She led the way into the dark room into which Murray had only been a few times in his life before. He looked to see if Miss Kirk was in her usual chair, but it was empty, leaving only a dent on the cushions where her thin body was usually propped.
‘My aunt keeps to her bed,’ explained Miss Kirk, seeing the direction of his gaze. ‘I know the servants say that it is the shock of the news about Parnell, but to be frank I do not believe she knows anything of what is going on, and she is simply growing more feeble with age. Her mind was never very sound, I regret to say.’
Murray noticed that a change had occurred in Miss Kirk, and was interested to speculate on the cause. From a languid, lustreless individual wrapped in layers of shawls against the inclement weather of her imagination, she had become sharper, more clearly-focussed, charged with a new energy. Her eyes were bright though concerned, and despite the dark circles around them her skin had a fresher tone and more colour than Murray had noticed before. She had discarded her shawls, and wore a sensible gown of a pale grey sprig, with a white muslin chemisette: it made her look a little like the better class of servant, brisk and efficient.
‘And Miss Parnell,’ he asked, ‘how is she?’
Virginia sat suddenly on the sagging chaise longue. She seemed to be looking about her for the right words.
‘Ah, she is not well, Mr. Murray, I am afraid. To do what she did placed a great strain on her, you know. She was very foolish to have done it.’
‘She was very brave, surely,’ countered Murray.
‘There is a fine line between the two, I believe.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Do you know how Anna does, Mr. Murray? Is she likely to recover?’
‘I believe Mr. Feilden is becoming more confident of that,’ said Murray carefully.
‘Yes. He was here last night, but I did not – he did not say.’ Her voice slowed and faded, and for a moment she looked like her old self, then she seemed to sharpen again. ‘Mr. Murray, I cannot deceive myself that you know nothing of the truth, that the condition of my sister is not at least rumoured beyond this household. Am I right?’
Murray squirmed, was about to form a polite denial, and then caught her eye. He was useless, he knew, at this kind of lie.
‘You are correct,’ he said simply. ‘It is rumoured that Miss Parnell is expecting a child.’
‘Well, they are wrong,’ she said defiantly, then her voice broke on a sob. ‘Or rather, they are wrong now. She lost the baby last night.’ She sounded angry, and desperately sad.
‘Oh, my dear Miss Kirk,’ said Murray, ‘I am most terribly sorry.’
‘I know,’ she said, breathing in deeply to restore her self-control. ‘I know you are. You are fond of her, are you not? Despite her – lapse. All the men are fond of her: that is her privilege, and her misfortune.’ She rose and went to straighten the cushions on her aunt’s chair, neatly fluffing them out. Having little to do had perhaps been her misfortune. ‘We fought for that baby, you know, from Thursday morning. We knew it would be bad, but we thought she stood a chance. Mr. Kennedy, the doctor, even the wretched housekeeper here, we all tried to do everything we could, but last night we just lost. And do you know what really hurts me, Mr. Murray? It is that people will say – ‘Well, it is a mercy’. You would have, too, would you not? Kind as you are? You would have thought of Parnell’s public humiliation, the mother of a bastard child, shunned by society, and you would have thought, ‘But if she lost the child, if the child were not even to be a shaming line in a baptism register with no man named as the father, what a relief!’ But you see, this was a child – my sister’s child, a part of her, my own niece or nephew. I cannot say that it is a relief: not yet.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’ Murray asked at last, humbly. He knew she was right, and that the same thought had indeed crossed his own mind.
‘Mr. Kennedy has been very good,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Thank you for sparing your guest for so long. You have probably guessed by now that we were all acquainted in Bath: I think he may have intended marriage to Parnell, but when by accident he discovered her condition he – well, he fled. I do not blame him. Some men are very young, are they not? And to take on another man’s leavings,’ she went on bitterly, ‘is more than one can ask of any gentleman. But for all he has done for her now, I shall never forget him or what we owe him.’
‘But on a practical level, Miss Kirk, may I at least send you some fresh vegetables and eggs? I have seen the kitchen gardens here, and as Miss Parnell regains her strength she – and you – will benefit from wholesome food.’
She laughed at last at his persistence.
