The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  Amory Jardine and his son rode down from London in a first class compartment of the early train they always took on Fridays, when guests were often expected for the weekend. For a while, they spoke of matters of the day: Mr Asquith, the Prime Minister’s problems with trade disputes and strikes; the high words in Parliament over the ever-present question of Home Rule for the Irish; incredulity expressed by certain letter writers to The Times that the earth could be thought to have actually passed through the tail of Halley’s comet, and the growing menace of the presumptuous, troublesome Suffragists. The opinions of father and son were not entirely in accord over this last, and presently they fell silent. Amory opened his attaché case and took out some papers, but Marcus remained uncharacteristically unoccupied. Stretching out his long legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles, he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked out of the window as the train belched and clattered through the dirty London suburbs and into greener, ever greener countryside, and thence on to a branch line, while pleasurable, rather daring, thoughts stirred in him.

  They were physically somewhat alike, father and son, with dark hair and eyes, though Marcus overtopped his more stockily-built father by half a head, and he was less outwardly austere in his demeanour. He had an engaging shyness of manner, which caused him to stammer a little, but mostly only when his emotions got the better of him. He had become a lawyer and worked in his father’s chambers, with the hope of following in his admirable footsteps in the fullness of time. Amory had built up a successful practice at the Bar, had become a KC and was looking for elevation to the Bench. A knighthood was rumoured to be in the offing.

  Marcus’s reserve, in fact, came from his father. Though in public, as befitted a lawyer, Amory’s flow of words could be undiminished, his innate reticence caused him in private life to be sparing of speech, and disinclined to demonstrate his affections, and at times manifested itself as a certain coldness, at least with those he didn’t know well. Even so, no one knew better than Marcus that everyone around Amory must always behave with the utmost probity and circumspection, and he looked at him now with a slight tremor of foreboding. But perhaps he was rushing his fences. Perhaps incurring his father’s disapproval was a circumstance that would never arise.

  Eventually, the train steamed into the little wooden country station. Marcus lowered the window with the leather strap, thrust out his hand to open the door. The platform was empty as usual, except for the accustomed figure of Joseph Jimson, the young porter, whose sole task, it sometimes appeared, was to await the arrival of the trains which brought and bore away visitors to and from Charnley House – and to deliver to the big house on his bicycle the fresh supplies of fish and meat which were sent direct from Billingsgate and Smithfield. If he were lucky, and he usually was, for he was a handsome and likeable young fellow, Mrs Heslop would give him a cup of tea and a slice of bread and jam, or a piece of cake, and if he were even luckier, he’d have the chance to steal a kiss from Polly Cheevers, his sweetheart, before cycling off again.

  He touched his cap to Mr Jardine and Mr Marcus as they alighted and walked towards the exit and the road outside, where Copley waited with their motorcar. He expected them to be the only arrivals, but this afternoon there was another passenger.

  “Why, there is M-m-miss Jessamy!” declared Marcus a moment later, striding forward with pleasure towards a distinctly eccentric, plain-looking little figure who was scrambling from the end coach of the train, and distractedly attempting to dump on to the platform her luggage, which seemed to consist of a large number of straw baskets, odd-shaped valises, a large satchel and an easel, as well as sundry other parcels, before it should be carried on to somewhere like Leighton Buzzard or any other uncivilised destination. Jimson, who had already had a similar, earlier encounter with Mr Iskander’s equally oddly assorted baggage, was already there, helping her and assuring her he would not let the train go with her bags still on board. She smiled her thanks at him, instantly vanquishing the idea that she was plain, and the smile widened even further when she saw Marcus striding towards her.

