Frank was a fine boy, but he had a sad tendency towards obstinacy.
As an epitaph it suggested Lieutenant Saunders had inherited at least one quality from his father. But it did not suggest there had been anything criminal or sinful about him. So in that case, what was worse than your son – a fine boy – dying as a result of a self-induced drunken accident?
Why, it could only mean that he had died for some other reason. Not disease, it appeared. So he must have been killed. But if killed lawfully, he would not have been reported as having died in an accident. So had Mr Noak’s son therefore been killed unlawfully?
In other words, had Lieutenant Frank Saunders been murdered?
49
Sir George most obligingly rode over on Thursday morning with the news that a suite of apartments in a house in Westgate had become available for the night of the assembly. Lord Vauden and his party had taken them for several nights but the sudden illness of a near relation from whom he had expectations had compelled him to withdraw. Sir George had taken the liberty of bespeaking the apartments in Mr Carswall’s name, though of course this conferred no obligation upon Mr Carswall, and it would be the work of a moment to cancel the arrangement if it did not suit because Captain Ruispidge was engaged to dine in Gloucester that very evening.
This was just the encouragement Mr Carswall needed. Not only was he flattered by Sir George’s kind attention but the suggestion removed the chief practical obstacle to the scheme. Sir George added that his mother was greatly looking forward to renewing her acquaintance with Miss Carswall and Mrs Frant. When we were sitting in the drawing room after dinner, Mr Carswall returned to this condescension on the part of Lady Ruispidge.
“But Papa,” Miss Carswall said, “you know Sophie cannot come to the ball.”
“Of course not. But there is no reason why she should not come to Gloucester with us, is there?” He turned to Mrs Frant who was seated at the tea table. “You will enjoy the shops, I daresay, eh? We have been very cooped up here at Monkshill, and it will do us good to have a change.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Groaning with the effort, he leaned on the table and patted her hand with his great paw. “You cannot mope for ever, my dear. You shall buy something pretty for yourself. And something for the boy, perhaps, too.”
Mrs Frant pulled her hand away and began to gather together the tea things.
“Sir George brought me a note from Mrs Johnson today,” Miss Carswall said brightly. “She enclosed a receipt for eel soup from Lady Ruispidge. So obliging. I wonder how many of us will go to Gloucester, and how many beds are spoken for us. One would not like to be cramped or thrown together with people one does not care for.”
“No,” said Mrs Frant. “I can think of nothing worse.”
The ball at the Bell Inn was on Wednesday, the 12th January. It formed the principal topic of conversation at Monkshill-park in the week before – where our party would lodge, what they should wear, whom they would encounter and whom they would like to encounter. The boys and I were to stay at Monkshill.
On Monday, two days before the ball, I came into the small sitting room to look for my pupils and found Miss Carswall with her nose in a book on the sofa by the fire. I explained my errand.
“Why not let them run wild this afternoon?” She yawned, exposing very white, very sharp teeth. “There is nothing so fatiguing as a printed page, I find.”
“What is it you are reading?”
She held out a cloth-bound duodecimo volume. “Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book,” she said. “It is a treasure house of valuable information. Here it tells you how to make a mutton-ham, which sounds a monstrous contradiction, and probably tastes like one too. And here are two and a half pages devoted solely to the laundry maid and her duties. It is so lowering. I had not realised there was so much useful knowledge in the world. It seems quite boundless, like the Pacific Ocean.”
I said something civil in reply, along the lines of being sure that a student of her ability would soon acquire all the knowledge she needed.
“The study of books does not come easily to me, Mr Shield. You must not think me a blue, far from it. But Papa believes that every woman should know domestic economy.” Her eyelids fluttered. “He bids me model myself in that respect on Lady Ruispidge.” Her hand flew to her left eye. “Oh!”
“What is it, Miss Carswall?”
“I believe I have something in my eye.” Miss Carswall rose unsteadily to her feet, pouting with vexation, and examined her face in the mirror above the fireplace. “I cannot see anything in it but the light is so bad over here. It is such an irritation.”
