Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  ‘Mattie Henderson! You aren’t listening to a single word I say, are you?’ Anna Johnstone did her best to sound offended, but could not prevent her laughter. ‘Whatever are you thinking of?’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Mattie said, honestly, ‘how demoralizing it must be to be a second-class musician playing second-class music to –’ she hesitated, and good sense for once asserted itself ‘– to people who don’t want to listen.’

  Anna dismissed the irrelevance with an impatient gesture. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Mama is right – you do say the most peculiar things, you know. Ugh! I refuse to take another mouthful of this foul stuff! It tastes like warm metal polish!’ Turning, she tipped her glass of water into the nearest potted palm and curled her fingers about her steaming cup of chocolate. Across the table Mrs Johnstone and Constance were talking earnestly, entirely engrossed – for all the world, Mattie thought drily, as if they actually liked each other – their voices pitched against the babble of the Pump Room. Kate sat, baby Nicholas asleep on her lap, glumly watching Elizabeth demolish her eighth cinnamon biscuit; this after having eaten her own Bath bun as well as Kate’s. The child gobbled the biscuit with a self-absorbed intensity that would have well become a starving waif rather than the plump and rather too well-fed child that she was. Edward, quite deliberately, braced his feet against his sister’s chair and pushed with sudden violence. The chair rocked. Not surprisingly Elizabeth choked. Equally unsurprisingly no-one took the slightest notice, with the exception of Kate, who pushed a small glass of the warm spa water towards her. The child grabbed it, took a mouthful and, with an outraged yell and to Edward’s huge enjoyment, promptly spat it out.

  Mattie raised her eyes to the pillars and the plaster ceiling of the elegant room. The Pump Room’s Georgian glories, though faded, were still evident. She liked to imagine what it might have been like sixty years before, when Beau Nash and his cronies had made of Bath the most fashionable and glittering of the English spa resorts.

  ‘Mattie!’ The sharp exasperation drew attention from the other side of the table. Anna smiled agreeably at her mother and Constance and added in a quieter and conversational tone to Mattie, ‘If you don’t pay attention and talk to me I shall pinch you. Hard.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Mattie turned to face the other girl. ‘I’m listening. I promise.’

  ‘I don’t want you to listen! I want you to talk!’ Anna hissed, moving her chair a little closer and speaking in a rapid undertone. ‘Now do come on – I’m dying – truly dying! – to hear about your passionate argument with the delightful Mr Sherwood – oh, don’t you think he’s the most divine-looking man you’ve ever seen? I do hope by the way that you didn’t mind my making you sing with him? I thought it might help.’ Her tone was just a shade too ingenuous. ‘It didn’t seem to, though. A pity, I thought.’

  There was a very short and, Mattie hoped, appropriately repressive silence. ‘Of course I didn’t mind. And of course it didn’t help, as you put it, since there was nothing at all to help,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have a “passionate argument” with Mr Sherwood. We had a difference of opinion. I’m afraid I was a little too frank. Mr Sherwood, as you saw, took objection. I suppose he is not to be blamed for that.’

  Anna waited.

  Mattie said no more.

  ‘Well?’ prompted Anna, impatiently.

  ‘Well, nothing,’ Mattie said, shortly. ‘Apart from the musical afternoon – and nothing happened then that you did not observe for yourself – I have neither seen nor spoken to Mr Sherwood, and I greatly doubt if I ever will again.’ She folded her hands and her lips and fell to determined silence.

  Anna shook her head in disbelief. ‘Really, Mattie, you’re no fun at all, you know! Why, everyone could see that the man was pursuing you –’

  ‘Pursuing me?’ Mattie was genuinely startled. ‘Oh, no, Anna – you have that entirely wrong. We spoke of poetry – of Mr Shelley and Lord Byron. There was no “pursuit”, I assure you.’ ‘And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea…’ She pushed the sudden memory of those words, of that voice into the deepest recesses of her mind, looking for a door to slam and lock upon them. Stubbornly they echoed, as they had so often in these last days. ‘What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?’

