Dorothy Eden (6 page)

Hetty had stayed on deck for the whole of the four-hour crossing. She had shivered in the sea wind, and closed her eyes so as not to see the rising and falling waves. It was cold and lonely on deck, but the claustrophobic atmosphere of the saloon or the over-crowded cabins would have been worse. She would have been looking for Clemency all the time, as she had been doing ever since leaving the little Kinsale hospital and travelling to Queenstown, where the majority of the living and the dead from the disaster had been brought ashore.

She had seen so many corpses that she had become numbed. They were so much debris, untidy, ugly, anonymous, and ready to be shovelled out of sight. As a kind of necessary penance she had chosen to stay for the mass funeral of the victims, the coffins carried on waggons drawn by horses gathered from all over County Cork. They had rattled over the cobblestones in a seemingly endless procession, past the little grey Irish houses with their shuttered windows and along the long winding road out of the town. The cemetery was on a headland. The Atlantic winds swept over it day and night. The dead would never be out of the sound of the sea.

Hetty, in her role of daughter, had decided that Mrs Jervis should be buried there. She had sent another cable to Uncle Jonas telling him of her intention and he had cabled back, “Perhaps wisest decision. Stop. It would be sensible to go ahead with your wedding plans. Stop. Put flowers on poor Millicent’s grave for me. Stop. Uncle Jonas.”

He hadn’t made any more enquiries about the presumably missing Harriet Brown. This was typical of the lack of personal interest the Jervis family took in their servants. She resolved there and then never to behave in that way herself, when she was Lady Hazzard of Loburn.

Lady Hazzard: she was living in a dream, and hoped she would never wake up.

She guessed that Uncle Jonas didn’t want to be too disturbed by the tragedy. His headstrong sister had brought it on herself, acting as she had done in defiance of his advice. Insulated by distance, snug in his rich surroundings, he must have regarded the whole thing as the kind of sensational newspaper headline that occurred constantly during a major war. Anyway, he and his sister had not got on particularly well. He would be relieved to hear of Clemency’s wedding, so that he could retire from responsibility for her.

Hetty had been trying to remember Clemency’s handwriting. She thought it had been large and bold and rather stylised and probably not difficult to imitate. When she wrote to Uncle Jonas, as she would have to do shortly, or to any of Clemency’s friends—fortunately Clemency hadn’t much cared for her own sex, and had not had a best friend, or even a particularly intimate one—she imagined she would be able to perform quite satisfactorily. She could even use the old ruse of apologising for using her left hand, having damaged her right.

On the train journey from Liverpool to London in the early dawn, her brain buzzed with plans. But as the train slackened speed, and slipped through the smoke-shrouded suburbs, her heart began to thump so violently that she thought she would faint.

The discomfort served to remind her sharply that she was alive, and that fact alone gave her ineffable pleasure. Compared to surviving a desperate shipwreck, meeting a strange Englishman and making a pretence of loving him was simplicity itself.

She intended eventually to love him, even if she had not quite achieved that felicitous state by the time she became his wife.

At one end of the station platform a small official group stood waiting. Someone nudged Hetty and told her the American ambassador was there. If she were an American she should go and be greeted by him.

Anything to postpone the moment of meeting Lord Hazzard, Hetty thought, her heart renewing its hard thumping. She stood before Mr Walter H. Page, looked into his worn, troubled face, and allowed her hand to be taken. She told him her name in a low voice.

“Have you friends in London, Miss Jervis?”

“Yes, I have. My fiancé. I think he is to be here to meet me.” Her tongue hadn’t tripped at all. But she was suddenly overcome by the thought of her first mistake. Clemency had always done her hair in an elaborate coiffure of curls. She had completely forgotten to make some attempt at that elegant style. In her clumsy makeshift clothes she must look like an Irish waif. Hugo would never recognise her.

“Can I have him located for you, Miss Jervis?” Mr Page was asking in his courteous concerned voice.

“I think he’ll be in uniform. He’s on leave. Oh—” she gave an audible gasp. “I do believe I can see him.”

