The Dust That Falls from Dreams (35 page)

M
rs McCosh found her husband in the dining room, where he was replenishing his Bladnoch decanter, and sniffing it appreciatively.

‘My dear,’ she said, ‘we need a lady maid. Rosie is quite exhausted, and Millicent is no substitute for the real thing. I always used to have a maid, and now I can’t for the life of me remember why I don’t any more.’

‘She went to work in a munitions factory,’ said Mr McCosh shortly, ‘and turned yellow. And I used to have a valet, but now my things are collected and taken to a laundry.’

‘She was quite a good maid,’ said Mrs McCosh, ‘very agreeable and amenable, but I would greatly prefer someone a little more
distinguée.’

‘
Distinguée
? In what sense might a maid be
distinguée
?’

‘A lady maid, my dear! A lady maid is
distinguée
!’

‘A lady maid. What is a lady maid? Is that any different from a lady’s maid?’

‘A lady maid, my dear, is from a good family that has fallen on hard times. She is a lady, but she finds herself in reduced circumstances and in need of employment. She is finely educated, has a delicate temperament, fine sensibilities, and knows everyone one ought to know. A lady maid, my dear, is quite in vogue at present.’

‘How could one possibly not go along with what is in vogue?’ said Mr McCosh. ‘Fancy that! A fallen aristocrat in the house! How perfectly indispensible!’

‘I perceive that you are unconvinced. You are waxing ironical.’

‘Well, it is true that Rosie is exhausted – Esther does wail a lot at night. And it is also true that Millicent isn’t really up to attending to you and your finery as well as scrubbing things left, right and centre and emptying ash out of the fires. Millicent,
I believe, is grossly overworked, and I have long felt anxious to do something about it. It is also true that a “lady maid” will cost an extra twenty-five pounds a year, or thereabouts. Whence do you propose to derive the money for her wages, my dear? Are you planning to take up painting and sell your masterpieces? Will you play your violin in the Haymarket?’

‘The money will come from you, my dear,’ answered Mrs McCosh firmly.

‘From me? Now, there’s a surprise.’

Mr McCosh took another sniff at the whisky, which put him in a better mood quite promptly. He said, ‘I will go along with this on condition that your lady maid helps Rosie as a nurse, and then, possibly, as a governess, and if she also helps Millicent and Cookie with their duties as required. If I am to have a fallen aristocrat in the house, she is not to be purely decorative, and if at any time I find that she has become so, I will dismiss her.’

‘It is up to me to hire and dismiss servants,’ said Mrs McCosh. ‘As master of the house, you should not concern yourself with the matter.’

‘If I wish to dismiss her, and you wish to retain her,’ answered her husband. ‘It is easily done. You will pay her from your allowance.’ Mrs McCosh huffed at this outrageous suggestion, and Mr McCosh said. ‘I will be intrigued to see what you come up with.’

Accordingly Mrs McCosh went by train and omnibus to the nearest registry, and within a month a quiet and dignified young woman was installed in one of the empty rooms at the top of the house.

She was pale-skinned and a little freckled, with tight brown curls, and dressed in very fine clothes that had been skilfully repaired. She spoke the most elegant English with the trace of an Irish lilt, and she had enormous grey eyes that radiated a kind of beautiful sadness. Her name was the Honourable Mary FitzGerald St George.

Mary took to Esther straight away, and had the ability to hush her when she was in one of her periodic fits of infantile hysteria. This made Rosie feel somewhat inadequate, however grateful she was. Mary helped Mrs McCosh to dress for the evenings, and proved to have such exceptionally good taste that Mrs McCosh
even took her along when she went shopping. It would be true to say that the Honourable Mary FitzGerald St George considerably lightened the heart of her mistress. Gaskell painted Mary’s portrait one day, making her look like a Valkyrie, and Christabel took some photographs of her in the garden that made her look like a dreaming poetess. These representations were admirably juxtaposed at their joint exhibitions.

One evening, after returning from London, Hamilton McCosh encountered the Honourable Mary FitzGerald St George in the morning room, and said to her, ‘Miss FitzGerald St George, may I have a word? In the dining room perhaps?’

