She was angry with herself. Was this all it took to disturb her hard-won peace? Was this all it took to make her homesick?
Emerging from Baker Street station, she went to the first slot-machine she could find, and bought a penny stamp with a defiant flourish. She didn’t need coincidences to help her make up her mind. She could take charge of her own destiny.
But when she had found a pillar box, she still couldn’t bring herself to post the letter. You are weak, she told herself in disgust. Weak, weak, weak.
Sibella’s brougham was outside the house in New Cavendish Street, and Sibella herself was waiting impatiently in the drawing-room.
‘Did you order tea?’ Sophie asked as she drew off her gloves.
‘I thought we were going out,’ said Sibella with a frown. ‘You don’t mean to say that you’ve forgotten?’
Sophie repressed a flicker of irritation. She was tired, and she needed to be alone. But clearly, chocolate at Charbonnel’s was immovable. Thank heavens that Sibella was going home next week.
She tried a change of subject. ‘What did you do today?’
‘Mrs Vaughan-Pargeter took me about,’ said Sibella in an accusatory tone which Sophie ignored. ‘We went to that new department store.’
‘Selfridge’s? Oh, isn’t it grand?’
‘Personally, I think it far too large and rather vulgar. And the clothes! “Hobble skirts”? And something ghastly called a “tube frock”. They’re all very well for you, but if one has any sort of figure, they’re absolutely the end.’ It was her most frequent complaint. She’d put on flesh since her marriage, and even now, in widow’s black, she looked very nearly fat.
Sophie sat on the sofa and kneaded her temples, and wondered how she’d got herself into this position: an unwilling courier to a woman she no longer even liked.
She’d been astonished when Sibella’s letter had arrived the previous month, for they hadn’t corresponded since Sophie had left Jamaica.
As no doubt you already know, Sibella had written after a brisk introduction, I recently lost my darling Eugene. Of course Sophie had heard. Madeleine’s letters, while short, were informative on factual matters; and Alexander in his desultory way sometimes remembered to mention his sister.
It was from him that Sophie had learned that the marriage had not been a success. As soon as the honeymoon was over, ‘darling Eugene’ had taken to spending all his time in Kingston, where he’d gambled relentlessly until felled by malaria. He and Sibella had lived largely apart, and she had not been overwhelmed by grief. She’d simply given up her small house on the Palairet estate, shaken off the stultifying influence of her mother-in-law, and returned to Parnassus. The Palairets had let her go without a struggle, for she had expensive tastes, and her only child had died at birth.
I have of course been inconsolable, Sibella wrote crisply, so Papa is sending me to London for a change of air. I would have come years ago if it hadn’t been for the beastly price of sugar and the beastly earthquake in ’07. Such a trial. Dear Eugene’s townhouse quite went up in smoke, and even Papa’s interests were damaged. The insurers have been absolutely vile. Of course I don’t understand it at all. Besides, worrying about money is vulgar and makes one ugly, so I’ve decided that I shan’t.
I shall be in London for a month, and I shall want you to show me about, as I’m sure that Alexander will be perfectly useless. But I’m afraid that I shall be staying at an hotel, as Papa had to sell our place in St James’s Square. Isn’t it frightful? So many changes. It’s too unfair.
So many changes. For the past three weeks that had been her constant refrain.
Now she fiddled idly with a tassel on one of Mrs Vaughan-Pargeter’s cushions, and studied Sophie’s plain grey costume with disapproval. ‘Everything is different from when I was here last,’ she muttered.
‘That’s life,’ said Sophie unsympathetically.
‘And it’s not just London. Trelawny is absolutely going to the dogs. You ought to come back and see for yourself.’ Her tone implied that Sophie had been getting off scot free for years, and should jolly well mend her ways. ‘It’s dreadful,’ she went on. ‘Estates going to smash every day. Why, old Mowat absolutely shot himself.’
‘You already mentioned that.’
‘And I was counting on London to cheer me up.’ She sounded aggrieved, as if London were somehow in breach of contract. ‘All these horrid motor-omnibuses. And “underground railways”. What a ridiculous idea. Who wants to go on a beastly train under the ground?’
