Indiscretion (14 page)

Her aunt stared. ‘You don’t mean you rode
outside?

‘Oh, no
—
I mean the umbrella is for fighting off the unwanted attentions of gentlemen. A good jab under the ribs usually does it
—
though with the fleshier sort of gentleman, whose ribs have long disappeared, you may have to go for the shin, or the kneecap.’

There was such a silence, such a stricken air of consternation, that Caroline swiftly made a mental review of what she had said, in case fatigue had made her pronounce some shocking indiscretion, or even one of her father’s barrack-room curses. But no: and as her uncle and aunt continued to stare, she could only blunder on: ‘Well, that is how it happened, at any rate. It was all rather absurd and unfortunate, but the main thing is I am here now, and so very relieved to meet you both at last. And yes, I am glad too, very glad, that Fate brought you and my father together before the end, Aunt: for my part I know and think nothing of the breach between our families except that it was a great pity, and now it’s over and we can be friends at last, and that’s something to be thankful for, and I still think so though I miss poor Papa sorely, and know I always will.’ She had talked herself close to tears again, but successfully held them back. Still the silent gaze of her uncle and aunt was insupportable, and she said unsteadily, ‘Lord, I’m afraid I’ve said something wrong, and I wish you would tell me what!’

‘My poor child,’ Aunt Selina said, stirring, ‘oh, you poor child. The thought
—
the very thought, of what you have been through! I hesitate to pain you any more by alluding to it; but this parting with your employer
—
a Mrs Catling, I think
—
was it really absurd, as you call it? It was obviously not amicable. And though your father was at pains to praise her, I gained the impression of a strong-minded woman, to say the least. I fear this is uncharitable, but I have always entertained doubts about the temper of rich ladies who cannot secure themselves a companion unless they pay for one.’ Something like a smile briefly lit the sombre face of Aunt Selina, who for all the plain-sewing and coddled eggs was clearly no fool. ‘Am I on the right road, my dear?’

Caroline could not reply beyond a rueful smile in return, as the Reverend
Dr Langland,
who had been studying his wife in open-mouthed amazement as if she had just begun to talk in Aramaic, or even to quack like a duck, burst out: ‘What? My dear Selina, what
—
what are we talking of? I really cannot understand you. The road you are talking of must be metaphorical, no doubt, but it might as well be in Samarkand for all I can set my feet on it.’ He chuckled distractedly at his own joke, then cried: ‘What?’ again in such a fashion that, if he were not a transparently nice, kind man, it would have tempted you to brain him with his own magnifying-glass.

‘I mean, my dear, that young women in such positions are often treated unfairly’ Aunt Selina said.

‘Are
they?’ cried
Dr
Langland, with an inquisitive goggle at Caroline. ‘Did you find that, my dear?’

‘Well
—
yes,’ Caroline said; and told them how she had come to lose her position with Mrs Catling, as briefly and coolly as she could, for she was not fond of people who made a great deal of their wrongs, and she certainly did not wish to seem continually angling after sympathy.

But even the bare account she gave of yesterday’s events produced such gasps, such looks of dismay, and at last such another stricken silence that the wildest exaggeration could not have done more.

‘This is shocking
—
shocking,’ her aunt got out at last, shaking her head and going over to her husband to squeeze his hand. After a moment Caroline understood, with pleased surprise, what this gesture meant: it was true spontaneous affection: being moved, they reached out for each other. ‘To dismiss you because you wished to attend your own father’s funeral! It is absolutely inhuman.’

‘Shocking,’ echoed
Dr Langland.
‘I never knew there were people so lost to common feeling and decency. Dear, dear me! My eyes are opened.’ Which they certainly were: to the extent that they were rather painful to look upon.

Caroline felt, in fact, altogether uncomfortable, so generous was the pity that enfolded her. Even from the maid, who presently brought the tea-tray, she received a degree of solicitous consideration that embarrassed her, being whisperingly entreated to try the eggs, and assured that if they were not just to her liking, they would be whisked away and replaced with something that was. Caroline found herself indeed in a similar case to
Dr
Langland, for she too had never known there were such people
—
such people as this, that is. She had moved amongst many circles in her life, some clever, some stupid, some moneyed, some threadbare, but all more or less sophisticated, and not inclined to expect much virtue in others, or to cultivate it in themselves. It came as a revelation, not quite commensurate with the proven existence of the fairies, but almost as charming and bewildering, that all the time there had been this other race of beings: kind, gentle, reliable, unworldly. It struck to her heart all the more after her recent experience with Richard Leabrook; and when her aunt wondered again at what she had been through, Caroline inwardly commented that she didn’t know the half of it.

The coddled eggs ‘were very good: they might have been even better as the
entrée
to a dish of roast mutton and capers and a pint of champagne, but Caroline was not about to quibble with any kindness extended her by the Langlands, whose transparent good nature was such that it set her wondering about something. How did this happen? How could the estrangement between the sisters, Selina and Caroline’s mother, have been so lasting?

There were indications that Aunt Selina was, at least, conscious of the question. Several times Caroline caught her aunt gazing at her with a brimming look, as if she were on the verge of unburdening something; and when she showed Caroline up to her bedroom, urging her to rest, she seemed almost to choke on her parting words: ‘I can’t get over the likeness. Too long
—
really, it’s been too long.’

Caroline was touched again to find the room all prepared for her. Nothing had been omitted for her comfort. Tired as she was, she did not think she could actually sleep, and was still thinking so when she opened bleary eyes on a room almost dark but for the firelight. She sprang up and hurried downstairs, realizing only when the drawing-room pier-glass told her so that she had all her hair dramatically on one side like a woman standing in a gale, and a sleep-crease not much deeper than a duelling-scar all the way down her cheek.

