As Shadows Haunting

by Deryn Lake

  *

  As soon as she had brought Catty Scarlatti back and settled him in with a tin of sardines, Sidonie had gone out again, drawn compulsively to Holland House.

  On that cold September day, with the leaves crunching beneath her feet and the sky the cool bright blue of irises, Sidonie made her way up Holland Walk and then turned left, entering the park by the path that ran beside the youth hostel. There were people everywhere, looking at the flowers, taking the air, making a noise, and Sidonie wished that she could be alone to appreciate the place, to imagine its former splendour in peace.

  It was perhaps this need to escape that turned her feet towards the courtyard, towards the fire exit of the youth hostel, the door that she had gone through on the very first occasion she had seen Sarah Lennox. And now, it seemed, that by this very simple means Sidonie had yet again entered a time fault, for a servant in clothes of the eighteenth century ran down the corridor just in front of her.

  There were lovely sounds in the air, of music and laughter, and the high bright shrillness of excitement, and everywhere an almost tangible gaiety. Unseen by a crowd of revellers in whose midst she found herself, Sidonie was swept along and it was no surprise to end up in a flower-filled chapel, the organ booming, a minister in vestments standing before the altar, the bridegroom sitting in the front, his back towards the congregation.

  It was an eloquent back, slim and shapely, clad in purple satin lavishly trimmed with lilac lace. Sidonie was just appreciating the extreme elegance of its owner when he turned and looked straight at her. Certain that he could not see her, she continued to stare at him, guessing that this must be the exquisite Charles Bunbury himself, the man whom Sarah was destined to marry.

  He was unbelievably good-looking, there was no denying that. A thin aristocratic nose dominated Bunbury’s features but his glittering dark blue eyes were also fine and his mouth beautifully shaped. He had interesting hands which were quite square and practical in comparison with the rest of him. Sidonie could imagine him handling horses with the greatest of ease.

  Suddenly, a wild sharp smell of lilac blossom filled the air and Sarah entered the chapel, exquisite as ever, her midnight hair threaded with flowers, a choker of white pearls nestling against her creamy skin. The bride was seventeen years old and looked disturbingly lovely.

  She walked up the aisle without seeing Sidonie, the musician knew that. But when the girl turned to hand her bouquet to a small sweet thing who could only be Susan, Sarah’s marvellous eyes picked out the intruder. The bride stood staring for a second or two, uncertainty struggling in her face and then, almost with a shrug, she turned away and put her hand into that of the exquisite bridegroom whose languid manner did not change at Sarah’s delightful touch.

  Remembering how the King had thrilled beneath it, Sidonie could only feel despair that the two young lovers, Sarah and George, were now irrevocably parted, each one of them gone to a partner not only incapable of fully appreciating their splendid sensual worth but also unable to give them the passionate love they craved.

  She turned at that, leaving the wedding behind her, anxious to get back into her own century and the familiarity of the flat. But this time it was hard to do and Sidonie wandered about in the park, hearing the sounds of the wedding feast floating down from the big house, until it became dark and she was suddenly aware of the distant noise of traffic from Kensington High Street.

  Somewhat shaken by the difficulty in coming back, the sound of Finnan’s voice speaking inside the Garden Flat was so eerie and unexpected that Sidonie positively fell through the front door, tripping over a large bouquet of red roses which stood propped against it. It was the answerphone, of course, and too late to pick up the receiver she stood helplessly listening to the doctor’s voice say, “I’ll try again another time. Hope to hear from you,” before the line cleared. Horrified, Sidonie gazed at her watch and saw that it was six o’clock. The experience in another dimension had lasted roughly four hours. Then she remembered the flowers and went to get them, hoping desperately that they had come from Finnan.

  The card attached read, “Sorry I behaved so badly. Forgive me? I still love you, Nigel.”

  “That’s all I bloody well need,” Sidonie shouted.

  Just then the phone rang again and switching off the answering machine she leapt to lift the receiver, wondering whether Finnan had decided to take a chance and ring back.

  “Hello,” she said, panting slightly.

  “Sidonie?” answered Nigel’s glutinous voice. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, of course,” she snapped back. “Who did you think it was?”

  “I didn’t recognise you. You sounded out of breath. I just want to know if the flowers arrived.”

  “Yes, thank you, they did.” Sidonie tried to control her voice. “Look, Nigel, you shouldn’t have sent them.”

  “I had to, I behaved appallingly. But I need you back. I’m still in love with you. Let’s start seeing each other again.”

  “I hate that euphemism and the answer is no. Our relationship ended in court, Nigel.”

  And with that she hung up. The phone went again instantly and Sidonie switched the answerphone back on.

  “I’m not giving up so easily,” said Nigel’s voice. “I’m still in love with you and I can’t help it. I’m getting you back, Sidonie, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  There was a click and the dialling tone as he hung up. Running back the tape Sidonie realised in horror that Nigel’s call had wiped off Finnan’s. And though she played it back several times all she could hear were the doctor’s last few words.

  “… Hope to hear from you.”

  Damn you, Nigel, she thought, and went to her desk to write to Finnan.

