The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Miss Tatiana, how very kind of you to hail me in this manner. I have not stopped to talk when I saw you here reading, for I know from dear little Portia, my daily visitor, that you are only newly converted to a High Faith, and therefore have to do much studying.’

  ‘That is all too true, Portia is quite right,’ Aunt Tattie replied, her face still grave from the struggle with the worthy but unnamed Monsignor’s cumbersome thoughts. ‘All too true. But to be honest with you, Mr Ward, I am finding these thoughts, although very, very worthy, very, very tiresome too. For, you see, they are the kinds of thoughts that might occur to the clergy, but certainly do not occur to the normal human being going about their appointed tasks, if you see what I mean? They are, even to a person of my known sensitivity, just a little too high flown. I am, when all is said and done, only a human being, and too much of this world, I fear, whereas the Monsignor seems to be of quite another.’

  Richard Ward smiled, and as his hostess patted the wooden Arts and Crafts and, to him, really rather strangely shaped chair placed carefully in front of her own bench, he nodded dismissal to his valet and sat down upon it, gratefully. For much as he had enjoyed, in the previous weeks, young Portia’s flying visits in the mornings, much as he had even quite enjoyed her reading to him from some book or another, as the mists of alcoholism had gradually cleared from his mind he could not wait to sit and talk to this dear personage from the dim and distant past. He remembered Aunt Tattie and her brother Uncle Lampard so well, from the dear days of Bannerwick, and it seemed to him, as he seated himself beside her, that the dear lady had, like Portia, not changed at all, that she was still as she had been exactly, and at that moment he too felt the same.

  And it was such a healing thought. It was as if the past had never been and he was young and vibrant, and his parents were still alive and he in love with life. And yet the mere mention of religion, alas, brought back more sombre thoughts too, which could not be avoided.

  ‘I have not much respect for religion myself, Aunt Tattie, at least in recent times. Not since the loss of my beloved wife and daughter. For if God chose to take persons so dear and so good from this world – from me – then I have no time for God, I am afraid.’

  Aunt Tattie nodded. ‘That is quite understandable, young Richard Ward. If I were you I should feel precisely the same, but when the healing time has come and gone, as it surely will come and go, and there is hardly a trace of even a scar, then I would say that you will come to terms with the fact that God has to let even the sea, even the tides and the storms, have their way. All He can do is offer you the healing. Otherwise we should all become like sleepwalkers, should we not? Just sleepwalking our way through life to the tune of His playing, and because He loves us He would not want that.’

  ‘It seems to me that I have been asleep this past year, so little of it can I remember,’ Richard told her, with a sudden piercingly sober look. ‘That at least is true. And you are right, perhaps the sinking of that ship, that terrible loss of life, had nothing to do with the Almighty and everything to do with man. And it was my fault that my beloved little family were on that same so-called unsinkable ship, my idea to send them to America – my treat. My conceit, if you like.’

  Aunt Tattie put out her hand suddenly and patted Richard’s still bronzed hand.

  ‘My dear Richard Ward, it is not given to us to mete out our own punishments. You must now learn to forgive yourself. Every day, if you will, for my sake and your own, you must try repeating the words I forgive myself three times when you rise, three times when you take turns around my garden after we have had our conversation, which I hope we will continue to do, and then three times at the end of the day. And, if you will, you must start now. It is never too early to start a good habit, you know.’

  Richard paled slightly and then reddened. ‘Come, come, Aunt Tattie. Not out loud, surely?’

  ‘Out loud,’ said Aunt Tattie firmly.

  ‘I forgive – myself. Hmm. I, er, forgive myself. And. I forgive myself!’

  ‘Well, now, there you are. You feel stupid now, but later you will feel better. And believe you me, that is no more than I feel after trying to follow this essay of the good Monsignor’s “On Awaking”. Why, Richard, if we did as the Monsignor here advises,’ Aunt Tattie started to knot the wooden beads about her waist around her hand, ‘we would still be going through the act of getting up as the sun was setting. There would be no time to live, no time to eat, no time for anything, except rising! I am not an insensitive person, but really, the Monsignor goes too far, even for me. Now, don’t forget your little repetition, and I will see you here tomorrow, same time, same place, and we will talk some more.’

