The Last Crossing (3 page)

He had always been one step ahead of the competition. When Railway Mania struck, the greedy had all come to him wheedling for advice, those stupid men of property, the proud county grandees, gentlemen who looked down on Henry Gaunt because he had no Latin and Greek, and them not able to reckon the simplest sum on the back of an envelope. All burning with speculation fever, falling over themselves to buy railway shares, licking their lips at the promise of premiums of two thousand per cent. October of 1845 and three hundred and fifty-seven new railway schemes announced in the press, three hundred and thirty-two million pounds of shares subscribed to. But he had been able to tell fool’s gold from the real article. Indeed he had.

Rats swimming to scramble up on the sinking ship. He had sold all his leaky vessels, saved a few solid timbers to keep him afloat while the speculators drowned. Land doesn’t sink, not with farm labour bought at nine shillings a week. This estate bought cheap by any reckoning, four thousand acres, the fine house he stood in. Put the bulk of his capital in British Consols, kept his famous grip still clamped tight on the railways that could make a return on traffic and didn’t need to depend on an artificial rise in share prices. George Hudson, the Railway King, who had had the Queen and Prince Albert to dine, had gone to the bottom like a stone while Henry Gaunt bobbed about merrily, light as a cork as the typhoon raged.

He smiled to himself. No gainsaying who had been the man of the hour then. It was he, not Hudson, who got the special invitation to the Great Exhibition of 1851, a tour of the facilities in the Prince Consort’s party. His hand shaken by the Queen’s husband. The fingers Prince Albert had favoured with his royal touch abruptly doubled into a fist. Seventy-five, but he still had the handshake of a navvy.

The Crystal Palace. What a glory of glass. There was engineering for you, a palace of iron and shimmer. The glass fountain too. Twenty-seven-foot high of the most cunning work, water gushing from three tiers of basins, the whole edifice clothed in glimmering, liquid raiment. Shining glass and shining water.

But none of it a match for the delight of taking his supper in Soyer’s Symposium. The most extraordinary of restaurants, each dining room designed, decorated, and furnished so that it mirrored some exotic portion of the globe. His favourite was Polar Latitudes.

What a strange feeling it had evoked in him, the painted iceberg of vast extent looming above him all bluey white, the infinite plain of eternal snow, the polar bear shambling off the wall towards him. The titillation of threatening, jagged cakes of ice, of blinding sky, of a menacing predator. Why, it had been the living heart of another world. Polar Latitudes had entered into him, and he into it. The worries of business, the clatter of plates and knives, the penetrating smells of roast beef, pudding, all simply evaporated in a flash.

Nothing but Henry Gaunt alone in a snowy waste. He wanted to seize that feeling again, or be seized by it, to stand in the midst of a world that bore no reference to him, a world so strange it banished anxiety.

He turned away from the window, crossed to the rosewood table where port and a tray of biscuits rested, poured himself a glass, snatched a biscuit, and began to circle the room in a panicky shuffle. Around and around he went, gnawing and slurping, leaving a trail of biscuit crumbs, raining drops of port on the parquet floor.

Oh God, he thought, what was happening to him? Who was there for him to lean on? Certainly not his sons. Charles had departed England on March 27. As yet, no letters had arrived from Fort Benton to explain the steps he had taken to learn of his brother’s possible whereabouts. Charles would blame the tardiness of the American post. Dodgy fellow, that Charles.

The twins, Charles and Simon, had always been so close, so loving that he had expected Charles to show more fire in this matter.
But then Charles had never had any push, any go to him. All he was interested in was splashing about in his paint puddles. He should never have indulged him at such an early age in his artist nonsense. As the sapling is bent, so shall it grow. Besides, that Italian drawing master had cost him a packet and what had been his thanks for it? It was Simon, not Charles, who had warmly expressed gratitude to his father. Kissed his cheek. Charles, on the other hand, was a chilly chap, standoffish even as a boy. Too old for his years. How could twins treat their father so differently? Simon so affectionate, Charles so distant.

