The Thief of St Martins

by Caron Allan

  ‘Do you have a beau?’ Imogen asked suddenly. To Dottie it was as if the whole room crowded in to hear her answer. She felt embarrassed.

  ‘Um, well yes, more or less. I am about to be engaged. When I’m twenty-one. So not until the end of March.’

  ‘How lovely!’ Imogen burbled. ‘How did he propose to you? I expect it was terribly romantic. And I expect he’s terribly handsome. And terribly romantic. Is he, Dottie? Is he terribly handsome? And romantic?’

  Dottie couldn’t help smiling. Imogen was like a little puppy eager to be played with. She seemed very young, and naïve.

  ‘Yes,’ Dottie said, ‘he’s very nice looking. And he can be romantic if I remind him.’ She was trying to make a joke of it, keep things light. But no one laughed or even smiled. There was an odd tension in the room that she didn’t understand, and she still had that feeling of addressing an audience in a kind of monologue.

  ‘Gosh.’ Imogen wrinkled her nose. ‘I’d hate to have to remind my beau...’

  ‘And what is this young man’s name?’ Cecilia Cowdrey enquired, cutting across her daughter’s chatter. Everyone was staring at Dottie.

  ‘His name is Gervase Parfitt.’

  Leo frowned. ‘I believe I know that...’

  ‘And what does Mr Parfitt do for a living? Or is he independently wealthy? I daresay he does not have an estate?’ Cecilia again interrupted. Clearly she conceded to no one.

  Dottie began to wonder if she’d fallen asleep in her bedroom at home and was dreaming this peculiar Austenesque scene. She resisted the urge to pinch herself to check she was indeed awake. Trying not to sound snippy, she said,

  ‘His father has an estate, but Gervase works for a living. He’s the Assistant Chief Constable of Derbyshire.’ She could hear the defiant-sounding ring in her voice and hoped she hadn’t caused offence.

  Cecilia nodded, apparently finding Mr Parfitt suitable, whereas Leo snorted and said, ‘Not exactly hard graft, I would imagine.’

  His wife June put a restraining hand on his knee, and said, ‘Leo,’ in a low disapproving tone. She frowned at him, though he appeared not to notice anything. They were all still watching her.

  Guy said, ‘A bit out in the sticks, Derby.’

  Imogen said, ‘How terribly romantic. Are there mountains and forests in Derbyshire?’

  Dottie smiled at her and was about to answer, when Leo chipped in with, ‘Don’t be pathetic, Imogen. Of course there aren’t. It’s a bloody industrial area. Mines. Engineering. Cotton mills.’

  ‘Really, Imogen, mountains? Forests? You are a frightful idiot.’ Guy laughed at her. The others—including June and Cecilia—joined in, shaking their heads at her ignorance. Dottie felt sorry for Imogen and wondered if it was always like this. If so, perhaps that explained her need to rush everything she said. Far from being immune to a lifetime of fraternal jibes, Imogen looked as if she were about to cry.

  ‘There is some lovely countryside,’ Dottie said, feeling a desire to defend her, and to soften Leo’s sarcasm. ‘Rather like some parts of Sussex, I imagine. Though Gervase actually lives a few miles across the county border in Nottinghamshire. He only works in Derbyshire. It’s quite a hilly area. Also close by in Nottinghamshire there is Sherwood Forest, of Robin Hood fame. Although of course, it’s more like little patches of separate woodland nowadays, rather than one huge forest. And there are plenty of very high peaks. The Dales are in Derbyshire, and the Peak District is only a little further. The Heights of Abraham are very high, and from the top, you can look across the valley to see Hardwick Hall. The little town of Matlock Bath, below, looks like a child’s toy from the viewing platform at the top.’

  Imogen shot her a grateful look and squeezed her hand.

  ‘I suppose it is convenient that one can carry on a dress-making concern wherever one lives, even in the outlying parts of the countryside,’ Cecilia said, and Dottie immediately felt furious at the implied put-down. What did Cecilia Cowdrey know of it, anyway? If she had heard anything about it from Lavinia Manderson, it wouldn’t have been couched in those terms, Dottie was sure. How often would Dottie need to explain that she didn’t run a mere ‘dress-making concern’?