“Shall I ring the bell?”
“They will take an age to come, and then they will have to find my maid. No, Mr Shield, would you be very kind and come with me over to the window and see if you can see it? Whatever it might be. It is unlikely to be a fly at this time of year. Perhaps a speck of soot or a hair. Even an errant eyelash can have such a profound and disproportionate effect on human happiness.”
I followed her to the window where she turned and held her face up to me. I came close to her and peered into her left eye. When you are near a woman, you smell her scent, not just the perfume she is wearing but the entire olfactory nature of her – a compound of perfume, the odour of her clothes, and the natural animal smell underlying all.
“Pray turn your head a little to the left,” I said. “There – that is better.”
“Can you see anything? In the corner.”
“Which corner?”
She giggled. “I am not thinking clearly. The inner corner.”
I brought my face a little closer so that I could see more clearly and, simultaneously, she raised herself on tiptoe and turned her face an inch or so to the right. Her lips brushed mine.
I gave a startled yelp and jumped back.
“I’m so sorry, Mr Shield,” she said with complete composure.
“I – I beg your pardon,” I muttered wildly, my heart beating like a drum.
“Not at all. At first I thought the hair had been dislodged but I think it is still there. I wonder if I might trouble you to have another look.”
She raised her face up to me again and smiled. I brought my mouth down on hers and felt her lips move and for an instant part against mine. Then her hands caught mine and she took a step back.
“Come away from the window,” she murmured, and like figures in a dance we moved a few paces together, as one creature, and then began to kiss again. She rested her hands on my shoulders and I ran my palms over her hips. Her warmth enveloped me like a flame.
Thirty seconds? A minute at most. There was a clatter on the other side of the door. We sprang apart. In an instant, I was contemplating the view across the terrace to the river far below, while Miss Carswall was seated on the sofa, turning the pages of Domestic Cookery with an expression of rapt concentration on her face. A plump maid with a damp red face carried a scuttle of coals into the room. She made up the fire and tidied the grate. While she was still rattling the fire irons, the boys rushed in.
“Mr Harmwell is going to show us how to trap rabbits,” Charlie said proudly. “Ain’t it famous? If we was shipwrecked, you know, like Robinson Crusoe, we could dine like kings on rabbits.”
“How very kind of Mr Harmwell,” Miss Carswall said.
“He is a very kind man,” Charlie said simply. “Edgar says he is quite different from the niggers they have at home.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Most of the ones we have in Richmond are slaves, sir,” the American boy said. “But Mr Harmwell is as free as you or I.”
The maid curtsied and left the room. The boys followed, banging the door behind them.
“And how free is that?” I said.
Miss Carswall giggled. “Free enough in all conscience. I approve of freedom. I am a natural radical.” She rose and came to stand beside me. She glanced out of the window, and the excitement left her face. “Look.
Sophie’s coming.”
We moved apart and re-arranged our limbs and our feelings. Mrs Frant passed the window as she made her way along the terrace towards the side door.
I coughed. “Do I understand from Harmwell’s continued presence that Mr Noak stays for a while longer?”
“Yes, had you not heard? At least until after the ball.” Miss Carswall laughed; she appeared wholly self-possessed. “I had the reason from Sophie who had it from Mrs Kerridge, who had it from Harmwell himself. You recall that Kerridge and Harmwell are sweet on one another? It is touching, is it not, and especially at their time of life? Anyway, according to Harmwell, Mr Noak is contemplating the purchase of some property from my father. A warehouse in Liverpool, or some such thing. And there is talk of other investments – you know what gentlemen are like when they begin to talk of their investments. They become like girls talking of their beaux – there is the same blend of fantasy with obsession, the desire for secrecy, the lust for acquisition.”
She had moved away from me now, and sat down again on the sofa. I felt half relieved, half cheated. A moment later, Mrs Frant came into the room and held out her hands to the fire.
