On a day that was unremittingly cold but bright, Sydney decided to explore Rosewell, and he walked its streets and narrow alleys, peering up at the carved stones above the doors of the old houses. Eventually he found his way to the Abbey and walked over the green grass that floored the ruins, gazing with interest at the grinning gargoyles and foliate carvings. He stopped in the middle of the roofless vault of the nave and stared up at an icy-blue sky showing between the fretted arches of broken stone. They reminded him of the half-built bridge, for they represented man’s desire to soar and dominate, to leave his mark on the world in defiance of mortality.
Emerging from the Abbey into the street, he was suddenly and violently knocked back against the wall by the speed of a passing barouche drawn by four cantering grey horses. Its hood was down and sitting alone in the back was the Duke of Allandale, who bawled out to his coachman, ‘Stop, stop!’ Then he turned round and called, ‘Sorry about that. Get in, Godders.’
Ignoring the scowls of the coachman and outriders who recognised him as the man who’d stolen the Duke’s horse and kept it for three days, Sydney climbed into the carriage and settled down with a sigh of pleasure into the deep cushions opposite the owner of this grand equipage. ‘You do yourself proud, Dicky,’ he said with a grin.
‘It’s expected,’ the Duke grinned back. Then he leaned forward and said, ‘I’m glad to see you again. I’ve been to London, and when I was there I saw your father—’
Sydney glared at him. ‘You didn’t say where I was, did you?’
‘No, of course I didn’t, but I’m longing to hear what this is all about – navvying, living in that camp, causing a fracas in the town hall and ruining my mother’s efforts at good works, wandering about by yourself like a lost dog. Hiding from your family… what’s going on?’ He stuck his thumb back at the Abbey and said, ‘Now I find you coming out of there. Have you got religion or something? Is that it?’
Sydney looked shocked. ‘You should know me better than that!’
The Duke laughed. ‘Yes, I think I do. In London I heard that you’d bolted a couple of years ago, but people think you went to France.’
Sydney nodded coolly. ‘Let them go on thinking that. I did go to Paris but I didn’t think much of the people so then I went to India. I liked the girls there but not the climate so I came back and joined a navvy gang. I thought I wanted a mindless and muscular way of earning money, and it was time I saw how other people live. By God, I’ve found out.’
‘Your father’s sick,’ said the Duke tentatively.
‘Is he? That doesn’t make any difference. I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell anyone where I am.’
‘The last time I saw him he was looking very ill.’
‘Good,’ came the retort, ‘but don’t worry – he won’t die. I doubt if even the devil’s anxious to make his acquaintance.’
‘I know he’s difficult but you tried his patience rather badly. He was always paying your debts and pulling strings to keep you out of prison if I remember rightly,’ said the Duke.
Sydney laughed as if he was being complimented. ‘Yes, I did make life rather difficult for him, didn’t I? It was getting to be a strain though, thinking of sins that would madden him enough. I’d done most things.’
‘To hear that you’re in a navvy gang would probably give him apoplexy,’ suggested the Duke, but Sydney shook his finger in warning.
‘No, no, none of that. We’ll keep this between ourselves, shall we? At least for the meantime. I used to dream that if I heard he was on his deathbed I’d hurry home and stage a scene in which I told him that I was going to gamble away the entire family fortune the moment he died, but now I don’t think I’ll bother.’
‘You mean you’re going to stay like this?’ The Duke spread out his hand to indicate Sydney’s fading coat and battered hat.
The reply, spoken with a devilish grin, was, ‘I might. Would you still stop and give me a ride in your barouche if I did?’
His friend groaned, ‘You know perfectly well I would, but how can you stand a life like the one you’re living – when you don’t have to? Isn’t there anything you miss?’
‘I miss pretty, cultivated women. And I miss sport. If you’re not too fussy you can always find a prostitute, but I am fussy.’
‘There are plenty of eligible young ladies round here,’ said the Duke, who was the quarry of almost all of them.
Sydney laughed. ‘And can you see them receiving a navvy as a suitor? No, I think I need a rather special woman and I’ve not met her yet. At least, I don’t think so… I want a woman with a bit of spice about her – a bite.’
