Eden Falls

by Sanderson, Jane

  ‘Is she unwell?’ Thea said now to Tobias. ‘She looks peaky.’

  Tobias studied his wife for a moment. Her understanding of Henrietta’s situation was limited, he realised that; if Thea had visited his sister in Holloway she might have been better prepared for the pallor of her skin and the drabness that somehow seemed to cloak her entire person. Even with the advantage of the Ritz dinners, Henrietta had clearly suffered during the past month. She needed to come home, thought Tobias: all would be well when they got her home. To Thea, he merely said, ‘She’s fine,’ then the sharp-tongued magistrate demanded silence, and the morning’s proceedings began.

  At Netherwood Hall, concern for Lady Henrietta among the household staff was universal, but Mr Parkinson, as ever, set the tone, with sorrowful reflections on shame, disgrace and the tarnishing of the noble name of Hoyland. Anna Sykes, visiting Mrs Powell-Hughes, found the atmosphere sombre indeed.

  ‘There can be no return from scandals such as these,’ the butler said with doleful finality. ‘Lesser crises have broken nobler families than ours.’

  Anna shook her head. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Mr Parkinson. Aren’t English aristocrats always in trouble one way or another? It never seems to alter anything for them.’

  He regarded her coolly. She was Russian, said his expression; how could she possibly hold an opinion, let alone voice it?

  ‘Also, I’ve seen her,’ Anna went on, impervious. ‘In Holloway.’

  This was impressive.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Parkinson a little more humbly. ‘And was she in good spirits?’ He bitterly blamed Lady Henrietta for the taint of disgrace, but he didn’t have a heart of stone. He had, after all, known her for most of her life. His feelings towards her now were those of a kindly patriarch towards an unruly child: disapproving, gravely disappointed, but ultimately very likely to forgive.

  ‘Very good, under the circumstances,’ said Anna. ‘It must have been hard on her, when the magistrate denied bail, but at least it means they’ll set her free after the trial.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Parkinson. ‘Well, that’s certainly something.’

  There was a brief lull while Mr Parkinson pictured the sixth earl, Henrietta’s father, turning in his grave. The wall clock struck four. Anna and Mrs Powell-Hughes exchanged a meaningful glance. At half past the hour Anna would be leaving; she was meeting Daniel and the girls by the wide Dutch canal where she’d left them messing about in a coracle. This was her treat, her indulgence: an exchange of news with Mrs Powell-Hughes. Their friendship had formed four years ago when Anna’s commission from the countess had meant daily visits to Netherwood Hall. Now they saw each other only rarely. Each of them wished the butler gone; it was regrettable, but true.

  ‘Lady Henrietta is built of stern stuff,’ Mrs Powell-Hughes said. ‘I should know, I’ve nursed her often enough when she’s come off her horse.’ She spoke briskly, hoping to discourage the Mr Parkinson’s tendency to lugubriousness; to discourage, too, his continued presence. However, he had settled into a Carver at the kitchen table; clearly he planned to share his misery in comfort.

  ‘Hardly comparable, Mrs Powell-Hughes,’ he said.‘We’re talking, here, about the family’s name being dragged through the mud by the newspapers. I tell you; they’re like hounds after a fox. Merciless.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna, ‘they are. But soon enough, something else will come along to distract them—’

  ‘And then normality will be restored, Mr Parkinson,’ said the housekeeper, sensing a way forward in Anna’s reasoning. ‘We shall all breathe easily again soon enough, Anna’s quite right. Was that the bell ringing in the front hall?’

  He cocked an ear. He hadn’t heard a thing, but he had noticed, since turning sixty last December, that the world was taking on a slightly muffled quality. Either gravel was losing its crunch or his hearing wasn’t quite what it had been.

  ‘I think not,’ he said, though there was uncertainty in his voice. Anna, quick on the uptake, felt a little sorry to be colluding with Mrs Powell-Hughes’s deception but did so anyway.

  ‘No, it rang, most definitely,’ Anna said and she smiled regretfully at the butler, as if she were even sorrier than he was that he must now leave them to investigate. He stood, a little stiffly on account of his hip. His face was a study in unresolved anxiety, but the women hardened their hearts and watched him go.

