Jane’s fingers followed his; the dog’s skin had almost the texture of the fabric in her lap. ‘Why do you call him General?’
‘He’s called General after great-great-grandfather Blake.’
‘Great-great-grandfather Blake? … was he a general?’
William’s fine eyebrows shot up. ‘Why yes! Didn’t you know that? I would have thought that Mamma would have told you!’
‘But who was he?’ Jane demanded impatiently.
‘Why … he was a general, and he fought under the Duke of Marlborough. He fought with him at Blenheim … He’s in all the old books about the wars. Mr. Taylor has read some of them to me.’ His smooth child’s brows wrinkled in astonishment. ‘Do you suppose Mamma forgot to tell you about him!’
‘I expect so,’ Jane answered dryly. Whatever Anne’s motive for not telling her about the Blake background she didn’t imagine it was forgetfulness. But she didn’t want to waste thought any longer over Anne’s motives; she wanted to revel in the knowledge of what was, suddenly, and incredibly, hers. It gave her an awareness of identity to hear William group her with a family which had existed before she was born; she wasn’t accustomed to the idea of belonging to someone. Always there had been just Anne, and, beyond her, a blank. William had peopled that blankness and made it alive; there had been a great-great-grandfather and he had been a general ‒ there were even history books to prove it.
Jane touched William’s arm. ‘What do you know about him? ‒ tell me!’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember all of it. Blenheim’s somewhere over in the Low Countries, isn’t it?’
Jane didn’t know, but she nodded encouragingly. ‘Yes ‒ I think so.’
‘Well, they won a great victory there, and great-great-grandfather Blake was there with Marlborough all through it. Mamma said he brought back a lot of booty from the wars … gold and tapestries … silver plate … things like that.’
Jane stared at him wide-eyed. ‘What else?’
William cast back in his memory in an effort to satisfy her. ‘Well … I can’t remember much else. Except … except I remember Mamma telling me that great-great-grandfather was all set to be made a lord ‒ or something of the sort ‒ and he offended Marlborough’s wife, the Duchess, Sarah. The Duchess was the Queen’s greatest friend, so of course he didn’t get the title.’
Jane gave a little gasp. ‘Is this true?’
William looked pained. ‘Why yes ‒ it says so, right in the books. All except the part about the Duchess. I told Mr. Taylor, and he believes it ‒ he says it’s the only reason he could understand, why great-great-grandfather wouldn’t have had a title.’
‘Well ‒ imagine that!’ Jane’s tone was dreamy; she was wrapped already in the wonder of discovering a past for herself, a past in which great and famous names jostled one another. There had been money as well ‒ gold, William had said, and silver plate and jewels, probably ‒ and a family of whose blood she was. They had been people of position and prominence ‒ all dead now, and vanished, but it explained why Anne moved and talked with that faint arrogance and authority. It explained many things ‒ why William was brushed with the same dignity, why she herself had gropingly sought something beyond Harry Black. She knew that her hunger over these years at The Feathers had not been only a longing to be with Anne; she had wanted identity, had wanted to know that there were people and a place from which she was sprung. Her thoughts now were confused and excited; she reached out greedily for all that William could give her.
‘What else do you know … about them?’
‘Them?’
‘Yes ‒ the family!’
‘There isn’t a family.’
‘What? ‒ none?’ In the few minutes William had been talking she had brought to life a host of personalities centering round the General ‒ a wife, children, a house and all its accoutrements … grandchildren, and their children, who would be cousins to William and herself. She had fashioned them in her mind because she wanted them. Now William had wiped them away.
‘Only grandfather ‒ that’s all.’
‘You mean Anne’s father ‒ no one else?’ She was sadly disappointed; the phantom world narrowed down to only one man, and he, she thought, would be an old man.
‘Mamma never spoke of anyone else ‒ she had no sisters or brothers. She told me about a cousin, a little boy, who lived with them for a while. But he went away ‒ to France, Mamma said.’
‘Where did they live? ‒ where does Anne’s father live?’
