‘That’s what treaties are for, Alice,’ he said slowly, as though explaining to a small infant. ‘We’re committed. We can’t escape trouble. Don’t you ever read the newspapers? Britons living on the Continent are fleeing in their thousands. They’re abandoning businesses to get home as soon as possible. Trainloads of them at Charing Cross and Victoria. See here, what it says.’ He jabbed at the front page. ‘They’ve travelled for hours and they’re telling tales of harassment and sometimes outright hostility. It’s clear they’ve seen some horrors, too. Mark my words, within days we’ll be in the thick of it.’
‘I hope Summerhayes won’t be affected.’ Life for Alice would always be played in a minor key. It was the small scale that mattered. The small people like herself, who were picked up by tides they could not control and thrown hither and thither.
‘We’ll all be affected. Can’t you get that into your head?’ He shrugged his shoulders in despair. ‘You seem to have no more idea of what we’re headed for than the Bank Holiday crowds on Brighton beach. They might be a little more subdued than usual, but they’ve no real understanding of what’s coming.’
She was suitably chastened but also frightened. Seeing the expression on her face, he said with heavy humour, ‘Comfort yourself with the fact that at least we have a common enemy now – the Hun. The suffragettes have laid down their little hatchets and union leaders are no longer talking strikes.’
She hardly heard him; fear of the future had taken hold. She half rose from her chair and then sat down abruptly. ‘We must think what’s best to do. We’re so close to the coast here that we could be in real danger. The Germans could be on our beaches in no time. There are already refugees in Steyning. Mrs Lacey saw them and thought they must be Belgians. They were talking a strange language.’
‘If the Germans do invade, it’s far more likely they’ll land on the east coast. Yarmouth or Cromer.’
‘They might come south,’ she said timorously. A whole new raft of anxieties had descended in a matter of minutes, and the dinner party had drifted from sight. ‘Perhaps we should move. For a while at least.’
‘What are you talking about? Where on earth would we move to? Back to Birmingham?’
‘Somewhere in the countryside,’ she said quickly. Even the Germans might be preferable to a return to Birmingham. ‘North of London maybe.’
‘We’re moving nowhere,’ he said forcefully. ‘If they invade, we stay and fight.’
‘But, Joshua…’
‘Not another word. Where is your backbone? Think of the brave men on the Titanic. That was the Empire spirit at work. And the way Captain Scott and his party met their death only this year.’
She thought about them and it didn’t seem to make it better. ‘The children – William, Elizabeth.’
‘Elizabeth will be married very soon and Audley will keep her safe. As for William, he’ll be miles away, back at school.’
She kept herself from pointing out that having a son miles away at a time of national emergency was hardly comforting. The mention of Giles Audley had brought to mind yet another anxiety, one that so far she had managed to suppress in the hectic preparations for the evening.
‘About Elizabeth’s marriage…’ she began. ‘Do you think it’s an entirely sensible thing at the moment?’
His stupefied gaze suggested that the laboratory specimen had climbed out of the test tube and suddenly begun to speak. ‘What’s got into you today? For God’s sake, you’re giving a dinner for the man this very evening. Giving it so we can get the marriage settled.’
‘I know,’ she said miserably, ‘but I’m not sure it’s what Elizabeth wants.’
‘Elizabeth doesn’t know what she wants. And what she thinks she wants has nothing to do with it. It’s a good marriage. She’ll adapt soon enough.’ He heaved himself out of the inadequate chair and thumped to the door.
Alice was left to fret. Her husband appeared to think the match was a deal already signed and sealed, and tonight was simply a celebration. The lure of an aristocratic connection was blurring his vision, but it wasn’t blurring hers. Their daughter was unpredictable and Alice knew the alliance was far from finalised. Elizabeth had certainly seemed to like Giles Audley. When she’d come upon them in Amberley’s dilapidated rose garden, they had been talking together as though they were old friends, and her heart had lightened at the sight. But since that day, she’d been unable to coax a word from her. Elizabeth had remained resolutely silent on the subject. Every time she had tried to raise the matter of a future wedding, the girl had smiled gently and then almost imperceptibly melted away. It had been like trying to catch a will o’ the wisp. There had been no outright refusal to contemplate Audley as a husband, but neither had there been the enthusiasm of a bride in the making.
