With the girl’s hostile gaze still on her, Jane forced herself to assume a look of confidence as she mounted the stairs. Her hand trembled slightly on the balustrade. She caught a glimpse of the drawing-room as she passed ‒ pale green, and gold and white, with mirrors reflecting the brilliance of crystal. The stairwell was panelled in light pine ‒ the house was soft and feminine … Anne’s house.
On the next floor she found the ante-room to Anne’s bedroom ‒ a prettily furnished apartment that made her more than ever conscious of her torn gown and matted hair, the lice on her body. She stiffened herself to approach the door and knock. With her hand poised, she heard Anne’s voice ‒ she had almost forgotten the peculiar beauty of that voice, its sweet, low pitch, and how it sounded forever on the edge of laughter. While she stood there Anne actually did laugh ‒ that clear unabashed laugh, not now with the charm of long ago when Anne had been in love, but charming still.
It unnerved her a little to realize that her mother was not alone, but Jane was determined that she would not return to the hall and sit waiting meekly under the eyes of that sullen girl. She knocked firmly.
‘Come in!’ Anne’s tone was indifferent, as if she had been expecting the knock.
The room had a warm, intimate kind of perfume which touched Jane’s senses even before she fully took in the scene. She entered slowly, and had an instant impression of a frivolous kind of disorder, of luxurious things, of carelessness. There was a scatter of clothes about, and an embroidered glove lay foolishly in the centre of the carpet. A caged bird was singing in the sunshine by the window.
Anne was naked, except for a shawl which lay across her shoulders, propped up against pillows on a tumbled bed. The bed was a huge one, with great carved legs, and hung with green silk. Anne’s breasts were firm; like a young girl’s. She displayed her body with a careless pride in its beauty.
Without turning she said. ‘Patrick … I rang hours ago! What’s kept you?’
When she got no answer she glanced questioningly around. Her features froze in an instant of disbelief.
‘Jane! … Mercy upon us!’ She half rose on the pillows, and dropped back again, as if the breath had been knocked out of her. She gestured helplessly towards Jane, then looked immediately across at the window seat.
A lean, dark-haired man, who sprawled there in shirt and dressing-gown, straightened as he became aware of Jane’s presence. Then unhurriedly he rose to his feet.
Jane looked from one to the other, and her cheeks burned a dull red. The rumpled bed and her mother’s nakedness were clear enough signs, even without the presence of the man; probably the bed was still warm from his body. It was too late now to efface herself; she must appear to them both like a naive little fool, who knew no better than to blunder into the room where Anne lay with her lover. She knew now the full extent of the malice of the servant girl in sending her here unannounced. She was furious at her own stupidity.
Neither of them seemed perturbed. Anne had recovered herself, and now she gestured imperiously.
‘Jane! … what in the world are you doing here? Come here, child … how you’ve grown! … what a sight you look!’
Jane went towards her. Anne’s voice had been warm and surprised, but not angry. In the next second she felt her mother’s arms about her in a light hug, and her face brushed those firm breasts. Anne smelled of scents and powder ‒ a smell that Jane recalled from a long time ago. There was another scent ‒ the erotic scent of a woman whose flesh is desired and loved.
Anne released her, and carelessly drew the shawl over her bosom. For some seconds she gazed at her daughter’s face in silence, then she put out her hand and swung her in the direction of the window.
‘Look, Ted ‒ my daughter, Jane. Grown up ‒ and looking like a gipsy. Jane, this is Lord O’Neill.’
He bowed. ‘I’m happy to know you, Miss Jane.’
His accent was soft. She had heard this voice in gentlemen who used the coaches to and from Liverpool ‒ the Irish voices with music in them, and easy emotion. He spoke with polite gravity, as if she were a great lady, and entitled to his consideration. As she curtseyed, she examined him more closely … a tall man, younger than her mother, a graceful, slender-hipped body, a fine linen shirt with costly lace ruffles. She saw this, and saw also, that with all the gravity of his deportment he was laughing just a little at her. It wasn’t unkind laughter ‒ he was too lazy, and, at the moment, too content, to be unkind. He was merely amused.
She didn’t like his being amused. With deliberate hauteur she looked away from him.