‘If it pleases you to do it, Mr. Murray, we shall all be very grateful, and I shall do my utmost to make sure that food of such quality does not suffer at the hands of our cook!’
‘Then I shall go at once and arrange it,’ said Murray with a grin. She came to see him to the door herself, and breathed in the outside air as she opened it.
‘This is a stuffy house,’ she remarked. ‘I cannot think how I could ever have thought it cold.’
‘Good day to you, then,’ said Murray. ‘Please give my best wishes to Miss Parnell, and regards to Kennedy.’
‘There is one thing you could do for her, Mr. Murray.’ Miss Kirk stood on the doorstep to see him off.
‘And what is that?’ Murray stopped. Miss Kirk smiled.
‘Speak kindly of her.’
Murray smiled back.
‘You do not need to ask that, ma’am,’ he said, and bowed.
III
Over many years of employment as manservant to Mr. Blair, Smith, a man of about forty, had developed not only the little habits of his own that everyone gathers around them with age, but also curious little methods of going about his daily business in order to make it easier to cope with the eccentricities of his employer and the effect they had on Smith’s life and professional standards. For example, Smith kept by him always a small pack of waterproof material (cut from scraps from the making of Mr. Blair’s great architectural raincoat) containing a clean shirt and stockings, a razor and a ball of soap, and two sovereigns, for the moments when Blair sent him or took him somewhere on a whim, to see something outlandish, to find something out, to buy some curiosity or rare foodstuff. Also, it was Smith’s business to maintain Mr. Blair’s clothes in good condition, a task that would have taken up all the working hours of a less skilled and dedicated servant. Mud, blood, grass stains, chalk marks, inkspots, rips and tears, stretchings and burstings, all had to be dealt with on materials that showed every crease and spot, bright peach, fresh green, scorching yellows and reds. Each night when Blair had retired, Smith would spend an hour or more in the dressing room with his cabinet of brushes, powders and sewing threads, tending to the clothes of that day and rendering them fit, if absolutely necessary, to be worn on the morrow. His were the mysteries of turpentine, boiled fig leaves and gum Arabic in the work of stain removal, and of discreet stitches behind buttons and above pockets where Mr. Blair’s clothes were most likely to suffer. Here, too, he kept what he chose to call his pocket box, into which, each night, he emptied the entire contents of Blair’s notorious pockets. It was possible that he was the only person ever to see the full contents of the pockets clearly, a mixed privilege: he would sort through them and remove, sometimes with tweezers and gloves, anything that was alive (there had been a field mouse once, and once a baby rabbit, snug and happy) or anything that was on the point of decay (he preferred not to remember most of those), and he would then leave the box by the washstand, where Blair would see it first thing in the morning. Sometimes Blair would poke through the box listlessly, picking out only one or two items and turning them over sadly, sighing as he returned them to that day’s coat pockets, and sometimes he would run to it with innocent delight like a child with a new toy box. Whatever he did not select was then sorted by Smith and distributed around the most appropriate places he could find amongst Blair’s furnishings, where Blair might come across the
m if he required them.
Thus it was that although Blair had had his unfinished dinner at the manse as long ago as Thursday, it was not until Tuesday, when he had returned to his room after dinner to try to discover a piece on a boxing bout which he had been saving to show Dunnet, the groom, that he began to work his way through the small stack of carefully flattened papers that Smith had placed on his desk. They included, to his initial confusion, a note which had evidently accompanied a book, and when he reflected on its possible origin, he held it very carefully in one hand and the boxing cutting in the other, and went back downstairs concentrating very hard on not putting either piece of paper in his pockets again, where they would fall into the same Smithian cycle and might not be thought of for another week.
At the foot of the stairs he found Robbins in the hallway, examining the flower arrangements in each of the front windows, though for what was not clear. He was able to tell Blair, however, that Murray had gone out into the Italian garden, and as Blair’s hands seemed unnecessarily occupied Robbins opened both sets of double doors for him so that he could leave the hall for the courtyard, formed by the two rear wings of the house, and full, in the sunshine, with the sharp smell of citrus leaves, and skirt around the end of the west wing to the terrace overlooking the walled Italian garden.
