All the dear faces (48 page)

“
She's not been at all well since she . . . she fell and hurt her face, so I want you to be especially gentle with her. Her poor face it is . . . well . . . it is dreadfully bruised, sweetheart and cut, so . . . you are a good, kind girl and I know you will not mean to upset her so . . . don't let her know you are . . .""I will show her the picture I painted for her, Mother."

“
Of course, darling, that will make her feel better. She will be so pleased and happy to see you. I'm sure she will begin to mend at once.
”

The little girl was hesitant at first, not at all accustomed to seeing Phoebe sitting down, doing nothing but stare at the crackling logs in the fire. She moved across the kitchen to place herself in Phoebe's direct line of vision since it seemed Phoebe was not going to turn her head to look at her and her eyes widened as she looked at Phoebe's ravaged face.

“
Phoebe, it's me, Cat," she said, then, hesitation gone, she clambered on to Phoebe's lap and hugged her carefully, gently, before placing a butterfly kiss on Phoebe's bruised cheek. "There," she said cheerfully. "All better now," just as Phoebe and Annie had said a hundred times to her, and Phoebe stirred and without conscious thought her arms went round the child.

“
Oh, Phoebe, I've missed you so much, really I have, but I've so much to tell you and show you. I've painted the loveliest picture for you. They're chrys . . . chrys the mums . . . well, Miss Mossop has them in her study .. . yes, a study, it's called, and she sits there at a big desk and she said I could paint them. I told her about you and me being friends and she said of course I could bring my paints . . .
”

Her voice went on and on, describing the wonders, the marvels which had been revealed to her during the past few days. Her eyes never left Phoebe's face, but they did not see Phoebe's scars, only the shining expression of love and amazed interest which had come to Phoebe's eyes. She would repeat it all again and again for her mother, for Blackie and Bonnie and Dandy, but it was as though at this precise moment, she knew with that curious wisdom which is bestowed on the very young, that this was for Phoebe since Phoebe had need of it
.

. . the food is not as nice as yours, Phoebe, so I'm looking forward to a blackcurrant tart . . ."

“
and tha' shall 'ave it for tha' tea, sweeting, as soon as I've heated the oven . . ."

“
. . and I tore the lace on my new drawers when Alice . . . she's my new friend . . ."

“
. . . Alice . . . that's a pretty name and I'll mend that tear as soon as ah've a minute . . .
”

. . so I'll get my satchel . . . yes, isn't it lovely. . . Mr Macauley said I should need it . . .
”

. . . by heck, that's grand . . . grand . . . and kind of Mr Macauley . . .
”

. . isn't it, but wait until you've seen your painting. Mr Macauley said he would frame it for you . . . there . . . now what d'you think, Phoebe, aren't the colours lovely . . ."

“
Eeh, lovey . . . lovey ... "

“
Now you mustn't cry, Phoebe . . . your face is not so bad. . ."

“
Eeh . . . lovey . . . lovey . . . Phoebe's missed thi' . . "

“
I know ... "

“
. . . and I've never had such a lovely picture, an' all me own, an' all . . .
”

Beside the doorway Annie turned away. She lifted her forearm and leaned it on the wall. Placing her face in it she wept the tears of gladness, for Cat's return, for Phoebe's return and for the deep enduring love Reed Macauley gave her
.

*

The little church of St Bridget's which stood in splendid isolation on the shores of Lake Bassenthwaite was generally full each Sunday but on the one following Cat Abbott's return from her grand school at Grasmere, every pew was jammed to capacity and several of its parishioners were forced to stand at the back. The church was very old, no one was sure just how old, since it was rebuilt in the reign of King Richard I. The register was begun in the sixteenth century and the font bowl was dated back to 1300 and in it, thirty-three years ago, Reed Macauley had been christened. There were many graves in the churchyard
bearing the name of Macauley, including those of Reed Macauley's mother and father, and several containing his infant brothers and sisters
.

The church was reached by a long track leading from the road between Hause and Keswick, down which, to reach St Bridget's, those with no carriage must tramp in all weathers, but today it was sunny and crisp, November, the sky the loveliest winter blue with not a cloud in sight. There was a stretch of woodland between the road and the church but round the actual building and the walled churchyard was a lush green pasture on which sheep grazed, and beyond it was the lake, its gently ruffled surface silver and the palest grey blue. Beyond the lake rose the browning fells, on and on into the distance as far as the eye could see
.

Reed Macauley sat straightbacked beside his lovely young bride. Eighteen months they had been married and still no children and not likely to be if the rumours which were whispered in every drawing room and on every street corner in Keswick were true. And Mrs Macauley so elegant and fine looking, a perfect lady in her dove-grey velvet two-piece outfit, the skirt so wide after the narrow angle of the last decade, those who were already seated were quite amazed that the church aisle could take it. Her jacket bodice was shaped to her tiny waist and flared out below it with a basque extended over her hips. It was close-fitting to her long white neck and edged with a small white lace collar. The buttons which ran from neck to waist were of mother-of-pearl. Her bonnet, also of dove-grey velvet, was tiny, slipping far back on her proudly held head to reveal the astonishing golden glint of her hair. She wore pearls in her ears, neat white gloves and extremely high-heeled dove-grey kid boots. She looked quite magnificent, aloof, unconcerned with anything other than the long and tedious sermon to which she listened intently, her cloudy blue eyes never wavering from the rector's face
.