Sophie sighed. The Tube had been an unmitigated disaster. On Sibella’s one attempt to make her own way from her hotel in Berner’s Street to the Kensington shops, she’d contrived to miss the new station at the Oxford Circus, and end up at Baker Street. There she’d found her way onto the Bakerloo instead of the Inner Circle line, and when South Kensington failed to appear she’d become so flustered that a station porter had had to help her outside. After that she’d pronounced the whole system unworkable, and hired a brougham from the hotel for the rest of her stay.
She had, quite simply, lost her nerve. She hadn’t been to London for a decade, and it frightened her out of her wits. The traffic; the new telephone boxes; even the meekest lady suffragist with a collection tin. They all inspired in her a terrified loathing – which was why she needed Sophie.
Watching her fiddling with the tassel, Sophie felt a flash of sympathy. After all, were they so very different? In a way, she too had lost her nerve.
It was a shaming thought, and it lent her the resolve she needed. She jumped to her feet and went to the bell-pull and rang for the parlourmaid. To Sibella she said, ‘I just need to give something to Daphne, and then we can go.’ Then she opened her bag and unearthed the letter.
‘Daphne,’ she said quickly, as soon as the maid appeared, ‘would you take this and see that it’s posted at once? It slipped my mind on my way home, but it has to go now.’
‘Yes, ’m,’ murmured the girl, looking less than delighted at the prospect of running to the post-box in the rain. But as she took the letter her hand touched Sophie’s icy fingers, and she glanced up in alarm. ‘You all right, ’m?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Sophie with a brief smile. ‘Just do as I say, will you? Straight away?’
Sibella had seen none of this. She was standing by the chimneypiece, inspecting her new mourning-bonnet in the looking-glass. ‘I do think it’s amazing’, she remarked, ‘that they found anyone to buy the old place.’
‘Which place?’ murmured Sophie, going to the window. There now, she told herself. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
‘Old Mowat’s place, of course. Arethusa.’
Sophie drew back the curtain and looked down into the street. The rain was coming down in sheets. She could see a stout old lady in a rain cape pulling a small bedraggled spaniel. A tall, very thin gentleman paying off a hansom cab. Daphne huddling beneath an umbrella as she ran to post the letter.
You did the right thing, she told herself. But she felt shaky and sick. And she couldn’t get warm.
‘I can’t imagine whom they found to buy it,’ said Sibella again, still at the looking-glass.
‘Buy what?’ said Sophie.
‘Arethusa. Aren’t you listening?’
‘I expect someone took a fancy to it,’ Sophie said with her eyes still on the street. ‘A coffee planter or a rich American.’
Sibella snorted. ‘Easier said than done in times like these.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Sophie, turning back from the window. ‘I’ve just sold Fever Hill.’
Sibella’s expression would have made her laugh if she hadn’t been on the verge of tears. Her friend’s eyes opened theatrically wide and her jaw dropped, then shut with an audible click.
‘Don’t say a word,’ said Sophie. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘But—’
‘Sib, please. Can we just go to Charbonnel’s and have a quiet cup of chocolate, and pretend I didn’t say it? I
’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. I promise. But not today. Tomorrow.’
Tomorrow – by which time Mr Fellowes would have received the letter, and no doubt muttered, ‘Well, well, so at last she has made up her mind to go ahead.’ And then he would send a man round to the purchaser’s attorney with the papers she’d signed weeks ago, and then it would be done. And it really would be too late to change her mind.
To escape Sibella’s pantomime astonishment, she turned back to the window.
The hansom was moving away, and the tall, very thin gentleman was unfurling his umbrella. He glanced at Sibella’s brougham, gave himself a little shake, and walked off down the street.
Sophie dropped the curtain and turned back to Sibella.
Chapter Nineteen
The Honourable Frederick Austen cast a wistful glance at the brougham waiting outside the elegant little townhouse, then shook himself and walked round the corner into Mansfield Street.
What a confounded idiot he was. To have paid off his cab in the pouring rain three streets from his employer’s house, simply for the chance of catching a glimpse of the fascinating young widow who seemed to be a daily visitor to New Cavendish Street.