The sight of that tall broad-shouldered figure in khaki, standing apart from the crowd, perhaps not particularly wanting to be part of it, since this drama was not something he had expected, made Hetty want to sink into the ground, or disappear into thin air. Whatever had she embarked on? She was appalled at the extent of her audaciousness. But how was she to retrace her steps? She couldn’t. She had set out on a course that could not be altered unless Clemency suddenly materialised in front of her and condemned her duplicity.

She felt a slight push in her back. She realised that the Ambassador was paternally guiding her in the right direction. And then Hugo saw her and came swiftly forward, his face full of unmistakable relief. So she was recognisable as Clemency, she thought dazedly, and smiling uncertainly she made the final step into her future.

“Hugo!” Her voice was completely spontaneous, as was her action of throwing her arms round him. But then she was distinctly aware of his wince. Oh, God, he knew! It was all over. He had realised her deception. Her panic, and she suspected she would have many moments of panic in the next few days, passed when she saw that he had been leaning on a cane, and her impulsive embrace had nearly unbalanced him.

“You’ve been wounded!” she cried.

He nodded. “Just out of hospital. Damned lucky, actually. I have a month’s leave. Poor girl, have you had a ghastly time?”

“Worse than that. I can’t talk about it yet.” She breathed deeply. “But I’m alive.”

“Your mother? Has there been a funeral?”

“She’s buried with the others. I thought it best. So did Uncle Jonas. Hugo, I have nothing. Even these comic clothes aren’t mine.” Surely that was what Clemency would have said, caring as she did about her appearance. “Do I look terrible?”

Now she was making him study her, challenging him to discover her lie. He did look at her hard, and she had the courage to return his stare, her first face to face encounter with the man she had decided was to be hers.

Did he look as attractive as he had done in New York, glimpsed when entering the house, or leaving with Clemency on his arm? She had thought his blue eyes so sunny, his fair skin and blond hair so English. Now she saw that his face was florid and a little puny, his eyes paler and colder than she had imagined. She had only seen him in the distance, after all, she herself invisible in her neat maid’s uniform, for he was not the kind of person who noticed servants.

She hadn’t remembered his neat straw-coloured moustache over full, rather pouting lips. He must have grown that since his visit to New York. But he was agreeably tall and erect, broad-shouldered and wide-chested, as she remembered, the epitome of a handsome British army officer. She was sure she could love his body well enough, but his mind, his intellect, his sense of humour? Those qualities she had yet to discover.

“Stop staring at me,” he said, a trifle sharply. “I’m not at my best. And you certainly do look rather awful.”

Hetty’s hands went guiltily to her wan face, her pulled-back hair. Clemency would never have permitted herself to look like this, even after a shipwreck.

She made an attempt at perkiness.

“It’s partly because I’m starving. We’ve been travelling all night.”

“Of course you must be famished.” He seemed relieved by this practical explanation. “We’ll have breakfast at the Berkeley before driving down to Loburn. Pimm’s outside with the Rolls.”

From Clemency’s avid study of fashionable London Hetty had picked up a good deal of useful information, including that the Berkeley Hotel was much favoured by debutantes and smart country people.

“Hugo, I can’t go to the Berkeley dressed like this.”

“Nonsense, of course you can.” His voice was supremely confident. “You’ll be with me.”

He limped slightly as he walked, but even so she had to hurry to keep up with him. It was clear that he hated the sad scene on the station platform: he had probably seen too many scenes of scarecrow refugees in France and Belgium. She understood that. She was beginning to understand war. It was far from the picture Clemency had had of gay young officers home on leave, drinking champagne, being fêted by beautiful women.

Poor Hugo! He had a painful wound, and his beautiful woman had been dragged out of the sea, limp-haired and bedevilled by ghosts. But they were both survivors. Reminding herself of that miracle Hetty quickened her step and came abreast of the man who was to be her husband. Surely he didn’t think her rightful place was two steps behind him.

A grey-haired chauffeur in uniform was standing beside a highly-polished motor car.

“This is Pimm,” said Hugo laconically to Hetty. “All the young men are joining up nowadays. We had to bring Pimm back out of retirement. The Berkeley, Pimm. We’ll have some breakfast before we set out. Miss Jervis is starving.”

The elderly man’s face remained impassive, not giving any intimation of what he thought of the waif his master was bringing home.

