Southampton Row (23 page)

She sat beside him in the dim light and wondered what it would be like to dress for a man who looked at her with pleasure, enjoying the color, the line of what she wore, seeing how it flattered her, above all finding her beautiful. There is something of loveliness in most women, be it no more than a grace of moment, a tone of voice, but to find someone who delighted in it was like spreading your wings and feeling the sun on your face.

The fact that he never spoke with intimacy or joy shriveled her up inside so it was an effort to hold her head high, to smile, to walk as if she believed in herself.

Again she allowed herself to daydream. Would Cornwallis have liked this gown? Had it been he she was dressing for, would he have stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched her come down with amazement in his eyes, even a little awe at how beautiful a woman could look, at silks and lace and perfume, all things with which he was so unfamiliar?

Stop it! She must control her imagination. She blushed hot at her own thoughts, and deliberately turned towards the Bishop to say something, anything to break the spell.

But all through the journey he sat uncharacteristically silent, as if he were unaware of her beside him. Usually he would speak about who was to be present at a function and rehearse to her their virtues and their weaknesses and what might be expected of them in terms of their contribution to the welfare of the church in general, and his see in particular.

“What do you think we can do to help poor Mr. Patterson?” she said at last when they were almost at their destination. “He seems in very great distress.”

“Nothing,” he replied without turning. “The woman is dead, Isadora. There is nothing anyone can do about death. It is there, inescapable, before us and around us. Whatever we say in the light of day, come the night, we don’t know where we come from, and we have no idea where we go—if anywhere at all. Don’t condescend to Patterson by telling him otherwise. If he finds faith, he will do it himself. You cannot give him yours, assuming you have it and are not merely saying what you yourself wish to hear, like most people. Now, you had better prepare yourself, we are about to arrive.”

The carriage pulled up and they alighted and climbed the steps as the front door opened and they were welcomed. As usual they were formally announced. Once Isadora had been excited hearing Reginald spoken of as His Grace the Bishop. It had seemed a title with infinite possibilities, more worthy than a peerage because it was not inherited but rather bestowed by God. Now she stared at the sea of noise and color in front of her as she came into the room on his arm. It seemed no more than an accolade given by men to someone who had fitted most closely the pattern they desired, who had pleased the right people and avoided offending anyone. He was not the finest in a bold and courageous way, to change lives, but merely the least likely to endanger the existing way, the known and comfortable. He was the ultimate conserver of what was already here, good and bad.

They were introduced and she followed a step behind him, acknowledging people with a smile and a polite response. She tried to be interested in them.

“Mr. Aubrey Serracold,” she was told by Lady Warboys. “He is standing for the South Lambeth seat. Mrs. Underhill. Bishop Underhill.”

“How do you do, Mr. Serracold,” Isadora replied dutifully, then suddenly found that after all there was something in him that caught her attention. He responded to her with a smile and his eyes met hers with a secret amusement, as if they were both privy to the same rather absurd joke which honor obliged them to play out in front of this audience. The Bishop passed on to the next person, and she found herself smiling back at Aubrey Serracold. He had a long face and fair hair which flopped forward over one side of his brow. She remembered now that she had heard somewhere he was the second son of a marquis, or some such, and could have used a courtesy title of Lord, but preferred not to. She wondered what his political beliefs were. She hoped he had them, and was not merely looking for a new pastime to fill his boredom.

“Indeed, Mr. Serracold,” she said with interest she did not have to feign. “And which party are you representing?”

“I am not entirely sure that either is willing to take responsibility for me, Mrs. Underhill,” he replied with a slight grimace. “I have been candid enough to express a few of my own opinions, which have not been universally popular.”

In spite of herself she was interested, and it must have shown in her face, because he immediately elaborated in explanation. “For a start I have committed the unpardonable sin of preferring the Eight-Hour Bill in urgency before Home Rule for Ireland. I see no reason why we cannot commit to them both, and by so doing be far more likely to win the support of the greater mass of the people, and a base of power from which to accomplish other much-needed reform, beginning with yielding up the Empire to its natural citizens.”

