Dreams That Veil

by Dominic Luke

  ‘It has taken him long enough to realize she is here.’ Roderick was scathing, went back to The Times.

  ‘The Colonel,’ Mama continued, still reading, ‘is looking forward to – to what? Really, his handwriting is atrocious! Ah, I have it: “I am very much looking forward to trying out my new motor—”’

  ‘His new what?’ Roderick dropped the newspaper in astonishment. ‘That can’t be right, Mother! The Colonel detests motor cars.’

  ‘It does seem unlikely, I admit, but it’s here in black and white.’

  ‘How nice of the Colonel to go to so much trouble,’ said Dorothea.

  ‘So much trouble, my eye!’ said Roderick. ‘He won’t lift a finger, you can be sure. He’ll expect everyone else to make the arrangements.’

  ‘In any case,’ said Mama, putting the note aside, ‘I’m not at all sure we can fit it in. There’s dinner at Brockmorton Manor, there’s the church fête: we are so very busy.’ She glanced out at the cedar tree and the grey sky beyond. ‘The weather does not look exactly promising, either.’

  ‘The weather may change by Monday,’ said Dorothea. ‘Oh, Aunt, we simply must go, if only to see the Colonel in a motor car.’

  ‘Very well, Dorothea, if that is what you wish. But we shall need to get organized. I shall reply to the Colonel at once.’

  Roderick, too, got to his feet, tossing the newspaper aside. ‘And I must get back to the estate records. The sooner I get through them, the better. They are too dull for words.’

  There was a general exodus, Dorothea, Rosa and Kolya following Mama and Roderick out of the room. The newspaper was lying on the chaise longue where Roderick had left it. Eliza picked it up. She read a bold, black headline: WAR DECLARED BY AUSTRIA. The Austrians, it seemed, were making war on Serbia. But Serbia – where was Serbia?

  She knew so little of the world. The academy did little to enlighten her. But the academy could not be ignored. Come September the dreary routine would begin again.

  She pressed her face against the window, looking out at the space of gravel, the heavy, dipping boughs of the cedar tree, the garden wall with its neat rows of red bricks. She sighed. Her breath misted the glass. The world outside melted away.

  ‘I really must,’ said Mama at luncheon next day, ‘go to Lawham this afternoon. I can’t put it off any longer.’

  She had a list of things to do. The Colonel’s picnic had only served to make that list even longer.

  ‘Let me help, Aunt,’ said Dorothea. ‘I shall go to Lawham with you.’

  Roderick announced that he would go too: there were papers he wished to consult lodged with the family solicitor. And so after luncheon, Mama, Roderick and Dorothea got in the motor and were driven away by Jeff Smith. Eliza stood on the front steps and watched them go. The sound of the motor faded. Silence descended. Another long, languid afternoon had come to Clifton.

  It was warm, hazy. The gardens were green and verdant, everything growing apace. In the broad daylight they looked nothing like a jungle: they were far too ordered and homely. Bees were busy about the lavender. Becket pottered short-sightedly amongst his onions, leeks and carrots. On the lawn, the shadow of the mulberry tree faded in and out in the fitful sunshine. Eliza, acting on impulse, climbed unladylike (Mama was safely in Lawham) up into the branches to perch amid the leaves like an exotic bird, like a. . . .

  But she didn’t know the names of any exotic birds, only parrots like Polly. Polly was not a good example, caged as she was, a captive.

  The lawn was a secluded corner, bounded by crumbling brick walls and a tall privet hedge and the raised patio with the old summerhouse. Eliza lay along the knobbly branch, balanced by her dangling legs, drowsy, lethargic. When Kolya appeared, rambling across the grass, it was too much of an effort to hail him. She watched through half-closed eyes as he sat down on the time-worn swing, stretching his legs out. He had no jacket and no hat. His flaxen hair flopped forward as he leant over his book. She expected him at any moment to notice her but when at length he looked up he was so deep in thought that he hardly seemed aware of his surroundings.

  He went back to his book. Eliza closed her eyes. She could hear the soft creak of the swing as it rocked gently back and forth. She could hear the faint chuck-chuck-chuck of a blackbird. Remote on the edge of hearing there was a sound like the wind in the trees – or was it more like waves on a distant shore?