It was not large, and owed its existence to Murray’s grandfather who had been captivated by Tivoli and the gardens of Naples, but at the same time felt himself constricted not only by a lack of imagination but also by an overwhelming guilt at spending so much money on mere delight. When Blair had first known the garden, as a boy, it was already ten or fifteen years old but not complete, for old Mr. Murray had rationed his planting like a medicine, and the laburnum walk, for example, had a graded effect through being for quite a while simply a laburnum arch. The Tivoli water gardens were reduced to one plain rectangular pool.
The roses were old, though, carefully protected during the garden building work in their terrace beds and in the border below. The upper ones were Rival de Paestum, creamy porcelain perfect on dark mahogany leaves, while below Rose de Thionville held out its delicate streamers of pink-white flowers, a mass of bloom in mid-June. A French gardener had come once to Letho on his way to somewhere more important: he had scarcely a word of Scots or English and Carlisle spoke no French but the names of his roses, and the two were firm friends in minutes. Murray was occasionally called upon to translate and help reply to letters from him to Carlisle.
Murray himself was on the terrace, leaning between the roses on the balustrade, staring out at the summer garden, across the pond to the gate which led to the park beyond, the gate where Parnell had stood, vividly pretty, talking with Kennedy only a couple of weeks ago. He was hatless, enjoying the freedom of feeling a light breeze ruffle his hair, cooling it in the sunshine. Blair’s shuffling footsteps brought him out of his reverie before Blair had actually reached him, but did not quite dispel the tune – complete with flat high notes – that was jingling constantly in his head.
‘I have just rediscovered this,’ said Blair without preamble, and handed Murray the cutting about the boxing bout. Murray skimmed through it, grimacing at the lurid description of the injuries incurred, and handed it back with an expression of polite interest.
‘Yes, I remember reading it at the time,’ he said. ‘Dunnet would be very interested in it: I could pass it on to Robbins to give to him, if you are willing.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Blair, snatching the cutting and substituting the other piece of paper. He just managed to stop himself from putting the cutting into his pocket. ‘No, no, this,’ he added.
The sun glared on the paper, which was not new, but which had not either been yellowed by exposure to the light. It was a note, dated, ‘Aberdeen, April 12th., 1804’, and it read,
My dear,
I ken you lik’d this and were eagger to hav it, and I hav sav’d enogh to by it for you. Do not alarum yourself for it please me sometimes to be abell to by for you as you doe for me, and as you knoe it was not much. I hop it still please you to, and rede it whil thinking of –
Yr. affect. friend,
‘K’.
‘K again?’ asked Murray thoughtfully. ‘Where did you come by this, then?’
‘That is the curious thing,’ said Blair rapidly. ‘It fell from a book at the manse.’
‘At the manse!’
Blair explained how he had gone to fetch the medicine chest from Mr. Helliwell’s study, had tipped the books from the top of it and the paper had fallen out, which he had stuffed into his pocket while he picked up the wooden chest and took it upstairs.
‘A very affectionate note,’ Murray remarked, reading it again. ‘None of the Helliwells has a Christian name beginning with K, of course. I cannot think of any connexion between them and Aberdeen, either. Mrs. Fairlie, who is – um – Jane, comes from that part of the country, of course, and Kenny, the schoolmaster, but Mr. Helliwell is from Roxburghshire and Mrs. Helliwell is a Fifer.’
‘People move around so much these days,’ said Blair, sadly. He flapped at the piece of paper again. ‘A lady’s hand, I thought, so K is not likely to be the surname.’
‘A lady of limited education,’ Murray added. ‘One might perhaps rather say a feminine hand. What interests me is the date.’
‘1804? Why that?’
‘Four years ago. Do you remember what Mrs. Helliwell said about the fashion of the dead woman’s clothes? She said they were all about four years old.’
‘Something else happened four years ago,’ said Blair, nodding solemnly.
‘What?’
‘I cannot remember. Something of which you have told me recently.’ He thought hard, scratching at the edge of his wig where it met his forehead. Then his face cleared in a smile.
‘You have remembered?’
‘No,’ said Blair, ‘but it will come back. Now I must go to find Dunnet.’ And waving his newspaper cutting like a flag of truce, he headed back across the rear of the house towards the kitchen gardens and the stable block.
IV
Since Murray had mentioned the proposed ball at Letho House to Mrs. Fairlie, he soon decided that it would be best to tell the servants of his plans as quickly as possible, before they heard from some other source. It would mean a great deal of extra work for them, he knew, and they would need considerable warning to give them time to prepare. They might also need some other form of placation, perhaps a day’s outing to the sea, or to the market at Cupar, or something similar. He was proud of his servants, and felt an affection for them: he did not like to think them unhappy.
When Robbins came to the library to receive his daily orders on Wednesday morning, he took the news of the ball with a lighter heart than Murray would have known, and at the end of the interview went almost eagerly back along the passage to the servants’ quarters to tell the tidings first to Mrs. Chambers, who was in the stillroom, and then to Mrs. Mutch, the cook, on whom the burden of the supper would fall. The stillroom had sparkled with glass jars and the air was exciting with the smell of the bunches of herbs hanging from drying racks: the kitchen, by contrast, smelled metallically of boiling eggs on the Carron grate. It was quiet here at this time of day, with the other servants busy cleaning the bedrooms or making ready the dining room. The garden door was open, exchanging some of the fire’s heat for that of the sunshine, and one or two kitchen cats lounged there, saving their energy for the challenges of stealing elements of dinner.
‘A ball?’ asked Mrs. Mutch. Her little eyes gleamed in her plump face. Three cats wove round her ankles, for she was dressing crabs with neatly adept fingers.
‘Aye, that’s a thing,’ said Robbins, eyeing the crabs with distaste. ‘Now,’ he went on, sitting at the other end of the big table, ‘Mr. Murray says he kens it’ll be a load of work, and he says he’ll bring in another cook if you wish it.’
‘Another cook?’ Mrs. Mutch was not impressed, and the cats flinched at the sound of her voice. ‘What would
he be wanting another cook for, tell me? Am I no good enough for his fine friends the now?’
‘He only said if you wish it,’ Robbins said placatingly. ‘I reckon he was worried that we’d all renege. But I think – and Mrs. Chambers thinks, too – that we can manage just fine. Do you not?’
‘Oh, aye, we can manage. I dinna see any reason why we should not. How many is he thinking to invite?’
‘He said forty to sixty couples, at least.’ Robbins watched her warily. She appeared to be calculating, eyes squeezed shut, but in a moment they sprang open and she nodded.
‘That’s nothing,’ she said, ‘if we all play our part well enough. Just because we dinna do it every week doesna mean we canna do it.’
‘That’s very true,’ said Robbins. For himself, he was not sure whether he could do it or not. He had not long been promoted to his present position when his old master had died, and the only large social event he had so far had much of a hand in had been his old master’s funeral – not, perhaps, the best example to set himself for the current case.
‘Who will be hostess?’ asked Mrs. Mutch.
‘Oh, Mrs. Freeman. They are to arrive next week, her and Miss Isobel, so we’ll have a few here. Maybe even Mr. Kennedy will be back, though Mr. Murray says there is no great sign of it yet.’
Mrs. Mutch grunted.
‘Well, there’s one won’t be coming to the ball, nor invited either, I hope.’
Robbins nodded, and to signal the change of subject, went to pour himself a mug of ale. The floor shook a little under his feet: only yesterday men had arrived to start shovelling out the great tunnel-drain beneath the wing.
‘Aye, Miss Parnell Kirk. She’d no be fit to dance, anyway.’
‘I hear she’s lost the bairn,’ said Mrs. Mutch, finishing the crabs. ‘It’s a sad thing to say but maybe in a way it’s no bad thing. There’s no mercy in bringing another fatherless bairn into the world. And let that be a lesson to the pair of you.’ Iffy and Effy had just emerged from the scullery, drying their hands from the breakfast dishes, and must have heard the conversation for Effy, at least, blushed. ‘You canna be too high but you can be brought low by your own sin,’ Mrs. Mutch finished firmly. She handed the tray of crabs to Effy. ‘Here, put these away in the pantry. Mr. Robbins is sick of the sight of them.’ She threw the crab scraps out through the open door, and the cats sprang after them. The cats on the step jerked in shock.
An Abandoned Woman (Murray of Letho Book 4) Page 18