  ‘But there isn’t anyone there, is there?’ whispered Anna, ‘The bell didn’t ring. He’ll be back in a trice.’

  Mrs Powell-Hughes tapped the end of her nose knowingly. ‘Mark my words, Mr Parkinson will find another job to do, while he’s up there. He can’t help it. A mote of dust will have settled on the hall table, or a petal will have drifted from the rose bowl.’ She winked at Anna, a surprising gesture from a distinguished housekeeper with a tight grey bun and a starched collar. ‘We’ve done him a favour, dear. Taken his mind off the family’s woes. Now…’ she leaned towards Anna, proffering the teapot ‘…tell me what you’ve been up to in London.’

  Daniel looked strained, thought Anna. There was an unaccustomed tightness to the set of his mouth, as if there were things he wished to say but couldn’t. They were crossing the common, having walked the couple of miles from Netherwood Hall to Ravenscliffe. Anna had done most of the talking. Then, quite suddenly, he said, ‘The thing is, Anna, I can’t be sure he’ll keep them safe,’ as if she’d asked a question and this was his answer.

  ‘Silas?’ she said.

  ‘He’s a self-serving individual, always with an eye on his own fortune.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ She needed no coaxing to think badly of Silas. She liked him no more than Daniel did, perhaps rather less. Both of them saw him through objective eyes, unclouded by sibling ties. When he’d strutted into Eve’s life five years ago – this was how Anna thought of him, strutting like a peacock, flashing his tail feathers – he was the long-lost brother made good, distributing largesse and worldly wisdom, whether or not it was welcome. He had made few friends in Netherwood, but then he hadn’t sought friendship from anyone other than Eve. She had been his sole purpose. In a manner of speaking, he had wooed her, thought Anna. There had been an absence of sixteen years: long enough to make a fortune, long enough to lose his humility and plenty long enough to make his surprise appearance seem, to Eve, like a gift from God. All his charm had been lavished on her and, insofar as they could help him win her heart, her children. The rest of them – husband, friends, neighbours – could all hang as far as Silas Whittam was concerned. This was Anna’s view, but while her dislike of Silas continued unabated, she at least had no qualms about Eve’s place in her brother’s affections.

  ‘You can’t doubt his fondness for her, Daniel. Whatever you and I feel about him, he’s a good brother to her.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Daniel’s voice was gritty, twisted with unhappiness. ‘He’s not to be trusted and they’re in his hands, my Eve and Angus.’

  Anna tucked her hand through his arm, trying to offer comfort, but Daniel barely seemed to notice.

  ‘He lacks compassion,’ he said. ‘He lacks a proper regard for others. He thinks he loves Eve but he doesn’t know how to love.’

  His face, in profile, was dark with worry; too much time in his own company, thought Anna. They’d had letters from Eve, she and he, and there was nothing in them to cause alarm; Port Antonio sounded a fine place, not a forbidding one. Eve sounded exhilarated, if anything: intoxicated by the adventure.

  ‘Well, just supposing Silas doesn’t guard them as you would, Eve’s quite capable of looking after herself and Angus, you know. Try not to worry.’

  ‘When someone tells you not to worry,’ said Daniel, ‘it’s generally because they don’t understand the problem.’

  She was stung. For a moment she was quiet, and let her hand fall from the crook of his arm. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’ she said, a little testily.

  ‘It’s a feeling, that’s all.’

  Anna fell silent, leavin
g him to his bleak reverie. Ahead, by the house, Amos waited, leaning against the gate. He’d had a good day, Anna could see. He was laughing at something with Ellen and Maya, who’d come three-legged all the way from the hall – bound together by a scarf – and still managed to beat Daniel and Anna.

  ‘Daniel,’ Amos said as they approached. ‘’ow do.’

  They shook hands. ‘Managing all right with no Eve?’

  Amos asked the question with merry insouciance, quite disastrously – and innocently – out of tune with the prevailing mood.

  ‘Aye, managing fine,’ Daniel growled. ‘Though we’ll all be better off when she’s back where she belongs.’ He stomped down the garden path and Amos grimaced at Anna.

  ‘Was it summat I said?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘And no.’

