Sandringham Rose

by Mary Mackie

  As he made this speech, I was conscious that Basil Pooley had noted my agitation and was making his way towards me.

  ‘And to me he was my brother,’ I said. ‘My dearest brother. My dearest friend.’

  ‘Then we have a good deal in common,’ Turnbull replied.

  For a moment our eyes locked and I saw that I had wounded him. Though he was a solemn, humourless sort of man, his regard for Victor had been genuine. His earnest wish to atone for the accident, to make something good from it, made me warm to him despite myself.

  ‘Do you need some air, Miss Rose?’ Basil Pooley was beside me, his hand lightly under my arm.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Are you sure? You look a bit pale. If this here chap’s disturbing you—’

  ‘He’s not disturbing me!’ I denied, and shook the unwelcome hand from my arm with a glance that made him narrow his eyes as I turned again to the engineer, saying, ‘Mr Turnbull, forgive me if I spoke in haste. It has not been an easy day for me.’

  ‘I entirely understand,’ he assured me. ‘My dear Miss Hamilton, please believe that I am not a man to take offence at the expression of genuine feeling – not from you. I was exceedingly fond of your brother, though he too had a swift temper. I enjoyed sharpening my wits in discussion with him. I shall miss that. Perhaps you and I might share the same pleasure, on occasion.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I murmured, and found reason to move away.

  I hoped to leave Basil Pooley behind, too. Trying to elude him, I made my way among the company and sought the comparative quietness of the library, where a few gentlemen were gathered by the fire, smoking cigarettes and laughing – laughter that died abruptly as I went in. One by one, they threw their smokes into the fire and moved towards the door, nodding politely in my direction.

  I made for the farther of two big windows which looked out across a herb garden set out in squares delineated by box hedges, with beyond it a line of weeping willows marking the progress of the stream. The scene was desolate with damp winter.

  Behind me the door opened and closed again. Basil Pooley had followed me. Wishing that he would leave me in peace, I sat down in the window-seat, spreading my crinolined skirts about me, my face turned to the view.

  ‘You owe me an apology, too,’ my pursuer said as he paused beside me. ‘I loved Victor, you know. I was his friend – and his business partner, just like Turnbull.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then why aren’t I good enough to be allowed to look after you?’ He slid into the window-seat opposite me. ‘That’s all I was trying to do – look after you, the way Victor would have wanted.’

  From my eye corner, I considered him as he leaned towards me, hands on his knees, his dusty fair hair and fresh complexion vivid against the stark black and white of his clothes. Now thirty, he had learned to curb the worst excesses of showiness, his only item of jewellery that day being a thick signet-ring on his little finger. Despite the slight misalignment of a broken nose, he was a good-looking man, and there was true appeal in eyes like summer skies; they entreated me to be kinder.

  ‘I know,’ I said again, sighing. ‘And I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need for that,’ he replied softly, reaching as if to touch my hand. ‘Not between you and me, eh?’

  He seemed to have read more into my answer than I had intended, so it was with relief that I saw him draw back as a voice said, ‘Excuse me, miss – sir. Would you be Mr Pooley? Mr Hamilton asks that you join him, and the other gentlemen, in the drawing-room.’

  ‘Did he say why?’ Basil asked.

  The butler lifted his brows. ‘Mr Baines, the family solicitor, is with them, I believe.’

  ‘Ah. Then I’ll come right away.’ He rose to his feet, pausing to look down at me and add, ‘I’ll not be far away, Miss Rose. From now on. You can rely on me, you’ll see. I’ll be there.’

  I did not find this assurance of much comfort.

  The ‘gentlemen’ – my father, my uncles, Victor’s two business partners, and the family solicitor – were meeting to discuss the legalities. In the absence of a will, all that my brother owned would pass by law to his next-of-kin – to Father.

  * * *

  We returned to the farm, where I went early to bed and fell into a sleep deeper than any I had enjoyed since coming home. That, I presume, is the reason why I failed to hear any commotion until I woke suddenly to see a red glare beyond my curtains. After a moment I identified it as the sway and brightening of leaping flames. I slipped out of bed and, shivering in the chill, ran to look out of my window.