“I am not certain about the Empire, but the rest sounds eminently reasonable,” she agreed. “Far too much so to become law.”

“You are a cynic,” he said with mock despair.

“My husband is a bishop,” she replied.

“Ah! Of course . . .” He was prevented from saying more by the need to acknowledge being joined by three further people, including Serracold’s wife, whom Isadora had not met, although she had heard her spoken of with both alarm and admiration.

“How do you do, Mrs. Underhill.” Rose returned the introduction with barely feigned interest. Isadora was not involved with politics, nor was she truly fashionable, in spite of the ocean-green gown. She was a woman of conservative grace and that kind of beauty which does not change.

Rose Serracold, on the other hand, was outrageously avant-garde. Her gown was a mixture of burgundy satin and guipure lace which, in combination with her startlingly fair coloring, was all the more dramatic, like blood and snow. Her brilliant aqua-colored eyes seemed to survey everyone in the room with something like hunger, as if looking for a particular person she did not find.

“Mr. Serracold has been telling me of the reforms he desires to effect,” Isadora said conversationally.

Rose flashed her a dazzling smile. “I am sure you must have your own knowledge of such needs,” she responded. “No doubt in your husband’s ministry he becomes painfully aware of the poverty and injustice there is which could be eased with more equitable laws?” She said it as a challenge, daring Isadora to claim ignorance and so brand herself a hypocrite in the Christianity which, through the Bishop, she professed.

Isadora responded without stopping to measure her words.

“Of course. It is not the changes I find trouble in imagining, but how we can effect them. For a law to be any good it must be enforceable, and there must be a punishment we are willing and able to inflict if it is broken, as it assuredly will be, even if only to test us.”

Rose was delighted. “You have actually thought about it!” Her surprise was palpable. “I apologize for slighting your sincerity.” She lowered her voice so it was audible only to those closest to them, and then went on speaking in spite of the sudden hush as others strained to hear what she was going to say. “We must talk together, Mrs. Underhill.” She put out an elegant hand, long-fingered, jeweled with rings, and drew Isadora away from the group in which they had found themselves more or less by chance. “Time is terribly short,” she went on. “We must go far beyond the core of the party if we are to do any real good. Abolishing fees for elementary schooling last year has already had wonderful effects, but it is only a beginning. We must do much more. Education for all is the only lasting answer to poverty.” She drew in her breath and then plunged on. “We must make a way for women to be able to restrict their families. Poverty and exhaustion, both physical and mental, are the unavoidable outcomes of having child after child whom you have not strength to care for nor money to feed and clothe.” She regarded Isadora with candid challenge in her eyes again. “And I am sorry if that is against your religious convictions, but being a bishop’s wife with a residence provided for you is a far cry from being in one or two rooms with no water and little fire and trying to keep a dozen children clean and fed.”

“Would an eight-hour day help or hurt that?” Isadora asked, willing herself not to take offense at things which were, after all, irrelevant to the real issue.

Rose’s arched eyebrows rose. “How could it possibly make it worse? Every laborer, man or woman, should be protected against exploitation!” The anger flared up in her face, pink color across her white skin.

Isadora was intending to ask Rose’s opinion rather than express any of her own, but was prevented in either by their being joined by a friend of Rose who greeted her with affection. She was introduced to Isadora as Mrs. Swann, and in return presented her companion, a woman of perhaps forty, with the confidence of maturity and still sufficient of the bloom of youth to attract the eye of most men. There was a grace in the way she held her dark head, and her deportment was that of someone who is quite certain of herself, yet interested in others.

“Mrs. Octavia Cavendish,” Mrs. Swann said with a touch of pride.

Isadora realized only just before speaking that the newcomer must be a widow to be so addressed. “Are you interested in politics, Mrs. Cavendish?” she asked. Since the evening was to that end it was a natural assumption.

“Only so far as it changes laws, I hope to the benefit of all,” Mrs. Cavendish replied. “It takes great wisdom to see ahead what will be the results of our actions. Sometimes the most nobly inspired paths are disastrous in their unforeseen ends.”

