Ravenscliffe (2 page)

‘Eve,’ she said, quite urgently, so that they both halted again. Her friend turned to her, questioningly.

‘When you and Daniel marry,’ said Anna, ‘wouldn’t it be better for everyone if you made new home, and left one you had shared with Arthur?’

Eve sighed, looked at the ground. This conversation, kindly meant, was nevertheless unsettling. ‘Probably,’ she said.

‘Arthur lives on in your children, you know, not in bricks and mortar.’

‘Aye. I know that.’ And she did. But still, she thought, it was a link with him. She didn’t want her love for Daniel to eclipse her memories of Arthur: that would be wrong and less than he deserved. While she lived in her little terrace in Beaumont Lane, she could still picture him at the table wolfing his dinner, or in the tub sluicing off the coal dust. Where would he be in Ravenscliffe?

They went in, though; like burglars, through an unfastened sash window discovered by Anna on a previous foray. She opened it now and ushered Eve through it, holding up her skirts and giving her a gentle push into a large square entrance
hall. They stood for a moment in the profound stillness of the empty house.

‘You’ll get us arrested,’ Eve whispered. She was half-impressed, half-scandalised at her friend’s resourcefulness. Anna, her eyes bright with purpose, grinned at her. She looked more twelve than twenty-two, Eve thought.

‘No need to whisper,’ Anna said. She spoke with bold confidence, and in the empty house her voice rang out like a challenge. ‘Come. This way,’ and she set off through the ground floor with a certainty of direction that suggested she’d been here before. There was no resisting her, so Eve dispatched her disapproval and allowed herself to be led from one large, impressive room to another. Abraham Carr had done a fine job. There was a fair amount of dust, and the spiders had claimed all the corners, but there was no getting away from the fact that this was a glorious house, flooded with natural light, substantially built and sure of itself, adorned with Victorian flourishes – lavishly tiled floors, plaster cornicing, marble fire surrounds, a sweeping, mahogany staircase – and positioned to make the most of the views of Netherwood Common, from the front and from the back. How odd it would be, thought Eve, as she gazed through one of two windows in the large kitchen, to look out every day on grass and trees. Anna joined her and Eve said: ‘Makes a change from looking at Lilly and Maud’s drawers on t’washing line doesn’t it?’

‘At least when their drawers are up you can’t see privvies.’

They laughed, then Anna wandered across to the other window and Eve turned to study the range. It was rather fine, a Leamington Kitchener, twice the size of her range in Beaumont Lane and with no visible faults that a pot of black lead and a rag wouldn’t solve. It was set into a recess, which was bordered on its two long sides by carved columns and
across its top by a handsome mantel in the same classical style, as if it were a prize exhibit, carefully positioned by a curator. Eve placed her hands on the top of the stove. She wondered how long it had stood cold.

Anna said: ‘You could watch Seth play knur and spell from here, see?’

Eve turned back to the window and joined her friend, who pointed up the hill outside towards the wide clearing of trampled grass where men gathered most Saturday afternoons with their pummels and knurs. Seth had watched his father play ever since he was old enough to be taken along to matches, and now he used his dad’s pummel, which was too big for him, really, but try telling him that. If the competition wasn’t too fierce or if they were a man short, Seth was asked to join in; along with the allotment, it was the one thing that could make him smile.

Eve moved to Anna’s side: saw the same long, wide slope and the same clearing. But she didn’t see Seth there. She saw Arthur. Jacket discarded on the floor, shirtsleeves rolled above the elbows, facing the spell and its finely balanced knur, his eyes never leaving the ball as the spring launched it up and he swiped it long and true with the pummel his own father had made for him. That’s where Arthur would be at Ravenscliffe, she thought. Not in the house, but up there, on the hill.

She turned and walked out of the kitchen so abruptly that Anna was sure she had taken against the idea of the move once and for all, and as they clambered back out of the window Eve was silent. But then she pulled open the front gate, which hung lopsided, its top hinge having splintered away from the post, and she said: ‘That’ll need fixing for a start.’