And her concerns had multiplied tenfold when she had seen the Kellaway boy put his arm around her daughter, and seen Elizabeth sink into him for comfort. That moment had brought back memories of Thomas. Unwelcome memories: the same attraction, the same likely disaster. It had been deeply worrying and still was. Her mind skittered around the scene she had witnessed. There was that whole dreadful business of the dogs. She’d tried to push it from her mind, but she sensed something bad was going on. Henry had laughed it off. He always did. From his earliest years, he’d laughed off whatever awful things had happened around him. Derided accusations, deflected suspicions.
She laid aside the seating plan. Like the food and the flowers and the wine, it was simply a distraction from more important problems. If Elizabeth refused Giles Audley, what would happen to her daughter? Might she be tempted by the young man who had been working at Summerhayes, tempted to jettison all she’d been taught to value? Or might she reject the whole notion of marrying? She had once, Alice remembered rather too clearly. Now the spectre was emerging from the shadows again. Might Elizabeth begin to talk once more of setting up as an artist, of earning her living by her own hand? It didn’t bear thinking of. And then there was Henry. If Elizabeth refused Giles, how would her brother react? What would he say? What would he do? That was probably the most frightening question of all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
While her mother wrestled with that evening’s entertainment, Elizabeth spent the day in her room. She was safest there from intrusion. The studio was too open to unwelcome visitors and she doubted she could have painted a brushstroke this morning. There was a tension running through the entire household and she felt it acutely. She had heard Joshua’s announcement, the news that could determine their country’s fate, and so had everyone else. They were all waiting for the unspoken blow to fall. And she had a distinct reason to hide away. She had no wish to meet Alice and be subjected to an interrogation ahead of this evening’s gathering. For days, she’d slid from her mother’s conversation. She had seen Aiden only once since he’d left Summerhayes, but it made no difference. She could not marry Giles Audley. She should have put a stop to the fantasy days ago, but she had clung on, hoping the idea would die a natural death. She knew that when she refused him, she would meet a wall of resistance and be made to suffer hours of persuasion. Persuasion that would turn to hostility and then to anger, that she’d rejected a perfectly decent man when no other plan for her future was to hand.
She’d had a plan once, but it had withered in the days and months after she’d returned to Summerhayes. She hadn’t wanted to go to London, but her father had insisted. He’d wanted the world to know that a man born into the poorest of families and reared in the slums of Birmingham, had a daughter grand enough to be presented at court. Elizabeth’s Season was to be a masterstroke for both of them. But when she’d returned home, unapologetic that she’d rejected two sterling offers of marriage, he’d been furious. She had been equally angry and announced that she would never marry, never be beholden to a man. And when her father had jeered at her and asked her how in that case she proposed to live, she had told him she would be an independent woman, and thrown into the fray the idea that had grown in significan
ce during those tedious months of the Season.
It was a gauntlet cast at her parents’ feet and their reaction had been so averse that she had never dared speak of it again. The notion that their daughter might work for a living seemed at first to bemuse them, then when they realised she intended to earn money as an artist, they’d been rendered dumbstruck. When finally they’d found the words to condemn the project, she’d been left in no doubt what her future would be if she were ever to leave the family home and try for an independent life. She would be rendered penniless; it was for her own good, her father had said, that she realise this. How then could she even begin? She had no money of her own and no knowledge of how to sell her work in order to raise sufficient rent for a single room. Her retreat from the dream she’d carried was craven and she’d spent months scolding herself for lacking courage, but that had altered nothing.