  A bonfire was blazing, on rough ground where a flowerbed was partly dug. Its brightness silhouetted a dark figure moving jerkily between the fire and a box that stood on the ground, each journey taking an armful of things from the box to throw on the blaze. Nor was he alone. As my eyes adjusted to the odd light, I saw Mama’s night-clad figure standing a few yards away, apparently pleading with him to stop.

  I threw up my window, leaned out, heard Mama’s plaintive: ‘Don’t do this, Will. Oh, please don’t! You frighten me. Please!’

  Father ignored her. He was bent on destroying whatever he had in that box.

  Knowing that someone had to intervene, if only to get Mama back into the house, I threw on a wrap and ran from my room.

  The door of Victor’s room was open, with a brass lamp set on the marble-topped wash-stand. Its light showed clothes spilling from wardrobe and drawers, books scattered on the floor. The glass-fronted cabinet which had contained my brother’s collection of hand-carved wooden engines stood open, some of the models missing, some splintered on the floor as if someone had stamped on them, others lying on their sides. In the centre of the chaos, cross-legged on the floor in his nightshirt, Johnny sat with his head bent over something he held in his hands, rocking back and forth, weeping.

  ‘Johnny?’ I breathed.

  His head snapped round, showing me his tears. ‘Father’s done it. He’s gone mad. He’s burning all Victor’s things. But he’s not having this. Victor promised that I could have it when he got a new one. I know he’d want me to have it. Wouldn’t he, Rose?’

  ‘What is it?’

  He opened his hands, showing me Victor’s big old turnip pocket-watch. Cased in silver, chased and engraved with a family crest, it had once belonged to Great-grandmama’s father, Lord Seward.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Grace’s worried voice enquired from the door of her room.

  I left her to look after Johnny.

  In the garden, Narnie was trying to persuade Mama to, ‘Come inside, Miss Flora, before you catch your death’, but Mama was weeping, imploring Father to stop what he was doing.

  He ignored her. His lean figure strode back and forth against the glare of the bonfire he had made, and with every trip sparks flew as he added more papers, more shirts, a broken carving of a railway engine… I felt sick. The heat from the fire seemed to reach out, wanting to devour me, making my skin break out in clammy sweat.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ I cried, running to catch his arm. ‘Father, you can’t!’

  He shook me off as if I were a fly. ‘He won’t be needing it. It must all be destroyed. All of it.’

  ‘Someone might be glad of those clothes!’ My hands to my throbbing head, I watched him fetch another armful – good underwear, and a pair of boots. ‘Father, it’s wicked to burn such things. Someone in the village could make good use of them. Victor would have wanted that. He wouldn’t have wanted you to throw away all his belongings. Give them away. Give them to the needy poor. Please!’

  He paused in his obsessional pacings to glower at me. ‘You always did argue too much, girl. Always think you know best. All right!’ On the words, he threw his latest burden full in my face and, as I shrugged free of the shrouding garments he said, ‘You dispose of them. Get rid of them how you please, but get rid of them. I want that room emptied. I want no reminders. Do you understand?’

  Without waiting for a reply he pushed pas
t me, to where Mama was weeping, with Narnie supporting her.

  ‘And as for you…’ he muttered as he paused in front of her. ‘Weep, woman! That’s all you know how to do. Work the handle and out comes the water. Like a mechanical doll. No real feeling in it, anywhere.’

  ‘Mr Hamilton!’ Narnie gasped in outrage.

  I doubt he even heard her. ‘You never cared for my son.’ He spat the accusation into Mama’s flinching face. ‘You were never a mother to him. Never! I curse the day my pity made me take you to my bed. There, that’s the truth at last. Weep on that, woman!’

  And he left us, making down the hill for the stables and his horse.

  Three

  Father did not come home, not that night or the next. Mama kept to her bed, racked with migraine. The household seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.