“Mrs Johnson is still at Clearland-court, I collect?” she said to Miss Carswall.
“I believe so. I had understood from Sir George that she was staying with them until after the ball. Why?”
“I was walking near the ruins and I saw a man in the garden of Grange Cottage.”
“Her gardener?”
“But she has no gardener now. Only the one maid of all work, Ruth, and she is not there at present. I was too far away to see him clearly but he seemed to catch sight of me, and moved away at once. Do you think we should inform Mrs Johnson?”
“It would be the neighbourly thing to do,” Miss Carswall said. “Could you describe him?”
“Tall and well built. He wore a long brown coat and a broad-brimmed hat. I can tell you nothing about his face. He was so far away, and the collar was turned up, and the brim of the hat was –”
“I will write a note to Mrs Johnson,” Miss Carswall cut in. “If she thinks there is something suspicious, she will consult with Sir George about what to do. I would not for the world want to worry her, but one cannot be too careful in such matters. Perhaps we should send someone to investigate before we raise the alarm.”
“If you like,” I said, “I could walk there now.”
To tell the truth, I welcomed the chance of escaping from that snug parlour. I always found it unsettling to see Mrs Frant and Miss Carswall together, and rarely more than I did on that occasion. I was not proud of my feelings yet I could not pretend that I did not desire them both: though not entirely for the same reasons, and not in the same way.
I found my hat and stick and set out. I was surprised how soon I reached Grange Cottage. Perturbation of the mind and discomfort of the body encourage rapidity of movement. In a sense, perhaps, I was attempting to hurry away from the unholy confusion of my own feelings.
Nothing had changed since my previous visit. The building had the desolate appearance of an untenanted house – somehow reduced in importance by the absence of its owner as is a body by the absence of its animating spirit.
The shutters were still up. I tried the doors: all were locked. As I had done before, I walked round to the kitchen yard at the back. I inspected the muddy patch beside the pump, and found only a confusion of ridges and furrows, brittle with frost, where before there had been an outline of a man’s footprint.
By and by, I returned through the park, walking more slowly than before. I scarcely knew the reason for my unease – whether it was what I might have left behind at Grange Cottage or what I might be walking towards at Monkshill. I skirted the lake by the longer, western route and took the opportunity to investigate both the approach to the ice-house and the shell grotto. I found nothing out of the way, and nor had I expected to do so. I was not following a rational purpose: I wanted to postpone my return, I suppose, and that part of the mind that is mysterious even to its owner was obliging enough to suggest plausible excuses for delay.
In the end, though, my powers of invention were exhausted. I took the path to the house, walking ever more slowly. Images of Mrs Frant, images of Miss Carswall, whirled through my mind. I could not think clearly, and even derived a gloomy pleasure from my plight: was I not the very pattern of a romantic hero?
As I was walking along the wall of the kitchen gardens, immersed in gloomy thoughts, the boys ran whooping like redskins through a doorway. They hurled themselves into me with such force that I staggered and almost fell.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Edgar, glancing at Charlie.
The boys burst into giggles. I pretended to roar at them and they scampered away with cries of simulated terror. I chased them through the walled gardens and seized both of them by the scruffs of their necks.
“Juvenal tells us maxima debetur puero reverentia,” I said. “Translate, Edgar.”
“The greatest reverence is due to a boy, sir.”
“But Juvenal is inaccurate on this occasion. The greatest reverence is due to a boy’s master.”
I pretended to cuff them and they ran off, shrieking. Soon they would grow older and more serious. Time was running out for their boyhood. For that matter, time was running out for us all, and running faster and faster. I thought of Mr Carswall and his watch: for all his wealth the old man was time’s slave, as completely in its power as any of his niggers had ever been in his. As for me, my sojourn at Monkshill was slipping away. In a few short weeks, I would take Edgar Allan back to Stoke Newington, and leave behind whatever was happening here.