  Lulled by the peace of the gardens, she was all but nodding off when a new sound raised her from her torpor, a rustling and a laboured breathing. She opened her eyes to see Rosa walking across the grass, slow and ponderous in a loose blouse and bright, flowing skirt, her hair tucked into a headscarf. Rosa’s distended belly was both intriguing and disturbing.

  Kolya jumped up and helped her lower herself onto the swing. She sighed as she settled herself. ‘I grow weary with waiting. I have swollen ankles. My back aches. I am enormously fat.’

  ‘You are not fat,’ said Kolya. ‘You are pulchritudinous.’

  She smiled up at him. ‘Your word of the day? Do you still learn a new English word every day?’

  ‘I learn many words. You are fulsome and fecund and fertile: three new words. You look like a pagan mother goddess.’

  ‘I don’t feel like a goddess. I don’t feel fertile and fecund. I am a fraud. I’m not cut out to be a mother. Frau Kaufmann, childless though she is, has an air of matronly respectability which puts me to shame.’

  ‘You will be new sort of mother, progressive mother: you will lead the way.’

  ‘With your help.’

  ‘I will not be here.’

  ‘Why not? Where will you go? Back to London?’

  ‘Back to Russia.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Rosa reached out, took his hand. ‘What would I do without you?’

  ‘You have him now. You belong to him. He will not invite me to Clifton again. This is last time, to – what is phrase? Rub my nose in it.’

  ‘Oh, Kolya! He’s not like that! He could never be so petty!’ Rosa struggled to her feet. ‘What can I do – what would it take – to get you to stay?’

  ‘You know what I want,’ said Kolya hoarsely. He drew her hand to his lips, kissed it. ‘I long for you, yearn for you, hunger for you: there are not words enough in your English language. Ya tebya lyublyu.’

  ‘Don’t, Kolya, please don’t – you mustn’t be so cruel. I am a married woman.’

  ‘Marriage is bourgeois despotism.’

  ‘We live in a bourgeois society.’

  ‘Bourgeois society will soon come to end.’

  ‘Do you believe that? Do you really believe it? After living here at Clifton these last six months I’m beginning to think that nothing will ever change. Oh, Kolya, I wish I knew – I wish I knew!’

  Rosa flung her arms round him and he held her, stroking her gently. She rested her head on his shoulder and he stared over the top of it; he stared straight into the mulberry tree.

  Eliza in the tree went cold all over. He’d seen her. He’d seen her. He was looking directly at her. He said nothing, his face impassive, his pale eyes piercing her. She couldn’t stand it. She shut her own eyes tight, clinging to the branch.

  When after a time she opened them again, the lawn was green and empty. It was as if Kolya and Rosa had never been there. Had it all been a dream? But as she dropped down from the tree she saw in the grass Kolya’s book where he must have dropped it. It had a plain cover with the word Chernyshevsky embossed on it. Eliza for a moment hesitated then quickly reached down and picked it up, tucking it in her pocket.

  She reached the house just as the motor returned. More time had passed than she realized. Dorothea took her hand. They walked up the steps.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Dorothea, ‘I will visit Hayton Grange. I have been putting it off and putting it off but now the time has come. I should have made my peace with Henry long ago. Will you go with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eliza.

  Hayton Grange. The name was so familiar. It wa
s so near: just off the Newbolt Road, the other side of the village. Yet as Eliza walked hand-in-hand with Dorothea up the drive in the dappled shade of the overhanging trees of Grange Holt, she could not remember ever being there before. It was absurd. In all her fourteen-and-a-half years, she must have been to Hayton Grange at least once. But the memory wouldn’t come.

  The house itself nestled beneath the steep green slopes of Windmill Hill. It was a neat, compact, brick-built structure with tall chimneys and many latticed windows. Here Lady Fitzwilliam lived with her son.

  ‘Henry is a recluse,’ Roderick had said at luncheon. ‘He’s a cripple, hideously disfigured after his accident.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Roderick,’ Mama had reproved him. ‘Henry damaged his spine. He is unable to walk. That is all.’

  That was all. But that was enough. Eliza did not know quite what to expect as Dorothea rang the bell.

