A Future Arrived (8 page)

She dressed and went downstairs. She could hear the twins shouting at one another in the back of the house, Victoria's voice a high-pitched note of aggrievement …

“You're beastly!
Beastly!
…” and Jennifer sounding pained and affronted … “Me?
Me? Never!
…”

It was not an argument that she cared to referee at the moment and so she continued on through the old, rambling house to the drawing room.

Jacob Golden sat on a sofa drinking a cup of coffee. Eight-year-old Kate Wood-Lacy sat beside him showing off her collection of flowers that she had pressed and dried between the pages of a thick, unwieldy book.

“And this is a primrose,” she said, turning the pages with her small hands.

“A primrose by the river's brim …” Jacob said. “Wordsworth.”

“I plucked it from the
garden
.” She turned the pages. “And this is a jonquil.”

“I can't think of any poem with a jonquil in it.” He smiled at Winifred as she walked across the room toward them. “Can you, Winnie? Daffodils, but not jonquils.”

“No jonquils.” She sat on the sofa beside her daughter and brushed a strand of soft brown hair from the girl's forehead. They looked alike. The hair, the oval face, the same cream-and-blush complexion. “I saw Nanny on the landing. She said you didn't tidy up your room as told.”

“I will.”

“Indeed you will—or you stay here with Nanny when we go to the Pryory on Friday.”

The little girl closed the book with a snap. “I'll tidy up … you'll see. Will Uncle Anthony let me ride the pony again?”

“Uncle Anthony is in the hospital, dear. He's not feeling very well, but I'm sure Mr. Gardway will take you for a ride.”

“The earl's ill?” Jacob asked.

“Angina. I'm sure he'll be all right. His old butler died and I suppose it was a shock to him. He'd been with him for ages.”

Kate got off the sofa, cradling the heavy book with both arms. “I'll go to my room now, Mummy. Do you mind not seeing all the flowers, Uncle Jacob?”

“I don't mind, Kate. You can show them to me the next time I come.” He watched her leave the room. “A delightful child.”

Winifred smiled ruefully. “Thank God I have one calm and collected girl. Jenny continues to be a hellion and Vicky, heaven help us all, has just discovered womanhood! She's a confused mixture of Janet Gaynor and Joan of Arc.”

“Just a phase.”

“Oh, Lord, I suppose so.”

“Where's his nibs?”

“In bed. I must say you look terribly alert.”

“Spent most of the night asleep in the back of a staff car. Saw all I needed … watery moonlight and total confusion.”

“Care to stay over and dine with us?”

“I'd like nothing better, but I must get back to London for a board meeting.” He stood up and held out his hands to her. “Come on, walk with me to my car.”

They strolled slowly side by side through a large, overgrown garden toward the garages.

“Towerside suggested that your loving husband retire … take a job with Vickers, perhaps.”

“What nonsense.”

“The cavalry generals would love to be rid of him, you know. Prophets are without honor in this country, especially in the army. Fenton is viewed with some alarm. Too unorthodox … too much the zealot. He considered Towerside's suggestion for a moment. Felt it would make you happy. Would it?”

She paused and looked at him. “No. I pray the day will come when soldiers no longer exist, but in the meantime, I happen to love one. Can you even conceive of Fenton not being in the army?”

“Difficult to imagine.”

“And if he were nudged out I think he'd disintegrate into a brooding, bitter man. I couldn't bear to witness it.” There was a wood bench under a grape arbor and she sat down. “I don't mind living in rented houses, trailing around like a camp follower … Egypt, India … tutors for the girls, training new servants every couple of years … don't mind any of that as long as he's reasonably content in his job. And soldiering
is
his job. I made my peace with that fact years ago. I wish he had left the service after the war, but he didn't.”

“Stubborn pride … not wanting to live off your money while he looked about for another career.”

