‘Come in, troops, come in, and do forgive the gymnastics. I’ve been stuck in the drawing room with Eugene for an age, and he’s very cruel to me if I so much as twitch an eyelid. Such a relief to be released.’
None of them knew what to say. You see, thought Parkinson, this familiarity was all very well, but it resulted in awkwardness in the end.
‘So.’ The countess righted herself and clapped her hands, indicating excitement. ‘You’ve heard that the earl has bought a yacht?’ She paused, looking at them for confirmation. Again, the trio was stumped. They had indeed heard: yacht-talk gleaned in the dining and drawing rooms had been carried below stairs and discussed at length. But there were carefully constructed codes of discretion, learned and handed down through generations of household staff. To admit to knowledge that could only have come from overheard conversations was contrary to everything the butler, the housekeeper and the cook held dear.
‘Really, Your Ladyship?’ Parkinson said, taking control. ‘That
is
exciting news. Congratulations.’
The countess beamed. ‘Thank you, Parkinson. She’s docked at Portsmouth, and that’s where she’ll stay until we travel down there in August and pick her up for Cowes Week.’
‘I see, Your Ladyship,’ Parkinson said, as if newly informed. It was a commendable performance in disingenuousness. Beside him, Mrs Powell-Hughes held on to her half-smile of polite interest and Sarah Pickersgill, younger than the others and less practised in pretence, looked confused.
‘Now, how are your sea legs?’ the countess said, addressing all three with a bright smile. They stared. She laughed.
‘What is it you English say when you’re flummoxed? Puddled? Muddled?’
‘Baffled, Your Ladyship?’
This was Sarah, relieved to be able to admit that indeed she was.
‘That’s it, Sarah! I’ve baffled you all. But I put it to you again, how are your sea legs?’
Mrs Powell-Hughes had once taken a trip on a paddle steamer at Filey, but that was all; still, it made her the most experienced sailor of the three. She said – to fill the anxious pause – ‘I quite like the sensation, so long as it isn’t too choppy,’ and the countess gave a small chirrup of laughter and said: ‘Good, because I’d like all three of you to join us on the
Lady Isabella
in August.’
Later, back in the kitchen, Sarah Pickersgill told Mr Parkinson that his mouth had dropped open at this point. He resented the suggestion. He would never stand open-mouthed in front of anyone, let alone the countess. And yet he had been wholly taken aback: for an intuitive man – those were his words – he had failed utterly to predict the outcome of the conversation.
‘I suppose if you think about it,’ Sarah said, ‘it makes sense. They’ll be living on that yacht for a few days. And if we don’t go, who’ll cook, who’ll buttle?’
‘Well, what about the Fulton House lot?’ Mrs Powell-Hughes said. ‘They’re that much closer to Portsmouth than we are. I’m surprised they weren’t asked.’
‘Mrs Carmichael’s too fat for a galley kitchen,’ Sarah said and, to her great surprise, Parkinson laughed.
‘I must say Mr Parkinson, you look happy enough about the situation,’ said the housekeeper a little peevishly. In truth she really didn’t want to go. She had a morbid fear of small spaces, and she had never learned how to swim. The butler considered for a moment, and then said, ‘Do you know, Mrs Powell-Hughes, I believe I am.’
‘And I am,’ Sarah said. ‘It’ll be a lark. It’ll get me out of this kitchen.’
‘Aye, and into another one the size of your cold store,’ the housekeeper said.
‘It’s our privilege to be asked,’ Parkinson said piously, ‘and our privilege to oblige.’ Mrs Powell-Hughes bridled. She needed no reminders about honour and duty, thank you very much.
‘We’ll see how you go on with a salver of champagne flutes in a force-nine gale, then,’ she said. She had no idea what a force-nine gale was: it was something she’d read in one of her gothic novels. But it wiped the smile off the butler’s face, so it served its purpose. Sarah laughed.
‘Like I said, a lark,’ she said, picturing sailors in white suits with blue trim and a twinkle in their eyes. Mrs Powell-Hughes, who could only picture a watery grave, took herself off to the stillroom where there were lavender bags to be filled for the linen press. And Parkinson, busy now in the candle cupboard, wondered if he might somehow practise carrying crystal glasses on an unsteady surface, in a high wind.