“Very well, m’lord. I expect the young lady has had a bad time.”

“Terrible. In you get, Clemency.”

Clemency. The name was like a stone thrown in her face. It made her shudder. She couldn’t be faced with her guilt day after day, besides taking the risk of absent-mindedly not recognizing when she was spoken to. She would have to make a decision about it, and very soon.

“Well, take a look at London now you’ve finally arrived.”

Sitting beside her in the back of the car, Hugo had suddenly taken her hand in his, an abrupt gesture that had made her jump. Now his voice was gently teasing, a fact that reassured her. Surely then he did have a lighter side. Shortly they would be able to smile and joke together.

“It looks awfully grey,” she ventured.

“Not when the sun comes out. It is spring, you know. Loburn’s marvellous in the spring.” Now there was some warmth in his voice. He cared about Loburn. Rather more, probably, than the American girl whom he had asked to be his wife. She had heard that Englishmen who were fortunate enough to own old family estates were passionate about them. She found this fact curious and interesting. She would like to experience such a passion herself. After all, Loburn was to be hers, too. She had, metaphorically, dragged it up out of the Atlantic.

“Where’s your ring, darling?”

Oh, heavens, she had forgotten the emerald and diamond engagement ring still adorning Clemency’s hand at the bottom of the sea.

“I lost it,” she said steadily. “It must have come off in the sea. I was holding on to a lifebelt for hours. Nearly all my clothes were washed off. I only had this bracelet,” she fingered the heavy gold circlet that she was never going to wear again after today, “to be identified by. Some people,” she continued dispassionately, “were completely naked.”

“Were they really? Just like being caught in a shell blast,” said Hugo. “Damned unpleasant.”

Hetty seized on the new subject.

“How did you get your wound?”

“Hit by a shell fragment. Made a nasty gash. Didn’t damage my riding muscles, thank God.”

“It must be pretty awful in the trenches.”

“It’s not exactly a picnic. Unless you like bully beef. Still, I can get a bit of riding when we’re behind the lines, if we’re camped near a cavalry outfit. We even managed a race one day, my company and another. But a Hun aeroplane came over and frightened the horses. We had to dismount and take pot shots at it with revolvers. The pilot crashed later in some woods. I don’t think we potted him; I rather gather it was engine trouble. He was practically skimming the ground.”

Dear Donald Newman, would you have found the aeroplanes you longed to fly more dangerous than enemy torpedoes if you had lived?

“Serve him right,” Hugo was saying. “He shouldn’t have frightened the horses.”

Was Hugo only eloquent when he talked of horses? That was going to be a little boring. She had hoped to develop all the interests she had had to suppress in the Jervis household—music, books, paintings, talk about many things. She knew that her father had been an accomplished conversationalist. Her mother had used to say so. “He knew everything, and he talked as easily as a bird sang,” she had said.

“I’ll get you another ring,” Hugo was saying, patting her hand. “Do you think emeralds are unlucky?”

Hetty made herself laugh.

“I hardly think it was an emerald that sank the
Lusitania.”

“We’ll find another stone, to be on the safe side. You can make the choice.” And she was suddenly wondering how different her finger might be from Clemency’s, bigger, smaller, longer? Offhand, she just didn’t know. But already she had decided that Hugo wasn’t particularly observant. He probably carried no sharp memory in his mind of Clemency’s slim young hand.

Over breakfast in a fairly deserted restaurant, Hetty felt her spirits rising. The coffee was good, the poached eggs and thin slices of toast, generously buttered, tasted better than anything she had ever eaten. She couldn’t resist some hot muffins.

Hugo watched her with an amused smile.

“Food not much good in County Cork?”

“You’re teasing. At first I was full of sea water, and then—” her face sobered, “the circumstances weren’t right for enjoying eating.”

He looked at her more attentively.

“I don’t remember you talking like that, in that precise way.”

She lowered her head.

“We didn’t really know each other that well, Hugo. Did we? It was for such a short time.” She added deliberately, “I only knew I wanted to marry you. And you said you wanted to marry me.”

“By jove, yes, of course I did.”

She knew that the warm food had brought colour back to her cheeks, and that she was looking prettier.