Her uncle, however, cried: ‘There’s a pleasant sight! Now, my dear, are you rested? And hungry? We waited dinner so you would not be disturbed
—
late hours are not our usual style. Mind, we dine later than in my youth
—
such is the irresistible pull of fashion
—
soon dinner will run into bedtime, and we shall all eat reclining like the ancient Romans — about whose digestion, you know, I have often wondered. Whether a dose of rhubarb might have made a difference to Nero or Caligula is a question you might ponder, my dear, next time you go through your Tacitus.’

Caroline promised she would, with a very indistinct idea of what she was promising; and hoped she had not put them out by sleeping so long.

‘Not at all,’ her uncle said, ‘for we have been talking about you, my dear!’

‘We have been discussing whether an appeal from us to this lady
—
this Mrs Catling,’ Aunt Selina said, with barely concealed distaste, ‘might help you: whether we could persuade her to change her mind, and reinstate you
—’

‘No,’ said Caroline sharply. ‘No
—
I’m sorry, I don’t mean that I’m not grateful for the thought. But even if it were possible to alter Mrs Catling’s decision, which is most unlikely, I would not go back to her on any account. What she said, you see, cannot be unsaid.’

‘I see,’ Aunt Selina said, with approval overtaking her surprise. ‘Yes, I do see. But, my dear, this is a difficult situation for you. Are not such posts obtained by recommendation?’

‘Oh, there is the Petty Register Office in Town
—
in London, that is. I mean to make that my first port of call.’

But Aunt Selina was unsure what that was; and when Caroline had explained it to her, she did not abate her expression of dubious regret. ‘These things you know about,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It does seem a pity!’

‘Oh, not at all. The fact is, I am very well used to looking out for myself. That was how Papa
—
’
she suffered a flinch of loyalty
‘
—
well, that is how I liked to live.’

‘Ah
—
your poor papa. We have hardly spoken of him, have we? You’ll want to know all, of course
—’

‘My dear aunt, I don’t think I can bear
all.
It is very chicken-hearted of me I dare say
—
but I just want you to tell me he was happy to the end, and went off as if he were going to spend the evening at his club.’

‘Happy? I do believe he was,’ Aunt Selina said seriously. ‘Most of all, that the families were reconciled at last. I never saw a man more unaffectedly glad of anything. Well, my dear, he lies yet at his friend’s lodging in
Westgate
Buildings. I don’t know whether you generally like to view ...
’

She soon did know, from Caroline’s beseeching expression, that Caroline did not generally like to view at all.

‘Well.
Dr Langland
has arranged, through his clerical acquaintance, that your father’s funeral take place the day after tomorrow, and he will be pleased to officiate himself
—
if, that is, you are in agreement, my dear? And then there is the matter of your father’s effects
—
his estate, as it were.’ Aunt Selina looked exquisitely pained. ‘It is, I’m afraid, rather a
small
matter.’

‘Oh dear, it always was!’ burst out Caroline, between laughing and crying; and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to bury her head on her aunt’s neck while she decided the point.

The funeral was all it should have been
—
not an event to be dwelled upon, still less pronounced beautiful; but there was the satisfaction of a proper and
dignified
farewell: there was rightness, even in the parting tears; and there was besides abundant evidence of the sheer liking Captain Fortune had inspired in life, independently of his merits (or, in the jaundiced view, in spite of his not having any). His short stay in Bath had produced a long tally of acquaintance
—
mostly gentlemen of a military, sporting, or lounging type
—
and they all came to St Swithin’s, filling the church with a potent presence of pomade, rum, tobacco, hessian-leather, and profanity. There was a characteristic flavour of eccentricity about them also
—
from the blue-nosed old commodore who swore he had seen a premonition of death in the bottom of his parrot’s cage, to the starched dandy who declared, against all the evidence to the contrary, that he was Captain Fortune’s long-lost brother and hence Caroline’s guardian
—
the evidence being that he was Irish, red-haired, and all of seventeen years old. The young sprig’s notions of guardianship consisting of a degree of physical consolation scarcely appropriate even in a true relative, Caroline was obliged to be firm with him.

‘Oh dear,’ Aunt Selina kept helplessly saying, in spite of Caroline’s assurances that this was second nature to her. Caroline was quickly becoming aware how many things in her experience would call forth that ‘Oh dear,’ from her aunt: and that as her own life could hardly have been less sheltered, her aunt’s could hardly have been more. Yet it was Aunt Selina’s presence that got her through the day. She told her so, frankly, when in a sort of peeled rawness of feeling she faced the next morning
—
the first, it seemed to her, of her true orphaning
—
and was gently pressed to accompany her aunt on her morning walk to Sydney Gardens.

‘My dear, I’m glad I could help,’ Aunt Selina at last said, after one of her long meditative pauses, which Caroline was now beginning to find restful. Having long lived amongst people who must always be talking, she had been quite bewildered by these at first: had she offended? Was royalty present? ‘All the same, I feel rather a fraud. It’s late in the day for me to be a help to my one true niece
—
my one blood relative, in fact. Blood being thicker than water, as the proverb has it.’

‘Well, but aren’t those old proverbs nonsensical sometimes? As if one had ever supposed that blood was
not
thicker than water. And as for teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, I can think of nothing more grotesque.’

‘Your grandmother would have thought the same,’ Aunt Selina said, with a rueful look. ‘My mother was a very
decided
woman in all ways, and the idea of her submitting to be taught anything
...
Not that I am so very different, I’m afraid, when it comes to stubbornness. I would go so far as to say, my dear, that I am a donkey and pig-head.’