Isabella’s presence at Netherwood Hall altered the mood of the household, subtly shifting the dynamic just as a pawn, carefully placed, can adjust the balance in a game of chess. Tobias had kept her a secret, driving home without wiring ahead to announce his cargo. It was a long and rather arduous journey. They had broken it by making overnight stops in old coaching inns, which thrilled Isabella, who had revelled in the novelty of discomfort: lumpy mattresses, chipped chamber pots, greasy eggs served by surly landladies. She enjoyed it so much that Tobias began looking for patently unsuitable hostelries, so that as they drove away the next day they could scream with laughter at what they’d seen. This shared adventure had only increased their mutual affection, and by the time they rolled into Netherwood they were the greatest of friends as well as the fondest of siblings.
Isabella fell quiet as Tobias steered the motor past the lodge at the bottom of Oak Avenue, where old Bartholomew Parkin held open the gate, though it was a long time now since his milky eyes had been able to see to whom he was granting admittance. The drive from the gate to the house was exactly one mile, and the details of it rushed at Isabella, assailing her with their familiarity: the staddle stones mottled with lichen, the pinkish gravel raked into stripes, the rise and swell of the parkland, the towering oaks. The grass appeared greener than the grass anywhere else, the deer prettier, the late spring flowers pinker, bluer, more abundant. The place seemed flooded by light and colour. She hadn’t been back in three years: she had forgotten how much of herself she had left behind.
Isabella was discovered first by Parkinson. He stepped outside to greet the earl and there she was, and he smiled with such heartfelt pleasure to see her that she burst into tears.
‘I’m so glad to see you, Parkinson,’ she said through the sobs. ‘I’m so happy to be here.’
‘Goose,’ said Tobias and gave her a little shove, but the butler was touched beyond words. Lady Isabella belonged at Netherwood Hall; this was Parkinson’s belief, though he did understand that when her mother remarried and went to Denbigh Court a duchess, the child had to go too. But it was just one sad and sorry outcome of a sadder, sorrier event: the premature death of the sixth earl. His fatal accident, so freakish as to seem like an act of cruelty by a bored and spiteful God, had dealt a devastating blow to the rhythms and cycles of family life, and the departure of Lady Isabella, baby of the clan, darling of her father, had seemed, to the butler, to be a further rent in the fabric that held them all close. Parkinson loved this family. It wasn’t his place to love them, he knew this, but nevertheless, he did. And in his private rooms, his inner sanctum, he had wept more than once over the frailty and impermanence of human life and happiness. Now, though, here was Lady Isabella restored, albeit temporarily, to the house in which she had been born and raised. Quite grown up, but weeping joyfully in the entrance hall where she had once played hopscotch on the marble. Parkinson’s eyes were damp as he carried her modest trunk: a footman’s task, in truth, but at this moment he considered it an honour.
‘Isabella! Goodness me.’
Henrietta, fresh out of the saddle, strode in through the front door. She slotted her crop into the umbrella stand and held her little sister at arm’s length, looking her up and down.
‘I’m not a filly at the horse fair, Henry,’ said Isabella.
‘No indeed, but you’re a sight for sore eyes. There simply aren’t enough of us since Mama stole you away and Dickie ran off to Italy. I won’t hug you because I’m covered in Marley’s hair.’
She released her sister and Isabella wondered if the horsehair was just an excuse. They had never been particularly close: too much of an age gap, too many differences in personality. As a child, younger by twelve years, Isabella had found Henrietta aloof and a little austere, and had always considered her a rival for their father’s affections. Teddy Hoyland had adored Isabella, of course, but he had depended on Henrietta; they had had shared interests, odd things such as coal prices, mining equipment, septic tanks and silage – things that no one else in the family cared two hoots about. Everyone called her Henry and it was apt, thought Isabella; even now, her sister’s preoccupations were masculine in nature and she ran the estate – not only in Tobias’s absence, but also when he was in residence – with authority and expertise. She was a brick, Toby had said in the motorcar, a godsend. She could also be rather cool and extremely high-handed, thought Isabella, although she had kept this opinion to herself.
‘How long are you with us?’ Henrietta asked.
‘Ages. Until you all go to Fulton House, then I’m to come with you. Mama and Archie will be late to Park Lane. They’re waiting—’
‘For Perry and Amandine to get home from Marienbad,’ said Tobias, striding through the hall and, with one arm, sweeping Isabella away from Henrietta and towards the stairs. ‘Never mind all that. Let’s go and find Thea. She’ll be ecstatic. She loves a surprise and she loves a guest, and here we are with a surprise guest!’