William was becoming wearied by this questioning game. Anne’s family had never troubled his thoughts greatly, except that he had had a child’s pleasure in seeing the General’s name in the history books. But there was too much happening all about him to leave time for speculation about people who were dead. He was puzzled by Jane’s eagerness, and worried because she expected him to know so much.
‘Some place in Kent, near the sea, I think. Mamma says they used to have sheep ‒ I would have liked to have seen the lambs,’ he added regretfully.
‘What was the name of the place?’
William screwed up his face wearily, pushing his memory to one last effort. ‘I don’t …’ Then his expression lightened. ‘Why ‒ yes I do remember! They lived on the Romney Marsh, by the sea, in Kent. The house where Mamma grew up is called Blake’s Reach. Yes! ‒ that’s it! Blake’s Reach!’
She was almost satisfied ‒ she had enough for the present to think about, to savour. Quietly she took up the silk again, and began making her minute stitches in the edging of the fichu. Blake’s Reach … near the sea; a place called the Romney Marsh, where there were sheep. She turned the few details over in her mind lovingly; they belonged to her now, as much a part of her, and belonging as much to her, as they did to William. She looked at the child’s head, with its untidy red locks bent towards the dog. They shared something in common now ‒ something neither of them had ever seen.
They were together only a few minutes more before Anne returned. Below they could hear the carriage stop, and the bustle that surrounded her entry. She called instructions to Patrick over her shoulder as she came into the room; her lovely face looked a little drawn and pale above the dark fur wrap, but her eyes glowed softly with pleasure as she saw Jane in the big chair, and William on the stool close to her knee.
‘Well, my loves.’
She held out her arms to William, but her glance included Jane. Again Jane was made acutely aware of the smell of her perfume, the rustle of many silk petticoats as she bent over her son. Anne’s presence always seemed identified for Jane as much by smell and the rhythm of her movements, as by the sound of her voice.
She threw off her wrap and settled herself in the chair opposite Jane. William came forward with a stool to put under her feet. He dragged his own stool midway between the two women.
‘Ah … William! You have two women now to fuss about. Have you been watching Jane sew?’
He nodded briefly; negligently stirring with his foot the pile of gowns on the floor. ‘Jane sews so fast ‒ like this!’ He gave a comically swooping imitation of the needles flying in and out of the fabric.
Anne smiled; she bent down and examined one of the dresses closely, her fingers running critically over the hem, and a darn in the lace.
‘How exquisitely you sew,’ she said quietly. Her eyes met Jane’s over William’s head. ‘I’ve rarely seen anything to equal this.’
Jane nodded. ‘Sally was a beautiful needlewoman ‒ when she had time away from the kitchen.’
‘I suppose she taught you to cook as well?’
‘Why, yes … You couldn’t help learning … seeing it day after day. I’ve not such a light hand as Sally with pastry, but my sauces are good.’
Anne looked at her for a moment in silence. ‘Well …’ she said at last, ‘you’ve learned things you’d never have glimpsed if you’d been living here.’ She fingered the lace again. ‘It’s no mean accomplishment ‒ Sally’s taught you more than I know.�
�
Jane wanted to say that Sally hadn’t taught her to move across a room gracefully, hadn’t been able to teach her how to fill awkward moments with light chatter, how to sit in a chair with perfect stillness. These were Anne’s gifts, precious things that Jane hungered for. Bending her head, she scowled a little at the sewing in her lap.
‘Oh ‒ it’s well enough, I suppose,’ she said dully.
William was picking through the gowns on the floor. ‘You wore that to a ball once, didn’t you, Mamma?’ he said, poking the cream silk.
She nodded. ‘That was the last time I wore it ‒ some fool spilt wine there on the side. Jane will have to take out that panel. That blue should look well on you, Jane.’ She sighed a little. ‘I thought it was a shade too bright for me last time I wore it.’ With an almost unconscious gesture she passed her hand over her cheek, as if she felt the lines of age gathering there. She got to her feet, restlessly walked to the window to look out at nothing, then came back and looked over Jane’s shoulder at her work. Jane had seen her hurried, nervous glance towards the mirror as she passed. Her white hands looked transparent as they gripped the chair-back.
Suddenly there was a little exclamation from William. He looked quickly and guiltily towards Anne. In his hand he held the wide-brimmed velvet hat; in the other hand, forlornly, lay the velvet rose that had trimmed it.
