I paused. In the far distance, I heard shouts. It sounded as if people were calling our names. I looked at the twinkling ball of the sun and realized we had been away much longer than I’d imagined.
She turned away from me and swung herself back over the gate. ‘All right,’ she growled, ‘I’ll see if I can change the girl’s room.’
I dropped to the ground just behind her. ‘Perhaps it would be for the best.’
She opened her handbag. ‘Would you … could you go on ahead and tell them I’ll be there shortly? I need to sort out my face.’ She gave me a swift glance. ‘They don’t know about the baby. You see, beneath it all I’m as terribly little England as anyone else, keeping everything under wraps.’
I nodded, impressed yet again with the weight of the confidence, and overwhelmed with the import of it. In mock solemnity I said, ‘Of course, Mrs Bray.’
She pulled out her compact and flipped it open. ‘Call me Clara, for goodness’ sake,’ she said, peering into it and pulling out a powder puff.
I turned away and crunched over fallen leaves. She had no idea, of course, that I had already called her Clara last night, inadvertently, and as I walked down the hill I found a false memory of her, leaning over me, unbuttoning my shirt, leaning into my ear and whispering my name.
I shook it away, embarrassed, and made my way through the trees to where various members of the painting party were waiting. I allowed them to berate me for having worried them so, imagining we may have fallen into the lake and drowned, a scenario so unlikely I found myself covering my mouth in an effort not to laugh.
Nothing could dampen my high spirits, and I did not stop to consider why they might be so high. Not Clara’s reappearance, freshly powdered, with a spiky laugh that excluded me as she gathered the ladies round her in secret feminine jokes. Not the drive back to Helmstone, squashed yet again beside Mrs Eagle, whose hand crept up my thigh as she told me unlikely narratives of which she was the
star. Not even when Clara and I emerged from our separate motor cars, waving off the others, and she said, ‘What are your plans for the afternoon?’ and I was forced to tell her that I was already late for tea at the Featherses’, and I sensed, behind her brusque manner, that another invitation had been lurking.
Better to parse out these intimacies, I thought as I trotted up the steps to the Featherses’ front door. I already had enough to ruminate on later; I was happy that I had an explanation for Clara’s previous coldness, that she did not want me to leave – that, in fact, I was a bonus to the house.
We stood either side of the low wall that divided the two buildings. She stood in her cloche hat with her head bent, waiting for Scone to open the door. When he did so she turned, nodded once in almost military fashion and entered the house.
All the female Featherses were in the drawing room for tea, and I was received with alacrity, Maddie jumping up from her seat and ushering me inside.
‘Thank goodness you’re here, Mr Carver,’ she said. ‘We’re in dire need of somebody to entertain us. Mother’s so deathly boring, I’m afraid.’
I looked at Mrs Feathers apologetically, who was holding the sugar tongs absent-mindedly.
‘I’m sure she’s not,’ I said.
She glanced up and smiled vaguely. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Carver,’ she said, and went back to peering at the tea tray.
The room, bereft of last night’s party, seemed to glow in the memory of it. It was a pleasant, feminine sort of
a room, with plants in pots at studied intervals and odd sticks of velvet-upholstered furniture dotted about the place. It was, of course, far grander than the little terrace I’d grown up in, but stood much less on ceremony than Castaway. I imagined Lizzie as a child here, running down the staircase, a doll clutched in her fist.
Adult Lizzie was on the sofa now, reading. I winked at her as I was ordered on to a plumply cushioned chair facing her and was rewarded with a smile. I supposed I was forgiven for abandoning her last night.
‘How was your day, Mr Carver?’ asked Mrs Feathers, handing me a cup.
I regaled them with the antics of the painting circle, which caused Lizzie to giggle, Maddie to squawk with laughter and Mrs Feathers to smile vaguely.
‘Lizzie says you were dragged off into the darkness by Mr Bray last night,’ said Maddie, shoving a slice of lemon cake into her mouth. ‘What happened? Was it all terribly seditious?’
‘Madeleine,’ cautioned Mrs Feathers. ‘You mustn’t ask things like that of guests.’
Maddie rolled her eyes.
‘It was rather dull actually,’ I said, dangling the teacup between thumb and forefinger, remembering my stiff, caked trousers that I’d scrubbed at in the bathtub myself. I took a sip of tea; it was Darjeeling, and pleasant in a Mrs Feathers sort of a way. ‘I left as soon as I could and came back home to bed.’