  After their conversation Richard Ward returned to his room, and although the valet still locked the door he felt strangely at peace. Knowing that he still had a friend in Portia’s aunt meant so very much to him. He knew that Portia was doing all she could for him, but somehow the presence of her aunt in the house, and her insistence on his repeating the words I forgive myself, seemed to him to bode well, and for the first time he found himself staring out of the window of his rooms on to the busy London street below, not thinking of the dark past, but of Aunt Tattie in her strange medieval clothes staring into his eyes, but with such a kind expression in her own that for the first time since he waved goodbye to his beloved wife and daughter, saw their figures growing smaller and smaller as the great ship sailed off to meet with catastrophe, a small voice inside his head whispered that there might at last be a little hope come into his life, and that although it might only be the size of a pinprick it was, nevertheless, that most glorious of feelings without which there is only darkness.

  Of a sudden it was almost as if the past had started to forgive him.

  Feeling much better than he had for what now seemed years, he started to walk about his rooms, touching pictures and straightening them, humming a little, thinking over the past weeks. Idly he passed the table where he kept his various mementoes, his cigars and matches, his snuffbox, a pocket knife, some money, his card case and other small items, and glancing down he saw that there was a letter partially hidden by his card case and snuffbox.

  It had been left poking out a little behind the two different shaped silver boxes, just enough for him to see, but certainly no-one else.

  I must see you, soon. I will unlock the door tonight. Meet me in the ballroom. P.

  It had not taken Evie long to work out, with the help of the less than estimable Evans, that the Vice Admiral must have a crush on Miss Phyllis. That being so, it would be something indeed if they could fake a note to him, and signing it ‘P’ set up a meeting between himself and Miss Phyllis, and then, having sent the same request to Lady Childhays, Meet me in the ballroom tonight, signed it with the initial ‘R’, make sure that Miss Phyllis’s mother would come upon the old man and the young girl. Miss Phyllis would be thoroughly disgraced and doubtless banished to Bannerwick and left to the patronage of her elderly relatives for the rest of her natural.

  ‘It will do him for Lady Childhays, of course,’ said Evie, sagely, to Mr Evans, ‘but that can’t be helped, considering. No, it can’t be helped at all. But what it will do, for good and all, is Miss Phyllis. That will be as right a spoke in her wheels as anyone could wish, the deceiving hussy.’

  The truth was that Evie had never really forgiven Miss Phyllis for not going on the sailing trip with the rest of her family, a trip which should have left the maid free to study her books and improve herself, time which she had mentally set aside for herself alone.

  ‘I don’t suppose he will know her handwriting, will he, now?’

  ‘Not from Adam – or rather, in this case, Evie’s own!’

  They had a short laugh about that.

  ‘Besides, I can fake Miss Phyllis’s hand soon as look at her; her handwriting’s just like one of us servants’, not all like what a gentlewoman’s should be. She never had any interest at all in her books and lessons, always out riding or sa
iling with her father, was Miss Phyllis. And of course Lord Childhays indulged her in everything, seeing that she was the first born and he had wanted a son. Until her brother came along, he treated her more as a boy than a girl, I always think. But of course when they wanted her to go round the world with them, on a true adventure, she had to be different, didn’t she? She had to stay at home and make herself the bane of my life instead! The one time I could have looked forward to being on my own, to study my books and that, she had to land herself on me. But then that is Miss Phyllis all over.’

  Now Richard stared at the handwritten note. It was scrawled in blue ink across one of Portia’s cards – Lady Childhays, London.

  Why should anyone wish to meet him alone, and why in the ballroom? It was not conventional. More than that, it would not be kind to his hosts, to Aunt Tattie and that nice friend of hers, the other woman, whoever she was, who occasionally popped her head round the door in the company of the doctor.

