Ashenden (18 page)

At an ocean’s distance, in America, he had understood that the contradictions in his father’s nature were the price a self-made man in an old country paid for success. It was the reason why an advocate of the railway did not want a railway line near his house and why a campaigner for the abolition of slavery underpaid those he employed and accused them of cheating. Much as he loved his father, that did not make the contradictions easier to bear at close quarters.

“I have written to ask Bartholomew for his final accounts,” said his father. “A great, great shame.”

It was indeed a pity. The architect was a small fretful man who worried about his reputation to the detriment of his income and who had put his blood into the house. Philip remembered him darting in and darting out, spinning jobs like plates in the air. It was hard to say what would hurt him more, the loss of his fees or the withdrawal of what he must assume to be friendship.

“Whether or not it comes to court,” said his father, “I should like you to handle it.”

No! This came out as a nod.

“I’ve prepared the figures. All you need to know is written down here.” His father pushed a few sheets of paper across the desk.

Philip got up to go.

“Pretty girls are ten a penny,” said his father. “As you must be aware by now.”

“Sir?”

“I trust you take my meaning.”

*  *  *

Later Beatrice Butterworth would wonder how she got through the week. For there was so much to be got through and admired: dismaying numbers of meals with many courses and dishes, rooms and yet more rooms, walks through shrubbery and along the river, bright regiments of planting on the terraces, and, of course, children. There was such a great deal of everything, and admiration, she found, was exhausting. For Florence, who had become such an object of fascination, the visit must also have been tiring, albeit for a different reason. Only Bertram was in some new element.

As the days wore on, Beatrice found herself thinking more and more fondly about her own dear home, which was of a similar age to Ashenden and shared (on a very modest, terraced scale) its proportional sympathies. In her mind, its quaint deficiencies that were such a trial to housekeeping receded, and she longed for its quiet and unfashionable rooms, where several clear strides might be taken between furniture.

“One can have too much ebony, don’t you think?” she said to her
daughter on the last evening, as they were preparing themselves to go downstairs. “Such an oppressive wood. To say nothing of all the gilt.”

“I am not clear whether you are objecting to the darkness or the brightness, Mama,” said Florence. “Are you going to be much longer? They will be expecting us in the octagon room.”

Her mother settled her locket round her throat on its black velvet ribbon and crooked her head. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What do you make of Philip?”

Florence replied that she thought he was very polite.

“Yes, he has been most attentive. To you, above all.”

“And of course he is quite tall,” said Florence.

“Long of limb,” said her mother. “But polite, as you say, and well spoken.”

“When he speaks,” said Florence.

“A quiet, steady disposition.”

“Quiet, certainly.”

“Hidden depths,” said her mother. “Your father was the same at Philip’s age.”

Florence colored with irritation. Philip had unsettled her in a way she could not put into words. “But clearly his chief distinguishing characteristic is that he is, or will be one day, very rich.”

Her mother gave her a long look. “We should go downstairs,” she said. “We are already a little late.”

The octagon room was where the Henderson collection of English pictures was displayed, or where it was stifled, depending on how you looked at it. Florence came through the door with her mother and thought she could hear the Constable gasping for breath.

It was an overwhelmingly purple room, padded, trimmed, and tasseled to within an inch of its life. Beside the high altar of the hearth, with its steel-and-ormolu grate, Philip leaned against the carved marble chimneypiece. Across an expanse of Turkey carpet, beyond the tableau of the rest of the family gathered there, she saw him register her appearance with a sharpening of attention that seemed to indicate that he knew something about her that she
didn’t know herself. She was used to attention, but the quality of Philip’s attention gave her a fluttered sensation that she was quite unprepared for. It was as if he had some sort of odd power over her that he might at any moment exercise.

“I very much enjoyed the archery this afternoon,” she said, as he threaded his way through the furniture to her side. She could hear herself throwing out the bright words to put a little distance between them. Everyone was looking at them. Even Wilfred, sitting reading on the ottoman, was observing them over the top of his book.

