by Kate Morton
Emmeline looked up quickly, unable to mask her excitement. ‘I suppose I could. If it would be a help.’
Hannah let Emmeline add ten Parisian dresses to her luggage, and I was set to making better alterations to the clothing she had brought with her. I suffered a wave of homesickness for Riverton as I unpicked Nancy’s perfunctory stitches. I hoped she wouldn’t take my revisions as personal affronts.
Things between the sisters improved after that: Emmeline’s slump of disaffection vanished, and by the end of the week things were much as they’d always been. They’d relaxed back into an easy friendship, each as relieved as the other by the return to the status quo. I was relieved as well: Hannah had been entirely too glum of late. I hoped the elevation of spirits would outlast the visit.
On Emmeline’s final day, she and Hannah sat at either end of the morning-room sofa, waiting for the car from Riverton. Deborah, on her way to an editorial meeting, was at the writing desk, back turned, sketching a hurried note of condolence for a bereaved friend.
Emmeline reclined luxuriously and gave a wistful little sigh. ‘I could take tea at Gunter’s every day and never grow tired of walnut cake.’
‘You would once you lost that slim little waist,’ said Deborah, dragging her scratchy pen nib across the writing paper. ‘A minute on the lips and all that.’
Emmeline fluttered her eyelids at Hannah who tried not to laugh.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?’ said Emmeline. ‘It really would be no trouble.’
‘I doubt Pa would agree.’
‘Pooh,’ said Emmeline. ‘He wouldn’t care a whit.’ She inclined her head. ‘I could live quite comfortably in the coat closet, you know. You wouldn’t even know I was here.’
Hannah appeared to give this due consideration.
‘You’ll be quite bored without me, you know,’ said Emmeline.
‘I know,’ said Hannah, swooning. ‘How will I ever find things to sustain me?’
Emmeline laughed and tossed a cushion at Hannah.
Hannah caught it and sat straightening the tassels for a moment. Eyes still on the cushion, she said, ‘About Pa, Emme . . . Is he . . . ? How is he?’
Her strained relations with Pa, I knew, were a constant source of regret for Hannah. On more than one occasion I had found the beginnings of a letter in her escritoire, but none was ever posted.
‘He’s Pa,’ said Emmeline, shrugging. ‘Same as always.’
‘Oh,’ said Hannah disconsolately. ‘Good. I hadn’t heard from him.’
‘No,’ said Emmeline, yawning. ‘Well, you know what Pa’s like once he sets his mind.’
‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘Still, I rather thought . . .’ Her voice tapered off and for a moment there was silence between them. Though Deborah’s back was turned, I could see her ears had pricked, with Alsatian hunger, at the hint of gossip. Hannah must have seen too, for she straightened and changed the subject with forced brightness. ‘I don’t know whether I mentioned, Emme—I’d thought to take some work when you’ve gone.’
‘Work?’ said Emmeline. ‘In a dress shop?’
Now Deborah laughed. She sealed her envelope and swung around on her chair. She stopped laughing when she saw Hannah’s face. ‘You’re serious?’
‘Oh, Hannah’s usually serious,’ said Emmeline.
‘When we were on Oxford Street the other day,’ said Hannah to Emmeline, ‘and you were having your hair done, I saw a small press, Blaxland’s, with a sign in the window. They were looking for editors.’ She raised her shoulders. ‘I love to read, I’m interested in politics, my grammar and spelling are better than average—’
‘But don’t be ridiculous, darling,’ said Deborah, handing her letter to me. ‘See it makes this morning’s mail.’ She turned to Hannah. ‘They’d never take you.’
‘They already have,’ said Hannah. ‘I applied on the spot. The owner said he needed somebody urgently.’
Deborah inhaled sharply, schooled her lips into a dilute smile. ‘But surely you must see it’s out of the question.’
‘What question?’ said Emmeline, feigning earnestness.
‘The question of rightness,’ said Deborah.
‘I didn’t realise there was a question of rightness,’ said Emmeline. She started to laugh. ‘What’s the answer?’