His eyes were abstracted as he spoke and his friend looked at him with curiosity. ‘You sound doubtful,’ he said. ‘Have you found the ideal lady here?’
Sydney shook his head. ‘No, no I haven’t. It’s just that life’s beginning to pall a bit, Dicky. I don’t know what to do next.’
‘Well, I can provide you with some sport. I’ll give you a good day’s hunting any time you want it. You used to be keen on the chase.’
Sydney’s hooded eyes glittered. ‘Now that’s something I do miss – a fast run on a good horse over difficult country! That’d shake some of the doubts and worries out of my head.’
‘Let’s do it. My stable’s full of the best horses you ever saw. You can have your pick. We’ll hunt the Three Sisters behind my place, just the two of us.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow if it doesn’t snow. If it’s frosty the scent’ll be strong. You’re not worried about breaking your neck so we could have a fine run. Come up to the stables now and we’ll pick out a horse for you and tomorrow morning we’ll make an early start.’
The stables behind Greyloch Palace were big enough to house ten families and still leave space over. The unexpected arrival of the Duke caused consternation. Grooms and stableboys ran hither and thither, rubbing cloths over horses’ flanks and wetting down their own forelocks with hands dipped in the water-trough. The riding horses were stabled in a building like a mansion with Grecian pillars on the facade. It was divided into a dozen large loose-boxes, each one more spacious than Tibbie Mather’s kitchen. On the door of each box was a brass plaque inscribed with the name of the horse that was housed within it. The grooms and stableboys followed in an anxious procession as their employer showed his horses off to his friend, peering through the iron railings that topped the half-wooden walls of the boxes, first at a stallion called Achilles, then at a mare named Rosalie, and finally at an enormous black gelding that stood behind a plaque announcing him to be Siegfried. At each one Sydney shook his head. ‘Not my sort; too heavy in the heel; looks a bit lazy; too big in the belly… Surely you’ve got something better than this, Dicky?’ he said, to the scandal of the grooms who resented such criticisms of their master’s bloodstock.
When he reached the last three boxes in the line, the Duke warned him, ‘You’d better not say anything bad about the next ones, Godders. They’re my best.’
The first horse was a chestnut with a distinctive head and a sharp eye who raised his head and whinnied in recognition as he saw his owner. The Duke opened the box and clapped the animal on the shoulder. ‘This is Ajmeer. He’s the fastest thing on two legs.’
Sydney nodded in appreciation. ‘Very fine, very fine.’ Then he bent and ran a hand down the horse’s foreleg. ‘He’s had a bit of a bump, hasn’t he?’
The head groom, who was behind them, jumped forward with an anxious look on his face. ‘That’s an old bump, sir. It doesn’t affect the horse in any way.’
‘It might in time,’ was Sydney’s laconic comment as he straightened up.
The next animal was a finely-bred bay mare with beautiful conformation. The veins were raised beneath her silken skin and she shivered with maidenly apprehension when they stepped in beside her. The Duke cupped his hand under her black muzzle and said, ‘This one’s a fine hunter. She’s as brave as a lion but she’s not up to a lot of weight, are you, Pompa
dour?’
‘You’re trying to put me off, aren’t you?’ Sydney complained. ‘I can see you don’t want me to pick her. D’you plan to ride her yourself tomorrow?’
The last horse was dark grey, so dark it looked like polished metal. A broad white blaze ran down the middle of its face and two short, forward-pricking ears showed its keenness and intelligence. ‘At last,’ said Sydney, nudging his friend. ‘This is really something. You’ve kept this to the end hoping I wouldn’t see him, haven’t you? Here is the one I want to ride.’
‘I knew you’d pick him,’ the Duke laughed. ‘You and this horse suit each other very well. He’s wild and wily and can’t be trusted an inch, just like you. But for the man who can master him, he’ll run all day and jump any obstacle.’
Sydney turned to look at the shining brass plate on the door and read out, ‘Knave of Hearts. I’ll ride him tomorrow, won’t I, old boy?’
He was rubbing a hand over the horse’s gleaming shoulder when the head groom stepped forward and said anxiously, ‘It’s a wild horse this one, sir, and it’s not been out much recently because the only man who can ride it has been sick.’
