The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  “You do look a sight, darling Daisy,” said Vita with a laugh, stretching out a hand to rub at a streak of paint on Daisy’s flushed cheek, rolling her eyes at the plaster-spattered breeches and smock which her sister had been allowed to wear for the duration of the work – and for that only – in imitation of the workmanlike garb Rose Jessamy donned to paint in.

  “I know,” answered Daisy, with satisfaction. “But it’s such fun.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Wait until you see the finished product.”

  “Gracious, I have no intentions of doing anything else but wait!”

  But not everyone was avoiding all the mess and clutter, Vita knew, especially the men – Wycombe and Papa, as well as Kit and Marcus, who never ceased to marvel at the quick and competent way in which Miss Jessamy wielded a trowel and a heavy hod of wet plaster, leaving the walls smooth as silk and ready to be worked on.

  Vita said, rousing herself from her lethargy, “I’ll walk across to Nanny’s with you and take her last month’s Ladies’ journal. She loves to look at the fashions.” The girls were all very fond of their old nurse. “You’d better change first, though,” she added. “If Mama catches you outside the house in that garb, you’ll never be allowed to put it on again.”

  “I suppose I must.” Daisy pulled a face, but went off to change.

  When she came back she had on a skirt and a fresh cotton blouse, her face was washed and her hair brushed and tied back with a large black bow. They walked the hundred yards or so to Nanny Byfield’s cottage in the lane at the edge of the woods, but found her alone, sitting on a chair outside the door in the sun, turning the heel of a sock without even needing to look, the four steel knitting needles flashing in the light. Poor Marcus! Yet another pair of thick, grey woollen socks, which he must pretend to be pleased with, when he’d been wearing silk ever since he left school. But he would never let Nanny know that.

  “No, I’ve seen nothing of your mama this morning. Maybe she got up early and went out into the garden and waited there to join the others when they went to church,” Nanny suggested.

  “Mama, putting a toe out of bed before she’s had her tea? Oh, Nanny, you know better than that!” laughed Vita, though Beatrice quite often did not have any breakfast. “And besides, how could she dress, who’d tighten her laces for her?” Their mother had never been known to leave her room without being properly equipped to face the day, her hair done and her corsets defining her splendid curves.

  “Never say never where your mama’s concerned, or she’ll surprise you in the end! And as for getting up early, well, she was always up and out in the fresh air before everyone else in the family, when she was a girl. ‘It’s too shiny a morning to stay in bed, Nanny,’ she used to say, ‘I don’t want to miss a moment of it!’“Nanny Byfield, who had been Beatrice’s nurse, too, had reached the age when she loved to reminisce and never missed the opportunity of taking advantage of a captive audience. “Oh, she was a madam, and no mistake! ‘When I grow up, I want to do this, I want to do that!’ there was never any end to it. ‘Well, then want will be your master, young lady,’ I used to tell her, but I don’t think she ever listened.” She smiled and drew up a further length of thick grey wool to hook between her fingers as she changed needles, having revealed such totally unexpected facets of Beatrice’s character that Vita and Daisy, after one glance at each other, were temporarily silenced. “Out she’d run, down to the keeper’s cottage, and calling out for Clara Hallam to come and join her.”

  “Hallam?” they chorused, united in astonishment.

  “Well, you knew she was the gamekeeper’s step-daughter on your grandfather’s estate, same age they were …”

  “Yes, we knew that – but not that they were friends!” Vita said.

  “Well, as to friends – it was always Miss Beatrice this, Miss Beatrice that, lady and servant, you see, never mind their ages, and very right and proper, too. But neither of them had anybody else, only a houseful of stepbrothers in Clara’s case, young Fred that she ran wild with, until Miss Bea took her up. Miss Bea without even a mother, and as for her father … he’d always wanted a son, and when his wife died giving him a daughter, he’d no interest.”

  “Poor Mama!” said Daisy.