Deborah inhaled, her nostrils sucking together. ‘Blaxland’s?’ she said thinly to Hannah. ‘Aren’t they the publishers responsible for all those nasty little red pamphlets the soldiers are handing out on street corners?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘My brother would have a fit.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Hannah. ‘Teddy’s often expressed sympathy for the unemployed.’
Deborah’s eyes flashed wider: the surprise of a predator interested briefly by its prey. ‘You’ve misheard, darling,’ she said. ‘Tiddles knows better than to alienate his future constituents. Besides . . .’ She stood triumphantly before the hearth mirror, stabbed a pin into her hat, ‘. . . sympathy or not, I don’t imagine he’d be too pleased to learn you’d joined forces with the very people who printed those filthy articles that lost him the election.’
Hannah’s face fell—she hadn’t realised. She glanced at Emmeline who shrugged her shoulders sympathetically.
Deborah, observing their reactions in the mirror, swallowed a smile and turned to face Hannah, tut-tutting disappointedly. ‘Darling, how dreadfully disloyal!’
Hannah exhaled slowly.
Deborah shook her head. ‘It’ll kill poor old Tiddles when he finds out. Kill him.’
‘Then don’t tell him,’ said Hannah.
‘You know me, I’m the soul of discretion,’ she said. ‘But you’re forgetting the hundreds of other people without my scruples. They’ll be only too happy to report back when they see your name, his name, on that propaganda.’
‘I’ll tell them I can’t take the position,’ said Hannah quietly. She set the cushion aside. ‘But I intend to look for something else. Something more suitable.’
‘Dearest child,’ said Deborah, laughing. ‘Put it out of your mind. There are no suitable jobs for you. I mean, how would it look? Teddy’s wife working? What would people say?’
‘You work,’ said Emmeline, slyly lowering her eyelids.
‘Oh, but that’s different, darling,’ said Deborah, without skipping a beat. ‘I haven’t met my Teddy yet. I’d give it all up in a flash for the right man.’
‘I need to do something,’ said Hannah. ‘Something other than sitting around here all day waiting to see if anyone calls.’
‘Well, of course,’ said Deborah, scooping her purse from the writing desk. ‘No one likes to be idle.’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘Though I’d have thought there was a lot more to do around here than sit and wait. A household doesn’t run itself, you know.’
‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘And I would happily take over some of the running—’
‘Best stick to things you do well,’ said Deborah, slinking toward the door. ‘That’s what I always say.’ She paused, holding the door open, then turned, a slow smile spreading across her face. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s a wonder I didn’t think of it earlier.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I’ll have a word to Mother. You can join her Conservative Ladies group. They’ve been looking for volunteers for the upcoming gala. You can help write place cards and paint decorations—explore your artistic side.’
Hannah and Emmeline exchanged a glance as Boyle came to the door.
‘The car is here for Miss Emmeline,’ he said. ‘Can I call you a taxi, Miss Deborah?’
‘Don’t bother yourself, Boyle,’ said Deborah chirpily. ‘I feel like some fresh air.’
Boyle nodded and left to supervise the stowing of Emmeline’s bags in the motor car.
‘What a stroke of genius!’ Deborah said, smiling broadly at Hannah. ‘Teddy will be so pleased, you and Mother spending all that time together!’ She inclined her head and lowered her voice. ‘And this way, he’ll never need know about that other unfortunate busine
ss.’
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
I won’t wait for Sylvia. I am done waiting. I will find my own cup of tea. A loud, tinny, thumping music comes from the speakers on the makeshift stage, and a group of six young girls is dancing. They are dressed in black and red lycra—little more than swimsuits—and black boots that come all the way to their knees. The heels are high and I wonder how they manage to dance in them at all, then I remember the dancers of my youth. The Hammersmith Palladion, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Emmeline doing the charleston.
I claw my fingers around the armrest, lean so that my elbow digs into my ribs, and push myself upwards, hugging the rail. I hover for a moment, then transfer my weight to my cane, wait for the landscape to stop still. Blessed heat. I poke my cane gingerly at the ground. The recent rain has left it soft and I am wary of becoming bogged. I use the indentations made by other people’s footsteps. It is a slow process, but I go surely . . .