Mary sat in the carver at one end of the table, and Mr McCosh in the carver at the other.

‘Now, Miss FitzGerald, please tell me about yourself, would you? I have only what I know from my wife. I realise that the servants are her business, but I do like to take an interest myself. Now that there are so few of them, it has become very much easier.’

‘Indeed, sir, what would you like to know?’

‘Well, your father is…?’

‘Roderick FitzGerald St George, Earl Edenderry. I’m his fourth daughter, sir.’

‘And Edenderry is near Dublin?’

‘Not so very far, sir. And not so very far from Tullamore.’

‘Anglo-Irish?’

‘Oh yes, sir, for centuries, sir. There’s an awful lot of us, sir. We don’t feel as welcome at home as we used to, though.’

‘Quite so. Have you heard of Edmund Burke?’

‘Yes, sir, but I can’t say I know very much about him.’

‘He used to say he was Irish and he used to say he was English, quite interchangeably. It was all one to a lot of people. Sadly, those days are past.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And your mother was Lady Dwyer of Portarlington, my wife says.’

‘Yes, sir. May I ask where this is leading, sir?’

‘Well, Mary. At the Athenaeum we have a copy of the 1915
Burke’s Peerage
. It is a large volume, most compendious. I sometimes look in it, out of curiosity.’

Mary went pale and began to bite on her lip. Her fingers were working in her lap, and she looked down at them as if they were foreign creatures. ‘Am I to be dismissed?’ she asked.

‘I was at first greatly annoyed,’ said Hamilton McCosh, leaning back and stroking his chin. ‘No one likes to be taken for an ass. Your references were most persuasive. You clearly have a talent for composition, and indeed for thespianism. And your talk of “the quality” certainly impresses Mrs McCosh. You must have done a great deal of mugging up.’

‘I mug up continuously,’ said Mary. ‘One has to. I have a copy of
Burke’s
myself.’

‘Hmm,’ said Mr McCosh. ‘I have given this some thought. I have said nothing to Mrs McCosh, and nor do I intend to. You get on very well with Miss Rosie, and Esther plainly adores you. Millicent and Cookie do not resent you, which is quite contrary to what normally happens when a maid and a cook find that a nurse has arrived in the house. Even the cat likes you, and I find your presence most agreeable, and Mrs McCosh is unstinting in her praise. My feeling, Miss FitzGerald St George, is that when a forgery is as good, if not better, than an original, then the wise man contents himself with the forgery.’

‘I am not to be dismissed?’

‘No, Miss FitzGerald.’

She gave a little leap in her seat. ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I would have been so sad…and…mortified. And what would I have done?’

‘I do think you should apologise for your deception,’ said Mr McCosh.

Mary Fitzgerald cast her eyes down and said softly, ‘Of course I apologise. I am indeed very sorry. Very sorry. I have hated myself for the deception quite considerably. It was, well…thrust upon me, almost.’

‘Thrust upon you?’

‘I
am
Anglo-Irish,’ she said. ‘I am the real thing in that respect. It’s just so horrible to be there now. One has no prospects. One feels despised and hated and suspected, and even in danger. The Easter Rising spoiled everything. It was quite the wrongest and stupidest thing to kill all those people and make them into martyrs. It turned everyone against us when they weren’t even mildly
against us before. And now the Fenians are at each other’s throats. There’s nothing more vile than a civil war, and what a way to celebrate independence! My father won’t move, and I worry about him continuously. We have a large farm and a big house, but we have no capital to speak of. To whom could we sell such a place in days like these?’

‘I’ve no doubt that eventually you will make a sound marriage,’ said Mr McCosh. ‘You are exceedingly personable. I think it quite likely that eventually you will meet just the right man, not least because of being in this situation with us. One of Master Daniel’s friends will turn up one day, no doubt, and sweep you off your feet. Of course you would then have to undeceive him about being the Honourable Mary FitzGerald St George.’

‘I did have a fiancé, for a while,’ said Mary wistfully.

‘Killed?’