  “Oh, she never seemed to mind that, what she’d never had she didn’t miss, I suppose,” Nanny said briskly, “and I didn’t see any reason then to discourage the friendship with Clara – as long as I kept an eye on it … it taught Miss Bea she might not be the only one in the universe, and Clara learned better manners than she might have, with all those rough brothers, and to speak nicely. Her mother had been sewing maid up at the Hall, and she made sure Clara knew how to sew. For all her gawkiness, she had neat fingers, and she was a quick learner, I’ll give her that. So she was all set up for becoming your mama’s maid-” She broke off abruptly and looked down at her gnarled fingers, which had stilled on her knitting. “Well, that’s enough of my old maunderings.”

  When she looked up again, she could see how taken aback they were. “Don’t you take too much notice of what I say, my dears, she soon forgot all that when she met your father and learned that a contented marriage and a good husband is worth a peck of wishful thinking. She’ll be back from church with the others, you’ll see.”

  But the churchgoers returned without Beatrice, and a small fuss arose, annoyance tinged with a frisson of uneasiness. All kinds of unlikely suppositions were put forward as to where she might be, but mostly it was felt that she must, on a whim, have suddenly gone to call on someone, or accepted an unexpected, off-the-cuff telephone invitation to luncheon – from someone who must, in that case, have sent a conveyance to fetch her. It was the only reasonable explanation, but left too much unexplained. In particular why, if she had decided to do something so astonishingly out of the ordinary, had she not let anyone know?

  It was Marcus, on his arrival home from church, who put an end to these speculations. “Mama?” he repeated. “She hasn’t b-been seen since last night?” No one else had quite looked at it like that. “Then something’s happened – we must look for her immediately. I’ll m-muster some of the m-men.”

  “No,” Amory said steadily, his face pale but admirably controlled. “There’s no need for that yet. Don’t make a to-do over it. There’s bound to be some simple explanation.”

  Marcus seemed about to protest, but Harriet laid a restraining hand on his arm, and after a moment he subsided, though the look of panic remained. He had seen, like Harriet, that their father’s unwillingness to instigate such a search just yet might well arise from an uncomfortable feeling that by doing so he would be admitting that something, after all, might be sadly amiss. Which possibility could not, really must not, be considered.

  The bell rang for luncheon, and everyone assembled, with the exception of Miss Jessamy, who never ate at midday, just a piece of fruit, it seemed – and nor was Mr Iskander there, either. Enquiries from the housekeeper as to his whereabouts subsequently elicited the information that he had departed Charnley early that morning, leaving behind a nightshirt in a drawer and a bottle of macassar oil on the dressing table, though fortunately he hadn’t forgotten to leave a sizeable tip for the servants. He had asked with such assurance for the pony trap to take him to the station for the first train that Copley had assumed the family were aware of his departure. Gone, bag and baggage, without even a note or a word of thanks to his hosts! Disappeared, like the genie in ‘Ali Baba’! This was deplorable, and it was also unexpected. Whatever else, Iskander’s manners had always been impeccable.

  “He obviously couldn’t stand us one more day – he was probably as sick of us as we were of him,” said Daisy cheerfully.

  “Daisy! I will not have you speaking like that, of one who was a guest in this house!”

  Daisy stared round-eyed at her father, blushing to the roots of her hair, with difficulty stopping herself from bursting into tears. He had never before reprimanded her outspokenness. She was, after
all, known in the family for her irreverent comments, which normally evoked a tolerant smile. “I — I’m sorry, Papa.”

  His face cleared, he patted her shoulder. “Well, well. But no more of it, hm?”

  But Daisy had only been voicing everyone’s thoughts. Valery Iskander had not been a man one could be comfortable with. Doubtless he did very well in his own country, but he’d been out of his element here at Charnley Yet he had stayed on, seemingly unaware of overstaying his welcome. After more than a week, by which time everyone had said all they had to say to him, and conversation was beginning to reach the desperate stage, his going was undoubtedly a relief.