Until Aiden Kellaway had arrived in her life. She had been attracted to him from the very beginning, but she could never have envisaged a future together. For weeks, she could only guess at his feelings, but she knew now that he loved her and wanted to be with her. Wanted to be her husband. Her hostility to marriage was no more. She wanted to wed him; it was so evidently right. Aiden’s love had transformed her vision of the life ahead. Yet, had it? She would not be allowed to marry him. She was still not of age and her father would refuse his consent. And if she were to marry without consent and by special licence, what then? He was a skilful architect. He was energetic, enthusiastic, primed to make a good life. But he was at the outset of his career and it would take time to build a secure future. Even if that future had lain in London, their marriage would have been a leap in the dark for them both. But it didn’t lie in London. He was going to Canada. She understood his reasons clearly enough, but Canada! An unknown land, a pioneer country, thousands of miles from home and family. Thousands of miles from Summerhayes.
‘I’ll find work,’ he’d reassured her and she believed him. ‘I’ll find enough to keep us in good heart. You won’t live as lavishly as you do here, but I’ll make sure you’ve every comfort I can give you.’ His words had torn her heart in two.
‘I’d be a burden,’ she protested, ‘a millstone. I’d contribute nothing – just a few daubs on canvas. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be laughable.’
He’d taken her by the shoulders then and given her a gentle shake. ‘Don’t dare to speak of burdens. We’ll be a team. I’ll design the buildings and you will paint the pictures to hang on their walls.’ He raised her hands to his lips. Then his mouth found hers again.
‘And that’s not just a dream,’ he murmured, when he finally broke away. ‘You’ll sell your pictures without a doubt. I’ve seen them – they’re good. They’re very good.’
Whatever he might say, it was a dream, an enticing picture of a shared life, loving each other to the full, labouring together to build a future. The very stuff of dreams.
‘I’m travelling to Southampton the day after I finish my work here. I need to book the first available passage to New York. Then from New York, I’ll make arrangements to travel on to Ontario.’
The dream died. He was going. He was going, but she was not. Her ties to family, to Summerhayes, were too strong for her.
‘I can’t do it,’ she whispered in a broken voice. ‘I can’t leave my family.’ At the best of times, she would find it impossible, but now with William ill and war on their doorstep, how could she abandon them?
Her whisper died into silence. He’d slipped off the seat then and knelt on the gravel beside her. His expression was grave but his eyes were filled with love. He had taken one of her hands in his, and then the other, and gripped them tightly. ‘I understand that what I’m asking is enormous. I truly do. But you must understand, too, that I cannot stay here, or my life will be over.’
They had remained like that, hands clasped, Aiden kneeling by her side, for minutes on end. When finally he spoke again, his voice rang with fierce sincerity. ‘If you marry me, Elizabeth, I will honour you and care for you. I will love you more than I can put into words. But I cannot stay.’
*
His words had been with her ever since. They’d buzzed and bounced their way through every thought, one minute tormenting her with the promise of happiness, the other taunting her with reality. The sun was still flooding her bedroom and the fresh, clear air of evening spilling through its open windows, when at precisely six o’clock, Ivy appeared at her mistress’s door. Her maid’s appearance signalled it was time to dress for the most difficult dinner of her life. She had only herself to blame for her predicament. She should have been bolder and braver and put a stop to the pretence days ago.
An hour earlier, she had snatched a glance at her mother’s seating plan and seen that she had been placed opposite Giles Audley. She would be required to talk to him across the table, talk to her neighbours on either side, on everything and nothing, to smile and to laugh as though there were little more at stake than a good dinner and a glass of wine. But all the time, she would be conscious that at any moment she must find the words to disappoint the kindly man who sat opposite. And all the time, too, shimmering and dark, a much greater pain, the knowledge that she was losing the man she loved. The man she could not marry.
Ivy was in boisterous spirits. ‘It will be Saturday, Miss Elizabeth,’ she said a trifle breathlessly. ‘We’ve just this minute arranged it with Vicar.’
She looked blank. ‘The wedding,’ Ivy prompted.
‘This Saturday? You’ve brought it forward again?’