  But before Dottie could say anything rash, Cecilia added, ‘Although I must admit I was surprised that Lavinia would permit you to do something so—so menial.’

  Dottie’s reaction must have been plain to see, for June hastily said, ‘Oh how clever you must be to be able to sew. You have a very keen eye, no doubt. My sewing skills are confined mainly to a little embroidery and that sort of thing.’

  Dottie simply smiled and nodded. She sipped her tea.

  Guy said, ‘Must save a fortune if a girl can alter her own duds.’

  ‘Oh do you? How clever you are! I love embroidery, but I can’t do clothes at all, they just don’t hang right.’ Imogen squeezed Dottie’s hand again.

  Dottie was relieved when June made a comment about the weather. From there, the conversation turned to gardening and half an hour later, a long, long half hour later, Imogen took Dottie upstairs to show her to her room. The group dispersed. Leo and June returned to their own home, promising to see Dottie at dinner. Guy wandered away murmuring vaguely about someone he had to see. Cecilia retired to her room with that overused excuse, letters to write. It was a relief to have a break from them. Dottie felt some of the tension leave her shoulders and neck.

  ‘You’ll be in here,’ Imogen said, throwing open a door to reveal a huge room dominated by a fully draped four-poster bed. Dottie’s luggage was there already; the suitcase was empty beside the dressing-table. She quickly found that all her things had been efficiently unpacked and hung up or placed in the drawers of the tall-boy. The shiny new briefcase lay, still buckled closed, on the edge of a little table crammed with ornaments beside one of the two floor-to-ceiling windows. Here, as downstairs, every available surface area seemed to provide a home for an antique or collector’s item. Statuettes and grimy paintings peered down at her from the walls and the top of the wardrobes, little brass and china things huddled closely together on the mantle-shelf and the shelves of the bookcase, perilously close to the edges. There was a tendency to cover furniture with draperies, too, and fringed edges hung here, there and everywhere, gathering dust, colours fading from the occasional ray of sunlight, stray loose threads dangling down in a highly aggravating fashion. As Dottie took in the scene around her, Imogen spoke from the doorway.

  ‘I’ll let you rest. Dinner’s at six o’clock prompt, Mummy doesn’t like to be kept waiting. But don’t worry, I’ll come and get you when it’s time to go down. We don’t dress, but if you want to have a quick wash and brush-up, there’s a bathroom along the hall, and the water will be nice and hot. Oh, Dottie, it’s lovely to have you here, you have no idea how lonely I get. Leo and Guy are too busy to bother with me, but now there’s you. You can’t know how much this means to me. I’ve always wanted a sister.’

  She was gone. Dottie walked slowly across the room to look out of the nearest window, still inwardly puzzling over what Imogen had said.

  When she said, ‘I’ve always wanted a sister...’, Dottie thought to herself. And even that, ‘You have no idea how lonely I get.’ Surely any company Dottie gave Imogen now would be lost again as soon as she left to return home? Of course, they’d no doubt make more effort to keep in touch once they’d got to know one another better, but even so, it seemed an odd choice of phrase.

  Dottie shook herself and forced herself to concentrate on the scene before her eyes. The room looked out on the back of the house. It was fully dark now, but by the light from the downstairs windows, Dottie could make out a small rose garden with formal edging almost directly beneath her room. It ran the entire width of the back of the house, from one outcrop of trees and shrubs to another, then out from the narrow strip of uninteresting paving immediately outside the back windows, down to the wide, long lawn beyond. A dark mass in the middle of the grass indicated the flock of geese were still there. Now
and again she heard them start up honking, if something had disturbed them. She wondered a fox didn’t get them, but then again, they were formidable birds, especially in a group.

  A gap between the hedges on the far side of the rose garden allowed access to the lawn. The trees came down on either side of it, as if a long band had been cut out of their number to lay the grass down. About a third of the way along, the ground began to slope away out of sight. Beyond this, Dottie could see the gleam of the water, the early rising moon shining on its smooth mirror surface. On the other side of the water, there appeared to be a rise of grass and the odd tree sticking up, that was all she could distinguish.