Anne had been studying her. ‘Jane, you’ve grown into a woman while my back was turned. How old you make me feel! … a hundred and two years, and toothless!’
Then she laughed, displaying for O’Neill’s fascinated eyes her small, pretty teeth, and drawing her body up straight, so that her breasts pointed through the fine wool. O’Neill joined in the laughter, his gaze resting on her fondly.
Jane stood between them, feeling clumsy and gauche, feeling less than a woman because Anne was more of a woman than anyone she had ever laid eyes on. There were refinements in Anne’s sensuality that she had never been conscious of before; it was easier now to see her as a man did. Like most other women placed beside her, Jane felt inadequate. She backed towards the door, preparing to excuse herself.
An agitated knocking halted her.
‘Come in,’ Anne called.
The door was flung open.
‘Oh, ma’am! It wouldn’t have happened if I’d just been there. I slipped out for a second to give the butcher a piece o’ me mind about the joints he’s been sendin’ ‒ and I get back an’ what do I find but that stupid young piece has let a stranger in … An’ upstairs, too, an’ all …’
Jane stared in astonishment at the speaker, a young man whose dead white face was topped by a great shock of lank black hair. He was tall and angular, dressed in servant’s clothes which fitted him, but seemed to hang limply on his thin frame. He couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, judging by the way he moved, Jane thought, but he gave the impression of someone much older. His brow was furrowed with lines of worry, and his whole body seemed to be screwed up in a ferment of anxiety. He looked only at Anne; no one else mattered to him.
‘Calm, Patrick! ‒ be calm! There’s nothing to get in a state about …’
‘Well, saints in heaven, ma’am, I wouldn’t have let anyone get past me …’
Anne held up her hand for silence. ‘I know you wouldn’t, Patrick, but this is one occasion when it’s just as well you weren’t there.’ She gestured towards Jane. ‘This is my daughter, Patrick.’
He swung his head slowly.
‘You remember,’ she prompted. ‘My daughter … who lives at Hampstead.’
He gazed at her wonderingly, shaking his head. ‘Heaven help us! It can’t be true! Why, ma’am, she’s the spittin’ image of y’ …’ His face broadened into a kind of foolish grin. ‘Why … I would have known her anywhere … so like you, she is, ma’am.’
‘We’re not as alike as all that, Patrick …’
‘Well, now …’ O’Neill drawled. ‘I’m hardly telling the difference between you!’
Anne said firmly: ‘There is a difference, and you all know it, so stop flattering me.’ She looked across at Patrick. ‘Miss Jane will be staying here … for the time being. We’ll need the small room upstairs made ready … and … oh, yes ‒ it will be breakfast for three instead of two.’
Patrick favoured Jane with a low, untidy bow. ‘Twill be a pleasure to serve you now, Miss Jane. An’ forgive me, miss, for the disturbance … it’s so strange to be seein’ y’, an’ all, after hearin’ about y’ all these years, and not really thinkin’ y’d come t’ life one o’ these fine days …’
Anne clapped her hands together. ‘Patrick, we’re hungry. Talk to your heart’s content when our bellies are full.’
He made his strange ducking bow again. ‘T’ be sure, ma’am. At once! Right awa
y!’ He left the room swiftly.
Anne flung aside the covers. ‘Jane ‒ reach me that gown, please.’
Jane watched while Anne discarded the shawl, and put on the green velvet robe. She slipped out of the high bed, tying the gown at her waist. Her limbs were beautifully formed; she seemed no older than Jane herself.
She looked across at her daughter.
‘Child ‒ you should eat before you talk. I won’t ask you yet what brings you.’ Then she gestured towards the end of the room. ‘You’ll find water in the pitcher behind the screen ‒ and soap and comb and things … Later Patrick will leave some in your own room.’
Jane moved obediently towards the screen, wishing that Anne didn’t have the effect of making her feel so coarse and dirty, wishing also, that O’Neill didn’t have to be present while she washed. She felt like a child being sent away in disgrace. And yet it wasn’t, she decided, Anne’s fault. There weren’t any rules for dealing with a daughter who appeared from nowhere, looking like a bedraggled tramp ‒ especially with a lover to witness the scene.