He laughed, pleased with his wit. He was – and this was, from an objective point of view, remarkable – looking forward to seeing his wife. Time away, perhaps: distance between. But also the four days he had spent with Isabella had done him the power of good. She had, without trying, without knowing, restocked for him some depleted store of self-worth, a corner of his being that had languished since … Here he paused in his thoughts, for he was never entirely sure whether it was his father’s death or his own marriage that had signalled the start of it. Either way, he felt he had not, for some time, been quite the man he once was. Not the man, certainly, who had pursued and won Thea Stirling, the liveliest girl in London in that carefree spring and summer of 1904. If he met such a girl now, he sometimes thought, he would more than likely watch from the sidelines while some other fellow danced her up the aisle. But in the car with Isabella – rescuing her, entertaining her, driving her safely back to Netherwood – he had begun to recognise himself again. Their mother had been livid. Manoeuvred into agreement with a scheme that didn’t please her, her objections batted away easily like drowsy bees, she had watched them go with a face like stone, while beside her Archie had waved his stick merrily and wished them bon voyage. Isabella had said Clarissa was jealous. ‘Pure envy, green with it. She married Archie to become a duchess, you know. To trump Thea.’ This Toby knew. They all did.
‘He’s a nice old cove, though,’ Toby had said.
‘Nice enough, but stubborn as a mule and when we don’t have company he reverts to barrack-room behaviour. Belches, passes wind, shouts “There she blows!” whenever he does.’
‘Poor Mama,’ said Toby, but he was laughing.
‘She’s made her bed, as they say. And, anyway, he’s terribly well connected. There was a Partington in the Tudor court, apparently, or at the Battle of Bosworth Field, or somewhere. I forget.’
‘Oh, well then. Who cares if he farts like a trooper?’
They had looked at each other and howled, and the tone had been set for the entire journey. Now they bounded up the marble stairs together, arm in arm, and Henrietta, trailing slightly, wondered if there was anyone at all to whom she could confess that she didn’t always like Isabella, and who wouldn’t judge her harshly for it.
M
ademoiselle Evangeline’s School of Dance was housed in a former cotton mill, a wide, tall, many-windowed building with four hundred looms still in place, though it was ten years now since any linens or fancy drill had been sent out from there. Eliza thought it was haunted. That is, she hoped it was, although no evidence had yet presented itself. The girls had to pass through the old weaving room on their way to the studio and they all did it at a clip, since Eliza told them that, once, she saw one of the machines moving, as if worked by a ghostly foot. Mademoiselle, hearing the story, had seized on it as an opportunity to galvanise the half-hearted among her girls.
‘Mais oui, mes chéries,’
she said to them, her face a study in sincerity. ‘It is the ghost of Dolly Treddle, the lady of the loom, and she only appears when lazy girls are in the building. She was lazy herself, you see. She was flogged to death for her laziness. She comes to warn you of the perils of
la paresse
!’
Eliza, the originator of the myth, was impressed at the way her teacher had smoothly embellished it. Mademoiselle Evangeline, sending them all to the barre with Dolly nipping at their heels, had winked at her.
‘Merci, ma petite,’
she had said confidingly, then, in her usual, commanding voice, ordered them all into first position.
These moments of complicity helped to inspire a level of devotion in Eliza that she had never felt for anyone, and she was a child who gave her heart quite readily. Mademoiselle, sparing with praise, lavish with criticism, was Eliza’s great obsession. She was easily the most beautiful creature in her world, and quite how she had ended up in Barnsley no one really knew. But here she was, with her long neck and perfect poise, and as she moved gracefully through the crush of the market or up the sweep of Peel Street people fell away and stared, as if a gazelle was in their midst. She was luminous in Eliza’s eyes, a higher being. An approving nod or a kind word from her dance teacher was worth more to Eliza than the most heartfelt acclaim from anyone else. Three times a week she caught the train from Netherwood to Barnsley, for dance classes after school. She wished it were more. ‘
Mon petit papillon
,’ Mademoiselle called her when she was pleased: light and graceful, like a butterfly. Eliza longed for her teacher’s attention, yearned for the moments when, scanning her small ensemble of ballerinas, Mademoiselle’s eyes would alight on Eliza and she would say: ‘
Alors, le papillon va nous montrer
. Eliza, show us your arabesque,
s’il te plaît
.’ This happened perhaps only once a month, because Mademoiselle detested favouritism, but Eliza knew what she knew. She had seen the way her teacher watched her, and each discreet nod of approval elevated her soul. They were moments of glory, and though few and far between, they sustained and encouraged. And then today, as she prepared to leave the studio, glancing one last time in the wall mirror at her face, flushed with exertion and all the prettier for it, Eliza had been called back by Mademoiselle, who had said she wished to speak with Eliza’s mother and stepfather as, at fourteen, she believed Eliza was ready to accompany her to France, to the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris.