In Pale Battalions (5 page)

No party was in progress this time. No chandeliers were blazing, nor fires crackling. There was not even Fergus to greet me. I went into the drawing room, where I could see a light was on, and encountered Payne, asleep in an armchair, snoring loudly and smelling of whisky. I dropped my bag heavily on the floor but he did not stir.

Growing puzzled, I rang the bell. After several minutes had passed, Sally appeared, looking more sullen and pinch-faced than ever.

“Where’s Fergus?” I said.

“ ’E’s left us, Miss. Didn’ the mistress tell you?”

“No. Where is she?”

“In the study, like as not.”

I found her where Sally had said, seated at what had been my grandfather’s desk. She looked tired and much older than when last I’d been home. Her only greeting was an icy glare.

“Sally told me Fergus has left,” I said.

“Fergus was dismissed.”

“Why?”

“Prying once too often.”

“But he’s been with the family—”

“Too long. Far too long. Old ways are changing here, Leonora.

Fergus going is just one example.” She rose and crossed to the window. I noticed for the first time that her prodigious self-control had deserted her. She was angry, though for once not at me. “My husband has declared himself bankrupt.” “Bankrupt?”

“I thought you would have heard about it.”

“You mean those houses on Portsdown?”

“You
have
heard. Yes. The houses on Portsdown. My husband’s prosperity, it seems, was as poorly founded as they were. He’s a ruined man, facing criminal charges. But that’s a small matter. My 28

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concern is to avoid being ruined with him.” She turned to look at me quickly enough to catch a glimpse of my immediate reaction.

“And don’t think you’re not implicated, because you are.”

“It’s nothing to do with me.”

“Oh, but it is. You won’t be returning to Howell’s after Christmas. I can’t afford the fees. I’ve just been writing to your headmistress.”

“Not . . . returning? You can’t—”

“But I can, Leonora. I can.” She moved closer. “As your guardian, I can do exactly as I like. Your education is now an unwarranted extravagance.”

“But what . . . what will I do?”

“With Fergus gone, there’ll be plenty for you to do here. You can help Sally.”

No better than a servant, then, in my own home: that was her plan for me. I ran from the house and made my way down to the riverbank, where Fergus had so often fished. The overhanging trees were stark and bare, frost already forming on the grass. I draped my raincoat over a fallen trunk and sat there sobbing, confronting in all that bleakness the misery Olivia threatened to make of my life. No Fergus to confide in, no schoolfriends to return to, no hope of release. In the end, I dried my tears and resolved not to show any weakness to Olivia, not to give her any hint that she had the better of me. I would bide my time—and escape her yet.

In the months that followed, life at Meongate hung in a void of financial uncertainty and unspoken animosity. Payne drank away his days and waited for a court action that might add bribery and corruption to his unacknowledged wrongs. Olivia busied herself in consultations with Mayhew that at least distracted her from me.

Our only other visitor was Payne’s son, Walter, a charmless thirty-year-old who needed but a measure of confidence to be a replica of his father. I avoided all of them and retreated into my private thoughts. When I could, I ventured into Droxford. There, in overheard conversations, I gleaned that Fergus was working as a lift op-erator in a Portsmouth department store (the postmistress had seen him there) and that Payne’s case would come up in April (his conviction was held to be certain).

On the fourteenth of March 1934, I was seventeen. At Meongate, the event was ignored by everyone except myself. Olivia

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had gone to Winchester, presumably to see Mayhew. Confined to the house by heavy rain, I entered the library in search of a book to read. I had made more use of it that winter than ever before. That afternoon, I made a new discovery. Pulling out a Walter Scott novel to look at, I noticed a book that had slipped behind the others at the back of the shelf. It was entitled
Deliberations of the Diocesan Committee for the Relief of the Poor of Portsea
. I opened it at random, thinking I would find it of little interest. But there, at the heading of a new chapter, was the title “Squalor Amidst Plenty”

and the name of its author: Miriam Hallows, Lady Powerstock.