  Amory watched in disbelief as Marcus and the porter gathered up her belongings. Jimson pocketed a shilling, and shouldered the largest of the boxes to the waiting motorcar. Marcus came forward with the owner of the luggage, a great deal of which was now distributed variously about his own person. So this, thought Amory, was Miss Jessamy, who had been engaged to be his beloved youngest child’s companion! Much younger than he had expected. Diminutive but very straight-backed, she wore a bunchy skirt short enough to show her ankles, and a loose blouse with a sailor collar and a floppy tie. Her hair was an unruly fiery red mop, cut level with her ears, underneath which a small, Pekingese face peered somewhat defiantly. She was hatless, though a battered straw, somewhat resembling that worn by donkeys, hung down her back by its ribbon. And gloveless. And, if he were not mistaken, Amory thought, scandalised, stockingless!

  Jimson kept his face straight and wondered in a mutter to swarthy-faced Copley, Charnley’s chauffeur, groom and occasional handyman, as they heaved the box on to the back of the motorcar, what in hangment Mrs Jardine would say when confronted with this second eccentric guest of the day. “Right one, that, ain’t she?”

  “One of them Bohemiums,” returned Copley with a broad wink, watching the young master hand her into the motor as though she were a right lady. “Reckon Mr Marcus’ll be well in there. Free love and all that, bet she’s a bit of all right between the sheets.”

  No one knew, or guessed, how momentous – disastrous might be a better word – the arrival of this small person at Charnley was destined to be.

  Not Polly Cheevers, the parlourmaid who was watching from her attic window, where she had been sent to change her apron – another clean apron, meaning a penny docked off her wages, and how was she to do her work without getting it dirty at all? – as the motorcar drew up and Mr Marcus descended, helping down that scrawny little figure.

  Nor that cheeky-faced Alf Copley, who was grinning at her in a familiar way and looked like as not to pinch her bottom, as he did with any of the maids when he got the chance.

  Nor Clara Hallam, lady’s maid to Mrs Jardine. A plain and angular woman for whom the world contained quite enough responsibility, thank you very much, without having to help with the rag-tag luggage of red-haired hussies without hats or stockings, as she’d been ordered to. She was deeply religious and attended the Baptist chapel, and deplored the free and extravagant lifestyle at Charnley. Though it was, after all, precisely this extravagance which permitted her employment here.

  As for Beatrice … she wasn’t there to greet her new guest. The pleasure of that would come later.

  2

  After all, as Harriet reluctantly had to concede, hustling her sisters into the library after tea, the ‘Three Graces’ as the subject for the tableau was the most sensible suggestion yet – or at any rate the most attainable at this late stage. It might not keep anyone guessing, but that didn’t really matter, since the object of the exercise was more to present a charming picture to the assembled guests, as a birthday tribute to their mother, than to mystify.

  “Bertie and Teddy have probably forgotten it was ever mentioned, anyway,” said Vita carelessly, “and Mama herself didn’t hear what Mr Iskander said; she was busy talking to Cheevers, so she won’t be expecting it.” She was becoming bored with the subject, and cross with allowing herself to be chivvied unceremoniously into the library by Harriet. She would much rather be occupying herself with colour schemes and styles of decoration for her new drawing room in the modern white house across the valley, which was now very near completion, awaiting decisions as to its interior decoration. All she knew was that she wanted no room in it to look anything like the over-elaborate rooms here at Charnley, but neither did she want the sort of peculiar – almost primitive-looking —designs this Miss Jessamy had carried out for Mama’s friend, Millie Glendinning, and was now about to begin here in the west wing. (How odd of Mama, o
f all people, to have made such a choice! thought Vita, momentarily diverted.) She herself was quite enamoured with the idea of spare, sinuous, elegant Art Nouveau, cool colours and expensive simplicity. There was that Scottish architect and designer up in Glasgow who was said to be very up to the minute …

  “It seems rather feeble, but at least it will be no trouble,” Harriet continued. She had been thumbing through a heavy volume to find a plate of Botticelli’s ‘Spring’, wherein the ‘Three Graces’ featured, and now she had studied it and considered the possibilities, she had to admit it would solve many problems, in view of the small amount of time left. The only uncertainty seemed to be whether Daisy could stand still long enough to hold the pose, or Vita keep her mind on the subject. “No props will be necessary – we can conceal ourselves beforehand behind a curtain in front of the folly, which can then be drawn – all we need besides is yards and yards of muslin–”

  “And something underneath it to preserve decency,” added Daisy, with a laugh, looking over Harriet’s shoulder at the diaphanous draperies which covered but did not at all conceal either the limbs or any other bodily parts of the dancing goddesses in the picture. “Otherwise, Mama would have a fit.”

