‘Nothing else?’
‘No. He was a model of courtesy.’
‘Damn his courtesy!’ The Prince strode across the room and slumped down heavily in a chair. ‘Do you have anything to drink, Cora? I feel in need of something.’
‘For you, Plon-Plon, I will broach the finest brandy. Wait here.’
She slipped from the room, and Prince Napoleon, cracking his knuckles and chewing his lip, slipped, too, in his mind, through the curtain of years, to the time a persistent stranger seemed to recall better than he did himself.
They called him the Prince de Montfort then. He had come from Italy to visit his exiled cousin, Prince Louis Napoleon, in Bath. Confined at Pulteney’s Hotel, the twenty-four-year-old Plon-Plon chafed at the recreational limitations of his escorts, Monsieur and Madame Cornu, until Louis Napoleon ingenuously introduced him to the household of Sir Lemuel Davenall at nearby Cleave Court.
Sir Lemuel’s son, Gervase, was five years older than Plon-Plon. They shared nothing beyond a love of excess, but that they shared exuberantly. Behind the staid and gracious terraces of Bath, Gervase knew of bewitching routes into a warren of debased sensation. Down them he led an eager Plon-Plon; it was his initiation into a world he never abandoned, at once his ruin and his salvation. It explained why, thirty-six years later, he sat lost in thought in an ageing whore’s apartment above the fading charms of the Champs Elysées, rejected and reviled by the world.
Gervase had a fiancée, a pretty, agreeable girl to be sure, but nothing more than a drawing-room ornament as far as he was concerned. The fiancée had a governess, Miss Strang, arch, graceful, entrancing Miss Strang, who lured Gervase hopelessly with her every forbidding glare. She represented the one indulgence he was absolutely denied: it gave her power over him. He watched her through all his dilatory courtship of her charge, watched and waited and never found his opportunity.
Until Plon-Plon came to Cleave Court, that is, for then Gervase, ever scanning Miss Strang for a single sign of weakness, noticed one at last and determined to exploit it. He explained it to his friend over a card game following the grand ball Sir Lemuel had held in honour of Louis Napoleon and his young guest. All the other revellers had departed. Only the two young men to whom it had been the tamest of entertainment drank still, and wagered and argued, as the small hours reached towards dawn on Sunday, 20th September 1846.
‘Did you see the way she looked at you, Plon-Plon?’
‘Moi? Mais non, mon ami. Mademoiselle Webster, she has the eyes for you.’
‘I’m talking about the Scots bitch. Catherine’s governess: Vivien Strang.’
‘Mademoiselle Strang encore? Gervase, you are obsessed.’
‘I’ve sworn to have her. And now I’ve seen a way. She couldn’t take her eyes off you.’
‘Donc, a lady of taste. For myself, les écossaises are … too cold.’
‘It’s what she thinks of you that’s important.’
‘We danced, we conversed: nothing more. Mais c’est vrai: I could have been having more if I had been wanting it. I think she found me … dazzling.’
‘So what do you say? Write her a note suggesting a secret rendezvous … at midnight. I could deliver it when I go there for this Godawful tea-party.’
‘What I say, Gervase, is that she would not come – and I would not want her to. She is too … sévère.’
‘I would keep the rendezvous for you, Plon-Plon. And I’ll wager you she would come.’
‘Wager? This becomes interesting. Combien?’
‘Aha! Now the dog sees the rabbit. Well, you’ve had the devil’s own luck tonight, mon ami. So what do you say to all I owe you: double or quits?’
‘Alors, I accept the wager. It is a noble wager. I will win, sans aucun doute. It will be a pleasure.’
‘You will lose, Plon-Plon. And the pleasure … will all be mine.’
‘Your brandy, Plon-Plon.’
Cora’s return to the room had taken him unawares. He looked up sharply – and caught his breath. She was standing by the door, holding a tray with a frosted bottle and two glasses on it. She was smiling, as she had been earlier, but now she had discarded the peignoir. She presented herself naked before him, walking slowly across to the low table beside his chair and leaning forward to place the tray by his elbow.