  Not that he did not find Portia as attractive as he had always done, spirited and fine, but Richard was too much of a gentleman, too sober now, and the road back to sanity he had traversed over the past weeks had been too hard by far, for his ever to wish to return to any kind of hysterical state.

  So, no, he could not respond to such an invitation. Perhaps the very act of sobering up had been just about as much as his poor old mind and body could take, for he had no wish to be alone with a young girl.

  With the feeling that his intelligence was slowly awakening, and the past slipping into a less confused state, as soon as Evans, the valet, came back into his rooms with a good, hearty supper laid out for him, Richard handed him a note in a plain envelope.

  ‘Please give this to Lady Childhays on my behalf, would you?’

  Evans was momentarily confused. Miss Phyllis, surely? But then he remembered the card Evie had taken from Lady Childhays’ writing case, and so, with a strange little smile he took the note from the Vice Admiral, and having laid out his dinner for him in the proper manner let himself out of the room. He locked the door and quickly undid the envelope, the flap of which, in the correct way, remained slipped into place, rather than gummed – a polite custom with well brought up people, giving as it did the responsibility of trust to the bearer of the letter.

  But Evans was not trustworthy, and would never attempt to be so. It was not his way, and so he held the card from within the envelope between his fingers only seconds after he had taken the note from the Vice Admiral.

  He read Richard Ward’s carefully penned words with a sinking heart.

  No, my dear. I could not possibly meet anyone in the ballroom, let alone a young person such as yourself. R.

  Evans started not to run, but to hurtle down the stairs towards the servants’ quarters in the basement. The one thing that he and Evie had not reckoned on was that Richard Ward would prove to be not just a Vice Admiral, but a gentleman too! How inconvenient! How unlikely! He almost fell into the servants’ dining room, and beckoned Evie as unostentatiously as he could.

  ‘Things, Miss Evie,’ he said, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, to the relief of Evie, for it seemed to her that the smell of cheap porter was permanent around Mr Evans. ‘Things have gone sadly awry. The gentleman in question has read the note and is refusing to act upon it, with the result that the wretched man is all set to leave Miss Phyllis standing around on her own, alas, uncompromised! Her reputation thoroughly intact, which is not at all what we wanted for the little jumped-up hussy, is it, Miss Evie?’

  Evie thought quickly. Mr Evans was right. Miss Phyllis, to whom they had naturally written a note on behalf of Richard Ward, was indeed going to be left thoroughly uncompromised, and now it was too late to stop certain events from hurtling forward to who knew what end.

  ‘Nothing to be done, Mr Evans, except wait and see and hope for the best, as always, in the best of all possible worlds.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Evie, but not quite what we were hoping for, when all is said and done, would you say?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Evie agreed. ‘But then what is?’

  ‘It might all end in disaster.’

  ‘Doubtless, it might. Or it might not.’

  ‘I rather fancy that if I had a wager on the outcome, my money would be going on the first option rather than the second, Miss Evie.’

  Evie turned away from him, walking back to the bench where she normally sat when off duty, to her knitting and her thoughts.

  ‘I am afraid I rather agree with you, Mr Evans.’

  Evans frowned to himself as he watched Miss Evie hurrying away. He turned to go back to the men’s quarters feeling really rather wretched.

  Captain Barrymore Fortescue could hardly believe his eyes. Of course he had hoped, but only in a very faint way, when all was said and done, that Lady Emily would turn up to ride with him in the early morning, in Rotten Row, but he had not really believed that she would.

  ‘Lady Emily!’

  He sprang forward from the shelter of the stable on seeing her, so tall, so slender, so much the horsewoman standing in front of him in the summer sunshine of an early London morning. And as his eyes grew wide with appreciation he knew that particular excitement of the young lover-to-be. He could hardly believe his luck, but now that he had his goddess firmly within his sights he knew at once that he would not let her go again, not for all the gold of the Indies, not for all the silk in China, not for all the other married women who had previously passed through his bed.

  ‘Lady Emily, I say, this is too, too of you, really it is!’

  Emily looked up into Captain Fortescue’s passionate young dark eyes. He would not know it, but she could hardly bring herself to believe that she was there either.

