He unfolded the mouse and shook out the napkin, then, because he felt foolish, he said, ‘I was thinking I’d like to be back in the States,’ and he was pleased to see Thea look not exactly affronted, but certainly a little put out. She sat down next to him.
‘But I’m not finished with you yet,’ she said. She smelled of jasmine, or of hyacinth: something heavy and floral, and very possibly narcotic. ‘And you’re not finished with me, are you?’
‘I believe I am,’ he said, deliberately obtuse. He raised his voice, and said, ‘I formally declare
The Countess with Spaniels
complete,’ and a wary hush descended on the neighbouring tables.
‘I wasn’t talking about the portrait,’ she said, lowering her voice to a seductive drawl. She leaned close to him, so that her lips brushed his ear, and she whispered, ‘I don’t want a cup of tea. Let’s go home and fuck.’
This was how she operated, he thought wretchedly. This was how he fell, every time. Embarrassment and desire had him in their clutches and rendered him temporarily speechless. Furtively, he pulled the napkin onto his lap and, staring ahead, tried hard to think of something unpleasant, but Thea had unnatural powers and she used them now to occupy his mind with the erotic details of their previous couplings. She laughed, and wormed a hand under the napkin. He pushed it away in alarm. She only wanted him because she was bored, he knew this; he was her toy, and only for the present. Part of him – a small corner of his mind, too small a corner to influence his actions – disapproved very severely of her wanton appetites. He wouldn’t want such a woman for a wife, he knew that much.
Beside him, Thea waggled her fingers at the waitress, who came to the table with the air of a woman showing immense forbearance. There should be a law against taking up residence, she thought; the gentleman must be putting down roots by now.
‘Is it the bill, madam?’ she said, without hope.
‘Nope. Earl Grey for me, and a macaroon for my friend. Thank you.’
Eugene waited until the waitress had gone, then managed to say, ‘I don’t want anything to eat.’
‘I know. But you look so sour, I thought it might sweeten you up.’
‘This is all an almighty joke to you, isn’t it?’ He sounded pained, which merely provoked Thea to more mischief. She shrugged.
‘I thought we were both having fun. Sex, with no obligations.’
She spoke, now, at a perfectly audible pitch, and Eugene looked stricken. ‘For God’s sake Thea!’
‘Well, let’s say making love then, for the sake of your feelings. Don’t you want to do it?’
He moaned, almost imperceptibly, but she caught it.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘So do I. Look, here comes your cake, so polish it off and let’s get going.’
He was as a lamb to the slaughter, he thought gloomily: there could be no happy ending, for him or the lamb.
At Fulton House, Isabella was crossing the hall when the front door opened to admit Thea and Eugene. He was a few steps behind, as usual, and looked sheepish. Really, he was such a sap, thought Isabella; she had seen the portrait of Thea and admired it, but still it was hard to believe he was capable of such a feat.
‘Thea, there you are,’ she said, stopping abruptly. ‘And Eugene too. What a pity.’
‘What’s a pity?’ Thea tossed her hat towards the hat stand as if it were a hoopla ring. She missed, and it skittered across the marble tiles, swiftly followed by a footman.
‘Tobes was looking for you.’
‘For me?’ Eugene said, and his craven heart skipped a beat.
‘Well, for Thea really. And then, when he couldn’t find her, for you. He’s at White’s now.’
‘Why did he want me?’ Eugene said, and Thea shot him a look which lay somewhere between pity and contempt.
‘Oh, nothing urgent,’ Isabella said, entirely unaware of the drama playing out in Eugene’s breast. ‘That is, he didn’t look very hard for either of you.’
Unwittingly, she had restored calm to Eugene’s ragged spirits and he smiled at her warmly. She was a very beautiful girl, he thought: classically beautiful. Not like Thea, whose appeal was less apparent on first meeting, but who stole your heart insidiously, like a thief in the night.
‘He left a message, though,’ Isabella went on. ‘You’re all dining at the Ritz this evening, and he wondered if you’d remembered. He’ll meet you there, he said.’
Thea said, ‘Are we? How dull,’ which Eugene thought unkind. Isabella just smiled, however.