‘You always said you liked me in anything – but most of all in nothing,’ she said. ‘Excuse my vanity, but all is still, as you see, in good order.’
Prince Napoleon breathed out slowly. There she stood, better than he remembered, because so long forgone, the flesh still unwrinkled, the curves still unresisting, his intact inviting Cora. ‘Superbe,’ he murmured. ‘Toujours superbe.’
‘Do you remember when I was served like this, on a giant silver platter, at the Café Anglais?’
‘As the dish too good to eat.’
‘You do remember.’
‘Do you remember the card I sent you after our first meeting?’
‘“Où? Quand? Combien?”’
‘You remember also.’ Suddenly, he closed his eyes, Cora’s words drawing his mind to another distant bargain. He had accepted the wager. He had written the note. But he had not thought … She was close to him. He could smell her perfume. It was his favourite brand. She took his hand in hers.
‘Chez moi. Ce soir. Pour rien.’ She kissed his hand and pressed it to her breasts. ‘Or are you really past consoling?’
He opened his eyes and smiled broadly. ‘No, Cora,’ he said. ‘Not quite.’
Chapter Six
I
EDGAR PARFITT REACHED Orchard Street even earlier than normal that Saturday morning, 14th October. He did not believe in giving the staff any room for complaint about him, in order that he should have ample room for complaint about them. To arrive before them was therefore an article of faith. Today, however, he had surpassed himself. It was barely light as he approached the rear door. He rubbed his hands in eager anticipation of a quiet half-hour, to be spent putting the finishing touches to his marbling scheme. It would soon be ready for presentation to Mr Ernest, whom he had high hopes of winning over. After all, Mr Ernest …
What was this? The door was unlocked, and the first post had been removed from the cage. He had been forestalled! Who could it be? The adjoining offices were empty, their shutters drawn. There was no sign of the post. Then he heard a movement above. Mr William already in his office? It was unprecedented. He hung up his hat and coat grumpily, then climbed the stairs.
Unprecedented or not, there was Mr William, the least formidable of the Trenchards and the least respected, seated at his desk reading a letter from the post, his office door open.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said Parfitt.
Trenchard looked up. ‘Oh. It’s you.’ He was haggard and unshaven, Parfitt noticed, his hair awry. He had not so much as fitted a collar to his shirt. As Parfitt stepped into the room, he was met by an odour of stale pipe-smoke and … yes, alcohol, quite definitely. ‘What time is it?’
‘A little after seven.’
Trenchard blinked, as if his eyes were sore, and reached forward to extinguish the lamp still burning on his desk. ‘Do you always arrive this early?’
‘Habitually, sir, yes.’ Parfitt’s eyes darted round the room. A smeared tumbler stood on the mantelpiece. Trenchard’s jacket and overcoat were draped over a chair-back. Was it possible he had been there all night?
Trenchard coughed and rose from his chair. ‘Well, I’ll have to leave you to it, I’m afraid.’ He picked up his jacket, shrugged it on and moved unsteadily to a mirror hanging on the opposite wall.
‘Going out again, sir?’
From his jacket pocket, Trenchard had pulled a collar and tie. He squinted into the mirror and began to fasten them about his neck. ‘Yes, Parfitt. Straight away.’
Parfitt shifted his gaze to the abandoned desk-top. There were tumbler-shaped rings on the blotter, flakes of tobacco amongst the scattered papers. And there was the letter Trenchard had been re
ading, restored now to its envelope. Parfitt could just make out the postmark: Bath, 13 October.
‘So you’ll have to excuse me.’ Trenchard leaned past him, plucked the letter off the desk and moved to the door. ‘Needs must …’
‘When the devil drives,’ Parfitt muttered to himself as he listened to Trenchard’s footsteps descending the stairs. Well, Mrs Parfitt had always said that one would go to the bad. And she was seldom wrong.
II
Brotherton & Baverstock,
Commissioners for Oaths,
Albany Chambers,
Cheap Street,
BATH,
Somerset.
13th October 1882
Dear Davenall,
Excuse my addressing this letter to your home. I did not wish to run the risk of its lying unread at your office over the weekend.