  Anna smiled mischievously. She was, Mattie thought, not without the smallest twinge of envy, a very pretty girl. ‘Well, if I’d aroused that amount of interest in the man, I’d have converted it into pursuit in very short order, I tell you that!’

  Mattie sipped her chocolate. It was thick, hot and very sweet. She set the cup steadily upon the table. ‘Well, the field is clear,’ she said, very lightly. ‘It was, to be sure, never anything else. So –’ she looked at the other girl with sudden interest ‘– will you set your cap at Mr Sherwood? Are you truly so eager to marry?’

  Anna’s bright eyes gleamed subversively above the rim of her own cup. ‘You’ve asked two entirely different questions there, dear Mattie.’ She glanced at her mother to make certain that her ears were entirely occupied with Constance’s shrill inanities. ‘If I were honest I’d admit that I don’t want to marry Mr Sherwood. I don’t want to marry anyone. I want to run off to Paris and live a life of sin. Or go on the stage and capture a Duke as my admirer. Or live in a garret in Rome with a poet who beats me and adores me by turns. But I’m not honest, of course, so I shall deny it all and say: yes, I shall most certainly set my cap at American Johnny. It will please Mama.’ She pulled a small and very droll face, the merest twitch of the muscles. ‘And it will please me too in that it will set what I believe is a rather large ocean between me and her. Hopefully for ever. Is it true that you never knew your mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How very sensible and clever of you. But then, you are a very sensible and clever person, aren’t you? Oh look – I do believe Elizabeth is going to be sick.’

  Fifteen minutes later Mattie sent a damp and subdued Elizabeth escorted by a Kate still queasy at the smell of vomit back into the Pump Room to Constance. Mattie’s own spirit, faced with the heat, the packed roomful of perspiring humanity and the sweet smell of chocolate, failed her entirely. ‘Convey my apologies, please, Kate. Tell Mrs Barlowe that I’ll see you all back at the house later. I have silks to buy, and the pink ribbon for Miss Elizabeth’s hat. And Elizabeth – don’t for Heaven’s sake eat anything else! Kate, do try not to let her devour absolutely everything in sight –’

  ‘I do, Miss, I do! But she do put on such a turn if she’s thwarted!’

  Mattie tapped the child briskly on the shoulder. Sulkily Elizabeth lifted her head. ‘Did you enjoy being sick?’ Mattie asked, brightly.

  The fair head with its tortured, corkscrew curls shook.

  ‘Well, if you eat anything else – anything at all – between now and supper, I can virtually guarantee that it will happen again. And since I’m leaving you to go off shopping, and since Kate seemed more inclined to join you at the bowl than to help, that leaves only your Mama to care for you. Or Edward perhaps.’ She waited for a moment for that message to sink in. ‘Now, off you go. Don’t forget to apologize to Mrs Johnstone. And to your Mama, of course. And Elizabeth, please, do try not to glower so – it’s not in the least becoming.’

  Alone at last and breathing the fresher air – the day was bright and breezy and cool for the time of year – Mattie stood for a moment in the busy square outside the Pump Room, relishing freedom. Constance would not be pleased; there would be pained recriminations and charges of wanton thoughtlessness, selfishness and caprice. There always were if Mattie contrived an escape, for however short a time. There was, however, absolutely no doubt in her mind; just to be alone, just to be left to think and be still for a moment was treasure, and worth the price. She turned her footsteps towards the magnificent west door of the Abbey Church, her favourite refuge.

  The interior of the great church – known for its light and beauty as the Lantern of the West – was still and quiet; a d
eceptive peace, she knew, for great plans were afoot to change and modernize the place and already building materials cluttered corners and doorways, and a ladder was propped against the huge screen with its magnificent organ and ancient carved wooden figures. The screen was to be demolished, and the organ repositioned to open up the nave to expose the great east window and the altar beneath it; a worthy aim, she supposed, and one thoroughly approved by many who had far more right and say in the affairs of the building than she had; but she could not help wishing that the lovely old place could be left to its simple, graceful self. She had seen many pictures of this lofty nave in its fashionable heyday some hundred years or so ago; she liked in her imagination to people it with the men and women of that elegant era who, with their wigs and their patches, had paraded and promenaded beneath this same ancient plasterwork ceiling – that, she feared, would also fall victim to ‘improvement’ – at a time when the church had been as much a part of the social scene as the salons, the Pump Room and the gardens of Bath.