  ‘Yes, I know, Captain Fortescue, I agree with you. It is really too, too of me, but too, too what of me? I dare say neither of us can bring ourselves to find the right word, but there it is. I am here, and so are you. Now where is Bright Buttons, or whatever he is called, and where your mount?’

  Barrymore Fortescue snapped his fingers and his groom came running.

  ‘Bring out Bright Buttons for her ladyship, Buckston, and take her to the mounting block.’

  ‘You will do no such thing, Buckston,’ Emily put in. ‘You will bring out Bright Buttons and lead him up to me, please.’ After which she turned and eyed Captain Fortescue with a bright, hard look. ‘No equestrian I know uses a mounting block, Captain Fortescue, unless they are injured in some way, or excessively old.’

  Captain Fortescue reddened, knowing at once from the look in Lady Emily’s brilliant green eyes that he had made a cracking ass of himself. Of course! A horsewoman such as Lady Emily would naturally despise a mounting block. She would spurn such an aid. It would be for ‘coffee housers’, as the ladies who trailed along at the back of a hunt were known. It would be for ‘lilting Lydias’, women who hacked gently and slowly around the Park, not for the Dianas of the chase, for the goddesses of equestrianism, to have their horses brought to a block to allow them to scramble aboard as if their mounts were so many omnibuses or tram cars. No, just a hand such as Buckston was holding out to her now, and the placing of the noble, slender foot in that hand, an allez oop, and an equestrian such as Lady Emily would be seated aboard Bright Buttons as lightly as any feather now floating from the Serpentine towards the barracks.

  And so their ride began, with Lady Emily a little ahead, stern and silent, her green riding habit showing off her tall, slender figure, her silken white hair startling beneath her elegant hat, and the expression on her face one of cold disapproval, as if she could not, after such a faux pas, believe that she was out hacking of a summer morning with someone so positively idiotic as Captain Fortescue.

  Barrymore knew himself to be handsome, and a well-known seducer of beautiful married women, and until that moment he had never found himself at a loss for words. How could he recover his footing with this goddess of the chase whose seat he had so admired in Ireland, those few seasons ago? How could
he impress on her that he wished he had had his tongue cut out rather than have so offended her by suggesting that she would be the kind of woman to need a mounting block?

  ‘Come on, Captain Fortescue. The Park is empty of anyone but a few cavalry types. I’ll race you to that bench over there, and if you get caught you can pay the fine, and if I get caught I shall plead a bolting horse!’

  She kicked Bright Buttons lightly and at the same time her hands, as light as her seat was balanced, tightened a little, and the horse flew from under her, and even as he flew Emily gave a shout of laughter, as Barrymore, too late, attempted to follow on his slower mount. Carrying more weight he knew that he had not a hope, for she had gone from a walk to a fast canter in a matter of seconds.

  Watching her from behind, too far behind, Barrymore knew that Lady Emily had stolen a march on him and it would be difficult, most likely impossible, to recover any ground. Weaving between the Park trees, pretending, as he was well positioned to observe from behind, to be a helpless woman quite out of control, Lady Emily cantered faster and faster. In and out of the trees she bent her willing young horse as supple as a sapling, herself gurgling with laughter, until finally her mount took off towards the Serpentine, towards the wild fowl, towards no-one and nothing, Barrymore following at an admiring distance.

  Finally, of course, as is always the way with pranks on horseback, she went too far. It was inevitable, really, and what was more he had a feeling that it was what she, at least, wanted. He closed his eyes and sat back, waiting for disaster, as with a gay laugh she took off in front of a Park bench, jumping it with miles to spare between Bright Buttons’s hooves and what looked like an old man still seated upon it.

  But Captain Fortescue need not have worried. His goddess of the dawn, his equestrian heroine, seemed to know both her steed and the poor creature on the bench, for she safely landed on the other side, and seemingly satisfied at last that she had finally had some sport drew Bright Buttons to a perfect, cavalry halt, turned him on a sixpence, and walked him decorously back to the captain.