There was a dedication as well: “Printed in memory of a fine lady who died as she lived, giving no quarter to complacency.” It had been written by my grandmother, Lord Powerstock’s first wife, the woman Olivia had succeeded. I had looked at her gravestone in the churchyard often enough and wished she could speak to me. Now, here were her words before me.

I shut the book and hurried upstairs with it, seeking the privacy of my room in which to read what my grandmother had written.

I had sat down on my bed and was about to open the book when, suddenly, Payne walked in. He was drunk, as always, face flushed and hair awry, collar loose, swollen lips forming uncertainly round his words. I could smell the whisky on his breath from the other side of the room.

“Olivia tells me it’s your . . . birthday.” He tried to smile, but what emerged was an addled sneer.

“Yes.”

“You’re growing up fast.” He swayed across the room towards me.

I closed the book and lowered my feet to the floor. “I suppose so.”

He slumped down on the end of the bed: it sagged beneath his weight. “Oh yes. Growing up fast.” He passed his hand across his face, as if to clear his sight. “Growing up . . . into a . . . beautiful young lady.”

I smoothed down my skirt where it had ridden up beneath me and stared at the floor, hoping he might go if I said nothing.

“And it’s your birthday. We should . . . should have had a party.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh . . . it does.” He leaned across the bed and slapped his sweaty palm across my left hand where it was clenched in my lap. “I’d like 30

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to . . . make up for it.” I felt the warmth of his stale breath on my cheek. “How about a birthday kiss?”

I turned towards him to refuse, but he didn’t give me a chance.

He forced his moist lips against mine and pushed me down across the bed. I felt the stubble on his unshaven chin pricking against my face, felt his right hand pawing at my breasts. I tried to scream, but the weight of his body and his mouth prevented me.

My outstretched right hand was still resting on the book. In desperation, I took hold of it and, with all my strength, swung it against the side of his head. The blow sounded louder than I’d expected. He slipped off me and the bed as well and crouched for a moment on the floor, shaking his head as if to clear it. Then he found his voice.

“You bitch!” he roared. “You treacherous . . . bitch.” He lurched upright, grasped me by the shoulders and flung me, face down, across the bed.

For a moment, I was winded. Then I realized what was happening. He had pulled my skirt up around my waist and was stooping over me, breathing heavily. “You bitch,” he said again. “Mincing round here with your bloody airs and graces, looking down your nose at me. I’ll show you . . .” I tried to turn over, but he forced my face down with his left hand against the back of my head, then dragged my knickers down with his other hand. I think I was too shocked to resist. When I felt the first stinging blow across my bare buttocks, I realized he’d taken his belt to me. The mattress bounced under the force of the blow. The first wave of agony came a moment later. Then I screamed.

What happened next I can’t be sure. He hit me two or three times. Then there was another voice over his—Olivia’s. Payne lurched up and blundered to the door, flinging his belt across the room as he went. The door slammed behind him. I knelt up on the bed and, for once, was glad to see Olivia. But in her face there was no mercy.

“You shameless little bitch,” she said. “What have you done?”

“N-Nothing,” I stammered. “He . . . he burst in here.”

“And you dropped your knickers for him. Like mother, like daughter.”

“Wha . . . what?” I couldn’t understand what she was saying, couldn’t think for the pain or see through my tears.

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“It’s what she did often enough. It’s how you were conceived. So what else should I expect?”

“No . . . Can’t you see? He attacked me.”

“With a belt?” Her mouth curled with scorn. “That’s how your so pure mother liked it as well. That’s how she amused herself while her husband was away, amused herself with my friends.”

“No. It’s not true.”

“How would you know? Did you really think you were Lord Powerstock’s granddaughter?”

“But I am.”

“Didn’t they teach you arithmetic at Howell’s? Find out when your so-called father died. Then you’ll—”

She broke off. There was a knock at the door and Sally’s voice, raised in urgency. “Ma’am: there’s been an accident. It’s Mr. Payne.”

Olivia flung the door open. “What’s happened?”

“ ’E’s lying in the ’all. Must’ve . . . fallen down the stairs. ’E’s not moving.”