‘Look … look what I’ve done!’
Before Anne could speak Jane reached out and took the rose and the hat from him. ‘It’s nothing, William! Just a stitch here … and one here … Looks better than it did in the beginning, doesn’t it!’
Anne shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘You see, William … we have someone now who can mend things. Jane’s clever with her fingers … very clever. Much more than any woman we’ve ever had in to sew.’ She paused. ‘I wonder …’
Jane sensed the request that was coming; she guessed the pieces of mending waiting, the things that the maids who were never paid had refused to do, the underwear rolled in the drawers laid aside for the stitch they never got, the fraying cuffs on William’s coat. Everyone who loved Anne served her; it was natural for her to ask it, and to expect an acceptance.
The request didn’t come because Patrick interrupted them. His long neck poked around the door urgently.
‘Ma’am, Lord O’Neill has just sent word that you’re to dine an hour earlier ‒ with Mr. Richard Burgess.’
‘Dick ‒ why Dick’s back in town!’ Anne’s face was pleased and animated. ‘Why, I wager he’ll clean out Myra Burke’s tables. Dick’s always lucky ‒ it’s lucky just to be with him. I’ll win to-night, my loves! I feel it in my bones that I’m going to win!’
Patrick had advanced into the room; he held a candle in his hand. ‘And is it so poor we are that we can’t afford to have a little light now! Sure ’tis wearing yer eyes down to the sockets ye’ll be, Miss Jane.’
As he spoke he lit two candles on the table, and hastened to draw the long curtains. Jane was surprised to see how the dusk had gathered, how little shreds of mist had collected under the eaves of the houses opposite. Without noticing it, she had been leaning towards the fire-light to see her work.
Now Patrick had gone into the bedroom ‒ setting a taper to the fire laid there, lighting the candles. Jane saw the colours of the room leap into life, the soft green of the bed hangings, the sheen of rosewood.
‘Isn’t it time now, ma’am, for you to be getting ready? Lord O’Neill sent word that he’d be round on the stroke of the half-hour, and here you are without your hair curled, and not even a gown laid out …’ He clicked his tongue. ‘An’ bad cess to that lump of a girl walking out this morning without even a word to a soul …’
As he talked he was busy about the room, taking out and arranging bottles on the toilet-table, folding Anne’s wrap, laying her hat away. He talked without self-consciousness, as if it was a habit of long standing; he knew Anne heard him, but he never expected an answer. His talk was a privilege that his devotion had earned for him. He enjoyed his monologue enormously.
‘An’ will you be wearing this white one again, ma’am? … sure, ye look like a queen in it, and there’s many who’ll be there this evening that I’d like to be gettin’ an eyeful o’ ye …’
Anne moved into the bedroom. ‘Yes, Patrick, that one … though Heaven knows I’m tired enough of it. I saw a lovely thing ‒ green ‒ at Seiker’s to-day. They wanted a young fortune for it, and I owe so much there already …’ She wandered to the toilet table.
Patrick came close to her. ‘An’ it’s yerself that’s not lookin’ too well, ma’am,’ he said, peering solicitously at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Yer not strong … I keep tellin’ ye yer not strong, an’ ye don’t get enough rest, and there’s all this comin’ and goin’ …’
Still clicking his tongue disapprovingly, he bent over Anne. As a matter of long habit, he began to loosen the hooks of her gown.
***
Patrick and William had gone, and Jane sat hunched on a stool watching Anne dress her hair. She was skilful, her hands moved swiftly, arranging, patting, pressing. The smell of the hot tongs invaded the room.
‘Just as well I’ve learned to do it myself,’ Anne said, looking at Jane in the mirror. ‘So many of these wretched girls are careless and stupid ‒ and before you know what’s happened, they’ve burnt a piece off. I don’t let anyone touch it now.’
Jane nodded. ‘You’re very quick.’
‘You learn in time … it takes patience in the beginning.’ She opened the drawer of the toilet table. ‘I have a pair of tongs here I don’t use. You can take them up to your room.’