  Luncheon was announced. The saddle of mutton with red-currant jelly, the apricot tart to follow, were got through somehow, a strange affair without Beatrice presiding over the table. No one seemed to want to eat much. Everyone tried to avoid looking at the clock as the hands crawled round, and still Amory deferred the search.

  Eventually, telephone calls were made. The Jardines had an intricate web of friends and relations, measured by the thickness and complexity of Beatrice’s address book. But to tell the truth, it was impossible – ludicrous! – to go so far as to believe that she would have suddenly taken it into her head to visit any one of them, without prior warning or a word to her family. Nevertheless, Harriet took on the task of calling the likeliest, using more guile as to the reason for her calls, so as not to arouse undue alarm or suspicions, than she had dreamed she possessed. Only when she rang Stoke Wycombe did her flimsy pretexts fall flat.

  “What’s wrong, Harriet?”

  “Oh, Uncle Myles!”

  It was such a relief to pour it all out, to have the ear of someone who listened intently, put sensible questions and then, when all the facts had been made known, announced that he was driving over to Charnley immediately, despite the fact that he’d only just arrived back home from there. As she hung up the receiver, Harriet felt better just for knowing he would soon be on the scene, with his gift for organising, and his common sense and indefatigable energy.

  “Come, Amory, what are you thinking of? Marcus is right, an immediate search must be made of the house, the grounds,” he announced immediately on his arrival, clasping his friend’s shoulder. It was now late afternoon, there was not a moment to be lost, he urged.

  “Very well.” Amory was pale and tense, outwardly controlled but betrayed by the constant tugging at his long upper lip, and by his eyes, which by now were frantic. It was as apparent to him now as to everyone else that he really had no choice but to agree.

  A search of the grounds was commenced by all the outdoor staff, supervised by Wycombe, aided by Marcus and two of the footmen. After a while, Amory took himself off to make a personal search of the house, moving methodically through the splendid confusion of rooms, every nook and cranny of which he had known intimately for fifty years, sparing no effort, even to ransacking through its long-forgotten attics and squeezing through the window which gave out on to the leads, from where he’d shot at pigeons as a boy. He searched through chests and trunks and the little corner room off one of the staircases, always known as the priest’s hole, though whether it ever had been used as that was a moot point. He omitted nowhere, not even the cellars – but he found nothing. And what had he expected? That Beatrice, of all people, had suddenly lost her mind and had wandered off to one of these farthest reaches of the house and got herself trapped, locked in, perhaps fainted? Well, an accident of some sort was the only possible explanation that was now lodging uneasily in everyone’s mind.

  No one yet had mentioned dragging the lake.

  The searchers returned, without success. It had grown too dark to carry on, but they were prepared to start again in the morning, at first light. A hush gradually settled over the house, servants tiptoed about as if there had been a bereavement, irritation and incomprehension turned to real worry and finally, as the unnatural day dragged on into night, dread. Nothing in the bewildered family’s well-regulated lives had prepared them for this feeling that they were all lost in the dark, wandering without any landmarks. They simply had no idea what to do. There was no precedent to follow because nothing like this had ever happened before. People – especially someone as well-conducted and predictable as Beatrice – did not simply disappear into thin air.

  Then the certainty that she must turn up, somewhere, that she would be found, ill or injured – even Daisy’s wild surmise that she might have been abducted, and some sort of ransom note might be expected – was eventually rudely scotched by Hallam’s report that certain of Beatrice’s belongings had also disappeared.

  “You are sure you are not mistaken?” asked Amory, blankly.

  “No, sir. A grey walking costume and a small valise, underclothes and her silver-backed hairbrush,” Hallam recited stiffly, her hand to her flat bosom. “It was only when I noticed her hairbrush missing that I thought to check on her other things.”

  Of course the woman was not mistaken about this. She knew every item of her mistress’s wardrobe intimately. She was a disobliging creature, all too easily disposed to take the huff, but there was no denying she was utterly dedicated to Beatrice and all her concerns and was without doubt blaming herself for not having checked it earlier. It must have cost her a great deal to report on what she had discovered, for there could now no longer be any doubt that Beatrice’s disappearance had been a deliberate act.

