by Rosie Thomas
‘No, I came straight in here.’
‘If you’ve had enough tea, I’ll take you up.’
Clio would have liked at least one slab of fruit cake, but Grace made it clear that she wanted to escape the hunting talk.
‘I expect you girls want to chat,’ Blanche said, as if she had forgotten that they were no longer eighteen. ‘We do still dress, Clio …’ Her voice trailed away in vague apology. Clio wondered if her aunt was so suspicious of her unimaginably Bohemian lifestyle that she was afraid she might shock Uncle John into an apoplexy by coming down to dinner in trousers.
As she closed the door Clio saw Blanche pick up some sewing. In his corner Hugo stretched his artificial leg out in front of him, and stared silently into the fire.
The corridor outside was dark. The cold smelt acrid.
‘God, this bloody house,’ Grace muttered.
‘How are you?’ Clio asked.
‘Let’s get upstairs first.’
The bedroom was just as Clio remembered it. There was a high half-tester bed and a tallboy and a writing desk, and any number of drawers where her underclothes might have been hidden. A small fire had recently been lit in the grate, and the chilly air was tinged with smoke. The bathroom was several doors away. Clio recalled it as a cavernous place of green paint and chipped enamel. John Leominster was not the man to squander capital on modern plumbing.
Grace stood at the window, looking down into the trees. Her hands massaged her thin arms. Clio located her outer clothes and put on her warm coat.
‘Cold,’ Grace said. It wasn’t a question.
‘I’d forgotten. If I ever felt it. Perhaps children don’t?’
‘Cressida is always complaining about it. And she has enough flesh to cover her bones.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In the old schoolroom probably. With Nanny, anyway.’
Grace’s profile was dark against the clouded glass. Clio balanced on the arm of a chair, watching her. ‘Is she getting better?’
‘She cries a lot. Terrible, salty, soaking outbursts. She believes it was my fault, that if the doctor had come sooner he might have saved him. She says that she loves her father, not me.’ The dark head tilted, rested sideways against the musty velvet of the curtains. ‘If it were not so sad, it would be funny, wouldn’t it? But at least Anthony never knew. At least there’s that.’
‘Grace.’ Clio stood up, went to her. She put her arm around Grace’s shoulders but Grace did not bend or yield. Clio could feel the concentration in her, vibrating like a wire.
‘Thank you for coming up here,’ Grace whispered. ‘You, and Julius and Jake, I don’t know what I would do without you.’
Clio was unnerved by the tautness. She felt that Grace could not let go of herself, because if she did she might break into a hundred pieces. ‘Come and sit, tell me about the election,’ she pleaded.
Grace sat down, but on the edge of a chair, ready to spring up again. She smiled at Clio. ‘They don’t want me to stand, you know. Ma and Pa. They think it isn’t suitable. A recent widow. A mother. A woman in Parliament.’
‘There have been women in Parliament for ten years.’
‘Pa doesn’t count Lady Astor. “Damn Yankee divorcee”, of course.’
‘Yes. Well then, the Duchess of Atholl. Who else is there? Mrs Wintringham and your friend Lady Cynthia Mosley.’
‘Those two are your side of the House, darling.’ Grace grinned at her, a flash of the old Grace.
‘That doesn’t matter. Are you really going to stand?’
‘Yes.’ It was as if Clio had plucked the wire in her. Grace leant forward, her eyes wide. ‘Anthony would want it. I can continue what he began.’
Clio began to say that the intention was admirable, but was hardly a political platform. Grace brushed the interruption aside.
‘Not just for that. I want to do it for Anthony’s memory, of course, I need that, but for myself too. For the sake of women, because I can, because the constituency is here for me. It isn’t for Hugo, or even Thomas, with their horses and land and their old values, but for me. A woman, a widow. Don’t you see how it has all changed?’
She jumped up again, turning so that the pleats of her skirt fanned around her calves.