He’d only seen her face once, but it had been enough. She was enchanting. Wide blue eyes; a small, soft mouth; and a truly magnificent figure. Surely one so beautiful must also be sweet-tempered?
But of course he would never find out, for he couldn’t possibly seek an introduction. If she so much as looked at him – or, heaven forfend, spoke to him – he would die of fear.
And after all, why should she speak to him? He was the last man on earth to find favour with a lady. He looked like an ostrich. All the Austens did. It was a family trait. They had long thin necks and large beaky noses, and in his case pale eyelashes and red-rimmed insomniac’s eyes.
So all things considered, it was better if they never met.
He turned left into Queen Anne Street, then right into Chandos Street, heading for the tall stone house in Cavendish Square of which his employer was already tiring.
A restless man, his employer. Moody. Discontented. Unpredictable. A rough diamond. Very rough indeed.
‘We’ll call you my secretary,’ he’d said at that first extraordinary interview in the Hyde Park Hotel. ‘I’ll pay you three times over the odds, but you’ll be earning it. It’ll be your job to teach me whatever I want to know.’
A singular requirement, particularly when it was made by an ex-street-Arab (and probably worse) to a member of the aristocracy. But as Austen had four unmarried sisters, three penniless old aunts, and a ninety-room country seat in Tipperary which was largely lacking a roof, he took the position. And so began the most exhausting, alarming and entertaining year of his life.
Whatever I want to know turned out to be everything. What to read and how to talk; how to dress and what to eat; where to live and where to ride one’s horses. In short, how to be a gentleman.
To begin with, it was like teaching a savage. History, religion and the arts were utterly unknown to him. He had no idea that one ought to go to Scotland in September for the shooting, and he’d never even heard of Ascot. But when a subject interested him, he would seize hold of it and make it his own.
To his surprise, Austen found himself enjoying the job. He enjoyed the discussions and the arguments. He enjoyed his employer’s harsh, godless sense of morality. A few months ago they’d made a start on the Bible, and Austen had been astonished at his employer’s flat condemnation of Jacob for tricking his brother out of his birthright – not to mention his scepticism about Original Sin. ‘So according to this,’ he’d said, jabbing the Book with his forefinger, ‘because Eve took the apple, it’s all their fault. Women, I mean.’
Austen was forced to agree that such regrettably was the case.
‘But how does that square with what you call a “gentleman’s duty to revere the weaker sex”?’
Austen was poleaxed. Until then, he’d kept Genesis entirely separate from the proper way to treat a lady.
‘The weaker sex?’ His employer snorted. ‘They’re the ones that have the bloody kids.’
‘Children,’ Austen gently corrected, for amending his employer’s language was an important part of his duties.
His employer studied him for a moment. ‘Austen, have you ever seen a woman giving birth?’
Austen blushed scarlet, and mumbled that he had not.
His employer’s lip curled. ‘No, I didn’t think you had.’
But he didn’t laugh, and Austen liked him for that. He liked him and was afraid of him in equal measure. He liked his cleverness and his flat-on view of the world. He liked his cavalier attitude to his enormous wealth – acquired, he vaguely explained, through a ‘prospecting syndicate’ with his business partner in Brazil. He liked the fact that although he worked to improve his accent, he didn’t carry it to extremes. ‘I can’t be talking like I’ve just come out of Eton,’ he said drily, ‘because I haven’t.’ Most of all, Austen admired his employer’s indifference to the opinion of others, for that was so utterly unlike himself. Austen could suffer paroxysms of self-consciousness quite literally at the drop of a hat.
But there was another side to his employer which he found unsettling and incomprehensible. The black, silent moods which could last for days. And the distance which must never be crossed. Two months before, as they were preparing to leave Dublin, Austen had been astonished when his employer gave orders to sell every one of his prized thoroughbreds.
‘But – I thought you were attached to them,’ he had ventured.
His employer had looked at him with eyes grown suddenly cold. ‘I’m not attached to anything,’ he’d said softly. ‘Not to my horses. Not to Isaac. Not to you. Remember that, my friend.’