Rose opened her remarkable eyes very wide. “Mrs. Underhill was about to tell us how the eight-hour day could be ill,” she said, staring at Mrs. Cavendish. “I fear perhaps she is a Conservative at heart!”

“Really, Rose,” Mrs. Swann cautioned her with a quick glance of apology towards Isadora.

“No!” Rose said impatiently. “It is time we were less mealymouthed and said what we really mean. Is honesty too much to ask—indeed, to demand? Have we not the duty to pose questions and challenge the answers?”

“Rose, eccentricity is one thing, but you risk going too far!” Mrs. Swann said with a nervous hiccup. She placed a hand on Rose’s arm but it was impatiently shaken off. “Mrs. Underhill may not—”

“Don’t you?” Rose asked, her flashing smile returning briefly.

Before Isadora could answer, Mrs. Cavendish stepped in. “It is very hard to be overworked, and quite unjust,” she said smoothly. “But it is still better than having no work at all . . .”

“That is extortion!” Rose said with a wild anger cutting in her voice.

Mrs. Cavendish kept her temper admirably. “If it is done deliberately, then of course it is. But if an employer is facing falling profits and more intense competition, then he cannot afford to increase his costs. And if he does, then he will lose his business altogether and his employees will lose their places. We need to keep an Empire, now that we have one, whether we want it or not.” She smiled to rid her words of sting but none of their power of conviction. “Politics is what is possible, not always what we wish,” she added. “I think that is part of the responsibility.”

Isadora looked from Mrs. Cavendish to Rose, and saw the sudden amazement in Rose. She had encountered someone of equal and opposite conviction, and her own power could not override the logic of the argument. In spite of herself, she was temporarily beaten. It was a new experience.

Isadora looked at Aubrey Serracold and saw the tenderness in his eyes, and a kind of sadness, a knowledge that precious things can be broken.

Isadora might have felt like that about John Cornwallis. There was a heart and mind in him, a hunger for honor, a revulsion from the tawdry, that she would have suffered any wound to protect. It was of infinite value, not just to her, but in and of itself. There was nothing in Reginald Underhill which awoke that fierce ache in her that was half pain, half joy.

The moment was broken by the arrival of another man, the familiarity of his glance at Mrs. Cavendish making it apparent that he was with her. Isadora was not surprised that she should have at least one admirer. She was a remarkable woman in far more than mere physical beauty. There was character, intelligence, and a clarity of mind in her which was most unusual.

“May I introduce my brother,” Mrs. Cavendish said quickly. “Sir Charles Voisey. Mrs. Underhill, Mr. and Mrs. Serracold.” She added the last two with a slight grimace, and Isadora remembered with a jolt that of course Voisey and Serracold were contesting the same seat for Parliament. One of them had to lose. She looked at Voisey with quickened interest. He did not resemble his sister that she could see. His coloring was slightly auburn, while her skin was clear and her hair dark, shining brown. His face was long, his nose a little crooked as if at some time it had been broken and badly set. The only thing they had in common was their agile intelligence and a sense of inner power. In him it was so intense she almost expected to feel a heat in the air.

She murmured something polite and sensible. She was acutely aware that Aubrey Serracold was now hiding his feelings, the knowledge that his opponent was a different kind of man, that there could be no holds or blows barred in the battle. This courteous exchange now was a matter of form, and not intended to deceive anyone.

There was anger in Rose’s stiff, elegant body with her long back and slender hips encased in bright taffeta, her fingers glittering as she moved her hands. The skin of her neck and throat looked almost blue-white in the light from the chandeliers above them, as if peering a little closer one might see the veins. There was also fear of something. Isadora could sense it as if it were a perfume in the air amongst the lavender, jasmine and the numerous scents from the bowls of lilies on the tables. Did it matter to her so much to win? Or was it something else?

They were shown in to dinner, all in the correct order of precedence. As a bishop’s wife, Isadora went in early, after the most senior of the nobility, long before such ordinary men as mere parliamentary candidates. The tables were laden with crystal and porcelain. Ranks of knives, forks and spoons gleamed by every setting.