‘Look at Blanche and Eleanor, Clio, and now look at us.’ A log fell in the hearth, sending up a shower of soft red sparks. Grace spoke in a low voice but her hands danced, smoothing and chopping the air, building edifices of her own reasoning. ‘Our mothers had to marry. What else was there for them? Marriage or Holborough Hall, lifelong subservience to Grandmother. They had so much youth and energy, you can reach out and almost touch it in the Sargent picture downstairs.’
You can in our picture too, Clio thought. Where has it gone? Or do you still have all that vitality, while I have lost mine?
There had been an evening long ago; when, exactly? After their coming-out dance, that was it. They had smoked Grace’s cigarettes and saluted one another as modern women, free agents who would not be yoked by convention as their mothers had been. Clio almost smiled. So much for our girlish idealism, then. I have no more real freedom than Eleanor did.
The fine threads of association wove around them both. Clio thought they would surely trip her but Grace swept on. ‘It must have seemed an act of rebellion for Eleanor to marry Nathaniel. But she was only doing the same thing as Blanche. They gave themselves up to exist through husbands and children because their world didn’t permit them to do anything else.
‘It has changed now, Clio. It’s different for you and me. Women went to war, they drove ambulances in France and nursed on the Russian Front.’
What did you and I do, Grace? We were only children. We stayed at home, and hurt each other over poor Captain Dennis.
‘Now women can live their own lives. London is full of stenographers and nurses and shop assistants, independent in their digs, not daughters or mothers or wives.’
‘And in West Shropshire?’
‘I can represent the constituents here as well as Anthony did. Once I am in Parliament I can represent a wider constituency of women too. I will be adopted for the seat, and I will win it, because I know I can. I’m a woman, and a mother. I had to marry, didn’t I? I tried to be a cipher-wife, and I was so unhappy, did you know that? It wasn’t until Anthony came into politics that I fell in love with him properly. We had a common project, and I will not abandon it now, not for Anthony’s sake nor my own.’
‘I see that,’ Clio said slowly. Out of the wash of Grace’s words she did pick out that much, that Grace and Anthony had loved one another.
The fire had warmed the room at last, or some of Grace’s alarming energy had radiated off her and thawed the air. It was dark outside now. The window had become a grid of black squares that swallowed the room’s reddish light. Grace came and half knelt in front of Clio, smiling at her.
‘And you. Look at you, Clio. You did what you wanted to do, poetry magazines and birth-control clinics; and you married on your own terms, didn’t you? You were always free, you still are.’
Grace had taken her hands. Their hands lay in Clio’s lap, linked together. Clio was thinking that she was not free, she belonged to Miles. She sheered away in her mind from what Grace had called him on the evening of the party.
Somehow, without quite understanding how it had happened or why, she had made herself his appendage. She had imagined a partnership, envisaged herself reading his manuscript and making discerning comments, but the dreary truth was that Miles did not want her help. She was no wiser about his work than she had ever been. He wanted warmth and security and domestic comfort, and she was glad to give him those, to the limited extent that she was able to provide. He had not married her for sex, she understood that already.
And for herself, she had wanted warmth and security too, she had wanted to be married. She had had enough of being bravely single, and now that she was no longer she supposed she ought to be happy. She was not modern; she was the opp
osite face of Grace’s post-war woman. As always, as ever, they misunderstood each other. They slid by, meeting but never touching. Clio’s mouth curled and Grace saw it. She sat back on her heels to look at her.
‘I was so envious of you when I was first married and Cressida was born, and you were reigning in Pilgrim’s set in the Eiffel. Did you know that?’
‘I can’t imagine you ever being jealous of anyone,’ Clio said truthfully.
‘I was. It wasn’t until much later that I realized my good fortune. In being married to Anthony.’
The shape of her face seemed to change. The muscles beneath the thin skin drew her mouth into a line and flattened her cheeks into waxy slabs. Her eyes filmed. Clio looked into them and saw her grief.
‘Oh, Grace …’
‘Don’t say anything.’ Grace was fierce and hard. ‘I don’t want to blub all the time. It was Julius’s idea, you know. He told me I must stand. He’s so clever, isn’t he? If I hadn’t had this, I think I would have died of sorrow.’
Clio leant forward to her, and their cheeks touched.