‘Yes, poor you,’ she said. ‘I, on the other hand, am expected at Park Lane in just over an hour. Mama and Archie have arrived, with Perry and Amandine. So, you see, I’ll be having so much more fun than you.’ She pulled a face to underline the irony, and Thea took both Isabella’s hands in hers and looked earnestly into her face. ‘Oh my poor darling,’ she said. ‘
Courage, mon brave
.’ She meant to be amusing, and, indeed, Isabella laughed, but Eugene had never met the Duke of Plymouth, or his son, and he didn’t see the joke. He felt suddenly gauche: superfluous and uncomfortable. He wondered, too – now that the panic had subsided – how he and Thea could possibly move from this imposing, and very public, front hall to the privacy of her rooms without it being perfectly obvious what they were up to.
‘Actually, I don’t really mind,’ Isabella said. ‘My gowns are ready and Archie bought me diamonds, and Perry and Amandine will have to defer to me for a change, as it’s my Season.’
‘It doesn’t alter the fact that you’re still only seventeen.’
The voice arrived before the person came into view, but it could only be Henrietta, who did indeed appear at the top of the staircase to look down at Isabella. ‘You sound rather brattish,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’ She descended the stairs as she spoke and now she said, ‘Eugene, do you have a moment?’
He opened his mouth to say yes, but it was Thea who spoke. ‘Henry, what can you possibly need him for?’ she said, and then, to Eugene, ‘In fact, you don’t have a moment, at the moment, do you?’
Poor Eugene. He stared at Thea, helpless as a kitten, a man with no self-determination, a subordinate.
‘Later, then,’ Henrietta said affably. ‘But Thea, I’m sure Eugene can speak for himself.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Thea said. ‘Come, Eugene.’
She started to spring up the stairs. He gave an apologetic smile to Henrietta, then followed. Isabella and Henrietta watched him go.
‘Do you suppose they’re…’ said Isabella, a new consternation suddenly clouding her face.
‘Certainly they are,’ said Henrietta.
Isabella looked aghast. ‘But what about Tobes?’
‘It won’t last, Isabella. These things never do with Thea. And, to be frank, Toby’s just as bad.’
Isabella looked about to cry. ‘Oh, how horrid! I can’t understand why you’re so calm and cold about it, Henry. I can’t possibly love Thea as I ought, now. Not if she doesn’t love Toby.’
‘Oh, Isabella, she never loved Toby, not really. Do grow up.’
Isabella stared. Henrietta, who hadn’t really intended to be brutal, said, ‘It’s just their way – it’s not the same for everyone. Don’t think any more of it. Truly. They quite understand each other, and that’s all that counts.’
‘But they’re so indiscreet,’ Isabella said, with a sort of helpless despair. She glanced up the stairs, trying to imagine what they were up to and failing.
‘Thea is,’ Henrietta said. ‘Eugene just does as he’s told.’
S
tepping off the train at Netherwood Station always felt to Anna like stepping back in time. Not that there was anything quaint or old-fashioned here. Indeed, it was just like any other railway station: busy with engines and people, grey with smoke and soot. But the familiarity to Anna ran deep, so that arriving here always had a sense not so much of coming home but of going back, of revisiting her past.
On the platform Harry Beddle, the stationmaster, was watering baskets of pelargoniums. They had been foisted on him by the rail company and were hanging from the ironwork in an effort to prettify the – frankly – grim outlook that greeted alighting passengers. Harry Beddle thought them a blessed nuisance. When he watered them he did it grudgingly.
‘Hello Mr Beddle,’ Anna said.
‘Ey up,’ he said, to the plants.
He hadn’t seen Anna for the best part of a year, but if she’d been away for a decade the greeting would have been the same.
‘Maya, say hello to Mr Beddle.’
‘Hello Mr Beddle.’
The child held out a gloved hand. Really, her manners were very becoming, thought Anna. Two weeks in Lyme Regis, in the sole company of the governess, and her daughter had returned equipped with a whole new set of disarming niceties. Miss Cargill was evidently a dark horse. First impressions had been of hearty enthusiasm rather than polish and poise, and she’d been appointed as Maya’s governess for her kind face, excellent qualifications and boundless energy for exploration and investigation; but it seemed she numbered the teaching of etiquette among her responsibilities too, and some light elocution. Maya had started calling Anna Mama instead of Mam. ‘One small additional vowel,’ Miss Cargill had said, ‘makes a whole world of difference.’ Mr Beddle, however, whose sixty-two years at the school of life had taught him nothing about manners, gave Maya a nod but stuck to the job in hand. The little girl withdrew her hand gracefully and Anna winked at her, approving of her daughter’s discretion. Water had now begun to stream haphazardly through the moss that lined the baskets, splashing down onto the platform, and Anna and Maya started to move on.