“You’ve a real knack. A crack shot,” he said. “That bull’s-eye!”

“I was standing quite close.”

Philip had butterflies in his stomach and elsewhere. “Not so close as all that,” he said.

“Albert scored three bull’s-eyes and he was standing much farther back.”

“Oh,
Albert,
” he said, longing to reach his hands about her narrow waist, to run his fingers through her curls—“spaniel’s ears” Caroline disdainfully called them—and as if reading his intention, she moved away.

“Tell me about this painting,” she said, peering at a still life of pears in a pewter dish surrounded by a dark broad frame. “It doesn’t look English to me.”

“No, it’s Dutch. It shouldn’t really be here. At least”—and here he paused, worrying that what he felt about her was written all over his face—“it should and it shouldn’t. We keep the Dutch masters at Harley Street.”

“I like the fly.”

Philip, who liked the fly too, admired her for admiring it (although there was almost nothing he did not admire her for). He explained that the picture had formed part of a collection that his father had bought a few months ago, with the idea that he would keep whatever appealed to him and dispose of the rest. “This was one of the ones he was going to sell until he discovered that it used to hang here in the house when the Mores were the owners.”

“Why was he going to sell it?”

“It isn’t of the first rank,” said Philip. “My father has very good taste.” He could have added that his father liked to win and found many ways to do it.

“My brother is going to be very sorry to leave tomorrow,” said Florence. “In fact, he has announced that he has no intention of doing so.” She laughed into what was becoming a dangerous pause. “Bertram is revealing quite a new side to Mama. Quite an
adventurous
side.”

“He has fallen in well with the little scamps, hasn’t he?” And here Philip had a warm and curiously complicit feeling that they were parents discussing their own offspring.

A footman bearing a small silver tray with chased scalloped edges, on which stemmed crystal glasses of pale wine were arranged at geometric intervals, interceded. They each took a glass, Florence raising hers quickly to her lips to avoid the embarrassment of a toast.

“A toast,” said Philip, leaning across to chink and spilling a little of his in the process. “I very much hope you have enjoyed your visit as much as your brother.”

“I have,” said Florence, and to an extent this was true. She had enjoyed the walks, the inspection of the glasshouses, the card games when it was raining, the smooth running of a household that delivered many delicious meals at appointed hours with no crying in the kitchen or fuss at the tradesman’s entrance over bills. She had liked to see the younger children making their own world in this house, which for all its ebony, gilt, and purple plush was at ease with itself. She was even rather proud of her bull’s-eye. To Philip she said none of this. Instead, she thought it might be really rather a relief to go home.

*  *  *

At the end of the evening, Ada Henderson sat in front of her looking glass and removed her garnet earrings and necklace, handing them to the maid to lay in the velvet-lined tray beside her diamonds. Not
once during the Butterworths’ visit had she worn the diamonds— what a pity tact was second nature to her!—and she now regretted this. A soft tap at the door, her husband entered, and she sent the maid away. He came across to where she was sitting and began to unhook her bodice as she took the pins out of her hair and brushed it out.

“Thank heavens that’s over,” she said, breathing more freely.

“I did warn you.”

“And you were right.” Ada thought how fortunate she was to have married a man of such sound judgment: it made for a well-regulated life. “It’s very sad. Beatrice and I have grown quite, quite apart. The easy way between us has gone. What’s worse, she has a new sly way of asking what things cost.” She turned to pat his hand. “As if
you
would ever pay too much for anything!”

“As if I would,” said her husband, returning the pat.

“And that wretched girl set her cap at Philip.” She wriggled out of her sleeves and fumbled about her waist to undo the strings of her skirt.

“Hop up,” said her husband. “It’s got into a knot.”

“What a siren that girl is!” said Ada. “I knew it the minute I set eyes on her. A fortune hunter of the first degree.”

“I think that it is rather the other way round, my dear.”

Ada said, noting the “my dear,” “What do you mean?”

“I mean that it is evidently Philip who is smitten.”