As she reached the screen, Anne’s voice arrested her again. ‘Just one question, Jane ‒ only one.’
‘Yes?’
‘That black eye? … how did you get it?’
Jane didn’t answer at once. She stood looking at the toilet table, abstractedly noting its dainty appointments. With O’Neill looking on, she didn’t know what to say to Anne. She shifted from one foot to the other, fidgeting with the heavy brush, twisting it in her hand. Then turning, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. The bruise under her eye was puffed and ugly; there was dried blood on her lip. She looked hideous, slatternly, like a brawling street woman.
Abruptly then, she turned back to face Anne and O’Neill. ‘I’ve worse things than a bruised eye.’
She let Sally’s shawl drop to the floor. The torn gown and her bare bosom were fully visible to them now. On her left breast were the weals where Harry’s teeth had bitten into her flesh.
‘I got the black eye from the same man who tried to rape me. All he got for his pains was a broken leg.’
Calmly she picked up the shawl again and threw it across the chair. ‘So that’s why I’m here ‒ I’m running away.’
She stood there only long enough to see the expression change on both their faces. Anne had grown pale, and O’Neill looked as if he had suddenly seen a different person in the place of the one who had been there. It gave her a bleak kind of satisfaction to know that she had taken his attention from Anne.
Then she moved behind the screen, and one by one began to strip off her clothes until she was naked. As they dropped, each one, to the floor, she felt that she was shedding all of herself that belonged back at The Feathers. She washed every inch of her body, freely helping herself from all the toilet bottles to scent the water. Carefully she put on the dressing robe which Anne brought to her, an elegant, blue thing which was only a little worn at the wrists. Without tongs she couldn’t achieve the fashionable curls she would have liked, but her hair combed down loosely on her shoulders looked even better, she thought.
A different and more calculating face stared out at her from the mirror. Whatever happened now, good or ill, she could never go back to being the girl who had climbed into the hay-loft less than a full day ago to watch the London coach depart.
II
They ate breakfast in the ante-room. Jane knew that she had the full attention of both Anne and O’Neill, and she savoured, not only their attention, but the luxury of the room, the fine china, the silk gown she wore. More than that she was not a stranger at Anne’s table; she sipped her chocolate slowly, and a sense of intimacy and ease began to flow through her. Patrick had lit a small fire in the grate. The sun and the rosy fire-light mingled on the faded carpet; Jane could feel the warmth and the peace as if they were things she could put her hands on.
Anne and O’Neill remained quiet to listen to her; as she relaxed she grew expansive, finding better and less clumsy phrases to explain her arrival, to tell of what had happened yesterday at The Feathers. It was important to her that they should feel the strength and the enraged despair of Harry Black; she sought words to tell them of the power and influence Harry’s father yielded, of his arrogant pride in his own position and achievements. It was important to her own pride that they should know she hadn’t come on any slight and foolish pretext.
She was also aware of the need to be brief, and not tearful. Anne was a woman of laughter, who wanted only to be amused; it would be fatal to make the mistake of boring her, or wearying her with a tale of trouble. Anne had always dismissed her woes with a shrug; Jane knew she must quickly learn to copy her.
O’Neill was full of noisy indignation. ‘Damn it, Anne! ‒ the fellow ought to be punished!’
Anne shook her head slowly. ‘No, Ted ‒ it can’t be that way. Jane did the best possible thing to cut her losses and run for it.’ She smiled wryly. ‘She’s a pretty woman ‒ and there’s always, I hope, a little danger in being pretty.’ Then she spread her hands. ‘If Black doesn’t pursue her, that’s the best we can hope for …’
‘Nonsense!’ O’Neill cut her short. ‘There isn’t a chance that he’ll do anything about it. I’ll warrant the man’s not such a fool as his son. He’ll know that once Jane’s come to you, he wouldn’t stand a chance. I know that kind ‒ big men in their own little field, but scared as the devil to chance themselves beyond it. If Jane had stayed around he’d have to bring charges to save his face ‒ now he’ll have every excuse not to.’
‘But if he should …?’ Jane asked.