To one side of the room there was a tall glass on a stand. Clio looked into it and saw their reflection. The difference in their clothes seemed only to emphasize their physical likeness. As in Pilgrim’s portrait, they might have been twins. For now, they faced each other.
‘Will you come to the adoption meeting? To support me?’
Clio said, ‘Of course I will. That’s why I’m here.’
Grace nodded. ‘It’s important to me. You all are, you and Julius and Jake.’
‘I know.’
But somewhere within Clio the old worm of mistrust still coiled itself. She pinched down on it, wishing that she could cut it in half, as they had done as cruel children. But then perhaps it would grow a new head and tail, and multiply.
Grace stood up. She smoothed her beautiful pleats and touched one hand to her hair. ‘Are you happy with your Miles, Clio?’
‘Yes,’ Clio said.
After a moment Grace told her, ‘You were right to marry him. I’m sorry for what I said on that horrible evening at Jake’s.’
It wasn’t easy for Grace to apologize. It never had been, Clio remembered that from the earliest times. For some reason she thought of the rowing boat, the Mabel, and the time that Grace had almost drowned.
‘It’s forgotten,’ she said stiffly.
‘Good.’
They were both looking away, into the fire. It had burnt down to a few red embers.
‘Shall I ring to have it made up for you?’
‘No, I can do it myself,’ Clio said. She took a log from the neat stack in the basket beside the hearth and threw it on to the ashes. A wisp of smoke rose. There was an outdoor smell from it of bonfires and leaf mould, and Grace shivered.
‘Time to change for dinner, I suppose.’ Abruptly she added, ‘They’ll try to talk you over, you know. Enlist you to support them against my going into Parliament.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Grace lifted her hand, then let it fall again. ‘Thank you.’
Clio went down at exactly half past seven, but she found that John and Blanche and Hugo were already waiting for her. Blanche was wearing her jewels and one of her mist-coloured gowns made of panels of floating net that disguised her stoutness, and on either side of her her son and husband were stiff in their white ties. Hugo leant on his stick, but otherwise his stance was identical to his father’s. Clio found herself longing suddenly for Julius and Jake. She chewed at the corners of her mouth and pretended to shake out the folds of her trusty old dress.
‘We keep country hours,’ John announced, after he had greeted her. He took his pocket watch out and frowned at it. ‘Where is Grace?’
‘She will be down in a minute, I’m sure,’ Blanche murmured.
But it was a quarter to eight before Grace finally swept down the stairs and into the drawing room. She was wearing a column of plain black satin and her throat was bare. She gave her father a dazzling smile.
‘I think we’ll go straight in,’ John said.
They took their places at one end of the immense table.
There was a silent interval broken only by the clink of cutlery and china before John raised his head and said to Clio, ‘What is your opinion of this Parliament notion of Grace’s?’
After they had handed the plates the footmen stood, as ever, against the walls with their white-gloved hands folded in front of them. Clio could not stop herself from glancing at the man directly opposite her, because she had never grown used to talking in front of the servants as if they were carved out of wood. The man’s face was utterly impassive.
‘What?’ John demanded. Clio saw that Grace and Hugo and Blanche were all looking expectantly at her.
‘I think it is a good idea.’
‘It is not.’ John Leominster was not used to being given answers he did not like.
‘Why is it not?’ Clio asked, very gently.
‘Self-evident. Not a woman’s job, politics. If anyone from this family were to stand it should be Thomas. I would have no objection to that.’
‘But Grace can represent West Shropshire just as well as Thomas. And for the very reason that she is a woman, she can represent a wider constituency too. Women need voices in the House.’
‘Thomas has no desire to …’ Hugo began.
‘Bravo,’ Grace interrupted him. Turning to her father she said cheerfully, ‘There you are. I told you that Clio would agree with me. There’s no going back, women are in Parliament to stay. There are fourteen now, next time there will be forty. And I shall be one of them.’
The Earl’s face was turning the same colour as the burgundy in his glass. Hugo frowned and Blanche unhappily crumbled her bread. Clio had only been repeating Grace’s arguments, but it came to her now that they reflected her own beliefs. Forty women members, she thought, and then four hundred, why not? Her admiration for Grace was reluctant, but genuine. She had found herself a supporter.