  In the meantime, Johnny and I cleared Victor’s room. Grace tried to help, but every few minutes she came across some item that brought back distressful memories and after a while she retreated, to share her tears with Mama. She said we should let the servants do it, but it seemed to me that such a personal task was best accomplished by someone who had loved Victor. I didn’t want the maids gossiping about the village with tales of my brother’s intimate possessions.

  One thing that most assuredly would have shocked the maids was a pack of cards printed with pictures of women in undress. Snatching them from the goggling Johnny, I threw them on to the fire and, as they burned to ashes, I lectured my young half-brother on the dangers of keeping bad company: Victor would not have known such abominations existed if he had not been led astray – most probably by Basil Pooley.

  We packed several boxes of clothes to be distributed in the villages, but despite Father’s orders we could not dispose of everything: Johnny desired the turnip watch, and a shirt-stud of gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl; Victor’s books I kept for myself, to replace those of my own which had vanished during my absence. Other things had sentimental value: a silk cravat I had tied for Victor on more than one occasion, and a dozen other small items, insignificant in themselves but to us redolent with memories of our brother. We shared them between us, keeping one or two mementoes for the others, and for the staff. The penknife I saved for Benstead, who had taught Victor to whittle.

  Finally, when all was done, the cupboards emptied and the bed left stripped, Johnny and I stood together in the doorway and looked at the awful emptiness we had created.

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ he said fiercely. ‘I shan’t forget him. I shan’t ever forget him, whatever Father says!’

  He turned and pressed his face to my shoulder, his young arms bony and painfully tight around me as he wept. I held him, stroking his hair, sharing his grief, my throat thick and my eyes wet, until he broke free. Without looking at me, he whirled and ran into his own room, shutting the door firmly.

  Later, unable to sleep, I lit my lamp and took one of Victor’s books down from the shelf. I had been surprised to find it among my practical brother’s collection, but I had always loved poetry and hoped it might soothe my spirit enough for me to sleep. The book fell open where a card had been left at a page where a pencil line drew attention to a poem beginning, ‘My true love hath my heart, and I have his…’ Intrigued, I turned the card over; it was a carte-de-visite, a misty sepia photograph of a smiling, rather plain young woman in a summer dress, with a parasol poised behind her bonnet. I squinted at it, trying to make out her face, not believing what I saw.

  If I needed confirmation, her name was written on the fly-leaf of the book of poems: ‘For Felicity Georgiana Wyatt, 17 July 1861’. Someone had given this book to Felicity as a gift for her twenty-first birthday. What was it doing in Victor’s collection?

  In my mind’s eye I saw again Felicity’s acute distress on the day of Victor’s funeral. I remembered, too, Victor flushing scarlet over a casual mention of Felicity’s name. The conclusions I drew caused me to write a note, enclosing the photograph and saying that I had found it in a book. Would Felicity like to meet, and talk about it?

  I had the boy Jarvis take it over to the Grange the next day. He returned with an answer from Felicity, requesting me to meet her in Feltham church.

  * * *

  Rooks croaked from dripping trees as I walked under the lychgate; a pigeon took off with a clatter of wings, a pheasant cried from an adjacent copse, and a rabbit’s white scut vanished among gravestones. Distantly through November mists came the sound of shooting.

  In the dim, cold quietness of the church, a figure stood by the lectern arranging chrysanthemums. She was dressed in unrelieved black – deeper mourning than etiquette required. But, to her, Victor had been more than a second cousin. All at once I was sure of that.

  My boots scuffed on the uneven stone slabs down the aisle, but though the sound seemed loud in that hushed place she didn’t look round. I paused a few feet behind her, saying softly, ‘Felicity?’

  She remained as she was, turned away from me, fiddling with the chrysanthemums.

  ‘You asked me to come,’ I said. ‘You wanted to talk?’

  As she swung slowly round I understood why she hadn’t spoken before: she had been unable to, consumed by such distress that her face was swollen, her eyes all but lost in pale, puffy folds of flesh. Her voice came out thick and cracked, hollow with desolation: ‘How can I bear it? Oh, Rose… He cannot be dead!’