Beside her, Anna smiled.

C
larissa Hoyland, in bed, draped in Flanders lace, propped up on three fat pillows, turned a petulant face towards her husband. It was the same expression her youngest daughter used when early signs indicated she might not get her way: brows puckered, bottom lip jutting, the suggestion of tears in her eyes. But of course, Isabella was only twelve. The child was away from home for a few weeks, staying with cousins in Suffolk, but Teddy Hoyland felt her presence now in the bed before him.

‘I simply can’t see the difficulty,’ said the countess. ‘And I wonder at you, Teddy, presenting me with obstacles at every turn, when already there is so much to be organised.’

‘Obstacles! I hardly think so.’

The earl, standing at the foot of his wife’s bed, was already dressed and replete with breakfast, ready for the day’s business, while Clarissa still lay dishevelled and rosy in a tumble of bedclothes. She was slow to surface in the mornings, unfurling delicately each new day like a fern, while her husband woke like one of his black Labradors, bounding with gusto from sleep into wakefulness. His rude health and sturdiness
seemed almost an affront here, in his wife’s room. The countess was tiny, bones like a bird, wrists you could encircle with room to spare between index finger and thumb. Lying there under the satin counterpane she looked fragile and vulnerable, and though he knew that any suggestion of weakness was an illusion – that she was, in fact, armed with a will of iron and nerves of steel – still she made him feel like a cad, a tweed-clad brute, denying his charming wife the smallest happiness. This was how she triumphed, always.

‘Very well,’ she said now, arranging her face into a mask of brave resignation. ‘We shall put him off.’

She picked up her novel and began to read, though it was upside down. For a short while he watched her, more amused than annoyed. Then he said: ‘Now, Clarissa. That won’t be necessary.’

She looked up.

‘Oh, you’re still here! Well, I beg to differ, Teddy. Far better the king doesn’t come to Netherwood at all, than to come and find us lacking.’

The Earl of Netherwood knew well enough what the royal visit meant to his wife. As Prince of Wales he had visited three times: as king, not at all. Now that the monarch was at last expected, Teddy knew how important it was, in Clarissa’s opinion, that Bertie should leave with the impression of having enjoyed limitless hospitality at the finest, most gracious country house in the whole of England. But still. To insist upon a programme of complete and lavish redecoration was one thing: to declare the bathrooms – all of them – as unfit for use was quite another. And this, just four weeks before King Edward and his entourage were due. Lord Netherwood decided to make one last appeal to reason.

‘My dear, the house has never looked so spruce. You’ve done a magnificent job’ – this to appeal to her vanity – ‘and your instincts in matters of style and taste are unsurpassed.’
She looked at him askance now, because even she detected flattery and flannel. ‘But there is neither the time nor the need to tear out perfectly good bathroom furniture for the benefit of Bertie. A lavatory he sat on as Prince of Wales will serve him just as well as king.’

‘Teddy!’ she said.

‘Well it’s true. We entertained him in grand style before, without any real upheaval at all. I’m perfectly confident we shall do the same again.’

She put down her book.

‘I’m sorry, Teddy. New baths, new basins, new lavatories, or I shall declare us indisposed. Something dreadfully infectious, perhaps. A polite letter to the horrid Knollys warning of a risk to the king of scarlet fever.’

Of course he knew, as she knew, that the ultimatum was preposterous. Clarissa would sooner run naked through the streets of Netherwood than write such a letter to the king’s man. In any case, if it suited Bertie to visit Netherwood Hall – and it did, as he was coming from Doncaster and the St Leger – then visit he would. An outbreak of scarlet fever, real or imaginary, would be of no account. He pleased himself, did Bertie, and on this occasion he had done as he always did by blithely announcing his intention to visit, entirely at his own convenience, leaving the honoured hosts to a tumult of anxious preparation. However, standing before his beautiful, pouting, manipulative wife, Teddy decided – not for the first time, nor for the last – to cave in. It was certainly his quickest route out of the countess’s rooms and into the fresh air and it wasn’t as if they couldn’t afford the work. And if Clarissa was happy, generally speaking, they all were happy. She had, after all, already been forced to concede the vexed point of Dorothea Stirling’s invitation to Netherwood Hall. No small concession either, given her initial opposition to that particular scheme.