  They were shown into a rather gloomy, wood-panelled room. A fire glowed in the hearth even though it was July. Lady Fitzwilliam rose to greet them. She was wearing a simple, old-fashioned dress. Her hair looked a little dishevelled. But when you were used to Mama, anyone’s hair would look dishevelled.

  ‘My dears, what a nice surprise, so kind of you to call! Dear Dorothea – Mrs Kaufmann, I should say: it’s been too long. How well you look – and such lovely clothes! You will want to see Henry, of course. He is in the conservatory. He likes to sit there these days. I will show you. Follow me. This way. Mind the step. You know, I’m sure, Mrs Kaufmann – or may I still call you Dorothea? You know, I’m sure, that Henry can’t walk. Such a tragedy: for a young man in particular. But his spine, his legs. . . . Arthur Camborne says that if you stabbed Henry’s knee with a knitting needle, he wouldn’t feel a thing, not a thing.’ The unexpected violence of the image coming from the lips of a courtly old lady was rather disconcerting. ‘You may,’ Lady Fitzwilliam continued, one hand on the door handle, ‘find Henry has changed. He is not as . . . jolly . . . as he once was.’

  Jolly: had Henry been jolly? Well, yes, he had. He had possessed a sense of fun. Eliza had rather liked him. But it had been so long since she had seen him. Would he recognize her now she was so grown up? And what would Henry himself be like? Disfigured, Roderick had said.

  She experienced a catch of fear as Lady Fitzwilliam opened the door.

  The conservatory was a riot of greenery, crowded with potted plants of all shapes and sizes, steeped in bright daylight yet somehow cut off, the outside world invisible. Henry Fitzwilliam was sitting in a bath chair in the midst of it all. There was a rug over his knees, his shoulders were hunched. He was fatter in the face than Eliza remembered and his chestnut hair was greying at the temples but his thin moustache was exactly the same, he was instantly recognizable, not disfigured in any way. He did not seem to hear them come in. There was a vacant expression on his face.

  His mother touched him lightly on the arm. ‘Mrs Kaufmann, dear, come from Germany. And Elizabeth Brannan.’

  ‘Hello, Henry.’ Dorothea drew up a chair quite naturally as if there was no question of any awkwardness; she raised on Henry’s face a wintry smile.

  Eliza sat a little apart as the conversation stuttered a little before it got going: an ordinary drawing room conversation about the weather and the village fête, with polite enquiries after their health and Dorothea’s journey. Sitting back and observing, speaking only when spoken to, Eliza could not help but wonder if it would have been easier – less disturbing – if Henry had been disfigured. He looked so much the same and yet he was an empty shell. Or perhaps not quite empty. It was as if (Eliza fumbled for the right words) something inside him – his spirit, his essence – had not so much died as fallen out of sight, like sinking into a deep, deep well. This was the man Dorothea might have married. He had been, so the story went, quite besotted with her. And now? Did he feel the same? Did he feel anything? Or was his heart paralyzed too: if you stabbed it with a knitting needle would he even notice?

  ‘My dears!’ Lady Fitzwilliam groped for the arms of her chair. ‘I haven’t offered you any tea! Where are my manners? I will see to it at once. Where is that girl when she’s needed?’

  Watching her disappear amongst the foliage, Henry said, ‘Poor Mother. She has such a lot to cope with. I have proved something of a disappointment. Father made a success of his life – he was an MP, he was knighted – whereas I can’t even give her grandchildren, something any man could do.’

  ‘You too have been a success, Henry,’ Dorothea insisted. ‘There would be no BFS motors but for you. It was you who persuaded Uncle Albert that motors had a future. And what about your racing? You were quite the celebrity.’

  ‘But now—’

  ‘Now you must turn your mind to other things, your next achievement.’

  ‘That is what people tell me: Mother, Camborne. It’s a case of adjusting, they say, of getting used to things. But it’s been a year and. . . . Well, I know now how that boy Richard felt.’

  ‘Richard was awfully fond of you, Henry. So many people are. That won’t change. I have never forgotten how nice you were to me the night I arrived at Clifton – you, before anyone else.’

  ‘You sat on my knee. You were so small and thin. There were holes in your boots. I gave you champagne.’

  There was a flicker in Henry’s eyes as if dying embers had briefly flamed into life. But at that moment Lady Fitzwilliam returned and the talk turned to other matters.

