The Granville Sisters (17 page)

‘If I were you, Rosie,’ Juliet observed, tapping the ash of her cigarette into a hideous ashtray, obviously another wedding present, ‘I’d be a good little wifey until after you’ve had your children, and then I’d get a divine lover, and meet him in the afternoon, when Charlie is at Lloyd’s. That’s what they do in France.’

Rosie looked stunned. ‘But I’m not French,’ she bleated.

‘Then your only other option, if the whole thing gets too ghastly, sweetie, is to leave him.’

‘I missed you all so much,’ Rosie exclaimed, hugging her little sisters and kissing their soft plump cheeks. ‘But I’ve brought each of you a present from France.’

She’d bought presents for Nanny and Ruby, too, and as she joined them all for tea round the nursery table, she could have wept with joy at being home in her old nursery again.

‘Are you Lady Padmore, now?’ Charlotte asked. ‘And did God put a baby in your tummy in the church?’

Rosie blushed. ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ she said hastily, avoiding Nanny’s eye.

‘Tell us about the places you visited,’ Louise begged. ‘I’m longing to go to Italy to see the ruins of the Coliseum, where they threw the Christians to the lions.’

Charlotte’s eyes widened. ‘Real lions?’

Louise nodded, importantly. ‘They ripped the people to pieces with their teeth. We’re learning all about it at school.’

‘Cor blimey!’ muttered Ruby into her cup of sweet tea. Nanny shot her a look of disapproval. Cockney slang wasn’t allowed in the nursery.

‘Did you go up the Eiffel Tower?’ Amanda asked. She needed glasses more than ever now, but in spite of Nanny’s protestations, Liza wouldn’t hear of it. Who looked at girls in glasses? It would ruin her appearance, she declared.

‘Yes, we went up the Eiffel Tower. It rattled and shook in the wind, so I didn’t like it much.’ Rosie helped herself to one of Mrs Fowler’s fairy cakes, and then remembered she’d bought nothing for dinner tonight. Their daily cleaner didn’t cook, so this was another daily horror she had to face, having no idea how to even boil an egg.

Rosie glanced at her diamond-studded wristwatch, a wedding present from her grandmother. ‘Oh! I’m going to have to go,’ she said sadly. ‘I haven’t bought tonight’s dinner yet.’

‘You haven’t
bought
it yet?’ Nanny echoed, disapprovingly. ‘Well, I expect Mrs Fowler could rustle up something for you to take home. Why don’t you pop down to the kitchen after tea, and ask her?’

A wonderful smell of cooking greeted Rosie when she sailed into the kitchen, making her wish, even more fervently, that she still lived at home.

‘My, you look thin, m’lady,’ Mrs Fowler exclaimed in a shocked voice, ‘if you’ll pardon me for saying so,’ she added hastily. She’d known Rosie since she’d been born, but you didn’t take liberties with a titled married lady.

‘I’m fine, Mrs Fowler,’ Rosie replied, trying to sound breezy. ‘I wondered if there was any cold meat you could spare? I’ve completely forgotten to buy anything for dinner tonight, and I’m afraid Fortnums will be closed by the time I get there.’

‘Very expensive they are too,’ Mrs Fowler observed. ‘Wicked what they charge for a cooked chicken, and as for a piece of salmon …’ For once words failed her as she thought of the extravagance of shopping at Fortnum & Mason. She pressed her thin lips together. ‘Let me see what’s in the larder, m’lady.’

She returned a few moments later with a steak and kidney pudding, the bowl covered with a piece of white cloth tied around the rim with string. ‘You just stand this in a big pan of boiling water for thirty minutes, and it will hot up nicely,’ she explained.

‘How shall I know when the water’s boiling?’ Rosie asked, mystified. She’d been buying ready-cooked food for dinner, with biscuits, cheese and fruit to follow.

‘When it bubbles,’ Mrs Fowler replied hollowly, after a deadly, shocked silence. ‘Have you got some veg?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then I’ll put a few spuds and some runner beans in a bag. You have to peel the potatoes, and chop up the beans, and boil them in separate pans,’ she enunciated slowly. Cor blimey! It was like talking to a child of six, she thought. ‘Would you like a summer pudding for dessert? I made an extra one this morning, and I can give you some cream to go with it.’

Mrs Fowler’s summer puddings were legendary. The proportions she used of strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants and blackberries were sweet yet sharp, gentle on the palate, yet pungent. Once again Rosie was transported back to her childhood, and she was engulfed in a fresh wave of acute homesickness.