The Duke intervened, ‘Oh, that’s all right. It’ll put you on your mettle, Godders, won’t it?’
Behind him the stableboys nudged each other, anticipating a come-uppance for the cheeky devil who’d said he wasn’t too impressed by the Duke’s horses. They all wanted to be chosen as whippers-in for the next day so that they could see Sydney defeated by Knave of Hearts.
The festivities of the Christmas season for Rosewell society were greatly enlivened by a round of entertainments hosted by the Anstruther family at Bella Vista. It was generally agreed that the most charming, lively and enchanting of all the ladies of the district was beautiful Bethya, who danced, flirted, laughed and teased with incomparable style. Everyone talked about her and she provided plenty of gossip-fodder, for they discussed over and over again how she had come to marry the lumpen Gus, and when that topic was exhausted they talked about her high-spirited beauty and the glory of her clothes.
No one except her maid Francine knew that Bethya was only acting, but with as much panache and style as any famous stage idol. Beneath the polished exterior and the dimpling smiles, she was utterly miserable.
On New Year’s Day she wept bitterly when she woke, sobbing as if her heart would break. She was crying because of the wretchedness of her existence and her longing for her family in Bombay. Through the tears streaming down her face, she sobbed over and over again, ‘I hate this place, oh how I hate it. I hate the cold and the greyness. I hate the people… you’ve no idea how much I hate these people. The only one I care for at all is Bap – and you, of course, Francine.’
Her misery was worse because she could imagine what was happening at home in Bombay at that very season. Her parents and sisters would be preparing to ride out in two gharris, all packed in tight on seats that sprouted straw stuffing from huge holes. Laughing and giggling, they would be on their way to visit her aunt’s family who lived in a shabby, rambling bungalow on Colaba Point. It was always there that the family’s New Year dinner was held. They’d eat spicy chicken, tongue-sizzling lamb curries, folded naan bread, lady’s fingers, fried pomfret, a favourite sticky pudding made from carrots, rosgullas in hot sugar syrup, mangoes and tiny red bananas, the kind Bethya loved best. Her taste buds ached for the spices that she missed so much and she wept again. ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I should never have married Gus. I thought he’d take me into London society. I had dreams of becoming a famous hostess, marrying another man, having children. I never thought he’d bring me here and leave me stranded. Oh, how I wish I could go home…’
Francine had heard all this before and knew there was no use contributing anything to it. She was preparing Bethya’s morning bath, pouring hot water from the huge jugs carried upstairs by the maids into a prettily painted hip-bath that stood on spread-out towels before a blazing fire. When she saw that her mistress was preparing to rise, she seized the poker and rattled it in the bars of the grate to make the fire leap higher and throw out more heat. Dropping her nightgown from her shoulders as she walked, Bethya came across the floor like Venus. ‘Stop making that terrible din,’ she snapped irritably. ‘And you’re very quiet this morning. Are you sulking?’
Francine glanced up with her black eyes flat and expressionless. ‘No, madame, I’m not sulking.’
Bethya stepped into the bath and sank down in the warm water with a pleased sigh. Some of her misery was beginning to lift though the core of it would always remain. ‘You’ve been very odd recently, Francine,’ she commented.
The maid handed her a cake of rose-petal-scented soap. ‘In what way have I been odd?’
‘Silent, not speaking, not smiling… odd.’
In fact Francine had sensed a drawing back in her mistress and she was right, because after Bethya had overheard Mrs Anstruther’s remarks to the Colonel the words had taken root in her mind and she had resolved to be more formal with her maid. Now that the subject had been raised, however, Francine’s own pent-up feelings came to the surface and she burst out, ‘Do you want me to leave you, madame?’
Astonished, Bethya looked up. ‘Leave me? Of course not! What on earth would I do without you?’
‘So you’re satisfied with my work?’
‘More than satisfied. You’re indispensable to me as a friend as well as a maid.’
Tears appeared in the French girl’s eyes. ‘Then why do you not talk to me like you used to do?’