‘I don’t know …’ Jane began. Then she stopped, unable to voice her thoughts.
Anne laid down the tongs. ‘You don’t know … what?’
Jane gestured helplessly. ‘So many things … my hair ‒ that’s just a beginning. How do I wear a hat like the one you wore this afternoon? How do I learn to say the right things …’ She clapped her hand over her left eye. ‘Why look at me ‒ I’m not even presentable!’
‘Hush!’ Anne said soothingly. ‘There’s much you don’t know, but you’re not a fool, and you’ll learn. You’ll learn very quickly, I promise you that.’
‘How?’
‘Soon ‒ soon enough,’ Anne said. ‘Almost before you know what’s happened. Or before I know …’
Jane straightened herself. ‘I won’t be round your neck long … you know that!’
‘What are you talking about?’
Jane looked at her without wavering. ‘I’m strong, you know. I haven’t been bred like you … to all this.’ Her hand indicated the room, the litter of the toilet table. ‘I know how to work. That’s all I know.’
Anne shook her head. ‘Too late for that, Jane. Too late, my dear. You’ve gone past that now ‒ very suddenly. If you had chosen to stay behind and marry Harry Black, you would have stayed within what you knew. You would have been safe there ‒ your future settled, nothing more expected of you. But you went beyond that. You asked for something more. We don’t know yet what that will be ‒ better or worse than Harry Black. We’ve got to think, Jane ‒ we’ve got to think about what’s going to happen to you.’
Jane shook her head, bewildered. ‘I get frightened when you talk like that. What is there for me? ‒ what can I do? There’s no money for me to stay on here … I can’t earn a living as a governess or anything like that. There’s nothing ‒ unless I’m a nursemaid.’
‘There has to be something! You’ll have to marry!’ She flung down the comb. ‘But where? … where? And how? If I let you out as Ted wanted, you’d be as much of a sensation as he believed. You’d have men flocking about you, the fools! But would there be one to marry you? … I don’t think so, somehow. That’s something I’ve learned from all these years. Only it would be harder for you. In two days the whole town would have named you your mother’s daughter. Do you see that, Jane? Do you know what I’m talking about? If you had said “yes�
�� when Ted asked you to go to the party this evening, it would have been the end for you. In a few weeks you’d have offers ‒ in a few weeks you’d be the mistress of some man, probably the one who could best afford you. It would go on like that ‒ and men never seem to marry their mistresses.’
‘It happened once,’ Jane said. ‘Viscount Hindsley … surely you …?’
Anne gave a little shrug of resignation. ‘But it didn’t happen. In the end it was just as if Johnny had never been … as if I’d had no right to him. He was so madly in love with me he was blind to everything else, but when he was drowned I felt it was because he’d gone against the rules. It’s perfectly natural to have a mistress ‒ but she isn’t married and allowed to bear children who succeed to the title and fortune. And it doesn’t do William any good to reflect that he might have been the heir of a rich man.’ Anne gave a little shudder; her face in the mirror looked haggard.
‘I know … I know …’ Jane said.
There was silence between them, and Anne began slowly to draw the bottles and jars towards her. Carefully, patiently, she began to apply the cosmetics, the orris root powder, the rouge, the burnt cork for the eyelids. Jane’s gaze never left her.
‘It’s money!’ Anne said suddenly. ‘It’s always money. Don’t let anyone ever tell you it doesn’t matter. It always matters!’ She met her daughter’s eyes firmly. ‘It wouldn’t have made Johnny come back to life for me ‒ no matter how badly I wanted him ‒ but it would have made things different for me after he was dead. It’s always easier to bear sorrow when there are not bills waiting to be paid.’ She gave a short, nervous laugh, ‘Well, at least it’s more dignified!’
She shrugged again. ‘Well …’ she added, ‘I suppose I’ve had my time, all the good years when it came to my hand whenever I wanted it. That was the time when I couldn’t go wrong at the gaming-tables ‒ I just couldn’t go wrong! And the men were generous in those days … and always the right ones seemed to come along when I needed them. I was younger, of course. Men are always more ready to open their purses to a young face. Well … well, I suppose mine isn’t young any more.’
Blake's Reach Page 6