‘We had to.’ For a moment the girl’s face clouded. ‘But Vicar has been that kind. He says, in the circumstances, he’s happy to marry us at short notice. And Eddie’s checked with the Horse and Groom and they don’t mind a bit.’
‘But why the rush?’
‘You’ve not heard then? Your pa don’t stop talking about it.’
‘You mean the news of Belgium?’ She couldn’t see how that would make Ivy and Eddie marry at such breakneck speed.
‘There’s an ultimatum. I think that’s what it’s called. If Germany don’t respond by midnight tonight, we’ll be at war.’
‘And Eddie wants to go and fight? Surely he doesn’t have to?’
‘No, he don’t. But he won’t rest till he’s enlisted. He comes from a soldier family,’ she said sadly, as though that were sufficient explanation.
Elizabeth was stunned. Since her father’s dismal announcement early this morning that Belgium had been overrun, she’d been closeted in her room and heard nothing more.
‘What about the other men?’ she asked.
‘They’m all talking about it. They’ll be marching to the recruiting office soon enough, you’ll see… I’ve run your bath, miss,’ Ivy remembered suddenly.
She walked across to the girl and gave her a hug. ‘Don’t despair. The ultimatum might work and then Eddie won’t need to leave.’
She was needful herself for it to work. If there were no war, Aiden might be persuaded to stay. They could steal away, obtain a special licence and marry somewhere – London perhaps. They’d find a room and Aiden would get work and she might sell a few pictures. Eventually, her family would see what a wonderful husband she’d won, and accept her marriage. They’d be happy for her and everyone would be reconciled. But she knew she was whistling in the wind.
When she emerged rosy-faced from the bathroom, she saw that Ivy had laid out the cream silk her father had bought her for the London Season, together with a pair of flimsy cream sandals.
‘The dress is a little grand for Summerhayes,’ she remonstrated. ‘I think we’ll have to find another.’
Ivy shook her head. ‘We can’t do that. Your ma wants you to look the very best. She says this evening is a big occasion for you.’
‘More like a big occasion for my mother. It’s the first party she’s thrown in all the time we’ve been at Summerhayes.’
‘Mistress is in a right tizzy, to be sure. But you’ll still want to look
your best.’
She gave up the argument. ‘The cream silk it is then.’
Ivy draped her figure in layer after layer of undergarments to a resigned silence. A corset to compress the waist and hips, a square-necked camisole, and then a pair of frilly knickers buttoned at the waist. Silk stockings with their attendant garters came next and finally a lawn petticoat laid out in a circle on the floor. She stepped into the centre and Ivy lifted the petticoat up and buttoned it at the waist. At last, she was ready for the dress.
‘That’s some beautiful.’ The girl stood back and gave a happy sigh at the finished picture. ‘Shall we use the gold and rhinestone comb?’
‘If you like,’ she said indifferently, walking over to the window and looking out at the scene she loved. The air might be soft but the greenness of the world had largely disappeared beneath a harsh sun, and the once verdant lawn was now bleached and tired.
She walked slowly back to her dressing table. Her hair was brushed into a shining mass, then piled high on her head and swept into a soft swirl with the gloriously ornamented comb to fasten it. Her mother could not complain of her appearance tonight. She was expected to look as though she had made an effort, and the ornament, the hair, the flowing silk dress with its ruched lace bodice encrusted with beads spoke effort loudly.
She’d been uncaring of the final effect, but when she looked into the mirror, she was pleased with what she saw. Although her figure was slender, the cream dress clung to her curves in a sinuous fashion and its décolletage was tempting rather than obvious. She wished it were Aiden who would see her tonight. Her maid fastened the matching gold and rhinestone necklace around her throat and she was ready.
She took up the beaded evening bag and gave the girl a kiss on the cheek. ‘Next time, you must let me work as hard. I shall dress you for your wedding and make you the bride of the year.’
‘I couldn’t let you do that, miss.’ Ivy was scandalised.
‘You could – and on Saturday, you will.’
The Buttonmaker’s daughter Page 16