“Philip is far too sensible.”

“Philip is a young man and Florence is a very pretty girl.”

“I hope you are not suggesting—” said Ada.

“A very pretty girl and a most unsuitable one,” said her husband. “Philip can do much better.”

“Then we are agreed,” said his wife, who, after much tussling, was down to her chemise, every ounce of flesh rejoicing. “Will you stay?”

“If you don’t mind.” Her husband, who had already removed his frock coat, was struggling with his neckcloth.

“Let me,” said Ada, reaching to help him.

Separate bedrooms, which they had not been able to afford in their early married life, made for conjugal happiness, or so she believed. There was something very agreeable about having a choice.

*  *  *

After the Butterworths left the following day, Philip found himself in the staircase hall utterly at a loss, unsure whether to go upstairs or down or to stay where he was.

“There you are,” said Rowena, untying her bonnet, as if he had been missing, not her. She had been out early this morning and missed the departure. “Come upstairs,” she said, studying his face. “We’ll go to my sitting room.”

His sister’s small sitting room looked over the river. The wallpaper was floral and he recognized some of the furniture from Harley Street, along with a brown-and-white pottery cow that was a childhood favorite of hers. There was a hole in the back where you poured in the milk and a hole in the mouth where the milk came out. The tail looped to make a handle. He remembered the tears at Clapham when their nurse forbade his sister from taking it to bed with her.

Shrugging off her paisley shawl, Rowena sat down and propped her feet on the fender. It was raining again and her shoes were wet through. “I’ve hardly seen you since you came back, what with the visitors.”

“Well,” said Philip, “you do make yourself scarce.” Wherever did she go? he wondered.

“I can’t be doing with all this sitting about, all this chitchat.”

“You’ve become quite an oddity, Ro.”

The old nickname brought a smile. “Haven’t I? The fate of unmarried persons.”

“You’re only nineteen.”

“I shan’t marry, ever.”

She leaned forward and began to ask him all sorts of questions about America, none of which concerned clothing.

“No, you tell me your news first. What have you have been doing
with yourself while I’ve been away?” At his suggestion, the hunger on her face almost shamed him.

“Oh, I haven’t been idle.” Then out came a story about a little school she was planning for the village, all the ins and outs and whys and wherefores of it. How she hoped that Mrs. Trimble, the former housekeeper of Ashenden, would agree to be the schoolmistress; how an outbuilding at the vicarage could serve as premises. “What do you think?”

Philip said that he thought that the school was a good idea but perhaps she might think of someone better qualified to run it.

“Mrs. Trimble is the daughter of a clergyman. She strikes me as a very capable person and she is a great reader.”

“All the same, a housekeeper isn’t a schoolmistress.”

“Anyone can teach. You taught me my sums and I taught Wilfred to read.”

And Wilfred had never left off reading. Even when he wasn’t reading, he looked like he was reading.

“It’s not Eton or Harrow I’m founding,” said Rowena. “At any rate, you will see when you meet the woman. From what I hear, More treated her badly and she hasn’t been able to get a position since. Not that she’s told me anything about it. She is too proud for that.”

“Is this about providing a school for poor children or finding employment for a housekeeper fallen on hard times?”

Two spots of red appeared in the exact centers of her cheeks. “It’s about righting wrongs. I thought you would understand.”

“Of course I do, Ro. I think it is a splendid idea.” He nodded and got up from his seat.

“Must you go?”

“I have some figures to look at. We’ll talk about my travels another time, I promise.” All he really wanted to talk about was Florence or, failing that, to find somewhere private to think about her. Already America seemed distant, on account of having no Florence in it.

“Do you know,” said Rowena, “when you first came home, I had the impression you might decide to go away again.”

“Why do you say that?”

She shrugged. “I imagine traveling must be a great adventure. At least, I should find it so.”

“I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the freedom, but I find I’m glad to be home after all.” He could feel heat travel up his cheeks.

“Good.” Rowena made brusque sweeps at her skirts. “Well, the Butterworths are gone at last!”