‘Hear your future . . . Read your palm . . .’
I cannot abide fortune tellers. I was once told I had a short life line; did not properly shake the vague sense of foreboding until I was midway through my sixties.
I pick my way onwards, will not look. I am resigned to my future. It is the past that troubles.
Hannah saw the fortune teller in early 1921. It was a Wednesday morning; Hannah’s ‘at-homes’ were always Wednesday mornings. Deborah was meeting Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon at the Savoy Grill and Teddy was at work with his father. Teddy had lost his air of trauma by then; he looked like someone who had woken from a strange dream relieved to realise he was still who he used to be. He had been surprised, he told Hannah one night at dinner, at how much opportunity the world of banking offered. Not just for the acquisition of wealth, he was quick to specify, rather for the nourishment of a man’s cultural interests. Soon, he promised, when the time was right, he was going to ask his father whether he might head up a foundation to nurture young painters. Or sculptors. Or some other sort of artist. Hannah said that sounded wonderful and turned her attention back to her meal while he spoke of his new manufacturing client. She was becoming used to the chasm between Teddy’s intentions and his actions.
A parade of fashionably dressed women had been leaving number seventeen for the past five minutes when I started to clear the tea items. (We had just lost our fifth housemaid and no replacement had yet been found.) Only Hannah, Fanny and Lady Clementine remained sitting on the sofas, finishing their tea. Hannah was tapping her spoon lightly, distractedly, against her saucer. She was anxious for them to go, though I did not yet know why.
‘Really dear,’ Lady Clementine said, eyeing Hannah over her empty teacup, ‘you should think about starting a family.’ She exchanged a glance with Fanny, who repositioned proudly her own sizeable heft. She was expecting her second. ‘Children are good for a marriage. Aren’t they, Fanny?’
Fanny nodded, but was unable to speak as her mouth was full with sponge cake.
‘A woman married too long without children,’ Lady Clementine said dourly. ‘People start to talk.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Hannah. ‘But there’s really nothing to talk about.’ She said it so breezily I shivered. One would have been hard-pressed to detect the hint of strife beneath the veneer. The bitter arguments Hannah’s failure to fall was causing.
Lady Clementine exchanged a glance with Fanny who raised her eyebrows. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? Downstairs?’
My first thought was that she referred to our lack of housemaids; I realised her true meaning only when Fanny swallowed her cake and added eagerly, ‘There’s doctors you could see. Ladies’ doctors.’
There was really very little Hannah could say to that. Well there was, of course. She could have told them to mind their own business, and once she probably would have, but time had been rubbing at her edges. So she said nothing. She just smiled and silently willed them to leave.
When they had gone, she collapsed back into the sofa. ‘Finally,’ she said. ‘I thought they’d never go.’ She watched me loading the last of the cups onto my tray. ‘I’m sorry you have to do that, Grace.’
‘It’s all right ma’am,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it won’t be for long.’
‘All the same,’ said Hannah. ‘You’re a lady’s maid. I’ll speak to Boyle about finding a replacement.’
I continued arranging the teaspoons.
Hannah was still watching me. ‘Can you keep a secret, Grace?’
‘You know I can, ma’am.’
She withdrew something, a folded piece of newspaper, from beneath her skirt waist and smoothed it open. ‘I found this in the back of one of Boyle’s newspapers.’ She handed it to me.
Fortune teller, it read. Renowned spiritualist. Communicate with the dead. Learn your future.
I couldn’t hand it back quickly enough, wiped my hands on my apron afterwards. I had heard talk downstairs about such things. It was the newest craze, the result of mass bereavement. In those days everyone wanted a word of consolation from their dear lost loves.
‘I have an appointment this afternoon,’ Hannah said.
I couldn’t think what to say. I wished she hadn’t told me. I exhaled. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, ma’am, I don’t hold with seances and the like.’
‘Really, Grace,’ Hannah said, surprised, ‘of all people I’d have thought you’d be more open-minded. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a believer, you know. He communicates regularly with his son Kingsley. He even has seances at his home.’