‘I’m sure that’s a lie,’ said Maddie artlessly. ‘And you needn’t tell me off, Mother; I know that’s not the sort of accusation one levels at guests.’
‘Honestly, Mad, you’re such an embarrassment.’ Lizzie set down her teacup with a clatter. ‘Come on, Robert, let’s take a walk on to the balcony.’ Her skirt swished about her as she walked past, scattering the scent of rosewater in her wake, and as I followed I saw Maddie stick a tongue out at her sister. I grinned at her, and she shrugged good-naturedly.
Across the room, the balcony doors had been flung open, letting bright squares of sunlight on to the polished wooden floor. I stepped out, enjoying the breeze fluttering at my scalp.
Lizzie was leaning on the iron railing. She said in a low voice, ‘Sometimes I hate my sister.’
‘She’s a decent sort, though.’ I looked down at the giddying drop of the sea. ‘She was defending you last night.’
‘I don’t believe it. How on earth did that happen?’
I glanced over to Castaway next door. I saw with surprise that the doors were open there, too, and I squinted, trying to see if I could spot Mrs Bray – Clara – sitting at the window. ‘Oh, your father mentioned some chap, and Maddie got quite heated on your behalf.’
‘Not …’ Lizzie briefly closed her eyes. ‘Oh, goodness, not Freddie Sponder.’
‘I believe that was it.’ I stopped trying to see Clara, and turned my attention full on to Lizzie. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything, by the way. We’re not beholden to one another.’
‘Well, no,’ she said, and I wondered with a jolt whether it might not be quite nice to be beholden to Lizzie. ‘It’s nothing, anyway. Freddie and I had been friends for years, since childhood. Always assumed, you know, that we’d
end up marrying. And then one day last year he announces he’s going to Egypt to work for the British Consulate in Alexandria. Said it would only be a few weeks, so I wrote, and he wrote, and then he stopped writing. Six months later we find out he’s married one of the natives and is living in some one-bedroom shack above the Attarine Souk. I cried for seven days solid. But I’m quite all right now.’
‘What a cad.’ I pictured a pasty Englishman on a divan, being fed dates by a black-haired girl as bleating goats were led past on a chain through the marketplace below. Lizzie appeared to be awaiting a further reaction, so I added, ‘I’d deck the coward if I could.’
‘Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t have met you if I’d still been with Freddie, would I?’ She peered at me curiously. ‘Are you jealous?’
I looked at Lizzie to gauge what her reaction would be to any of my possible answers. I wondered if she had slipped her tongue into Freddie Sponder’s mouth as well. I thought, on reflection, that she probably had not, and I therefore dismissed him from my mind. ‘Oh, wildly jealous,’ I said airily, and she simpered.
‘You mustn’t be,’ she said, leaning towards me. ‘I realize now I never cared for him at all.’
‘Good.’ I looked over Lizzie’s shoulder and saw Clara Bray step out on to the neighbouring balcony holding a long, thin drink. I wondered what was in it, but knew that whatever it was, it had to be a damn sight more exciting than Darjeeling in a china cup.
Lizzie looked round too. Clara saw us, smiled and raised her glass in greeting. I waved back. I would have brought
her into our chatter, but she moved towards the other end of the balcony, where a lounge chair was set up, and curled on to it with her back to us.
‘Oh, I wish I were Mrs Bray,’ sighed Lizzie in a low voice. ‘And then I wouldn’t have a single worry in the world.’
My mind boggled at the irony in that statement, but, casting around for the only piece of information I could impart, murmured, ‘Well, there’s been trouble with the servants, so she’s not entirely worry-free.’
‘I’d adore to have servants,’ said Lizzie dreamily. ‘Of my own, I mean. Anyway, it’s only that the parlourmaid’s too scared to sleep in her room.’
‘You know?’ I said, somewhat surprised.
‘Doris told us.’ She laughed. ‘Doris knows everything.’
A thought occurred to me. ‘Then you must have heard about the earlier parlourmaid, nine years ago – the overdose she took?’
‘Oh yes. Well, I knew about that at the time. Although I always thought she’d drowned herself in the tub.’ She glanced back into the drawing room and, satisfied that we were out of earshot, continued with relish, ‘And apparently she’d got herself into trouble.’
I was rather disquieted by her gusto. ‘You knew her?’