‘Very well,’ said the earl. ‘Talk to Motson. If he believes the work can be achieved in the time available, go ahead.’

‘Thank you, Teddy,’ she said, briskly now that her mission was accomplished. She blew him a kiss by way of dismissal so he took his cue, exiting his wife’s room just as a housemaid arrived with lemon tea. The girl stepped back and bobbed a respectful curtsey, and the cup rattled in the saucer in her trembling hand. She should save her awe for a figure of actual authority, thought the earl wryly as he strode off down the long corridor. Underfoot, the pile of the new carpet felt soft and rich – not that the old one had ever seemed unsatisfactory to him. New bathroom furniture indeed. He wasn’t sure who was the bigger fool: his wife, for inventing the project, or himself for sanctioning it.

In her room, the countess lay back on the pillows and picked up a writing pad and pencil that she kept at all times on her nightstand. She had many of her best ideas in bed, in those unstructured moments just before sleeping or just after waking, when the mind loosened itself from the shackles of daily routine. In bed, she had imagined any number of wonderful dresses for herself and the girls that had subsequently been realised by her dressmaker in chiffon or satin or cotton lawn. In bed, too, she had visualised garden schemes – the famous wisteria tunnel, the pagoda in the Japanese water garden, the precise combination of blooms in the white border – and last night, just before she succumbed to sleep, she had seen in her mind’s eye the exquisite rope of tightly plaited orchids in magenta and cream that must grace the table for the forthcoming royal party. She had sat up at once and sketched these and would hand them on later today to Mrs Powell-Hughes, the housekeeper. Now, though, she took up the pad and wrote ‘Motson’ to remind herself to send word that he should begin work immediately on the main bathrooms of the east wing. She had every faith in him and his small
army of workmen to complete the work swiftly and, in any case, everything they needed was ordered already; stylish pieces with sleek, modern lines in white porcelain with chrome accessories. For while she felt it was only polite to seek her husband’s permission, the process was, in fact, just a formality; she had not had even the smallest doubt that her wish would be granted.

Henrietta was waiting for the earl at the bottom of the main staircase, where the graceful curve of the banister concluded its journey with a flourish in the form of a fine, intricately carved newel post. She was leaning against it with her back to her father as he began his descent. Unnoticed by her, he paused. His eldest daughter was dressed for riding: habit, gloves and boots on, her thick blond hair caught up in a knot, and he knew at once that the fact she hadn’t yet gone meant she must have something to say – to him, doubtless. Something pressing. Something that would either complicate his morning or reflect badly on his character. The shameful notion crossed his mind that he might yet retreat and take the servants’ stairs instead. He didn’t, though, dismissing the idea even as it was conceived and, as if to make up for the unrealised slight, he called cheerfully to her as he bounded down, two stairs at a time as always.

‘Morning, Henry!’ He almost sang the greeting.

She turned and smiled, but it was tight and brief, with no accompanying twinkle, which meant – as he had feared – that she had something in particular on her mind and, indeed, she wasted no time on pleasantries but launched straight in to the first item on her agenda.

‘I have to say, Daddy, the very least you might have done is read it.’

Merciful heavens, he thought to himself, would his
womenfolk give him no peace? He tried a rueful smile but she regarded him sternly without a hint of forgiveness; this young woman – forceful, determined, robustly argumentative – would make a splendid governess, he thought, if ever they fell into penury. She waggled under his nose a wad of papers loosely bound in a buff-coloured folder, which had sat on his desk for three days now, growing ever less visible under the gradual accumulation of newspapers and other matters pending, but which Henry had obviously ferreted out this morning. He did wish she wouldn’t make quite so free with his study: like his club and the outside lavatory, it was no place for a woman.