  “Good, then that’s settled,” said Vita, with evident relief.

  It was rather unfair of her to have lost interest so quickly, thought Harriet, drawing paper towards her to make a list of what would be needed, since she had been the one who suggested presenting a tableau in the first place, but really, you never knew with Vita; she never thought of anyone but herself and she was good for nothing sensible these days. The only things which absorbed her attention were her dress for The Day, the wedding presents, a few of which had already begun to arrive, and choosing a name for the new house, most of the suggestions for which were either banal or whimsical, and made Daisy hoot with laughter. She couldn’t altogether blame Vita, however, that this tableau as a choice of birthday entertainment lacked originality, and showed no subtlety. It was her own fault, she acknowledged impatiently. She had only agreed to perform the thing at all in a fit of absent mindedness, when she was preoccupied and unsettled by other things – mainly the latest letter from her friend Frances who was – oh, consummation devoutly to be desired! – studying at St Hilda’s College in Oxford. If only, thought Harriet longingly, if only! But her father would entertain no such suggestion. He firmly and honestly believed the highest fulfilment for a woman was that of wife and mother, and that only. And as for Beatrice, she dismissed the idea as just another silly notion being bandied about among young women with advanced opinions and too much time on their hands, nothing more than a passing whim. Without their support, there was nothing Harriet could do. She did not have enough money of her own to make an independent move, only her dress allowance and, generous though that was, it was not enough. Moreover, though strong-minded, she was not made of the stuff to flout parental authority, mainly because she loved her father too much to hurt him. All the same, she despised herself for not having the courage to stand out over this, and tried to tell herself she could make up in other ways. She could – her heart lurched – marry Kit, for instance. Marry him and make something of him, and perhaps something of herself into the bargain. Or thereby ruin herself.

  “I say, he’s rather dashing, isn’t he?” asked Daisy.

  Harriet blinked, and woke up to find the other two had not in fact divined the disturbing direction of her thoughts as she at first imagined, but had moved on to another subject. “Who is?”

  “Why, Mr Iskander, even though his name is Valery!” All three girls giggled, even Harriet, though dashing would not have been a word she would have used to describe their visitor. Less complimentary adjectives sprang to mind. “I must say,” added Daisy, “he seemed rather taken with Mama.”

  “Who is not?” asked Vita flippantly.

  Harriet intervened, rather sharply, “More to the point, what did you think of your new governess, Daisy, now that she’s finally arrived?”

  “A governess is simply the last thing one would expect her to be – the last thing she wants, too, I should imagine. What do you think – she so perfectly hates the name Rose Jessamy that she prefers to be called RJ! And I can see why,” added Daisy sympathetically. Its owner was not in the least the flowery, gentle being the name suggested. “I rather liked her,” she finished, deliberately understating the case in anticipation of her elder sisters’ reactions – Harriet’s scorn and Vita’s teasing. In fact, she was already on the way to developing a decided crush on Miss Jessamy … RJ. How splendid to be so independent, to chop off your bothersome hair and wear loose, comfortable clothes. No stockings. No stays! Freedom, no matter what anyone thought!

  It was entertaining to speculate on how RJ and Mama would get on, and who would win, if it came to a battle of wills.

  In fact, they had already encountered one another, though not to say in a spirit of controversy, and not in the matter of stays or stockings, but over the decoration of the rooms, which Miss Jessamy had naturally wanted to see immediately she arrived, since they were, after all, the main reason for her being here at Charnley

  She had walked through each one, admiring their proportions, and then stood looking around the last one without saying anything, deep in thought. “Yes,” she said drily at last. “This is exactly the sort of thing I imagined, from what Marcus said.”