  None the wiser, Amos followed his wife into the house. The little girls careered about, Ellen’s left leg tied to Maya’s right, and their laughter, which had no regard or respect for adults and their complexities, filled the silence.

  Chapter 27

  Mr Arbuthnot, the magistrate, was obliged under the strict terms of court conventions to disallow many of Henrietta’s questions to Mr Asquith. She kept straying into matters of personal opinion or raising areas of government policy, neither of which avenues could possibly shine any light on the matter in hand. However, even the magistrate, who had little sympathy with violent protest whatever its cause, was finding her hard to resist; for sheer entertainment value, he would willingly admit – later, of course, in the privacy of his club – that he had never encountered the like before, and probably never would again. The journalists bubbled and fizzed with professional glee, and the public gallery listened with enraptured delight as Lady Henrietta Hoyland tied the prime minister in knots.

  ‘What were your emotions when my brick appeared, uninvited, in the entrance hall of Number Ten, Downing Street?’ Henrietta asked.

  Mr Asquith’s handsome face wore the resigned expression of a busy man forced by circumstance to waste his time on nonsense. Disdain and distaste radiated from him like heat from a flame.

  ‘I was angry, just as you would be if someone were to vandalise your property and risk the safety of you and your family.’ He was a distinguished man – a barrister as well as prime minister – and debonair; he had clearly dressed with care for this appearance in court. He stood before her, an unwavering symbol of opposition to women’s suffrage, the man who had banned females from attending public meetings unless they had a written guarantee from a man to vouch for their character and good intentions. Henrietta smiled, the image of sweet concern.

  ‘Were you afraid, then, for your safety?’

  ‘I was angry, as I said.’

  ‘But, Prime Minister, if you felt the brick threatened your safety and that of your family, would you not feel afraid as well as angry?’

  Thea whispered, ‘What’s she up to? Sounds like the case for the prosecution.’ The magistrate pierced her with gimlet eyes and demanded silence.

  ‘I was by no means afraid,’ Mr Asquith said.

  ‘Where were you, Prime Minister, when the brick was thrown through the fanlight of Number Ten?’

  ‘I was with members of the Cabinet at the House of Commons.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Henrietta, feigning astonishment. ‘So the grievous assault on your home posed no physical threat to you whatsoever. Perhaps, though, you were concerned for your wife and your children?’

  The prime minister looked at the magistrate. ‘Is this relevant, your worship?’

  ‘It is not irrelevant, I believe,’ said Mr Arbuthnot, ‘if not exactly relevant either. Continue, if you please.’ There was a muted ripple of appreciation from the gallery, and Henrietta waited, her head cocked in an attitude of patient interest. Mr Asquith blew out a long breath of irritation. ‘My family was at our constituency home at the time,’ he said.

  Now Henrietta looked at the pressmen and her supporters, and rolled her eyes. There was open laughter, and Mr Arbuthnot smacked the top of his bench and called for order. He glared at Henrietta.

  ‘Lady Henrietta, you will desist from playing to the crowd. This is a court of law, not a variety theatre. Similarly, you are not permitted to either cross-examine or attack the credibility of your own witness.’

  ‘I apologise, your worship,’ she said, but there was a light in her eyes now, a flush to her cheeks, a vigour to her movements: she looked altogether stronger than she had when the warders had first brought her in. ‘I merely wished to share my surprise that the crime for which I stand here, and for which I have already served four weeks’ imprisonment, placed neither Mr Asquith nor any member of his family at any possible risk.’

  ‘You are not required to share anything, least of all your surprise, with members of the public. Do you have any further questions for the prime minister?’

  ‘Just one, if I may?’

  The magistrate inclined his head in agreement. Mr Asquith heaved another sigh.

  ‘Prime Minister, does your implacable opposition to women’s suffrage indicate an underlying lack of confidence in your own political future?’

  Mr Asquith smiled, perfectly aware that his tormentor had just shot her bolt. The magistrate, boggle-eyed at her impertinence, demanded that Henrietta’s comment be struck from the record and that her questioning of the prime minister now cease. There was a small uproar as the dogged, devoted Mary Dixon stood and shouted ‘Votes for Women!’ and ‘Shame on you, Asquith!’ and, although she was shushed by her WSPU friends, she was herself escorted from the court as the prime minister made his own more dignified exit.