  It was unclear who first made the connection between her disappearance and Valery Iskander’s unscheduled departure. Perhaps it was Amory who saw the connection first, from whose lips a shocked exclamation burst. It was followed by a stunned silence. Daisy’s eyes filled with tears, horrified that her flippant remark about the two running off together had been nearer the truth than anyone could have realised, and fervently hoping that Vita would not remember it.

  Vita, however, was struggling against her own unworthy first thoughts: how could she do this to me? Why did she not at least wait until after the wedding? For she knew now that if the unthinkable should turn out to be true, then Bertie’s mother would never allow him to marry her, Vita, the daughter of a fallen woman. Through some oddity of his father’s will, Lady Rossiter more or less had control of her son’s fortune until he was twenty-five, so Bertie would have no choice. Still, she was ashamed of herself for thinking these thoughts at a time like this and hoped the tears would not fall. She looked at the floor, in case Harriet divined what she was thinking – she was always so quick to latch on to these things.

  But Harriet, too, was busy with her own reactions, endeavouring to convince herself that such a thing just wasn’t possible. Of course, women before now had caused scandals by eloping or bolting with unsuitable men – look at Millie! – but there had never been a breath of anything scandalous or indecorous connected with Beatrice – a little flirting, perhaps, here and there, but that was the commerce of fashionable society, and with renowned beauties such as Beatrice, it was understandable, and did not count. And, well … Iskander!

  As for Marcus – his first instinct after the revelations had been to rush upstairs and into the west wing to find Rose Jessamy. Preoccupied with her work, it had barely seemed to register with her when he had told her earlier that his mother was missing, but Marcus knew she would, all the same, have heard and remembered it. She was so sharp and penetrating, so defensive of her position as an artist, it was easy to dismiss her as self-absorbed, yet he’d found that her judgement of people and situations was usually cool, but right. If there had been anything between his mother and this fellow Iskander, Rose would have been the one to notice. He longed for her calm detachment. But he restrained himself, knowing instinctively that she would certainly tell him that his place, at the moment, was here with his family.

  “Even if one can begin to contemplate such a thing happening, Father,” he said, “Mama would not have failed to leave a note to tell you, at least, what she intended. She is meticulous—” He broke off, flushing, running a hand through his hair. “Tha
t sounds r-ridiculous, in the circumstances, but even so, I’m sure she w-wouldn’t …”

  Wycombe said, “As a matter of fact I rather agree with you, Marcus. Simply by going away like this at all, your mama hasn’t acted in anything like her usual rational way, so leaving without a note of explanation might be difficult to believe, but must be accepted.” His thoughts were in turmoil. Good God, this was the very devil! Of all things, he hadn’t expected this. “Well, he’s capable of it,” he said grimly at last, voicing a coda to his own speculations, barely aware that he had spoken this last aloud.

  “But – Beatrice?”

  “Beatrice too, Amory, I’m afraid. We’ve all underestimated her. There – there have always been unexplained depths to her-” He broke off abruptly. “I should not have said that, I am overstepping the line.” Yet despite his bracing attitude, which was to be expected of one who had confronted and been in charge of worse situations than this, there sounded to be some underlying shock, as if something in him that he was not able to accept had been challenged.

  “No, no, Myles,” Amory replied. “We must look the truth in the face. But before jumping to conclusions, we must be absolutely certain. All this is speculation. We have no means of knowing if she really has gone with Iskander.” He added with an unexpected touch of bitter humour, “But if that is the case, it is to be hoped he’s rich. She has taken nothing with her of any consequence, according to Hallam. Except the new garnets - and those,” he added with some irony, “are of little value, compared with some of her jewels, and unlikely to bring in enough to keep Beatrice in anything more than gloves and stockings for long.”

  Marcus said, suddenly, “This is a temporary madness! She will return, I know she will. Nothing would have made her leave us all like this if she were in her right mind!”