Always that distance.
And it hadn’t taken long to learn that why was not a question which one ought to ask. Why do you never go out into Society? Why do you bother to improve your speech, when you don’t care a pinch of snuff for what people think? Why have you hired a private detective? And why, since we’ve been in London, do you go out alone every afternoon?
True to form, his employer was out when Austen reached the house. Only Mr Walker was at home, as Austen discovered to his discomfort when he went upstairs and opened the drawing-room doors.
He hung back, irresolute.
Mr Walker, in an easy chair, froze with a teacup in one hand and the Daily Mail in the other.
Their unease was mutual. Mr Walker was far more conventional than his business partner, and far more cautious – which was probably why they’d made such a good team in Brazil. But that also meant that he was uncomfortable with people like Austen, whom he knew to be his betters.
For his part, Austen simply didn’t know how to behave. Until a year ago he had never spoken to a black man in his life – let alone lived with one under the same roof. He liked the man well enough, and in a way he even respected him. But he couldn’t relax with him. It would be like relaxing with one’s butler.
Awkwardly, Mr Walker deposited the Daily Mail on the tea table, rose to his feet, and rubbed the back of his head. ‘The tea’s gone cold. D’you want me to ring for some more?’
Austen reddened. It would be dire for them both if he sat down to tea. ‘No, no,’ he murmured, ‘I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you.’
Downstairs the front door slammed, and moments later Austen saw his employer coming up the stairs. He breathed a sigh of relief.
His employer glanced from Austen to his business partner, and he grinned. ‘What’s up, Austen? You been squabbling with Isaac again?’
Austen’s cheeks burned. ‘Oh, I say, sir, I wouldn’t dream—’
His employer touched his shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ He went over and poured himself a cup of cold tea and drank it off in one go, then threw himself down into a chair with his usual grace. ‘So what you been up to, mate?’ he asked Mr Walker. Sometimes with his business partner he lapsed into his old mode of
speech. Austen suspected that he did it to tease his secretary.
‘Been down the docks,’ said Mr Walker, with an embarrassed glance at Austen.
‘Bloody hell, Isaac, what for?’
Mr Walker shrugged. ‘I dunno. I went down the COS, too. Least, the COS as was.’
‘But what for?’
‘I dunno. Old times.’
His partner shook his head. ‘God Almighty, Isaac, you got to start leaving it behind.’
Isaac grinned, and his partner reached over and gave him a good-natured cuff.
Austen felt obscurely left out. He liked his employer and he wanted his employer to like him. But this reminded him of school, when the other chaps used to send him to Coventry for enjoying Greek. From the doorway, he cleared his throat.
His employer turned his head. ‘What is it, Austen?’
‘Erm. Not “God Almighty”,’ said Austen gently. ‘Might I suggest – “Dear Lord”?’
His employer studied him for a moment, then burst out laughing. ‘Why don’t you stop prossing about in that doorway and come and have some tea? And if you ever catch me saying “Dear Lord”, you can shoot me. All right?’
Austen permitted himself a shy smile, and edged towards the sofa. ‘Very well, Mr Kelly,’ he said.
It’s Sunday morning, and Ben’s gone down the bakehouse with his big sister to fetch the dinner, and everything’s topper.
The weather’s a bit sharp, but the big tin of batter pudding’s warming his hands nicely, and the smell of the meat pieces is twisting his belly into knots.
It’s the best time of the week, as he’s got Kate all to hisself. She says that when he’s ten he can go to the bakehouse on his own, but not before, or some basher will give him a thrashing and click the lot. But Ben knows that’s just an excuse. Truth is, she likes coming with him.
She’s topper, is Kate. She’s got bright blue eyes and hair like copper wire, and freckles all over, which she hates, but Ben thinks are bang-up. She can be a right Tartar, making him sluice his head every Sunday and walloping him if he don’t. But she’s the sharpest bit of muslin you ever met, and she’s got the loudest laugh in East Street. And when she cracks a joke, she always looks at Ben before the others, like she knows he’ll catch on first. Pa hates that, but it makes Ben so proud that it hurts.
The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 61