  Thea was rapt. ‘Isn’t Henry marvellous?’ she said to Tobias.

  ‘Foolhardy, more like,’ he said.

  Mr Arbuthnot called for silence, and barked out an order for a short recess. He looked extremely displeased, while Henrietta, standing tall between the two officers who now led her away, looked anything but apologetic.

  Amos, Anna and Maya took the train home from Netherwood. To walk there was an outing; to walk home, an ordeal. As it was, Maya laid her head on Amos’s arm and slept for the duration of the short journey, worn out by Ellen’s inexhaustible fund of games, all involving sticks, mud and warfare of one form or another. Maya’s hat was lost somewhere on Netherwood Common and there were grass stains on her white pinafore. Ellen had daubed muddy stripes on their faces for war paint.

  Soon Eliza would be back from Paris and Anna felt this could only be a good thing. She worried that, between them, Daniel and Ellen were turning feral; they ate when they liked and not always together, and Ellen had made a bed under a rowan tree: on warm nights she was allowed to sleep there.

  ‘Like a hedgehog,’ Anna said now, to Amos. ‘On a nest of leaves and feathers. And I don’t know that she’s had a bath since Eve left.’

  Amos couldn’t see a problem.

  ‘Nowt wrong wi’ a bit o’ muck,’ he said. ‘Anyway, Lily Pickering still comes most days. She’ll not let everything go to pot.’

  Anna wrinkled her nose. Lily Pickering was taking advantage of Eve’s absence too, in her view. By the looks of the linen basket she was at least two weeks behind with the washing and the windows were opaque with that particular mix of dust, midges and dried raindrops that was the speciality of the common in mid-summer. These things went unremarked upon by Anna, of course; the visit was clouded enough, from her point of view, without chiding Daniel about the quality of the housekeeping.

  ‘So,’ Amos said significantly. Maya shifted against him and he leaned down and kissed the top of her head, gently so as not to disturb her. There was a leaf threaded through her dark hair but he left it be, in case she wanted it there.

  ‘So, what?’ Anna said.

  ‘I expect it was all about t’family’s black sheep over at Netherwood ’all? Weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth?’

  Anna gave him a look.

  ‘Not all about that, no,’ she said. ‘Some of it was about you.’

>   He grinned. ‘I’ve told you not to brag about your good fortune, Mrs Sykes.’

  ‘I think she pities me. She considers me … now what was it? Ah yes, lumbered. Mrs Powell-Hughes considers me lumbered.’

  Amos laughed. ‘She’s not wrong,’ he said. ‘Whereas I consider myself blessed.’

  ‘You’re not wrong, either.’

  They smiled at each other, enjoying an unexpected moment of perfect harmony that had come stealthily, from nowhere, and when they alighted at Ardington they kissed on the platform in plain sight of the stationmaster.

  After the adjournment Mr Arbuthnot came back a changed man: not a shred of good humour, not an ounce of leniency. Tobias regarded him with alarm. It was clear as day that the magistrate regretted his earlier indulgence and was newly inured to the charms of Henrietta’s audacity. He spoke curtly, bringing matters to a close. She was allowed a brief summing up, which she used entirely to promulgate her views on female suffrage, after which the magistrate looked her straight in the eye and declared her guilty of a malicious act of vandalism.

  ‘Your aim, young woman, was to cause the greatest harm to both the property and, I have no doubt, the person of the prime minister. In this latter regard, of course, you did not succeed. However, your disgraceful actions reflect a lamentable and potentially dangerous lack of restraint, added to which you seem determined to ridicule the ancient and serious conventions of our judicial system.’

  Henrietta watched his features steadily. His eyebrows were white, as was his hair, and they kicked up and out at their extremities like the ear tufts of an owl. He had thread veins on his cheeks and a florid nose: a port drinker, she surmised, or a lover of claret.

  ‘You are a privileged young woman and your status in society has, I suspect, protected you thus far from facing the consequences of your actions. However, we are none of us above the law and I feel it is my duty to put a stop to your destructive progress with the harshest possible sentence for your crime.’