’ Jan prompted.

  Reluctantly, then with growing interest, she met his gaze.

  ‘Oh, I spent some time with a charming family in Kremsier.’ There was no mention of her having been governess to the family. ‘But the country didn’t really suit me. I came home.’

  ‘Kremsier, in Moravia. Yes, I know it. A splendid place. Noble traditions. But you visited other parts also?’

  ‘I had little opportunity.’

  ‘Southern Bohemia, no? The Böhmerwald – that part the Czechs call the Sumava?’

  ‘I’m afraid I never learnt what the Czechs called things.’

  ‘Such magnificent countryside. The great estates of the Schwarzenbergs, and other lesser families.’ He seemed to be demanding that she should admit it, as if it were impossible for any rational being to have visited his country and not sought out that particular region. ‘Krumau and Winterberg, the Black Lake, Svetlik . . .’

  Caroline flinched.

  Then, curtly, she said: ‘I had no time. I came home.’

  ‘Isn’t Svetlik a Czech word?’ I asked. ‘It sounds like it.’

  Jan turned back towards me; and Caroline looked at me just once, trying not to show her fear and fury.

  ‘It is, yes,’ said Jan. ‘An old name for a pretty little place.’

  There was a silence. Aunt Aurelia glanced, puzzled, from one face to another.

  Suddenly Caroline was telling us all about her plans for the Tempest Fen house, and how they were going, and how impossible the local workmen were, and how much time she had to spend on the journey from Wisbech to the house, because if she wasn’t there then nothing would ever get done.

  ‘But it’ll be so wonderful when it’s done. Won’t it, Mama? Mama,’ she explained, ‘has been over several times to see it.’

  ‘It’s a cold house,’ said Aunt Aurelia.

  ‘It’s taking time, but we’ll succeed in the end. Won’t we, darling?’

  Dominic nodded.

  ‘And, Nora, you must come and see it soon. You must. I do so badly need advice on some curtains, and some of the furniture. Come and spend a day or two – you will, won’t you?’

  She was leaning forward, eager, talkative and imploring. But the fear in her eyes was not just an exaggerated fear that I might say no. For that matter, I doubted whether she really wanted me at Tempest Fen. She must guess that if we were alone together for any length of time I would raise that awkward topic once more; which I had every intention of doing when the opportunity presented itself.

  When we moved away from the table, my father took Dr Meredith to inspect some old medical prints he had acquired by mistake when buying what might have been one third of a hitherto unknown Mass by Michael Haydn. Mother said, ‘I must just have a word with cook,’ and went off with Aunt Aurelia in close pursuit. The other four of us went out of doors.

  There was a nip in the air but the sun was bright on the grass and stone, treating us to a last brilliant fling before being subdued to its winter pallor. I had expected Jan to fall into step beside me, but I noticed him hold back, edging imperceptibly towards Caroline. And Dominic was heading for me.

  We wove different routes around the paths, drifting further and further apart, until Dominic and I were out of earshot of the others.

  He said: ‘Nora, I’m sorry.’

  I was scared. It was the first time I had been alone with him since the uncomplicated years before his wedding.

  ‘For what?’ I said lamely.

  ‘To do what I did, while you were away . . .’ He adjusted his long stride to mine. ‘How it must have come to you, without warning . . . I can’t say how deeply sorry I am.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologize for seeking happiness.’

  ‘For seeking it?’ He laughed a harsher laugh than any I had ever heard from him. He had always been so comforting, resonant with cheerfulness and confidence: always laughing with things and people rather than at them. Then he said: ‘I have no right to say more. But please tell me that you don’t hate me.’

  ‘Caroline expected me to hate her. We shouldn’t let ourselves think of such things.’

  ‘She expected you to hate her?’ It seemed to cause him no surprise. We walked on into the afternoon shadow, and out again. ‘And you do not?’

  ‘It’s a sad sensation, to hate.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said in little more than a whisper. ‘Isn’t it?’