  Dottie closed the curtains and pulled off the comfortable, warm coat and skirt, and went to look for a not-too-dressy evening frock. She took her time, there was no hurry.

  Chapter Seven

  The tap on Dottie’s door preceded Imogen turning the handle, and, opening the door just a crack, she put her head through and said, ‘Are you ready to go down?’ Dottie was.

  Dottie wondered if Leo and June joined the rest of the family for all meals, because there they were again in the drawing room with Guy, Aunt Cecilia, and an older man who had to be Uncle Lewis sipping drinks and waiting for the call to the dinner table.

  At least this time they didn’t all fall silent and turn to stare at her as she came in, Dottie thought. She let Imogen go in front. But before she could do anything other than put a pleasant smile on her face, the butler ahemmed behind her and announced that dinner was ready.

  Uncle Lewis came across the room to lead them into dinner. He held out a hand to Dottie and just touched her cheek with a conventional kiss. He smiled broadly at her, though the smile didn’t seem to quite touch his eyes. Like her ‘cousins’, he seemed alert, watchful. But his greeting was bland enough. ‘Very pleased to meet you again, Dottie. Welcome to St Martins. I hope you’ll be very comfortable during your stay. Shall we go in?’

  She smiled and thanked him. Then Leo said something to his father, and somehow as they all moved across the cluttered hall to the dining room, Dottie found herself walking beside Guy. At the table, he held her seat out for her, and she thanked him and sat. He gave her that odd grin again. It made her feel as though he knew something she didn’t.

  As he went to take his own seat, the butler and the maid who’d opened the door to Dottie began to serve everyone. There was a heavy silence whilst everyone waited for their food. Not for the first time, Dottie felt there was a certain pomp and formality in the way things were done here. But eventually they all had their food, the staff withdrew, and dinner began.

  Conversation broke out among the three men seated in a cluster at one end of the table. Their favourite topic appeared to be fishing. At the other end of the rather over-long table, the ladies discussed the weather yet again with a surprising passion. Inwardly Dottie sighed.

  The only interesting point during the whole of dinner was when Dottie heard her aunt speak to the butler in a low tone.

  As he leaned towards her to pick up the plate, Cecilia said to him, ‘By the way, Drysdale, I believe a gold snuff box has gone missing from the little rosewood table in the morning room. It’s the one with the four-leaf clover design on the lid, the one that was my great-grandmother’s. Kindly look into that, would you?’

  He bowed and said, perfectly calmly, ‘Of course, Mrs Cowdrey.’

  ‘I told you, Mummy,’ Imogen said, but Cecilia simply said:

  ‘Shush, Imogen.’

  The ladies left the dining room almost the second Cecilia Cowdrey lay aside her napkin, following her from the room one by one. How regimented it all was, Dottie thought, and how like something from an earlier generation. Her own parents at home in London had seemed particularly relaxed or informal in their habits. Until now. The phrase ‘at home’ struck her deeply. St Martins could never be a home, she thought. Cluttered, dark, and far too big by modern standards. She was puzzled by how utterly different it was here to the way the Mandersons lived. How strange it was that two sisters could be so unlike one another.

  As they came along the hall, Cecilia Cowdrey said to Dottie, ‘Perhaps you might give me a few minutes of your time. I would like to consult you about a birthday gift for Lavinia.’

  ‘Of course.’ Dottie felt slightly puzzled. She was not aware that Cecilia was in the habit of sending a birthday gift to her sister, and in any case, the birthday, being in May, was still five months away. Then with a sinking sensation she realised this was merely a subterfuge to explain their private conversation. She followed her aunt into what turned out to be the morning room, just as cluttered as everywhere else, it seemed, whilst Imogen and June continued into the drawing room a little further along the hall.

  ‘Come in and shut the door,’ Cecilia said. She took a seat on one of the four sofas and indicated that Dottie should sit opposite her. Dottie almost knocked over a small table of knick-knacks as she squeezed past it to sit down. She bent to pick up a miniature oil painting in a gold frame and put it back in its place. There was a little bare square in the dusty surface of the table. Was that where the missing snuff box had been, she wondered. Her next thought was, with so much clutter, it must be very difficult to keep track of everything.