Lady Davenall persists in maintaining that 20th September 1846 is a date of no significance. I know from Miss Pursglove, however, that Lady Davenall’s governess at that time, a Scottish spinster named Strang, was dismissed in September 1846 following an unspecified incident at the Cleave Court maze. I also know, from the same source, that Prince Napoleon attended a ball at Cleave Court in September 1846, probably on the 19th. Lady Davenall, however, has instructed me to leave the Strang question entirely alone, which I am, therefore, bound to do.
Lady Davenall has also instructed me to tell Sir Hugo – which I trust I may leave you to do on my behalf – that Mr Norton’s claim is to be uncompromisingly resisted. She would oppose any monetary inducements being offered to him to withdraw. I might add that she has heard of none through me.
You will appreciate that I now enjoy little scope for movement in this matter. I should be obliged if you would let me know how and when Warburton intends to proceed.
I remain,
Yours truly,
ARTHUR E. BAVERSTOCK
The cab drew to a halt, and Richard Davenall slid Baverstock’s letter back into his pocket: here they were at The Limes. He climbed out and paid the man off, then took a lungful of St John’s Wood air – somehow sweeter than ever frowsty Highgate – and marched up the drive. There was a spring in his step and a tilt to his hat, as if, from all the unpromising circumstances crowding around his head, he had drawn some unreasonable inspiration.
The front door was open. A trunk stood in the hall. At the foot of the stairs, a small girl, dressed in a travelling cape, her hair tied in pig-tails, sat on the bottom step, staring intently ahead and clutching a bonnet in her lap. Richard recognized her from his previous visit.
‘Hello,’ he said, stepping in. ‘It’s Patience, isn’t it?’ She did not reply. ‘Going somewhere?’
The little girl’s eyes clamped themselves on him, as only a little girl’s can, but still she said nothing.
‘Is your father in?’ With the diffidence of a confirmed bachelor, he stooped to her level. ‘Your daddy – do you know where he is?’
At last, she spoke, slowly, as if the words had been rehearsed. ‘Daddy … isn’t … coming.’
Richard frowned. What could she mean? Suddenly, the stairs before him vibrated with the descent of a flustered female figure. ‘No time to sit there mooning, Patience!’ she cried. ‘We must be up and doing!’ Richard looked up. It was the child’s nanny, all calm efficiency last time, transformed now into an embodiment of bustling frenzy. ‘Come along,’ she said, plucking Patience from her seat. ‘We’ll soon be ready to go.’ The pair vanished together into an adjoining room, Patience gazing back at him solemnly as they went.
Richard rose slowly and looked about him. At the end of the hall, in an open doorway, stood Constance, watching him with some of her daughter’s solemnity. How long she had been there he could not tell.
‘Good morning,’ he said lamely.
‘Hello, Richard,’ she replied. ‘Looking for William?’
‘Yes.’
‘He isn’t here. Won’t you come in?’ She retreated into the room, and he followed. ‘Please close the door.’ He did so. ‘I was just writing you a letter.’
‘Really?’
‘I thought you should know my course of action – and my reasons for it.’ She took the letter, as yet unfolded, from the bureau and handed it to him. His gaze rested, despite himself, on the splintered wood showing above one sagging broken drawer of the bureau. ‘Here you are.’
He carried the letter to the window and began to read. It did not take long.
‘Well?’ she said, when he had clearly finished.
He looked at her, the light from the window falling full on her face, and noticed, for the first time, how superficial her composure was. There was some tumult within her, some moving passion at which the letter only hinted. ‘If you choose to live with your father rather than with your husband, Constance, it is no business of mine.’
‘Yet the reason is.’
‘Where is William?’
‘At Orchard Street. He decided to spare us both this parting.’
‘I’ve been there this morning. They told me he’d left. That’s why I came here.’
‘Oh?’ Her lack of reaction shocked him. It was as if she was no longer interested in Trenchard’s movements; as if, already, the ties of an earlier, unconsecrated union were stronger than any legal marriage.
‘Do you intend to declare openly your support for Norton’s claim?’
‘I shall await the outcome of the hearing.’
‘And then?’