Worst of all, I would leave Sophia Frant and Flora Carswall. At that moment, the prospect of losing them seemed an insupportable fate. They had become my pleasure, my pain and my necessity. They had become my meat and drink, my Alpha and Omega. I was enslaved to them, I told myself, and to what they represented: and in my addiction I was no better than an opium-eater tapping a coin on the druggist’s counter as he waits for his heaven and his hell in a pill-box.
50
The following day, Mr Noak sent down to say that he was unwell. He had a severe cold. Harmwell explained that his master would be obliged to keep to his bed for at least a day or two. Owing to boyhood illnesses, Mr Noak’s chest was weak. The greatest care was needed if he was to avoid fever, a severe and debilitating cough and possibly pneumonia. The news spread throughout the house long before Mr Carswall announced it formally at dinner, which gave Miss Carswall ample opportunity to consult her brown duodecimo volume.
“You must not be anxious, Papa,” she said when he told us the news with a long face. “I have already instructed Harmwell to dose Mr Noak regularly. I have prescribed a spoonful of syrup of horehound in a glass of spring water, into which he should stir ten drops of the spirit of sulphur: I am reliably informed that this is a remedy that will generally relieve the severest cold.”
“A very proper attention,” he said. “But I was depending on him for our excursion to Gloucester.” For an instant his lips formed the pout I had seen more than once on Miss Carswall’s face. “It is so provoking.”
“I suppose the poor man cannot help his health.”
“I do not say that he can.” Mr Carswall took another sip of wine. “But I shall miss his conversation. And Harmwell could have made himself useful when we passed through a turnpike, and in Gloucester. There are always arrangements to be made, errands to be run.”
“Surely there is at least a partial remedy immediately to hand? We should invite Mr Shield to accompany us in Mr Noak’s place.”
Carswall gestured for his glass to be refilled and stared down the table at me. “Aye, that might answer. You shall accompany us, Shield. Not to the ball itself, however – there will be no need for that. No doubt you will enjoy the change of scene. Yes, it will be quite a treat for you.”
I bowed and said nothing. Mr Carswall liked to give the impression that consulting his own
comfort was merely the indirect means of doing someone else a favour. In my absence, the boys would be left in the care of Mrs Kerridge.
On the Wednesday morning, Mr Carswall plunged into a morass of indecision. He consulted his watch – he glanced at the dark, grey sky – he prophesied snow. What if we should become stuck in a snowdrift? What if a wheel should break while we were in the depths of the country? What if we had not allowed enough time for a journey at this time of year, and we were benighted on the road and froze to death? As he grew older, Mr Carswall lived in a world of terrifying possibilities, a world whose dangers increased in proportion to his own frailties.
Miss Carswall soothed him. There would be a constant stream of travellers. Most of our way would lie along the newly cut turnpike road beside the river. We would never be far from a pike-house, a farm or a village. Mr Shield, the coachman and the footmen were all able-bodied men capable of wielding a shovel or walking for assistance. Besides, it was not yet snowing, and even if it had been, there was no reason to fear that the road would be blocked.
At last Mr Carswall’s anxiety subsided sufficiently for us to leave. Miss Carswall’s maid and his own man had already gone on ahead to make our apartments ready, so the five of us travelled inside the great coach – the three ladies, Mr Carswall and I. Mr Carswall’s splendid equipage was nothing if not luxurious. We glided along the macadamised surface of the turnpike road. The coach’s big wheels and long springs combined with the perfectly flat gravelled surface to create an impression of rapid but almost effortless motion. I was in close proximity to both Mrs Frant and Miss Carswall; indeed I sometimes felt a gentle pressure from the latter’s foot upon my own. There was pleasure, too, in leaving behind Monkshill-park, that elegant and spacious prison.
We came into Gloucester by the Over Causeway, a circumstance which caused Mr Carswall much agitation, for the river was rising and the masonry of the arches was already in a ruinous condition. To his relief, we crossed the Westgate Bridge and entered the city while it was still light.
The American Boy Page 25