  But the day’s strange experience had tired her more than she thought and Sidonie just sat there, staring at the blank sheet of paper. Somewhere, at another level of time, Sarah Lennox was probably leaving for her honeymoon with the beautiful Bunbury. Somewhere, a girl would be spending her wedding night with the man she had chosen to replace the King in her affections. And knowing the outcome as she did, Sidonie sighed for her.

  *

  “What was that?” said Sarah.

  “What?” repeated Charles, his face pale against the pillows, his lawn nightshirt making him look even whiter.

  “Somebody sighed in this very room. I heard it.”

  “Nonsense, come to bed.”

  They were still at Holland House, the wedding feast having gone on far too late into the evening to contemplate setting forth for Suffolk. But to compensate for this disappointment, the young couple had been put in a very grand room, usually reserved for the Duke of Richmond, the great draped bed hurriedly decked with flowers for the wedding night.

  “Are you sure it was not you who sighed?”

  “There was no sigh, Sarah, just the murmur of the wind.”

  “How prettily you said that,” she answered, and with those words the bride got into bed, her dark hair loose and brushed out, and snuggled against her husband’s chest.

  He pulled her into his arms, kissed her a few times, and then performed his matrimonial duty without love, without passion, without anything resembling what had passed between her and His Majesty, virgins though both of them had been at the time.

  Sarah lay in the candlelight staring at her new husband, his face in repose more exquisite than ever. She had never felt so disappointed in her entire life. Her French Marquis was, after all, nothing but a cold fish, unaroused even by her extraordinary beauty. The perfunctory intercourse she had just endured filled her with feelings of dislike and, with a sinking heart, Sarah thought of all the years that lay ahead of her tied to a man behind whose handsome appearance lay a soul devoid of inner fire.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a revelation, like a dream come true; the city of Paris in springtime was without doubt the most beautiful on earth. To Sarah, who had never visited the capital before, the very smell in the air was enough to
give pleasure. The flowers clustering in the markets, the bakers’ shops, the watered dust from the streets, all combined in a unique odour which seemed to her to be the very essence of the French metropolis. And this family visit — for Bunbury’s wife was in Paris with her sisters Caroline and Louisa, her two elder nephews Ste and Charles James, and an irrepressible friend who delighted in the name of Clotworthy Upton — could not help but be both pleasurable and amusing. No pastime being more stimulating than to sit in the Tivoli Gardens, smaller than Vaux Hall but somehow more interesting, and watch the world passing by; pretty men, fine ladies, whores and washerwomen, scoundrels and scandalmongers, uneasily rubbing shoulders as they thronged past in the daily parade.

  “Is it not fine?” Sarah said to Ste, and he nodded with enthusiastic agreement.

  He was twenty now, exactly five days older than Sarah, but alas had inherited none of the beauty of his aunt’s side of the family. For the fact was that Ste looked remarkably like Mr Fox, being both portly and heavily jowled. Unlike his father, however, he was also rather deaf which made the young man difficult in strange company, while his character was reputed to suffer from certain other weaknesses.

  The truth was that he had been born a compulsive gambler and by the age of fifteen had already become massively in debt. And even when after a great deal of effort Ste had cured himself and given up the tables, his passion for clothes and horses undid him once more and he had again plunged towards ruin. If it had not been for his indulgent father, who constantly settled his bills, Sarah paled to think what would have happened to her eldest nephew. But for all that there was nothing cruel about Ste. He was merely weak. He found temptation impossible to resist, and as a result was adored by his contemporaries who could see his faults only as a mirror of their own.

  Charles James, on the other hand, was growing up precocious yet amusingly so. At fourteen he was a slave to fashion, on one occasion arriving at the Playhouse with his hair powdered and coiffé en aile de pigeon. He was now fully in charge of dramatic performances at Holland House in which he both starred and directed the other actors. Currently he was feigning jealousy because Sarah spent more time talking to Ste than she did to him, and demonstrated this by going into a fit of the sulks, which he was doing as the family party sat in the Tivoli Gardens waiting for the firework display to begin. Knowing her nephew was glowering, Sarah ignored him and instead turned deliberately towards her sisters.

  “I realise one should not say this but I do miss Susan.”

  Caroline’s face grew angular, an art she had unconsciously mastered as she grew older. “Truth to tell, so do I, though I would never dream of saying so in front of her father.”

  “Would Lord Ilchester be horrified, do you believe?”

  “I think he would.”

  There had been a great change of circumstances in the lives of the Foxes. Just before Sarah’s marriage to Charles Bunbury, Caroline had been created a peeress of the realm in her own right, being elevated to the rank of Baroness Holland in April, 1762. A year later Henry Fox had followed her into the peerage. On 16th April, 1763, he had received the title of Baron Holland of Foxley, Wiltshire, his life’s ambition at last fulfilled. Looking back to how he had once eloped with Lady Caroline Lennox and created a scandal, the new Baron felt that Society had finally forgiven him. But history has a naughty way of repeating itself and no sooner had the old fox become complacent than things started to go wrong for his niece.