  We sat in the front pew, talking in low voices, as she confessed her love for my brother. For a long time she had adored him from a distance, never believing he might care for her.

  ‘I had made up my mind to content myself with growing old alone, a maiden aunt to my sisters’ children. And then…’ Remembered joy gleamed through her tears like sunlight through showers. ‘I met Victor, by chance, at the home of a mutual acquaintance. Mrs Linnet Longville, do you know her?’

  I searched my memory. ‘No, I don’t believe so.’

  ‘She lives in Drayton village. In a pretty little cottage with a lovely garden. She keeps bees. She gave us some honey.’ Seeing that it meant nothing to me, she went on, ‘Chloe and I went to call on her, with some sleeve-patterns which Mama had promised, and Victor was there, taking tea.’

  Mrs Longville, wife to a sea captain who was frequently absent, was a person somewhat lacking in breeding but with a kind heart and two beautiful daughters. She had contrived to leave the pair alone for a few minutes and, ‘Oh, Rose!’ Fresh tears sprang from Felicity’s eyes. ‘Victor had planned that meeting! He felt as I did! During all my years of agony… he had felt just as I did!’ Sobbing, she buried her face in her mittened hands.

  Other meetings had followed, snatches of conversation after church, and another covert rendezvous at the home of Mrs Longville, ‘… who was never far away,’ Felicity hastily assured me, her pale cheeks stained with magenta. ‘Victor would never compromise me, you know that, Rose. He’s so…’ Wincing at the slip, she corrected herself with a catch in her voice, ‘He was… so strong. So very strong. He fixed his mind steadfastly on his goal and he never faltered from it, however long the road ahead, however steep the climb. Stubbornness, he called it, but I call it strength of resolve. An innate sense of honour. Victor always did what was right.’

  ‘Yes, that’s so.’ My brother’s sense of ‘what was right’ had at times been uncomfortable to live with. Nevertheless, it had been part of what made him as he was, and I too had loved him.

  He and Felicity had exchanged photographs as a token of their bond; she had also given him her book of poetry, with the special poem marked. She would have been happy to marry him at once, but my brother, stubborn and stiff-necked as ever, had decreed that they must wait until he had sufficient money to keep her in a manner of which her wealthy family would approve. He had calculated that, if all went well, he should accomplish that feat by the time he was thirty.

  ‘Just a little over three years and we might have been married,’ Felicity wept. ‘Or even… even just a day or two more and we might at least
have been betrothed. He was planning to approach my father as soon as the steam engine trial was over.’ She stared at me hopelessly. ‘But we were not vouchsafed that joy. I haven’t even the right to mourn for him properly. Oh… I must have been a wicked sinner for God to punish me so. Now I shall be alone for ever.’

  Clasping her hand, I said, ‘God isn’t so unkind. Don’t blame yourself. Haven’t you told anyone else how you feel? Your mother…’

  ‘Yes. Mama knows, now. At first I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it. But after the service, when they took him away from me for ever… then I confessed the truth to Mama.’ As she looked up at me her eyes brimmed again. ‘Do you know what she said? – She said that I shall forget him, that I shall find someone else. And I shall not! I have never loved any man but Victor. I never have and I never shall, though I live to be a hundred. Rose, what shall I do?’

  I had no answers for her. I had only sympathy to offer, and a shoulder for her to weep on as we shared our sorrow.

  * * *

  When Father returned he continued to brood alone when in the house, and he absented himself for hours. We heard from Aunt Lettice that he was seen in Morsford churchyard, standing alone by the grave. It was as though those few feet of earth held all that had ever really mattered to him; the rest of his family – the living members of it – were of no account.

  A week or so after the funeral, Father was on hand when William Turnbull arrived with some men and a sturdy wagon. Together, they supervised the loading of the pieces of the steam engine, which were going back to the works to be examined. They spent the evening closeted in the farm office, and in the morning Father announced his intention to accompany Turnbull back to Thetford. When Mama begged him not to go, he said it was time he learned more about the business in which, once Victor’s estate was settled, he would be a partner.