‘No Mr Sykes, then?’ Mr Beddle said, to the plants.
‘Busy in London,’ Anna said. ‘He wasn’t able to join us.’
Rum do, thought Mr Beddle; Amos Sykes, busy in London – she might as well have said he was busy on Mars – it couldn’t have sounded stranger or less appealing. Speaking for himself, Mr Beddle had never found any reason pressing enough for him to leave Netherwood, let alone Yorkshire. He put folk on trains to all corners of the country, but he never felt the smallest urge to climb on board himself. He did, at least, recognise that if everyone felt the same way as him he’d be out of a job. But it didn’t alter the fact that there was far too much to-ing and fro-ing. Mrs Sykes and the bairn here in Netherwood, Mr Sykes there in London. A rum do.
Anna and Maya, hand in hand, each holding a small bag of belongings, emerged onto Station Road, and began the walk up to Netherwood Common, and Ravenscliffe. When she’d married Amos and they’d left for their new home in Ardington, Anna had promised Eve that she’d be back often. ‘All the time,’ she’d said. ‘If Maya has any say in it.’ But Maya was a child; she lived in the present and never hankered for anything she couldn’t actually see. If she was taken to Netherwood she was happy; if she spent half a year in London she was happy too, especially now that she had Miss Cargill as an additional distraction, filling each new day with discovery. So Anna and Eve, whose friendship had once been as necessary and natural as the air they breathed, had found that life had filled and swelled to occupy the distance between them. While their thoughts often wandered from one to the other, they themselves rarely did. And yet, thought Anna, here she was, bolting to Netherwood, because even now it was her port in a storm. Amos, torn between his feelings and her happiness, had given no ground at all since the evening of their argument. He could be stubborn as a mule and today, when she and Maya travelled north, he had left early for the House of Commons, so that when the hansom cab came to take them to King’s Cross, there had only been Norah on the doorstep waving them off. Always, Amos relied on Anna’s more amenable nature to ease their passage back to friendship after a disagreement. This time, she thought, he could wait a little longer than was usual.
‘Look,’ Maya said now, stopping dead and releasing her mother’s hand to point. ‘Dad’s allotment.’
This was still a novelty, and if Amos had been with them it would have lifted him out of the doldrums. He had become Dad only recently (‘Not Papa though,’ he had said when Mama got its first airing. ‘I’m definitely not a Papa.’) and while what she called him seemed to hold no significance for Maya, to Amos it meant the world. There had been no debate, no fanfare, no announcement. She had simply said, at the table one morning, ‘Please could you pass the salt, Dad?’ and Amos, overcome, had had to pretend he had something in his eye. Anna had said, ‘That was nice, Maya,’ and the little girl had looked puzzled and said, ‘But I always say please.’ This was like her, though; she had, at six (‘and three-quarters,’ she would always add) a naturally literal, matter-of-fact manner: a way of dealing smartly with complexities and thereby simplifying them. Grasping the nettle, Amos called it. It was an admirable trait, he said: there was many a government minister would do well to observe Maya’s style and adopt it.
Anna stopped by Maya’s side. There was a low, dry stone wall and, behind it, a patchwork of allotment plots showcasing varying degrees of expertise and commitment. Maya pointed.
‘That one’s Dad’s.’
It was roughly central in the run of plots, and distinguishable by its raised vegetable beds, which Amos had made from old railway sleepers. When the sun was hot the children had been forbidden to sit on them because they seeped tar. There were canes up for sweet peas and runner beans, and young broad bean and potato plants stood in rows, shoulder to shoulder.
‘It was Seth’s, really,’ Anna said. ‘Dad helped him. Not theirs now, though, is it? Somebody else must be gardening there.’
‘It’s a shame,’ Maya said. She had been very young when this town was home, but she remembered rootling around in the soil for potatoes, which emerged like precious stones in her hands, and picking fat green caterpillars off the cabbages and sprouts. She remembered, too, the guilty pleasure of eating the peas that they’d harvested for Eve, then chewing on the empty pods, extracting every last drop of pea flavour. Anna laughed.
‘It’s not a shame. It’d be a shame if they did still have it and it was all gone to weeds, with Seth in Jamaica and Dad in London.’
‘Who has it now, then?’
‘You’ll have to look for Mr Medlicott or Mr Waterdine. They’ll tell you.’