  Mattie walked slowly, the sound of her heels echoing in the quiet, the hubbub of the square outside cut off by the towering walls and the massive doors. Wind buffeted the tall, leaded windows that were set high above her. Beyond the screen she manoeuvred her wide skirt into one of the old choir stalls, sat, quite still, her eyes upon the altar, and let her mind drift gently in the benevolent quiet. She was not a particularly religious person – no daughter of her father could have been – yet she never failed to appreciate the blessing bestowed by a quiet church; often she thought that God, if He were in attendance, would understand and accept these quiet moments as a kind of prayer, since she found it impossible to indulge in the more conventional kind. Indeed she sometimes comforted herself with the thought that perhaps He might prefer it; at least she never disturbed His peace or tried His patience by begging favours.

  She found herself thinking, with a touch of laughter, of Anna’s desire for a life of sin in Paris; found herself then comparing, with much less amusement, the shrewd and intelligent Anna she knew to exist with the one that she so often saw at Mrs Johnstone’s soirees, simpering and affected, sometimes downright silly. Was this truly what most men wanted of a woman? If so, then Constance was certainly right in one thing; Mattie’s own father had clearly ruined her chances of ever finding a husband, since Coombe House and the small income that went with it would never be enough as dowry to counter the independent mind he had so cavalierly fostered. And though she would determinedly show nothing but unconcern about that to the world at large, to herself she could admit a certain despondency at the thought. She had spent most of her life in an atmosphere of love, mental stimulation and warm companionship. It had not, for a long time, occurred to her that there was any other way to live. The difference between that world and the one in which she now so uncomfortably found herself was that there she had belonged, and had been accepted as a thinking and comprehending person – hampered sometimes, admittedly, by a too-quick tongue and a too-quick temper, but never made to feel inferior simply because she was a woman. No-one, including her father, had made any allowances; if she joined a discussion she was expected to hold her own and to take the same punishment as others. An ill-thought-out theory or an illogical argument would receive short shrift in that circle, whoever espoused it. On the other hand, no one view was considered superior to another simply because of the sex, or the age, of the person who held it. In short, she had been brought up to believe that she should think for herself; and this, it seemed, perplexingly, was a thing most fiercely frowned upon. She knew herself too well to believe that she could now produce some obnoxious and despised alter ego, as Anna had done, to simper and trill prettily to entrap some poor man into marrying her. Yet – she could not deny it to herself – the thought of being alone for the rest of her life, never to share a thought or a feeling, never to know that wayward, romantic love about which she had heard and read so much, but of which she knew nothing, daunted and dismayed her. She sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin in deliberate defiance of the thought, that seemed somehow disloyal. Things could be much, much worse; she could find herself married to someone like dull, upright, respectable – thick-witted – Herbert; and that would teach her to mope, and no mistake! The thought brought a small, graceless smile to her face. She felt her father’s precious, delighted approval as if he had been sitting by her side. An approval, she told herself stubbornly, that was worth all the handsome, bright-eyed young men in the world.

  Or was it?

  The unguarded thought had opened that dangerous door again. ‘What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?’ Cruelly lovely words. And accompanying them a jeering treacherous imp, that mocked her self-deception. And if you had known? it seemed to ask, if you had seen what Anna apparently saw, what you have subsequently come perhaps half to recognize yourself ? Where would your fine principles have led you then? Why did he leave? Why? If he had not cared for your opinion, why would it have mattered so much to him? A young man whose good manners are the talk of Bath – to stalk off like that, with so little excuse – think about it, Mattie, think what you might have said, might have done if you had understood – if you had not been caught so much off guard. And you dare to condemn Anna, who is, in her way, more honest than you are?