  He quickened his pace so that he was a few inches in advance of me and I could not see his face.

  But the set of his shoulders and the merest glimpse of his profile told me too much. I had thought there could be nothing to match the intensity of Count Florian’s pride. Now I saw something very like it in Dominic: the pride of a man shaken to the depths of his being, yet determined to share none of his troubles with the world. Already he was regretting having shown me the slightest trace of weakness.

  I asked about the Warrington enterprises, and Wisbech office; and gratefully he began to talk about the yards, and expansion of coastal shipping and a new agreement with the Dutch, and about the annual bargaining over canal contracts which would take place on Ely market day this coming week.

  We stopped below the arcading of the Galilee porch, preparatory to turning back.

  ‘I have more than enough to keep me occupied,’ he said with a brief quirk of his old smile. And then: ‘It would be asking too much . . . for you to see Caroline when you can? She has no close friend. No one who can advise her.’

  I could have retorted that it was now her husband’s task to advise her. But he was not her husband.

  He said: ‘My wife . . .’ And faltered.

  And I could have reached out and shaken him and told him she was not his wife.

  Beyond him, across the grass, I saw Caroline and Jan. Like ourselves, they had come to a halt. Jan was thrusting his neck forward, appearing to talk more earnestly than I had known him do.

  But what could he have to say to Caroline, whom he had only just met, that was so solemn and important?

  She stepped abruptly backwards. I thought she was about to strike him. She drew herself up, an inch or so taller than he; shook her head; turned and tugged up her dress so that its hem did not skim the ground, and walked away.

  Dominic had seen none of it.

  I said: ‘If you think Caroline wishes my companionship –’

  ‘She has no other.’

  As we went back to the house and I saw Caroline’s perturbation, her deliberate avoidance of Jan Sieghart, I felt a random twinge of hope. What could he have said to disturb her so? Surely not a risky, momentary flirtation? But if he knew Anton Florian . . . had been deputed, even, by the young Count to come to England and find out what had gone wrong . . . because there had been no word from me, and Florian had grown impatient and mistrustful and was prepared to risk a trusted accomplice to study the lay of the land and succeed where I had failed . . .

  When our guests had gone, should I risk confiding in Jan?

  It was too dangerous. If I were mistaken, all the previous reasons for keeping the secret were as valid as ever.

  And Caroline – what if she spoke rashly to him, or to anyone else?

  But Caroline had denied the existence of Count Florian. She would hardly have broken down in conversation with a newcomer when she had refused to yield an inch to me.

  When she was upstairs in the spare bedroom close to mine, preparing to leave, I went up to her
, ostensibly to see if she needed anything.

  She was alone.

  She backed away from me, just as she had backed away from Jan.

  I said: ‘Caroline, you must take this seriously. Please. You must send a message to your husband. You owe it to him.’

  ‘My husband’s waiting for me at this moment.’ She stooped slightly to see herself in the looking-glass as she stabbed a pin through her hat. ‘Waiting for me downstairs.’

  ‘A message for Count Florian. You must send word somehow. Or go to him.’

  There was an instant when I felt she might withdraw the hat-pin and plunge it into me instead. But when her hand came away she swung round and jabbed two fingers at me like someone warding off the evil eye.

  ‘You’re mad, Nora. D’you hear me? Mad!’ It rose to a shriek. ‘Mad, and I’ll not listen to any more of it. Not one word.’

  ‘How can you be so cruel to the man who –’

  ‘There’s no such person. None. Be quiet. Quiet, I say.’

  She pushed me to one side and stormed from the room. I followed, breathing in great gulps. Outside, Dominic had just reached the head of stairs. She pushed past him in the same way and stamped furiously on each tread on her way down.

  Dominic did not watch her go. He stood where he was on the landing, gazing at me.

  ‘I apologize for her manners. Or lack of them.’

  ‘We were getting quite excited,’ I said. ‘But it was nothing.’