  ‘I thought it best to have a short talk about things,’ Cecilia immediately began. She leaned forward to take a cigarette out of the box on the coffee table and lit it. She closed her eyes for a brief second as she savoured it. ‘Ah that’s better. It’s a shame convention doesn’t allow a woman to remain at the dinner table and smoke along with the men.’

  ‘It’s your dinner table,’ Dottie said with a smile, aiming for a gentle joke. ‘You can please yourself what you do in your own home.’

  If her mother back home in London permitted such flippancy, here in rural Sussex, her aunt took a different view. She frowned at Dottie.

  ‘That’s quite obviously not suitable. Even when one doesn’t have guests, the conventions must be observed.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Dottie hastened to agree. She folded her hands in her lap and waited demurely.

  ‘I realise my sister has a different attitude to social mores, but I’m afraid I don’t approve of this modern laxity. Perhaps these things are all right in London, but here they are not at all acceptable in the homes of the better families.’

  Dottie again said, in her most demure tone, ‘Of course.’ She must remember to mind her Ps and Qs; it would not do to offend her aunt and uncle.

  ‘Now, I think we can overlook the confusion of your unexpected arrival.’ She looked at Dottie as if half-expecting an apology. Dottie waited, wearing an attentive expression.

  With a frown, Cecilia resumed, ‘I assume there are things you want to ask. Though for the life of me I can’t imagine what. But your aunt indicated that you had questions you wanted to ask me. Obviously, you now know that you are my natural child, and that you were adopted by my sister because it was impossible for me to keep you here. I’m sure you can see how impossible my situation was. And—I may say—twenty years ago, things were very different, such a subject could certainly not be discussed openly as we are now doing.’

  Dottie didn’t think this short private conversation constituted an open discussion but conceded that it surely had to be a difficult—even distressing—topic for her aunt. But now that she had the opportunity, she felt unable to voice most of the things she really wanted to know. Instinctively she knew that this woman was not as ready to be open as she stated, and Dottie struggled to think of something that seemed more or less harmless.

  ‘My mother—I mean...’

  ‘My sister Lavinia? The woman you always thought of as your mother?’

  ‘Yes...’ Dottie took a pull on herself. Why was she getting so emotional? She took a breath. ‘She said that the day that’s always been my birthday is the right one. So I was really was born on 31st of March?’

  There was another quick frown from Cecilia as she leaned forward to stub out her cigaret
te, and immediately reached for another. Lavinia Manderson didn’t smoke, and in her rather fastidious and somewhat old-fashioned way, did not really approve of women smoking, even in the privacy of their own homes. Dottie didn’t much care if women smoked or didn’t smoke. She didn’t like the smell or the way it turned your teeth yellow, those were her own reasons for not smoking. Cecilia Cowdrey, Dottie was realising, was more particular about social conventions and doing things the right way than her younger sister, yet she smoked rather heavily. Dottie found that curious.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course it is. Why on earth does it matter? I must admit, I’d expected some rather more searching questions from you than the date of your birth.’

  Dottie felt foolish, like a silly child begging for a party or to be given praise or attention. But she needed to know who she was, and it began with her beginning. She said, ‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter to anyone but me. It’s just that when you’ve always thought you were born on a certain date in a certain year, it’s nice to know in the light of—recent discoveries—if those basic facts are true.’

  ‘I see. I suppose if you put it like that. You are rather given to introspection, are you not? Not a healthy thing for a young woman. You should be thinking of others, not yourself. But you needn’t worry, you’re not older than you thought. To answer your question, you were born on the 31st March in 1914. You are still twenty, not twenty-one for another three months or so. The facts haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘For me,’ Dottie ventured, ‘it’s as if everything has changed. Everything I thought I knew is different. My mother is now my aunt, and my aunt is my mother.’

  ‘For God’s sake keep your voice down, you stupid girl! Do you think I want everyone to know all this?’