“Stay with Leonora.” Olivia swept past her and was gone.

Sally stepped uncertainly into the room and closed the door behind her. She said nothing, just watched in silence as I fumbled to rearrange my clothes. I rose unsteadily and moved to the dressing table, where I sat down and dabbed at my face with a handkerchief.

I tried desperately to stop crying, tried vainly to stop shaking and sobbing. But I could not.

“Well, well,” she said at last. “The mistress catch you up to something? Mr. Payne could’ve fallen ’cos ’e was drunk, but p’raps he was upset . . . at being found out.”

I didn’t turn round to look at her. Normally, she never spoke to me. Now, all the sour venom of her hostile glares came out in her words.

“Maybe you done us all a favour.”

Suddenly, in the mirror, I saw that she was standing immediately behind me.

“You’ve always thought me a fool, ’aven’t you, Miss? But it’s Fergus she put out on the street an’ me as stays ’ere in comfort.

That’s ’cos I do as she says. So don’t worry: I won’t tell nobody about this.”

I was still staring incredulously at the reflection in the mirror of her hard, pinched face when Olivia came back into the room.

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“Leave us,” she said. Sally obeyed at once.

I looked down to avoid her gaze. In the struggle, I’d laddered one of my stockings: I noticed a large hole on my right knee. I stared at it and steeled myself not to look up. Olivia must have picked up Payne’s belt, because I could hear the buckle clinking as she walked slowly round the room. Then it stopped, as she stopped, by the bed.

“What’s this book doing here?”

“I took it . . . from the library.”

“There’s blood on the spine. Whose blood is it?” I said nothing.

Suddenly, she was standing beside me. She pulled my chin up sharply, forcing me to look at her. “You hit him, didn’t you? This is his blood.”

“Yes.”

“Then you should know: he’s dead. Sidney Payne is dead.” She spoke of him impersonally, as if they’d never been married at all.

“It wasn’t my fault.” I hoped she would see the pleading in my eyes, but, if she did, it was only as a sign of the weakness she would play on.

“There’ll be lots of questions—an inquest, a coroner. But I’ll keep you out of it. We’ll say nothing about what happened here—on one condition. That, from now on, you do as I say. I’ll keep you here and I’ll keep your secret—on that condition. Do you understand?” “Yes.”

“Otherwise, I’ll have to tell the truth about your mother. How she did the bidding of any man who wanted her. How I can’t even say which one of them fathered you. How you inherited her perversions and helped to kill my husband. Do you want all that to come out?” “No.”

“So you do understand?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Good.” She rose. “Don’t wash your face before the doctor comes. A few tears will impress him.” She went back to the bed and picked up the book. “I’ll keep this—in case it’s needed.” She moved to the door, paused and looked back at me. “By the way: happy birthday, Leonora.” I had all that night, alone in my room, to think of what had happened and what Olivia had said. Just a few minutes really—fifteen

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33

at the most. But they had been sufficient for Sidney Payne to die and my dreams with him, of the parents I had never known. Not my father’s daughter? It explained why my mother was never spoken of, why she died elsewhere and in disgrace, why my grandfather had disinherited me. It explained everything—and yet nothing.

Even in the depth of my despair, even in the grip of my shocked reaction, I knew that Olivia must have made it sound worse than it was. And why? Because now she had a way of holding me at Meongate. I had done nothing wrong, but I did not doubt that she could make it seem that I had. What would they do if they thought me responsible for Payne’s death? A lunatic asylum—Olivia would make sure of it. Unless . . . I obeyed her in everything. We had played into her hands, Payne and I. There would be no scandalous court case now that he was dead. There would be nothing I could do to resist her now that she could threaten me with exposure as his murderer. A bloodstained book I had never read, a mother I could neither disown nor defend, a father I could no longer claim. Her victory was complete.

The following morning, Sally told me that Olivia wanted to see me. She was in the study.

“I think it best that we understand each other,” she said, pacing the carpet by the window whilst I sat glumly beside the desk. “You have no rights in this house—but I will allow you to remain.