She wasn’t to know I was no longer devoted to Sherlock Holmes; that in London I had discovered Agatha Christie.
‘It’s not that, ma’am,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe.’
‘No?’
‘No, ma’am. I believe, all right. That’s the problem. It’s not natural. The dead. It’s dangerous to interfere.’
She raised her eyebrows, considering the fact. ‘Dangerous . . .’
It was the wrong approach to take. By mentioning danger I’d only made the proposition more attractive.
‘I shall go with you, ma’am,’ I said.
She had not expected this, was unsure whether to be annoyed or touched. In the end she was both. ‘No,’ she said quite sternly. ‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll be quite all right by myself.’ Then her voice softened. ‘It’s your afternoon off, isn’t it? Surely you have something lovely planned? Something preferable to accompanying me?’
I didn’t answer. The plans I had were secret. After numerous letters backwards and forwards, Alfred had finally suggested he visit me in London. The months away from Riverton had left me lonelier than I’d expected. Despite Mr Hamilton’s comprehensive coaching, I’d found there were certain pressures being a lady’s maid that I hadn’t anticipated, especially with Hannah seeming not as happy as a young bride should. And Mrs Tibbit’s penchant for making trouble ensured that none of the staff was prepared to let down their guard long enough to enjoy a camaraderie. It was the first time in my life I had suffered from isolation. And though I was wary of reading the wrong sentiment into Alfred’s attentions (sure enough, I had done that once before), I found myself longing to see him.
Nonetheless, I did follow Hannah that afternoon. My meeting with Alfred wasn’t until later in the evening; if I went quickly I’d have time to make sure she arrived then departed again in good condition. I’d heard enough stories about spiritualists to convince me it was the wisest course. Mrs Tibbit’s cousin had been possessed, she said, and Mr Boyle knew of a fellow whose wife was fleeced and had her throat cut.
More than that, while I wasn’t certain how I felt about spiritualists, I was certain enough about the type of people who were drawn to them. Only people unhappy in the present seek to know the future.
There was a thick fog out: grey and heavy. I followed Hannah along Aldwych like a detective on a trail, careful never to fall too far behind, careful she never slipped too long behind a cloud of fog. On the corner, a man in a trenc
h coat was playing the mouth organ: ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. They were everywhere, those displaced soldiers, in every alleyway, beneath every bridge, in front of every railway station. Hannah fossicked in her purse for a coin and dropped it in the man’s cup before continuing on her way.
We turned into Kean Street and Hannah stopped in front of an elegant Edwardian villa. It looked respectable enough but, as Mother was fond of saying, appearances could be deceptive. I watched as she checked the advertisement again and pressed a finger to the numbered doorbell. The door opened quickly and, without a glance behind, she disappeared inside.
I stood out front, wondering which level she was being led to. The third, I felt sure. There was something about the lamp glow that yellowed the frilled edges of the drawn curtains. I sat and waited near a one-legged man selling tin monkeys that ran up and down a piece of twine.
I waited over an hour. By the time she reappeared, the cement step on which I sat had frozen my legs and I was unable to stand quickly enough. I crouched, praying she wouldn’t see me. She didn’t; she wasn’t looking. She was standing on the top step in a daze. Her expression was blank, startled even, and she seemed glued to the spot. My first thought was that the spiritualist had put a hex on her, held up one of those fob watches they showed in photographs and hypnotised her. My foot was all pins and needles so I couldn’t rush over. I was about to call out when she took a deep breath, shook herself and started off quickly in the direction of home.
I was late meeting Alfred that foggy evening. Not by much, but enough that he looked worried before he saw me, hurt when he did.
‘Grace.’ We greeted each other clumsily. He held out his hand to take mine at the same time I reached for his. There was a clumsy moment where wrist hit against wrist, and he grabbed my elbow by mistake. I smiled nervously, reclaimed my own hand and tucked it under my scarf. ‘Sorry I’m late, Alfred,’ I said. ‘I was running an errand for the Mistress.’