‘Thank you, Mrs Fowler,’ she said, blinking away her tears. ‘That would be wonderful.’

‘Doing the cooking yourself, are you?’ she remarked in a voice charged with pity. It really was a shame that Miss Rosie had married someone who couldn’t even provide her with a cook.

‘Yes, for the time being. Of course, I’ll have someone to help me when we move to a bigger house.’

‘She’s not eating,’ Mrs Fowler informed Parsons, as they sat drinking tea in the servants’ hall that night. ‘Looks like the scrag end of a piece of mutton, she does. Gone right down, in my opinion. Trouble is, them girls have never been taught how to do anything.’

‘That’s right, Mrs Fowler. They were brought up as proper young ladies.’

‘If you ask me, I don’t think Lord Padmore has got tuppence to rub together. Imagine, they’ve only got someone who comes in to clean in the mornings! That’s not what Mrs Granville wanted for Miss Rosie, now, is it?’

Parsons nodded gravely. ‘I’d say,’ he replied heavily, ‘that she’s never got over the death of the young marquess.’

‘But he had no money either.’ Mrs Fowler sounded scandalized. ‘They attract fortune-hunters, that’s the problem with them young ladies. I wouldn’t wonder if Lord Padmore wasn’t after her money. Probably hoped Mr Granville would give Miss Rosie a big dowry when they got married.’

‘Mr Granville would have expected her husband to keep her in style,’ Parsons opined.

‘She’ll be lucky,’ Mrs Fowler joked, baring her teeth like a grinning greyhound.

The long hot days of August, filled with the sound of children’s laughter, the
pluck-pluck
of tennis matches, the whirr of the lawn-mower, and the song thrush in the old oak tree near the house, gave way to the golden month of September, and the warm days waned in a flurry of falling leaves and cooler nights.

After the rest of the family returned to London for the little season, Juliet finally began to recover her spirits, after the shock of finding Daniel was married. Like a fern, with its tightly rolled new leaves slowly unfurling and stretching towards the light, so did she regain a sense of purpose, energy, and a feeling of rebellion. She was no longer going to be pushed into going to parties, to see and be seen. Nor was she going to be made to feel guilty for going her own way.

‘It’s all thanks to you, Granny,’ she said when she announced she was returning to London at the end of the month. They were strolling through the garden with the dogs one balmy evening, and the setting sun glowed red in the west.

‘Darling, I haven’t done anything,’ Lady Anne laughed. She stopped to dead-head one of the last roses of summer. ‘Hartley is a healing place. I felt it the first time your grandfather brought me here.’

‘It’s more than that.’ Juliet looked directly at her grandmother. ‘You handle me so much better than Mummy. I sometimes think that some of the things I do are just done to annoy her.’ Her wicked smile had returned.

‘How honest of you to admit it.’

Juliet looked thoughtful. ‘Mummy and Rosie are so … so …’ She paused, searching for the right description.

‘Anxious to do the right thing?’ Lady Anne suggested.

‘Yes. We always seem to have to go to the right place to meet the right people, wearing the right clothes and saying the right thing; it really
does
make me want to kick over the traces, you know.’

They looked at each other, Juliet as much startled by her admission as her grandmother.

Then they both started laughing, laughing so much that Lady Anne had to sit down on the nearest bench, throwing her head back like a young woman. Juliet sank down beside her, wiping the tears of mirth that were gathering in her eyes. The sheer relief of admitting, even to herself, why she behaved as she did was cathartic.

‘My darling girl, you are a scream,’ Lady Anne said, when she could speak, ‘but try not to hurt your mother. She has your best interests at heart. She just wants you to be happy.’

‘Yes,’ Juliet said, serious again, wondering how she was ever going to be happy without Daniel, who still filled her thoughts all the time. ‘I know I wanted to come out at the same time as Rosie, because I didn’t want to be left behind, but it was Rosie who made such an issue of it. Like she was scared I’d take something away from her. Of course that made me all the more determined, and that’s when we started competing with each other. She takes everything so seriously.’

‘Some girls don’t have your confidence, Juliet. I hope you’re not being unkind to Rosie, sweetheart?’ she added gently.

Juliet sat in silence for a few moments, deep in thought, her brow furrowed. ‘Some women make me
want
to be unkind to them, including Rosie. She’s so – so perfect.’

‘No one’s perfect.’

‘I know, but she’s so damned immaculate.’