What a fool to agree to let Addington stay behind to mind the business of supplying the expedition while Charles went ahead to prepare a “base camp,” to “scout the terrain.” Army jabber. Several days in London would have been sufficient for Addington to carry out his task. But on and on it dragged, Addington reporting he’d had to ransack shops for gear, arguing that such an expedition succeeded or failed on its
matériel
. The man must be suffering from the delusion he was off to fight Napoleon. He was beginning to believe Addington had no hope of finding his younger brother, beginning to suspect that for Addington this venture in America was simply an opportunity to add to his trophies, his collection of animal skins and heads. In the end, he had had to bring him up short, order him home from London, and hand him his marching papers.

Had Addington and Charles no pity? Had they not seen his worry and longing for Simon? One disaster after another piling up on him. First, his darling boy’s disappearance and then the attacks on his deer. Could his sons not fathom the concerns that weighed upon him?

Henry Gaunt’s face purpled with rage. Poachers daring to lay hands on his deer! He’d lashed Walker with his tongue yesterday about that. Made it clear the poaching must be stopped at all costs. Load the guns with swan shot! he’d roared. Break out the mantraps! See to those poachers, do for them proper! The bloody cheek, killing his deer, selling his venison in London game shops!

His rage burned away and left him suddenly cold. Who or what was turning against him, now that he was old?

He was afraid. Lord, it left him choked and breathless. He had never been afraid before.

Since Simon had been lost last autumn, how he had yearned for a room like one of those in the Symposium, a room to help him forget, push back his fear. When he had hinted at what he wanted to Charles, Charles had remarked in that dry, infuriating way of his, “And what am I to paint, sir?”

What he had wanted to do was cry out, “Paint me a room into which my terror will not follow me! That is what I want!” But one could not say such a thing to Charles. Instead he had given him three choices of subject: The Siege of Sebastapol, Merry Old England, Ancient Rome. To ask him to paint the Arctic was impossible. The boy would never come up to the mark set by Polar Latitudes.

When he stood in the conservatory, gazing up at the ripening fruit, struggling to think of orchards in France where pears glowed in the sun – why then suddenly Simon’s dear, gentle face peeped out at him from between the branches, the leaves, the dusky golden pears. Warm and smiling. Not dead, not frozen. That was all that he required, to know Simon was still alive.

Those early letters from Montana sent by the firm of I. G. Baker were mistaken. It was dreadful of them to say Simon was likely dead. What right had they to suggest such a thing?

Addington was loitering in the vicinity of the marquees, seeking a chance to purloin a pair of gloves, a handkerchief, a reticule from the young misses gathered to take refreshment. He couldn’t help himself pinching dainty articles, at balls, in the crowded porches of churches, in the first-class carriages of trains, wherever and whenever an opportunity presented itself. Last year during the Annual Meeting of the Toxophilites, amid the press of spectators, he had tugged Miss Crawford’s cambric handkerchief out of her sleeve. But the spoor of the cologne that had clung to the cloth had grown so faint it was no longer any use to him.

It is curious, he thought, when he noticed the servant girl Alice passing, how very unsatisfactory coarse women are.

In the bustle of fetching the guests their drinks, Alice’s hair had come unpinned and was straggling down her neck. Heat and busyness had daubed two hectic spots of red on her cheeks, working-class rouge.

Servant girls ought to be eager, but when he last rogered her, she lay like a drowned woman, pale and lifeless. And there was her smell. He was always catching faint whiffs of musty fustian, toasted herring. Still, no faulting her figure. And her soft, milky skin – all but the heels, yellow and rough with callouses. He hated the feel of them on the backs of his legs.

His mind shifted to the angelic Miss Venables, a more obliging thought. What a thrill it would be to possess some trifle of hers. Lounging about the refreshment tent had won him no plunder. Better to stalk new hunting grounds. Miss Venables’s father, the portly vicar of Kingsmere St. George’s Church, was hovering about in a badly cut black suit and preposterous shovel hat near the umpire of the ladies’ archery competition. The father was never far from the daughter.