  The little pulse of uneasiness, which had previously only stirred, now awoke properly in Beatrice’s breast, her hitherto unshaken faith in Marcus’s judgement having already been shattered by the arrival of Miss Jessamy … what could her level-headed son have been thinking of, how could he possibly have imagined Daisy could be exposed to the influence of a creature who dressed in such an outrageously controversial fashion? The skirt – the lack of stockings! And that hair! If she cared so little as to present herself to the world in such a way, what on earth were her moral principles?

  And another thing – Beatrice, who was never indecisive, had discovered to her alarm that she was now by no means as confident as she had been about the work Miss Jessamy was to do. The young woman had asked for – nay, almost demanded - carte blanche to work on the decorations as she wished. It was not so much the fee, it seemed, as the opportunity to experiment, and express herself as she desired in paint, the provision of free materials and her keep provided, which was of paramount importance.

  “My dear, you know I leave all that sort of thing to you,” Amory had said when Beatrice had first approached him over the matter of refurbishing the guest accommodation in the west wing. “You have such impeccable taste.”

  But she was beginning to realise, too late, that even Amory might be somewhat shaken when he saw what might be done to rooms where previously the decorations, if needing to be renewed, had simply followed accepted tradition. She had of course known he would be rather taken aback by the sort of thing she envisaged but had simply decided that she would have to enlist the help of Marcus – and possibly Daisy, who could twist her father round her little finger – to persuade Amory that new was not necessarily bad. Now she realised that she might have more than just that on her plate, belatedly remembering that he regarded the Art Nouveau style Vita had so set her heart on as the acme of decadence.

  This would not do! She took herself in hand and mentioned the vibrant wall colours, the decorative door panels and stencilled friezes which she had admired in Millie’s house, but Miss Jessamy did not seem to be impressed with her suggestions. “Every place needs different treatment, and Lady Glendinning’s house is not at all like this one.”

  That Millie’s modern London residence was not like Charnley was undeniable. “What exactly are you hoping to convey?”

  Miss Jessamy, she discovered, had a disconcerting way of looking at one fearlessly without saying anything for a long time, from a very fine pair of eyes, the warm brown that sometimes goes with red hair and white skin. And how glorious that hair could have been had it been allowed to grow as nature intended!
“I’d like to keep an open mind for a while, until I get the sense of it,” she answered eventually. She was in fact surprisingly pretty when she smiled and forgot her fierceness, Beatrice discovered, despite her turned-up nose. “How do you feel about nudes, odalisques, Sapphic themes?” she asked, with an abrupt return to her direct manner.

  Beatrice was on shaky ground here, not really understanding what was meant. She had not received a liberal education. Moreover, such generalisation seemed to leave a good deal to the imagination, and Beatrice was not blessed with too much of that quality. “It’s not so much what I feel,” she replied cravenly (this fierce little person was beginning to intimidate her, something she was quite unused to) “as to how it will affect the visitors who will be sleeping here.”

  “Is the naked form unknown to them, then?”

  Possibly not, since these rooms, a little distant from the main house, were normally allocated to those gentlemen, young bachelors or perhaps widowers, unaccompanied by a lady. Beatrice, however, decided it was time to terminate this conversation. She lifted the small jewelled watch pinned to her chest. “I think perhaps we had better leave the decisions until tomorrow. I hope you will join us for dinner, this evening at any rate, Miss Jessamy, until you establish a routine,” she said, hoping that she was making clear this was not to be regarded as a regular thing. She foresaw a rather awkward situation arising with this young woman, who did not fall easily into the category of either employee or friend of the family. Not like Miss Tempest who, when Daisy was dining with the grownups, had always made it quite clear that she preferred to take her meals in an egalitarian way with the domestic staff. “I think you will find your room comfortable – if there is anything you need, don’t hesitate to speak.”