“It goes deeper than that, Jacob. Heavens, we live off my money now. A brigadier's wages don't stretch far these days. No. He's obsessed with the idea of remodeling the British army to his own specific vision. It's not a vision that many share, so naturally he's resented … even feared. The army is like the civil service, everyone jealously protecting their own little place in it. They look on Fenton as a threat.”

“Yes, and not without reason. At least in this country.” He sat on the bench beside her. “Would you find a few years in India too abhorrent?”

She watched swallows dart in slender blurs over the wild, unpruned garden. “Why do you ask?”

“I'll come to that.”

“It's not Hampshire, but I've always liked the country … Simla especially. Even Quetta during the cooler months.”

“Don't for God's sake say anything, but some of my gray lads have come up with something.”

“Your what lads?”

“Gray lads. A host of petty clerks … Whitehall drones … faceless, meek little creatures who pass on information to me for a quid or two. I have a network of them. Even have a gray lad at Buckingham Palace.”

She laughed and squeezed his arm. “Oh, Jacob, it's a good thing they no longer hang, draw, and quarter people on Tower Hill!”

“I can think of some people in Britain who would relish a revival of the practice—for the exclusive chastisement of labor leaders and Jewish newspaper owners. Anyway, one of my inquisitive little spies informs me that a move is afoot in Delhi to start modernizing the Indian army. The plan is for a completely mechanized brigade—including the dehorsing of two cavalry regiments and placing the bewildered chaps in armored cars. Fenton's gospel to the letter. Our lad would be the obvious choice to train and lead such a group, but politics being what they are, there's no guarantee he would be chosen. I will have to go to work on it with my usual quiet diplomacy and Byzantine intriguing. It's all extremely hush-hush at the moment. If Fenton got wind of it he'd go smashing his way through the War Office cliques like a bull in a china shop ruffling feathers and stomping on toes. So mum's the word, please.”

She gave his hand a quick squeeze. He was about the same age as her husband, and yet he looked years younger. A fine-boned, delicate face that would have been pretty had it not been for the sardonic twist to the mouth and the vulpine eyes. “You always look out for him.”

He turned to her and kissed her softly on the cheek. “And you, Winnie.”

T
HEY BURIED
John Harum Coatsworth on Saturday morning, a cloudless day, the High Street thronged with shoppers. It was a simple ceremony—as Coatsworth would have wished—and Charles's eulogy was brief, if heartfelt. The vicar, mindful of the fact that many of those in attendance were servants from the Pryory, wished to read the passage from Matthew that began with …
“Well done, thou good and faithful servant …”
but Hanna dissuaded him and he chose a selection from Isaiah instead. The last of Coatsworth's three favorite hymns was sung and then the casket was carried into the churchyard.

Massive oaks shaded lush, damp grass and old gravestones. The vicar intoned a prayer.

“In the midst of life we are in death …”

The younger parlormaids, dressed in their best frocks, fidgeted at the back of the crowd, casting anxious glances toward the bustle of the High Street. They had been given a holiday until five that afternoon and they yearned to make the most of it.

“… of the Resurrection unto eternal life. Amen.”

The mourners dispersed, the servants hurrying—without appearing too eager—toward the excitements of the town: the F. W. Woolworth's, the tea shops, and the pubs.

Winifred, holding a fidgeting Kate firmly by the hand, and trailed by the twins, both wearing expressions of almost theatrical somberness, walked over to where her husband stood talking with Martin and Charles and William Greville. The Hon. William, seven years younger than his brother, was a giant of a man who could easily have shouldered the casket to the grave without the aid of his fellow pallbearers—could have, that is, if his right knee, shattered by a bullet in 1917, had been up to the strain.

“We're all expected at the vicarage for sherry,” Winifred said.

Charles shook his head. “Tea. Glynis Masefield made cress sandwiches and a Madeira cake.”

William, his knee aching from kneeling at prayers, rubbed it vigorously and scowled. “Oh, bugger that. I'm for a pint or two at the Rose and Crown.”

“So am I,” Charles said, “but I'd best attend. It would embarrass Mother and disappoint Glynis terribly. You chaps sneak away. You won't be missed.”