  I tried to follow Caroline downstairs. I was close to him, near to brushing against him as she had done. On the top step I swayed, and he caught me. His arm was round me, he wrenched me towards him, and ducked his head to kiss me as he used to do when we were younger.

  But it was not the same as then. In no way was it the same. Fire blazed through me, answering him, scorching through my body and through my lips to his. It was shaming. He of all men had no right to this response.

  I tried to pull away.

  Tensely he bit off the words: ‘There’s nothing I can do, nothing to undo the harm I’ve done . . . but . . .’

  There was a shrill cry of outrage. Aunt Aurelia came out of the room at the end of the corridor and stood wide-eyed, open-mouthed. She puffed and squeaked; and then bore down upon us. I stepped well back from Dominic. He stood quite still as she passed between us, glaring into his face, her lower lip quivering. Then she threw me a look of horror and went clattering down the stairs, her palm squealing along the banister rail.

  Chapter Seven

  The following morning I was stopped on Fore Hill by the Meredith sisters. Twin spinsters in their early thirties, they liked to mix with people ten years younger than themselves and were always eager to listen to girlish confidences, since they had none of their own to impart. Clearly they had been unable to extract much from their father, Dr Meredith, about the previous day’s lunch; and hoped they might do better with me.

  ‘What did you make of her?’

  ‘It must have been so upsetting for you, Nora.’

  ‘How do you think they’ll get on?’

  ‘The things we heard the other day . . .’

  They were identical twins apart from Mary having a slightly drooping left eyelid – what the old wives called a lazy eye. It gave her a sly, calculating expression; but in fact she was no more scheming or inquisitive than her frank-faced sister.

  I said: ‘I haven’t heard anything, myself.’

  ‘Oh, but they’d try to keep it from you, wouldn’t they? Knowing how you feel about Dominic.’

  ‘How am I supposed to feel about Mr Warrington?’

  ‘Oh, Nora, we . . . well, you know how upset your friends have been. And it must have been terrible for you, sitting at the same table.’

  ‘That’s enough, Mary,’ said Rhoda Meredith. ‘But it is dreadful, the way that woman’s carrying on at Tempest Fen.’

  ‘Carrying on?’ I said.

  ‘The time she spends there. And the money. Having poor old Burridge thrown out, and now all those wagonloads of stuff being sent out there. She’ll drive her husband mad.’

  ‘Or bankrupt,’ said Mary.

  I wondered, sickeningly, if that was Caroline’s design: to drive Dominic to ruin, as she believed the Warringtons had driven her father to ruin. But vindictiveness could surely not go to such extremes. She could not bring Dominic down without bringing herself down. She would not want to suffer those deprivations a second time.

  ‘Cook and the housemaid were supposed to have stayed on,’ said Rhoda, ‘to keep the place aired and be there when your cousin took it into her head to visit the property. But they wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘They wouldn’t stay on,’ said Mary, ‘not with her.’

  Both waited for some reaction. But I was not going to pander to their curiosity. They would get no juicy titbits from the conversation at our table.

  I wondered, though, how many other gossips were collecting bad omens about the recently married Warringtons.

  As I made a move to walk on, Rhoda said: ‘Well, we’re glad you’re not taking it too hard, Nora.’

  ‘It must be nice,’ said Mary, ‘having that foreign chap with you all the time.’

  That foreign chap was in fact preparing to leave. Following one of my father’s lovingly prepared itineraries, he went off to visit a number of sites in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

  I missed him.

  At Ely market the following week I made a point of avoiding Dominic. There could be nothing but awkwardness if we met, and the slightest unwary remark or gesture would be snatched up by half the gossips of the town.

  I got on with my work at my own pace, often lapsing into a reverie, and then at other times abandoning the whole thing and going out for a walk. Catching my own reflection in a shop window once, I saw that I was pinching my lips together, with teeth clenched behind them, and my arms were stiff and tense. I wanted to take a grip on events and shake them into a pattern which suited me; wanted to make things happen instead of simply waiting for them to happen.