  The tea arrived. Balancing a cup and saucer on her knee, Eliza noted that Henry had fallen out of the conversation. Was he even listening now?

  ‘These goings-on in Europe,’ said Lady Fitzwilliam: ‘the archduke, the Austrians. “Gravest apprehensions”, it said in the newspaper this morning. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all. If only Joseph were still alive. Joseph knew how to explain things.’ Her husband Sir Joseph Fitzwilliam had been dead twenty-six years.

  The visit came to an end. Dorothea getting to her feet kissed Henry on the cheek. Henry, Eliza told herself, would shed a single tear that would leave a glistening track down his cheek. But when she looked his cheeks were dry and the flicker in his eyes had gone out.

  Lady Fitzwilliam saw them to the door. ‘God bless you, my dears. Do call again soon. But what am I saying? Why not stay for luncheon? There’s no need to rush off!’

  Dorothea smiled gently. ‘Dear Lady Fitzwilliam, luncheon was hours ago, it is nearly teatime now.’

  ‘Teatime? Well, yes, I suppose it is. How time flies: how it flies, never to return.’

  The door was shut. They turned away. Eliza was assailed by a keen sense of sadness. For Henry of all people to have been singled out: Henry who had never hurt a fly. A tragedy for a young man, Lady Fitzwilliam had called it. She was right. Thank goodness, then, that such terrible accidents were so rare. But how bright the world looked after the seclusion of Hayton Grange!

  Dorothea took Eliza’s hand. Together they set off up the drive towards the Newbolt Road.

  ‘Are we to wait for Mr Antipov?’ said Mama in the drawing room the following day, a Saturday.

  ‘Antipov is prostrate,’ said Roderick cheerfully. He and Kolya had been out that morning for another driving lesson. Their motor had broken down the other side of Bodford. They’d had to trek back across country. ‘Our little stroll quite exhausted him and his feet are covered in blisters. It’s what comes of wearing second-hand boots that don’t fit properly.’

  ‘And Rosa?’ said Mama. ‘Is she coming down?’

  ‘Rosa says she has a headache,’ said Roderick. ‘I told her to rest.’

  Mama pursed her lips and Eliza wondered if she was thinking of the orange, purple and emerald-green walls of Roderick’s bedroom, enough to give anyone a headache: that was Mama’s opinion, anyway. Roderick was more casual about it. He had mocked the colour scheme when he first saw it but had not had the room repainted. As for the ruined furniture, well, not everything that was old needed to be preserved in amber. T
he whole house could do with a good clear-out (he had not said this in Mama’s hearing). If Rosa wanted to waste her time doodling then it was her lookout; but it was better that than smashing windows or setting fire to pillar boxes. Eliza couldn’t help feeling that Roderick was secretly rather pleased by what Mama called Rosa’s eccentricity. He was certainly scathing of many girls who were the opposite of eccentric, the dull sisters of his Oxford friends.

  ‘Very well,’ said Mama, ‘if we are all here, we may as well go through to luncheon.’

  As they took their places in the dining room, Mr Ordish appeared with another note from Colonel Harding: should the picnic be cancelled in light of the grave news?

  Mama looked up from the note. ‘What news? Does anyone know what he’s talking about?’

  ‘I expect he’s referring to the European crisis, Mother.’ Roderick shook out his napkin. ‘The Times was positively lugubrious about it this morning. How did it go? “The prospects of a general war have become more imminent”, something in that line.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Mama laid the note aside, dismissive, as the soup was served. ‘I thought the silly man had heard something important. All this fuss over nothing won’t have any bearing on the picnic. If we don’t have a motor, however, Roderick—’

  ‘I told you, Mother, I was using the old landaulet. We’ve two other motors in perfect working order. I would be more worried about the weather if I were you.’

  Taking up her spoon, Mama glanced out of the window. It had been a dull, rather close morning with rain in the air. ‘I do hope it stays fine for the fête tomorrow.’

  Dorothea had not started on her soup. ‘Does the Colonel really think there may be a war?’

  ‘The Colonel always thinks there’s going to be a war,’ said Roderick. ‘He’s been predicting the next one ever since we finished giving the Boers a good drubbing. There won’t be a war. Even if there is, it won’t affect us. Why should we care about Serbia?’