‘No, not at all. I was only nine.’ She squinted against the afternoon sun. ‘I remember peeking out of the nursery window and seeing them carry her out, on a covered stretcher. They’d called Father for help when they found her in the morning. But Father’s a professional, you know. He wouldn’t tell us anything about it. Still, servants talk, don’t they?’
‘I’m sure they do. Terribly sad, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lizzie excitedly. She satisfied herself that Clara was at the other end of the balcony, and whispered, ‘Nobody ever found out who her follower was. You know, some nasty people said it might be … well …’
‘Alec?’ I supplied, and she nodded.
‘Only they proved it wasn’t him. He’d been away at school the whole time. All the same, people do gossip, don’t they? And Mrs Bray was very upset by it all. I mean, Mrs Viviane Bray. Well, of course you would be, wouldn’t you, having such a thing happen in your household.’
I couldn’t help but glance at Clara. Her back was to us now, and all I could see of her was the crown of her head, the dark hair smoothed like a cap across it. As I spoke to Lizzie I kept an eye on Clara Bray throughout. She looked as if she were asleep, the drink discarded on the glass-topped table beside her, her shoes neatly placed together beside the lounger, one cord of her emerald-coloured gown flopping towards the ground. I pictured her sleeping, wondering if she’d wear her usual sardonic look while unconscious as well, and continued smiling and nodding at Lizzie and giving the complete impression that I was absolutely involved with whatever it was she was talking about.
On my way out, after arranging to meet for yet another afternoon at the pictures, Doris said to me, ‘If you don’t mind, sir, the doctor asked if you’d pop into his surgery for a quick word.’
We were walking down the stairs to the ground floor. My lungs spasmed; I knew this would be about Lizzie, and I wished for the smallest of seconds that I could fillet her
from her family, have her liveliness and innocence all to myself without the hedging about and good manners I was forced to bestow on her elders.
Then I stopped and told myself that Lizzie would not be the way she was without the support of her family. A girl without a strong background would be wild, feral – would be something, I thought, rather like the slum kid Clara Bray had so clearly been. And, I silently added with a nod that surprised the parlourmaid, that was not a desirable quality in a woman. Definitely not.
Dr Feathers’ surgery was transformed from the room where we had dined last night into a large, light-filled office. Folding doors divided it from his consulting room at the back, and along the wall were several chairs that had bordered the dining table previously, interspersed with low tables which held a variety of dusty journals. Facing the chairs was a desk upon which sat a typewriter, telephone and several open files. Cabinets which had been shrouded yesterday were revealed, and it was at one of these that a sour-faced woman was rifling through. She looked up when we came in.
‘Sorry,’ she said, in a voice that sounded anything but. ‘Doctor’s had his last appointment for the day.’
‘No, Miss Splendour …’ began Doris, but the secretary cut her off.
‘And to be quite honest, it’s much better if you telephone. I’m sure you’re on the telephone,’ she said with a swift grimace, turning from the cabinet towards the desk and flashing a card at me. ‘Do take one.’
I turned to Doris, who was looking fairly distressed. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, waving her back into the hallway, ‘I’ll explain.’
Miss Splendour was still brandishing the card as if it were a small firearm. I took it and said, ‘Thank you. Dr Feathers asked if I could come by and see him. I’m Carver.’
‘Hmm,’ she grunted, looking not at all impressed. ‘Well, the doctor’s with a patient at the moment, so you’ll have to wait. He’s a very busy man, you know.’
‘Of course he is,’ I said, smiling broadly, and strolled about the room, looking at the paintings I had been unable to admire last night. They were mostly hunting scenes, and not at all to my taste, but I supposed they were meant to stimulate the appetite and perhaps provide Dr Feathers’ patients with the impression that he was foxing out the cause of their aches and pains. I sensed the woman watching me suspiciously, as if I might unhook one of the paintings and scamper away to hawk it on the beach in the early evening sunshine.
There was a commotion behind the closed partition doors and, as it opened, I heard Dr Feathers’ usual boom. ‘… Time works wonders, you know!’
A mouse-like woman emerged, clutching a handbag to her chest. She blinked at the lemon-faced secretary, who forced a smile.
‘Everything all right, Mrs Corby?’
The woman blinked again. ‘Oh yes, thank you, Miss Splendour.’ She eyed me nervously and pulled on her gloves with a twitch. ‘How are you?’
‘In marvellous health, thank goodness.’ Miss Splendour nodded once, extravagantly, perhaps to underline the extent of her good health. ‘How’s Mr Corby?’