Her gaze, which had hitherto drifted, gossamer-like, about the room, now fixed itself upon him. There was his answer, clear to see in the candour of her expression. ‘Your refusal to accept James baffles me,’ she said at last. ‘William is jealous, Hugo avaricious. And Lady Davenall has always been a mystery to me. But you, Richard – how can you maintain the pretence?’
‘The evidence is—’
She silenced him with one upraised hand. ‘I ask you as his cousin and his friend – not as his solicitor.’
Something in her commanded him to be honest. ‘Because I can’t be sure who he really is. He knows enough to persuade anyone – I don’t deny that. Yet, sometimes, he seems to know too much. More of James in some things, less in others. As if—’
‘Yes?’
‘As if he is the man James might have been – but wasn’t.’
‘He is James. I no longer doubt it.’
They were standing, side by side, before the window and the view it presented of the garden. All this hedge-trimmed order, all this inner domestic calm, was about to be ended – for the sake of … what? A falling leaf floated by, close against the glass, moved by the invisible breezes of the season; moved, as they were, by forces unseen yet irresistible.
‘His story, which you all tried to keep from me, I had from his own lips.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It seared my heart.’
Richard, too, spoke in an undertone. ‘As if he holds within him all the false steps and treacherous turns we’ve taken. As if he’s all our pasts demanding satisfaction, our consciences, which we can no longer stifle.’
A moment of silence followed. Then she seemed to hear what he had said. ‘What?’
He turned and smiled at her. ‘Nothing. I see you are not to be dissuaded. As Catherine is to you, so are you to me.’
‘A mystery? But I have—’
‘You have her will, her strength. Now, today, for the first time, I see the resemblance.’ His gaze drifted back to the window and passed, to a different day, through the refracting surface of his memory.
For those eight months that served as the meagre season of passion in Richard Davenall’s life, his cousin’s wife, Catherine, was a person he had never known before and would never know again. Whatever had so struck at her complacent serenity in the Crimea, whatever Prince Napoleon had disclosed to her in a fit of rage in Constantinople, had ushered in the brief flowering of her true self. For Catherine, as he and she alone knew, was neither the pliant wallflower of her youth nor the forbidding recluse of her m
iddle age. There was another, secret Catherine, who returned to Cleave Court in December 1854 and honoured Richard with her company during the months that followed.
She was twenty-five years old, at the peak of her physical beauty, suddenly restless and resentful at all she had been denied between a domineering father and a domineering husband. What had sparked this mood of convulsive emotion she never revealed, and Richard never asked. As a young and diffident man of twenty-two, ostensibly dedicated to learning the ways of estate management and earning the approbation of his demanding father, he ought to have resisted the slightest suggestion of something more than the respect he owed her. But he did not. Instead, he fanned the flame of a dangerous sensation.
The spring of 1855 set in early, as if Cleave Court were in Italy rather than in Somerset. April was a succession of numbingly perfect days, during which Richard found himself accompanying Catherine on endless walks and drives and languid excursions. As if bewitched, like Richard, by the eerie paradise the weather had made of his home, Sir Lemuel offered the two only encouragement, seeming to draw some sap of youth from their heedless ways. There was no work, no duty, no threatened end to their idyll. Gervase was far away and forgotten by those who claimed to love him. The world was compounded of Catherine’s smile, and bouncing hair, and running feet on warm grass. And the world’s end was not ordained.
The first time he kissed her, he held back, hesitating before the prospect of what he might be about to do. They were in the woods behind Cleave Court, in a realm of green-pillared sunlight set aside for their pleasure. Her hair hung loose to her shoulders, her eyes gleamed. He ached to touch the pale flesh beneath her dress – and she seemed to want him to.
‘You are married,’ he said haltingly.
‘My husband has forfeited his right to me.’
‘But have I won it?’
She did not answer. Instead, she drew him to her.
Half an hour after leaving The Limes, Richard Davenall was sitting, his shoulders hunched, on a rough backless bench towards the summit of Primrose Hill. Further down the slope, a child played with a hoop whilst her mother read a book. Everywhere, the leaves were falling. He could hear them, if he listened hard enough, fluttering about him where he sat.
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