She nodded. ‘At Beersheba. Still, at least we won the battle. It’s some consolation. It would have been so much worse if we’d lost.’

‘I suppose you added the “St George” yourself,’ said Mr McCosh, and she nodded. ‘It was a good touch,’ he said. ‘Jolly good. Well done. Most ingenious.’

S
ophie and the Reverend Captain Fairhead bought a house on 1 March 1920, on the day that Charles Garvice died. Neither of them was a fan of his novels, and they were considerably more saddened when Mrs Humphrey Ward died three days later. On the 17th they attended Queen Alexandra’s unveiling of the statue of Edith Cavell in London, taking Mrs McCosh with them, who was so thrilled by seeing the Queen that she tripped over the spike of her own umbrella in the general rush to get a better glimpse, and made a rent in her skirts.

On the 30th they moved into their new house in Blackheath, just near the top of the village. It was situated in a tranquil street lined with chestnut trees that attracted all the local children in the autumn, when it would become a battlefield littered with opened shells and smashed conkers. Cries of ‘Mine’s a thirty-niner!’ ‘Mine’s an eighteener!’ floated up amongst the eaves. The clever children drilled holes in their conkers with a skewer when they were fresh, and then left them to shrivel and harden in the airing cupboard until the following year. No doubt they made fortunes in later life thanks to their patient good sense. If one were to defeat an opponent, one would automatically acquire their score and add it to one’s own, and so there were exceedingly enterprising children who, when their champion conker was just about to break, would sell the right to the next contest for three farthings. In the summer, residents enjoyed the pink candelabra on the trees, and at night they harkened to the virtuosity and passion of a nightingale which never failed to return. In the autumn it was replaced by a robin, whose voice was just as sweet.

Sophie and Fairhead’s house had a pleasant mature garden planted up with azaleas and camellias. Inside it was dark but not gloomy, and Sophie draped everything with paisley-printed cloths that were both cheerful and casual. They bought
mahogany furniture at auction, including an imposing but woodwormy four-poster bed that collapsed the first time they made love on it.

Like Daniel, Fairhead was in a quandary about what to do with his future. It seemed altogether likely that one day they would have children. In the meantime Sophie was content to follow the drum, should he be posted abroad or away, but Fairhead himself declared that an itinerant life was no life for little ones, and, furthermore, he was not sure that he wanted to remain in the army chaplaincy, or even remain a clergyman.

‘I’ve painted myself into a corner,’ he said to his wife one day. ‘I’m unqualified for anything except the Church or a public school. Or, worse, a prep school.’

‘Let’s go into trade,’ suggested Sophie. ‘Mama would be so shocked.’

‘But your father is in trade,’ said Fairhead.

‘Well, Mama does find it shocking,’ replied Sophie. ‘She tries not to think about it. She aspires to inherited wealth.’

‘Well, it’s thanks to Great-Aunt Arabella that we have this house. Let’s not denigrate inherited wealth.’

‘I’d only denigrate it if there were no chance of it. Isn’t it odd that no one is called Arabella any more?’

‘Or Anastasia. Or Rahab. Or Salome. Or Judas. Or Delilah.’

‘I’m not surprised about Salome and Judas and Rahab and Delilah.’

‘No, neither am I. What do you think I should do?’

‘You keep asking, dear, and the only thing I can think of that would really suit would be to be a hospital chaplain, as I keep saying. You are so good with the mortally ill. Simply excelsitudinous.’

‘I don’t really have the faith any more.’

‘Can’t you pretend?’

‘Honestly, darling! What do you think God would want of me?’

‘But you don’t seem to believe in Him any more! And God can’t want anything, can He? If He’s omnipotent He can have whatever He wants whenever He likes, can’t He?’

‘Gracious me, Sophie!’

‘Well, He can, can’t He?’ She paused whilst she unpicked a bad
stitch in her embroidery, then said, ‘Why don’t we think about what God would want if we were God?’

Fairhead laughed. ‘You really are utterly original. I can’t imagine where I found you.’

‘Court Road, Eltham,’ she said. ‘The Grampians. And all because of poor Ashbridge, if you remember.’