‘Damn Gus’s horrible mother,’ thought Bethya. ‘She’s ruined the only friendship I have in this place.’ But she assumed her actress front. ‘You’re being silly, Francine. Of course I still talk to you. I’ve been talking to you this morning, haven’t I?’
‘But not in the old way, not as you used to do,’ sobbed Francine.
Suddenly embarrassed, and very conscious of her nakedness, Bethya stood up in the bath and reached for an enormous towel that lay on a nearby chair. Wrapping it tightly around her and knotting it on her breast, she stepped out of the water and told Francine: ‘I’m very fond of you, Francine – you’re like a sister to me – but I’m not able to show it openly because Gus’s mother thinks that we’re too familiar with each other. I overheard her saying so to the Colonel. That’s why I’ve not been as open as before.’ The word ‘sister’ was used deliberately, but as she said it Bethya knew it was partly true. She adored her real sisters but she was fond of Francine and felt remorse and pity when she realised that the French girl’s life must be as isolated and lonely as her own. She had no companion or confidante in Bella Vista either. They needed each other for support and succour.
‘I want to give you a New Year present. We always give them to each other at home. We think New Year is more significant than Christmas, you see,’ she said.
‘But you gave me ten guineas at Christmas,’ said Francine in surprise. On Christmas Day the mistress had presented her maid with a purse containing an unusually generous amount of money.
Bethya nodded. ‘Oh, that.’ In Bombay it was the custom of her parents to give the servants gifts of money on major feast days, and she had only done what she considered proper, though she knew that the money she was giving was really too much. In a way it was reparation for having been cool with Francine. She did not tell the maid this, however, and hoped that Francine was sufficiently discreet not to talk about her mistress’ liberality below stairs because, if Mrs Anstruther Senior got to hear about it, she might take it as another proof of an unsuitable relationship between mistress and maid.
‘No, no,’ she went on, shaking her head. ‘That wasn’t your real present. I want to give you something special. Now I know you like my garnet brooch – so I want to give you that.’
Francine’s expression was shocked. ‘But the Colonel gave you that last Christmas! If he or his wife see me wearing it, they’ll think I’ve stolen it.’
Bethya laughed. ‘So they would, would
n’t they? And she’d not hesitate to say so, either. Don’t wear it when you’re near the Aristruthers, that’s all – but you must have it. It’ll suit you very well.’
Tripping on her towel in her eagerness, Bethya ran over to the chest and pulled out the top drawer. Inside was her velvet-lined jewel box, and in the top tray she found the brooch. It was made of circles of matching deep-red garnets, set in gold with tiny diamonds dotted here and there like stars against the glowing colour. It must have cost a great deal of money because it was two inches across – a brooch the wearer would find hard to conceal from sharp eyes like Mrs Anstruther’s.
Francine received it with a look of wonder. ‘It’s lovely,’ she whispered.
‘Put it on,’ said Bethya. When the brooch was pinned to to the maid’s bodice, she clapped her hands in delight. ‘It’s perfect! It suits you just as much as I knew it would.’
‘Thank you very much. I will treasure it all my life,’ said Francine, putting her cupped hand over the brooch. Her eyes were shining as if she’d been given the most wonderful gift in the world, for it represented more to her than monetary value; it represented an affirmation of Bethya’s esteem and affection.
Colonel Anstruther was sitting at the breakfast table with his rubicund face shining when his daughter-in-law appeared. There were only the two of them in the room so she could be as natural as she liked and treat him as she would her own father.
‘Happy New Year, Bap,’ she said, pausing by his chair and planting a kiss on the top of his bald head.
He looked up in delighted surprise. ‘And the same to you, my dear,’ he exclaimed.
Her hands were behind her back and she brought them forward to put a little parcel by his plate. ‘A gift for you. At home we always give presents on New Year’s Day to the people we love best,’ she said. She delighted in giving presents but could not bring herself to buy one for Gus or his mother, only for Bap.
He opened it with careful fingers, as pleased as a child, and revealed a jeweller’s box. From the other side of the table Bethya was watching him attentively. She wanted him to like her gift. From the box the Colonel drew out a beautiful little jewelled pencil made of gold with a circle of emeralds around its middle and a green silken tassel at one end.
A Bridge in Time Page 48