  Meticulously Mattie cleared the nonsense from her brain, packing the words, and the imp, back into their dark cupboard, locking and barring the door. Briskly sweeping all trace of them away with common sense. The whole thing was a silly, futile fantasy; she was altogether too old and too sensible to allow rein to such self-indulgence. His attitude to her on Thursday afternoon at Mrs Johnstone’s should surely have dampened any absurd hopes she might ever have harboured. She stood and slid carefully out of the choir stall, automatically protecting the fine stuff of her skirt from the splintered wood, her eyes still upon the altar and its dull-gleaming crucifix. Drawn from herself for a moment, she wondered again, as she had wondered so often, at that terrible – and truly heartbreaking – icon.

  And then she turned to discover that the tall figure of Johnny Sherwood stood within the shadows of the doomed screen, watching her.

  He spoke first, which considering the paralysed state of Mattie’s own vocal chords, was just as well. ‘Miss Henderson, I can do nothing but apologize – I saw you outside – followed you – an unforgivable thing to do, I know, but I so wanted to speak with you –’

  She stood as immobile as the ancient wooden figures above the screen, and as wordless.

  ‘I trust I’m not interruptin’?’ His voice was quiet, his eyes flickered towards the altar.

  She shook her head, unable to deny or explain.

  He came to her swiftly then, with that loping, long-legged stride; made as if impulsively to take her hands and then withdrew a little, standing awkwardly for so graceful a man, a couple of feet from her. When he spoke the words came rapidly, as if he feared she might stop him. ‘I realized when we met the other afternoon that you hadn’t forgiven me; Miss Henderson, I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you should. I thought to write – but then could not find the words. I’m no Mr Shelley, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Mr Sherwood, I –’

  ‘Please. I must say it. I feel so very badly about the way I behaved the other day – to leave so – and to make it so clear that we had had – that we had had words. It was unpardonable. But Miss Henderson, I promise – I would do anything before I would offend you.’ His dark face was intense; there could be no doubting his sincerity. ‘I have thought about it – dare I say about you? – day and night since. I wanted so much to speak of it at the musical afternoon – indeed, to be truthful, that was the purpose of my attending – but alas, understandably you made it very clear that you did not wish my company –’ She blinked at that, shook her head slightly. He talked on rapidly. ‘When I saw you in the square it seemed like a sign. I followed you in here because I simply had to speak to you alone. To beg your forgiveness. Please may I hope th
at you will accept my sincere apologies?’

  Mattie found her voice properly at last. ‘Mr Sherwood, no. Absolutely, no! It was I who gave offence. I who should apologize. It was unforgivable of me to speak as I did.’ Somewhere far away the imp cackled with laughter and was quickly silenced. ‘I too –’ she faltered a little ‘– I too have found myself greatly regretting our quarrel.’ The word had an oddly intimate sound. She felt colour rise in her face.

  Footsteps sounded in the nave, and a woman’s voice murmured, answered by another.

  ‘I feared you would never speak to me again,’ Johnny said, dropping his voice a little. In his relief he smiled. Mattie thought, a little bemusedly, that someone must have lit a candle upon the dark altar. She thought she had never seen anything as beautiful.

  ‘And I was certain I would never hear another word from you.’

  ‘I asked you to sing with me.’

  ‘Ah no, Mr Sherwood.’ Ridiculous happiness was rising, just to listen to his voice – to stand so, openly, and look at him. ‘That was Miss Johnstone. It was with Miss Johnstone, too that you danced.’

  ‘I left the rose petals in your book.’

  ‘I feared that too might have been for Miss Johnstone.’ Her clear eyes were steady and bright on his.

  Another small smile lit his intent face. ‘For – for Miss Johnstone?’

  ‘You do her a disservice,’ Mattie said. ‘There is more to her than she allows you to see.’

  ‘I don’t want to see Miss Johnstone,’ he said calmly. ‘I want to see you.’