Lady Anne looked up sharply. ‘That’s an odd word to use, isn’t it?’ she observed lightly.

Juliet shrugged. ‘Rosie’s always been immaculate. Pure as the driven snow; Mummy’s favourite.’

‘Your mother loves every one of you equally. I’ve never seen any sign of favouritism. Are you sure, darling, that it isn’t because you don’t regard
yourself
very highly, that you want to hit out at other women? Including Rosie? And the way you know best is by being more attractive to men than they are?’

‘I don’t know.’ Juliet sounded despondent again, thinking how she hated the very existence of Daniel’s wife. ‘Granny, I think I’ll go and have a rest for a while.’

‘You do that, sweetheart. And I’ll see you later.’ Lady Anne watched as Juliet wandered slowly towards the house.

What raw nerve had she touched that accounted for that remark of Juliet’s? And why had she chosen a word that meant ‘without sin’ to describe Rosie?

‘Darling, how thrilling! I’m so excited for you!’ Liza clapped her hands in delight, while a very pale and sickly looking Rosie sat in a heap in the drawing room of Green Street.

‘No one told me I’d be sick every morning,’ Rosie complained. ‘How long will it last?’

‘It varies, sweetheart,’ her mother replied, blithely.

‘Oh, God!’ Rosie slumped deeper into the chair, her arms folded across her front. ‘I hope it’s a boy then, because I don’t want to go through all this again.’

‘Is Charles pleased?’

‘A bit shocked, actually.’ She didn’t tell her mother that Charles’ first reaction had been: ‘I say, old girl, that’s a bit of a disaster, isn’t it?’

‘Are you going to buy a bigger house now?’

‘No, we can manage where we are, with just one baby.’

Liza looked fussed. ‘So you’ll turn the top floor into a nursery suite, will you? It’ll mean the nanny will have to sleep with the baby, if there’s to be a day nursery. Oh! But you don’t have a bathroom up there, do you?’ she added, aghast.

‘I’m not going to have a nanny.’

‘No
nanny
!’ Liza’s mouth opened; she looked like a stunned fish.

Rosie reflected they’d be lucky if they were still solvent by the time the baby was born. Her first shock had been when she’d accidentally opened a letter addressed to Charles. It was a final demand for the rent. Fifty pounds a quarter was owing, the letter said. Those were the terms of the agreement. Would Lord Padmore kindly forward his cheque for that amount, immediately.

‘I don’t understand,’ she told Charles when he returned from Lloyd’s that evening. ‘I thought the house was ours. I thought you’d
bought
it.’

Charles turned bright red. ‘I was going to … but the owners decided at the very last moment they wanted to rent it out, not sell, and by then it was too late for us to find somewhere else.’

Rosie knew him well enough by now to know he was lying.

‘Then why don’t we buy somewhere else now?’ she suggested craftily. ‘This place is too small for a baby and a nanny.’

He looked sullen. ‘I don’t want our children brought up by nannies. It’s a mother’s job.’

She eyed him with suspicion. ‘Did your mother look after you and Henrietta?’

‘Things were different in those days,’ he blustered. ‘We’ve got a daily as it is. We can ask her to come a bit more often, perhaps.’

Rosie couldn’t believe this was happening. Charles had never warned her they’d be living like a working-class couple, in a tiny rented house, with no proper staff.

‘You’d better pay this before we get evicted,’ she remarked coldly, handing him the rent demand.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t?’

‘Stop going on at me, will you? I haven’t got the money. You know Lloyd’s don’t pay me until the end of the month.’

‘But the rent was due on September twenty-fifth. That’s four weeks ago. Why didn’t you pay it with your September cheque?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake …! What is this? You’re turning into a bloody nag. The trouble is you’re so extravagant, Rosie. The food bills are enormous. Then there’s the daily: six pence an hour, I ask you! And you keep inviting people to drinks. We’re not rich like your parents, you know.’

‘But I didn’t think we were
destitute
.’ She twisted her second-hand engagement ring – for that was how she now thought of it – round and round on her finger. ‘Does this mean that we can’t buy a house of our own?’

He raised his chin arrogantly. ‘I never promised to buy a house. I said we’d get a house, I’d provide a house. I never said I’d buy one.’

Something cold and hard moved in her chest, gripping her heart, cutting off her supply of love, as if an artery had been severed. Did he hope her father would buy one for them? She dismissed the thought instantly; it was too terrible to think he’d married her for her money.