‘I shall be one of them, whatever you have to say about it, Papa,’ Grace concluded. She was smiling, but there was no question of her determination. Clio suddenly understood the meaning of Grace’s independence. She had left her father’s house. She had been married and widowed, and now she was alone. If she wanted to become a Member of Parliament, if the constituency party of West Shropshire adopted her and if the people voted for her, there was nothing John Leominster could do to prevent it. The recognition of something so obvious and simple almost took Clio’s breath away. She felt like cheering.
John threw down his spoon. Tiny droplets of soup splashed and lay like murky gems on the polished table.
‘Damned nonsense. Damned feminists and suffragettes, meddling in what they don’t understand.’
He was shouting, a surprisingly loud shout from his thin frame. Clio remembered Eleanor once telling her that he had been nicknamed Sticks, long ago, for his skinny legs. The footmen went on staring at the opposite walls.
Grace sat forward a little in her chair. He thin wrists with their prominent knobs of bone rested on the table on either side of the ranks of ivory and silver cutlery still waiting to be used.
‘Who are you to imagine that you understand the world any better than feminists and suffragettes?’
Clio thought that her uncle might choke. ‘I am who I am. A member of the Upper House.’ The Leominster crest winked back at them all from the silver and the napkins. ‘And I am also a man, and your father. I will thank you to remember that, madam.’
‘John …’ Blanche faltered.
‘Oh, I don’t forget it,’ Grace said. ‘But you don’t make the smallest difference, you know.’ She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. Her lipstick left a crimson print on the linen. She stood up, and a footman moved to draw back her chair for her. She crossed the room, straight-backed, and the door was opened for her by white-gloved hands. It was closed again silently behind her.
After a moment Hugo said, ‘Grace will do what Grace want
s to do. We all know that.’ He was looking at Clio, trying to draw her back to them. But Clio felt as if she had just seen the grandeur of Stretton, the heritage that had awed her all her life, crumbling down into a pile of stones. Grace had done that, with her singularity. She felt utterly disorientated.
The Earl’s face was still dark red. He picked up his spoon and then dropped it again. ‘Are we going to get any damned dinner this evening?’ he demanded.
Blanche inclined her head to the butler, the signal to remove the plates.
The conversation for the rest of the miserable meal was between John and Hugo, entirely about estate business and hunting.
When Blanche and Clio withdrew and left them to it, they found Grace in the small drawing room sitting in an armchair to one side of the fire with her feet up on a stool. She was eating an apple and flipping through Vogue, evidently quite comfortable. Clio wished that she could have exchanged her own experience of dinner for a picnic and a magazine.
‘Grace, how could you?’ Blanche said.
Grace threw her magazine aside and stood up. She went to her mother and put her arms around her. ‘I had to.’
Blanche was not appeased. ‘In front of Clio, too.’
Clio knew that she must align herself. She said tentatively, ‘In a way, Aunt Blanche, Grace is right.’
Blanche pushed Grace away. She went to her chair and sat in it with her head up and her back stiff, as if the seat were a throne. To Clio’s eyes she suddenly looked smaller, a plump little woman with greying hair and too many heavy jewels. She was stranded in a corner of her great cold house, defended by the ageing rump of an army of footmen, an anachronism. Immediately Clio thought of her own mother. Eleanor was getting old too, and Nathaniel, and the tide was beginning to flow away from the Woodstock Road. She had seen it, without recognizing it, but now as she looked at Blanche it was clear.
Her mother and father had always been pillars in Clio’s life, and in their own way so had her aunt and uncle. To see this diminishment was painful, and it left her feeling cold and exposed. She found herself wanting to cry, and she blinked angrily.
It was Grace who had been widowed, and Grace who was striking out. For herself, she was newly married and at the beginning of a partnership. She had not yet discovered what kind of partnership it might be, but there was no need for tears. Old age came to everyone, if they were lucky, luckier than Anthony had been.