The three men took him at his word and trailed the crowd moving along the gravel path toward the street. William cast a final glance over his shoulder at the grave.

“Poor old codger. I was the bane of his life. God, how he dreaded my coming down from Eton on hols, usually with two or three of my friends—rowdies all. We were always trying to find some way of breaking into the wine cellar. He managed to foil all our schemes, but it left him a nervous wreck. Oh, well,
de mortuis
and all that. He was a decent old soul.”

“Your father will miss him,” Fenton said.

“Lord, yes. That was all he talked of when I telephoned him from Dublin yesterday—that and the uncivilized food. Poor Father. Never been ill a day in his life. He finds the whole hospital routine quite beyond his understanding. Dulcie just left one in Leicester. She called him to sympathize and promised to send a Yorkshire ham.”

“Dulcie ill?” Fenton asked.

“Had the tubes tied—thank God and about time, too. That last miscarriage nearly did her in. No heirs from us and that's certain.”

“Who is Glynis, by the way?” Martin asked.

William laughed. “The vicar's niece. A pallid, mousy little thing. Mother finds her attractive only because she's remained unmarried, and impregnably virgin I daresay, to the age of thirty. Any unattached female of acceptable social background is fair game for Mother's artful nets.”

“I have the impression Charles isn't interested in women at the moment.”

“Quite so. He wants only to be left alone in the sanctuary of Burgate House School. Wouldn't you agree, Fenton?”

“I'm afraid so, yes.”

William shook his leonine head. “Christ! Talk about a lost generation. If all the people
ruined
by the war had their names carved on stone shafts there wouldn't be quarries enough to mine them!”

They were in the shadow of the war memorial at the top of the High Street …

FOR KING AND COUNTRY

1914–1918

… chiseled into the pale marble. Martin avoided looking at it. He knew only one of the names carved below the inscription—Ivy Thaxton Rilke of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service—but that one was enough.

“How was Ireland?” he asked as they crossed the street.

“Wet. But successful. I bought a super colt in Kilkenny. A real Derby prospect.”

“For yourself?”

“Yes. The old Biscuit Tin Stables. I've stopped training for others, although it was fun while it lasted—especially in the States. Saratoga … Belmont. I'll miss all that … and the bloody marvelous parties Jock Haynes used to toss at East Hampton. Poor old Jock. I understand he lost everything in the crash.”

They turned off the busy street and down a short, cobblestoned alley that led to the Rose and Crown, Abingdon's oldest public house. William ducked through the low doorway of a tobacconist to buy a box of cigarettes while Fenton and Martin continued walking slowly toward the pub.

“Hesitate to ask, old boy,” Fenton drawled, “but how did Mistress Wall Street treat you?”

“With a kiss on the brow. I was advised to sell out a few months before the deluge. The only shares I owned were CBC radio. Bought them at twelve dollars and sold at three hundred and five. They're down to eighteen today. I made a fortune and someone got burned. Feel a bit guilty about it, to tell the truth.”

“No need to feel that. A fundamental economic law. For every winner on the stock exchange there are ten who lose their shirts.”

To step inside the Rose and Crown was to step back in time. It could have been 1913 in the murky, dark oak interior, or 1813 for that matter. No American-style cocktails were served. Beer in oak barrels from the Kentish Weald. Scotch whisky in stone crocks. Good English gin—not blasphemed by French vermouth. The only concession to the times was ice for the gin and tonics—but then only on request and grudgingly, and sparingly, slipped into the glass from a teaspoon. Fenton ordered three pints of bitter. When William entered the crowded bar he was quickly surrounded by a boisterous group of men all sporting cloth caps, checked tweed jackets, and riding boots. He introduced them as friends from the racing circuit and members of the Abingdon Hunt Club. The ensuing conversation regarding steeplechasing as compared to flat racing was too esoteric for Martin and Fenton, who slipped away with their beers and went outside to sit on a bench beside a whitewashed wall.