‘I think I must have found you in some exotic place where completely new ways of thinking have resulted from the intercourse of philosophers and angels. What would you want if you were God?’

She bit her lip and thought for a few seconds. ‘I would want us to rebuild the Garden of Eden. I’d want us to recreate it.’

‘We have a lovely garden,’ he said.

‘Let’s build a wall round it so no one can look in.’

‘That would be rather high. And awfully nice. We can’t afford it, though.’

‘Let’s do it ourselves. I’m sure Daniel would help. He loves that kind of thing, and he’s at an awful loose end just now, and having to live at The Grampians is driving him quite barmy. He knows everything about stresses and whatnot, doesn’t he?’

‘Rather like me.’

‘You don’t know anything about stresses and whatnot,’

‘No, I mean the loose end.’

And so it was that over a period of three months, in a desultory manner, a red-brick wall rose up and encircled the azaleas and camellias. It was nine-foot high, with occasional buttresses, and was capped by demilunar tiles. At the southern end Fairhead planted passion flower, to remind himself of the religious origin of their idea, and because he enjoyed the fruit, and in the least windy places he planted clematis. Sophie insisted on having climbing roses up one wall, and Virginia creeper up another.

There came the day in late spring when Humorist won the Derby, and the sun broke out of the cloud over Blackheath. The walled garden blocked the wind and trapped the heat, and Sophie and Fairhead put a tartan rug on the lawn and brought a picnic of tea and sandwiches out of the house, in order to celebrate the official opening of their new Garden of Eden.

After they had polished off the food, Sophie flung herself back
on the rug and spread her arms wide, saying, ‘Bliss, oh bliss, oh bliss!’ Suddenly she stood up and pulled Fairhead to his feet. ‘Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘We are walking round the garden two or three times to make sure no one can look in.’

‘Are we?’

‘Yes we are.’

‘As my beloved wills.’

Arm in arm they circled the garden, scrutinising every angle. ‘No one can see in,’ declared Sophie at last. ‘We are invisible and indiscernible.’

‘We are indeed invisible and indiscernible and indivisible.’

‘We are safe from scopophiles.’

‘No scopophilia here.’

‘There are no balloonists or aeronauts. Let’s take our clothes off,’ said Sophie.

‘Darling, we can’t possibly.’

‘We can if we lock the front door.’

‘But, darling, it’s not done!’

‘What is this?’ asked Sophie, waving her arm to indicate the whole garden.

‘The garden?’

‘The Garden of Eden,’ she said firmly. ‘No clothes, no fig leaves.’

‘I’m really not sure I can. I’m a clergyman, for God’s sake!’

‘Oh fie!’ she said, sitting down on the rug and holding her arms up to him. ‘Come here, clergyman. It’s what God wants if we were God. They were naked and they were not ashamed.’

Afterwards they lay entangled on the rug with the sun on their skin. Sophie rolled aside a little and said, ‘Oh, darling one, I’ve got kalopsia.’

‘I’m sure you can cure it with Beecham’s,’ murmured Fairhead.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?’

‘No.’

‘You old spoilsport. And we forgot to lock the front door. Talking of kalopsia, have I ever told you that you are the apple of my eye, the pineapple of my pineal gland, the melon of my mouth, the nectarine of my knees and the fig of my foot? Have
I ever declared before witnesses that you are the most beautiful man in the world? Have I ever informed you that you give me the most truly fearful tentigo, such as will wear me out before I’m thirty?’

‘Almost every day. My scepticism remains, however. My teeth are yellow and my moustache is orange down the middle from smoking too much.’

‘I know it’s only because I love you,’ she said.

‘No amount of love would turn a moustache orange. I’m sure it’s the cigarettes. Do I take it that you’re fishing?’

‘In what manner might I be piscatorial?’

‘You want me to say you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.’

‘No I don’t. I know I am. I have complete confidence. My pulchritudinosityness knows no bounds.’

‘It’s infinite.’

‘Quite. Because you love me. You exist, you love me, therefore I am beautiful. It’s a perfect paralogism.’

‘I like a nice paralogism,’ said Fairhead. ‘Let’s have one for tea.’