Just as Addington sauntered up, applause rippled through the crowd as a “gold” was scored. He ran a discriminating horse dealer’s eye over the women. Most of the female toxophilites had selected conventional Lincoln green for their wardrobes. Green velvet jackets and long green skirts, soft leather quivers embroidered with leaves of green thread, green archers’ hats adorned with the same grey goose feathers that fletched their arrows. All except for Miss Venables, whom he spied drawing her bow at the target. No Lincoln green for her. Amply bustled, waist looped with a large, rosetted pink ribbon that made an appealing contrast with the dove-grey lower skirt and the dark-blue bodice of her dress. What’s more, the bold little minx had decorated her hat with an ostrich plume that swayed and drooped alarmingly. The plump, lustrous chignon riding the nape of her neck quivered with exasperation at this impediment to her marksmanship.

Addington glanced over to Papa noisily offering encouragement and advice to his pet. It was a mystery how the voluptuous, comely Miss
Venables could have been generated by the seedy divine. A most vexing individual, who was continually button-holing Addington for contributions to foreign missions, extending invitations to him to teach Sunday school, or to accompany the parson on visits to the sick and the deserving poor. What the insufferable fool took him for, Addington didn’t know, unless he confused him with Simon, little, pecksniffing, pious ass.

A burst of cheering broke out as Miss Venables completed her round, Reverend Venables attempting to outdo everyone else, bawling like a lunatic, waving his shiny, dented hat in the air with crazed abandon. Miss Venables, mouth composed in a mysterious half-smile, paid her father not the slightest bit of attention.

Addington waited for the daughter to join her father before hazarding an approach. The Reverend pumped his hand enthusiastically. “See how all come to pay homage to the huntress Diana! How d’you do, my dear Gaunt! How d’you do!”

Addington bobbed his head curtly to Venables, bowed deeply to the daughter. “Miss Venables, I cannot say which exceeds the other-your beauty or your skill.”

Miss Venables received the compliment by remarking, “To draw the comparison mocks the compliment, sir. Since I am such a poor hand with the bow.”

Addington smoothed his moustache with his thumb. Miss Venables’s polish was amazing. How she came by it, whetting her wit on her dull Papa, he couldn’t guess. “On the contrary, Miss Venables -” he began.

The vicar broke in excitedly. “The hat, the hat,” he said, tapping the crown of his own to illustrate his point. “I warned Ellie she ought to remove
le chapeau
. It interfered.”

“I disagree entirely,” said Addington coolly, readying to launch another salvo of compliments at the daughter. He got no further. Reverend Venables contorted his body into a grotesque pantomime of an archer, absurdly struck the brim of his shovel hat, knocking it to the grass. “You see! You see!” he crowed triumphantly, bending over to recover it, presenting them with his fat arse. “D’you take my meaning!”

Miss Venables serenely ignored her father and addressed Addington. “Mrs. Colefax has shot a round of five hundred and outdistanced the field.”

“No, never outdistanced the field,” murmured Addington.

Miss Venables might feign innocence, but she did not mistake a gentleman’s tribute. The corners of her lips turned up in appreciation.

“Reverend Venables,” said Addington, pointing to the claret cup clutched in the divine’s hand, “you are empty. Won’t you have another?” He gestured towards the marquees.

“Very good of you. Very good indeed,” Venables mumbled, but stayed planted to the spot.

Mr. Barlow approached, a hearty, stout, middle-aged fellow. “A splendid meeting, Captain,” he said. “Organized to satisfy in every way. What would the Society of Toxophilites do without the patronage of the Gaunt family? Everything first-rate, as usual.”

“I am obliged to be of service,” replied Addington.

Barlow turned to Miss Venables. “The rest of we poor chaps bend our bows in vain when the Captain competes.”