O’Neill looked at her, his grey eyes softening. ‘What are you thinking, my dear? … are you thinking that people go to the gallows or Botany Bay for less?’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t trouble yourself about it ‒ you’ll not see the gallows or a prison ship ‒ not while I can help you. If you’d stayed at The Feathers it might have happened ‒ here with Anne you’re safe. Black would know well enough that her influence matches his. He’ll leave it alone, you’ll see.’
Anne gave a short laugh, and shrugged. ‘Would to God that my money matched his! Then I’d go into the court with the King himself and expect to win!’
They made it sound so easy, these two, Jane thought. They could joke, and shrug their shoulders, and the menace no longer existed. O’Neill could use the weight of a title, and a word spoken in the ear of a man belonging to his club, or with whom he passed the time in the coffee houses. Anne could probably use influence in certain places also, if she had to. It was no harder than that. They had made their decisions and cleared their minds of the problem. Now they wanted to put it aside, find something to laugh at, as Anne had done over Tom Black’s money. If they were going to forget about it, Jane decided that she could forget too, almost as easily. It was pleasanter to revel in luxurious rooms and silk gowns than worry about what might possibly happen to-morrow.
Anne yawned delicately, like a cat, and fell to talking with O’Neill about a party which a woman called Myra Burke would give that evening. ‘… They say she’s used most of the money old Benson left her to decorate the new house. But just think ‒ she has such frightful taste!’ She gave a mournful little pout. ‘All that beautiful money going to waste on Myra Burke, when I could use it so much better.’
O’Neill crumpled up his napkin. ‘Well ‒ I don’t care if the woman hangs her walls with tapestry or old bags so long as I win some money this evening. Blanchard took a load off me last night.’
‘Of course you’ll get it back,’ Anne said quickly. ‘It always comes back somehow ‒ if the luck’s with you.’
O’Neill turned to Jane. ‘Listen to her! ‒ There was never a woman courted luck so faithfully. I’ll swear she bows to it three times before she goes out in the evening.’
Anne shrugged. ‘What if I do? ‒ all the gods must have their offering. If I believe in luck hard enough …’
She glanced towards the door as it opened, and broke off her sentence. The half-de
fensive smile she had worn became tender and warm.
‘And here’s William come to bid us good-morning,’ she said softly.
Jane turned her head slowly; she almost didn’t want to look. It was impossible not to hear the love and protectiveness in Anne’s voice; she hadn’t realized before that she was jealous of William.
William was tall for his age, and was every inch Anne’s child ‒ except that his eyes were dark and framed with heavier brows than hers. He had the same red hair, and features that were curiously strong and defined for a child; here also were Anne’s graceful, easy movements. He wore a dark velvet jacket that made him look like a young prince. It was clear that he had known of Jane’s arrival; he moved towards his mother immediately, but an inquisitive, eager smile had already started on his lips, and he looked directly towards Jane. He responded with a childish brevity to Anne’s kiss.
‘William ‒ this is your sister, Jane. She’s come down from Hampstead to stay with us.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I know. Patrick told me ‒ he’s in a bother about it. Betty packed her bags and went this morning ‒ and he has no one to help him get the room ready.’
Anne’s brow darkened. ‘So Betty left! Well ‒ there’s one ungrateful baggage the less for us to trouble about.’
‘She says she’ll be back, Mamma ‒ she wants her wages.’ William said it as if servants’ leaving with wages unpaid was nothing new to him. He moved around the table towards Jane. He held out his hand to her.
‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ he said. ‘Patrick says you’ve come from Hampstead. Is that a long way?’
‘Quite a long way,’ Anne said, a trifle irritably. ‘It’s a long pull for the horses up to Hampstead.’ It was the first time she had made even the vaguest reference to the distance as a reason for her long absence from The Feathers. Jane knew that Anne would never make more of an excuse than this.
Jane held William’s hand briefly. She felt no warmth towards him, only a jealous suspicion. This good-looking little boy had no business to be so self-possessed, so sure of Anne and of everything about him. He spoke with Anne’s clear tones, and her inflections ‒ he was everything that contact with Anne had made him. She fiercely envied him the years he had spent in this house, and the confidence they had bred in him. She was tongue-tied besides him, and angry because he had destroyed the mood of intimacy she had revelled in.
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