  Next market day Dominic was in Ely again. I heard that he had come down to deal personally with some cartage contracts which had been mishandled.

  I also heard the tail end of a remark from one factor to another: ‘Mr John wouldn’t be none too happy if he got wind o’ this. Hasn’t got no mind for things any more, that lad.’ And there were other little ripples from a chattering group of shawled and bonneted women who had come in with their husbands from the farms. ‘Out there on her own at all hours, it’s not right . . . oh, I’m not saying there’s another fellow already, but they do say . . .’

  I made myself walk past and hear no more.

  Once or twice in those drab days I caught my mother and father glancing at me. They must have heard the rumours and were asking themselves how many had reached me.

  I talked brightly about Jan and how he might be faring. Mother was happy at this choice of subject. She said a dozen times how charming he was, how distinguished, how unlikely it was that he had told us even half of his military valour. An ideal young man, in short.

  ‘A very strong character,’ my father contributed. ‘Very strong sense of . . . I’m inclined to call it dedication. Isn’t that how he strikes you, Leonora?’

  I was not prepared to express opinions which might be misinterpreted; but I did remember my own impression of Jan’s steadiness and determination. ‘I think he has everything worked out in his mind,’ I said, ‘and if he wants something he’ll persevere until he gets it.’

  ‘Without rushing too wilfully at it,’ my father agreed.

  Mother’s face was one broad, artless smile. ‘I do hope so.’

  Jan returned to Ely sooner than we had expected. And my first meeting with him after his return was unexpected, though not so violent as our first encounter. I had been below Cherry Hill to take a message to one of my father’s sick friends and, reluctant to shut myself away again in the cathedral, treated myself to a stroll by the river. I watched a train along th
e embankment, waited for it to stop at the platform and leave again, and then sauntered on to join the road from the station.

  Leaning on a fence at the foot of the hill, lost in contemplation of the meadows, was Jan.

  I was only a few yards away when he said to himself: ‘Ich glaube es nicht . . .’ He shook his head like a dog shaking water from itself. ‘Nein doch . . . das ist nicht zu glauben.’

  I said: ‘What don’t you believe?’

  He spun round, his right hand sweeping across his chest as if to draw a sword and lunge instantly forward.

  ‘Nein doch . . .’ Then, with an effort: ‘Leonora.’ Even after recognizing me I had the odd feeling that he was literally about to challenge me. ‘You . . . you take me by surprise.’

  ‘It sounds as if I’m not the first surprise you’ve had today.’

  ‘Ah. So I talk to myself! But that is only the landscape. I am trying to fit all I have learnt into its correct landscape, yes? And a bad habit, I talk to myself.’ He was still looking piercingly at me. Then he took my arm with all the assurance of one who had a right to do so, and we began to walk. I did not know if he had just come off the train and left his baggage to be collected, or if he had already returned to The Lamb and was out, like myself, for a stroll. ‘I have been to an abbey,’ he said, ‘and then to Norfolk, and now I come back and everywhere it is so flat and watery. Our Southern Bohemia has its little water meadows and its meres – so many of them – but not like this.’

  I wondered what had really startled him so.

  He would be staying in Ely again, he told my welcoming parents, for a few days only. Then he must go to London.

  ‘And you’ll come back to us before you go on your next exploration?’

  ‘It will depend. I must see. There is not too much time.’

  Mother looked at me. I was annoyed that her concern was so obvious. It could not have been lost on Jan.

  He said: ‘Believe me, I am in no haste to be away. Not for myself.’

  We had a musical evening, to which my father had invited a country rector and his wife from some four miles out on the fen. Things were a trifle stiff at first: the rector took an austere view of music, and was not used to people who actually enjoyed singing and playing; but liberal helpings of my mother’s home-made gooseberry wine had a mellowing effect, and his head began to nod in time.