Her husband was also splendidly dressed, like her in grey, but his was a charcoal grey, immaculate and expensive with a watered silk lavender waistcoat beneath his
coat. A swallow-tailed coat from which a snowy white stock cascaded. His trousers were tight, well fitted, showing off his splendid calf and strapped under his instep. He carried a tall grey top hat. His face was grim, looking neither to left nor right as he had followed his wife's wide skirt up the central aisle but during the parson's sermon had there been anyone – bar the parson – in front to see, they might have noticed he closed his eyes several times and his face clamped itself into what might have been pain.

“
We shall go to church this morning, Reed," Esmé Macauley had announced after breakfast. "Do not think I intend to skulk at home, hiding my face as though I had something of which to be ashamed during this . . . difficult time. I can do nothing to stop you acting as you are doing, causing gossip of the most unsavoury sort, but I can show society that I have nothing to hide."

“
You have nothing to hide, Esmé, and I have done nothing of which I am ashamed."

“
Really, then may I ask you why you are taking so much interest in the daughter of a woman who, or so I have been told, has a reputation for being ... "

“
Yes, Esmé?" Reed's voice was dangerously quiet. "She is not married, Reed, and has a daughter. Surely that is all that need be said.
”

Esmé Macauley was not quite twenty years old. She had been ready to love her handsome husband though she had scarcely known him on the day they were married. He was wealthy and influential, not quite of the gentry, but then neither was she for her father's father had been a weaver and her father was of that new class, the millocracy, those coming to power and wealth in this new industrial age. She had been gently reared and her governess had instilled in her all that a lady should know. It was, she had hinted, quite acceptable for a man to have a mistress providing he was discreet and if she was honest, Esmé had not concerned herself when it came to her notice that Reed was no exception. She had not cared for his rough embrace and the indignities to which he subjected her, but she wanted a child so she must, to get one, perform herwifely duties, she had thought. There was no child and it mystified and distressed her, though she spoke of it to no one and certainly not to her husband. So what was she to make of his interest in the bastard called Catriona Abbott
?

She had asked him since she did not want her own position in society to be jeopardised. She tried to be reasonable, calm, remembering the teachings of her governess that a lady never, never showed emotion, but she had her household to consider, her friends, most of whom came from Yorkshire, Cheshire, Leicestershire since she found the wives and daughters of the local society somewhat parochial.

“
I have no interest in her other than to give her a decent education."

“
But why? Why should you concern yourself with this child in particular, who is, after all, from the lower orders?
”

Reed clamped his teeth about the fragrant cigar he was smoking and on his face came that scowling expression she had come to know so well and which, in the past, before she had learned to control herself, had made her cry. His eyebrows dipped ferociously over his eyes which had in them the blue chill which made his wife shiver, for she was an affectionate, placid girl who had known, and needed, nothing but kindness. She wanted Reed to be as her father had been. Exactly. Indulgent, fond, generous, not this truculent, grim-mouthed, pugnaciously jawed stranger who was always polite, who shared her bed most nights, at least for half an hour, and who often looked through her as though she were made of glass.

“
This child from the 'lower orders', as you so quaintly put it, is bright, exceedingly so. She even knows a little Greek and Latin. Can you imagine that . . . ?" smiling in a way Esmé had never seen
.

Esmé couldn't, since she herself scarcely knew how to add one figure to another and as for languages or dates of battles, they would just not stay inside her head, no matter how hard Miss Humphries, her governess, had tried to put them there.". .
.

she can read the Bible from cover to cover and
speaks some French and is proficient in mathematics arid she is no more than five or six years old."

“
But who has taught her? Not her mother, surely." "Some chap who . . . lived with them." His face closed up tight as a clam but his wife failed to notice.

“
The mother's lover?
”

Reed struck the mantle shelf so hard with the flat of his hand several ornaments which stood on it jumped half an inch into the air, and so did Esmé.

“
No, he was not, dammit." He glared at her so fiercely she shrank away from him but nevertheless she would not give up.

“
How do you know that, Reed?"

“
Because I do, confound it. She is not a liar and when she told me that they were not lovers I believed her.
”

He had told her all she wanted to know. She was not clever, not it seemed like the woman's child was clever, but it did not take a great intellect to see the anger, the longing, the frustration which ravaged her husband, though once again his face had become smooth, closed up, his eyes expressionless.

“
You and she discussed it then?" She lifted her lovely head and her upbringing and the practical Yorkshire common sense she had inherited from her father was evident in her smooth young face. She had to be a fool not to understand and inexperienced though she was, Esmé was no fool.

“
For God's sake, Esmé, what sort of a question is that?"

“
A simple one, I would have thought. You and she have talked of the child and her education, it seems, and from what you tell me, of other things, I am . . . I think I am entitled, as your wife, to know what she means to you?"

“
She is . . . a neighbouring farmer . . . she fell on hard times and .. ."

“
You helped her out.
”

Reed's face took on the menacing hue and expression those with whom he did business would have recognised. He was not a man to be questioned on his actions,
whatever they might be, and he was certainly not going
to explain to this child, even if she was his wife, the undercurrents which eddied about his relationship with Cat Abbott's mother. He had known from the first that his carriage at the gate of Browhead, with Cat Abbott in it as they drove on the road to Grasmere, and as it drove back, his coachman at the reins, again with Cat Abbott in it, would not pass by unnoticed. His name had been linked in a vague, unformed way with Annie Abbott's for some time, but the presence of Charlie Lucas had silenced the whispers. Now they were becoming a full-throated roar and he found that he did not care any more. He was sorry if they should hurt his wife since she was no more than a child herself. A child to whom he had done a great mischief, but his obsession with Annie Abbott was running out of control and he could not seem to harness it. He wanted to cosset her, hold her, protect her, wrap her in luxury and hide her deep and safe in the love which filled his heart, but she wouldn't let him and so he must do it through the child.