  During the Christmas celebrations of 1763 there had been a great family gathering. Sarah and Charles Bunbury had come from Suffolk and Susan from Somersetshire to join in the festivities. The theatricals were organised by Charles James who, that year, had hired a professional actor to take the leading man’s part. Sarah, who had learned to make the very best of her marriage, allowing her husband freedom to go off with his friends while she enjoyed her own social life, flirting a little with some of the better looking men, found it so wonderful to be back at Holland House that she noticed nothing at first. In fact it had been her husband, aged twenty-three by then and more dandified than ever, who had first pointed it out to her.

  “He’s an attractive fellow, that Irish actor.”

  “William O’Brien? He certainly has melting eyes and a glorious smile.”

  Charles had nodded. “Your friend Susan seems to think so.”

  “Does she?”

  “Indeed. And he’s equally smitten with her, poor fool.”

  “Why do you say that? Why do you call him fool for liking her? Just because you prefer men’s company to that of your wife it does not follow that everyone is the same.”

  Charles had stood up, very slim and tall. “What are you implying, Sarah?”

  “Nothing,” she had answered, “nothing at all.”

  For though it was true she was left to her own devices while Charles hung about with his racing cronies, what wife so comfortably situated could grumble at it? Marriage had turned out to be a loveless experience, nothing like Sarah had expected, but for all that life was enjoyable enough.

  Yet Charles Bunbury had been right. Observing Susan and William O’Brien together nobody could deny that they were deeply attracted one to the other. Caroline and Henry Fox had seen their niece’s obvious infatuation and Mr O’Brien’s equally obvious reciprocation, and were quite relieved when, Twelfth Night over, the handsome Irishman departed. But they, who had once deceived Caroline’s parents so cleverly, did not think hard enough. With the coming of the new year, 1764, the lovers continued to meet, very secretively and very discreetly.

  In the spring, Susan had been having her portrait painted by the well-known artist, Catherine Reed, and William had been in the habit of meeting her occasionally at the sittings. Whether Miss Reed was responsible or whether it was servants’ gossip, the fact remained that the matter had been reported to Susan’s parents, Lord and Lady Ilchester. Anger had not described their reaction. Mr O’Brien had been pronounced penniless, worthless and Irish to boot. Susan had been ordered to give him up and, amidst an ocean of tears, agreed on condition that she could see her lover alone to take her final leave.

  The couple had met on 1st April to say farewell. Four days later Susan Fox-Strangeways had celebrated her twenty-first birthday and had come of legal age. The very next morning she had set out early for the artist’s studio declaring that she was going to have breakfast with Lady Sarah Bunbury, currently staying in her town house, on the way. But Susan had only been gone a few moments when she discovered, to her apparent consternation, that she had left behind a particular cap in which she was being painted. Turning to the footman who accompanied her everywhere, Susan had asked him to return home to fetch it.

  The watchdog out of sight, Susan had literally run to where William O’Brien awaited her in a carriage. The couple had hastened to Covent Garden Church and had been married then and there, afterwards going to Mr O’Brien’s villa in Dunstable whence the news of the elopement had reached the ears of the bride’s furious family. Only Mr Fox, now Lord Holland, had stood by the girl, remembering his own far from saintly past. He had given Susan an allowance of £400 per year for three years, and had worked tirelessly to get William a job abroad, at a safe distance from the fulminating Lord Ilchester. So it had been that in September, 1764, Lady Susan and Mr William O’Brien had sailed for New York to become flax farmers.

  “How strange it is without her,” Sarah said to Caroline now.

  Caroline turned to look her sister fully in the face. “But are you missing your husband as well, my dearest?”

  “Of course I am,” Sarah answered, just a trifle too emphatically. “But he did not want to came and that’s an end to it. There is much to do with the horses at present.”

  “I wonder you do not have a child to keep you company.”

  “I am doing what I can,” Sarah answered, looking away, only for Louisa, now aged twenty-one and married for six years without a baby, to join in the conversation.

  “There are some particu
lar saint’s relics at St Cyr which, if you pray to them, give one a child. Apparently the Dauphine went and became pregnant.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Yes, I am. I think you should come with me, Sarah. After all, you have been married almost three years now.”

  “Very well, I’ll accompany you if it would please you,” her younger sister answered carelessly.

  “They say the Queen is about to produce again.”

  “When isn’t she producing? Married not quite four years and two and a half children already.”

  “Sarah!” said Louisa, pretending to be shocked. But she was smiling, wondering what would have happened if her sister had become Queen.

  Looking at Sarah now, Louisa remembered a story Caroline had repeated. Apparently their sister had gone to the Palace to see the newborn Prince of Wales, lying in his bassinet, gurgling prettily. Sarah had robustly kissed the little creature, declaring it a fine young animal, a beautiful, strong, handsome child, and been reprimanded by the nurse for not calling the boy a prince. At that very moment the King had come along, visibly trembling, and enquired whether Sarah had had fine weather all summer. She had apparently answered, “Yes”, and that had been the sum total of the conversation. That he was still attracted to her had been the consensus of the fashionable world.

  ‘And now,’ thought Louisa, ‘here she is without her husband and without a child. I do hope all is well and that she is not still attracted to him.’

  But Sarah’s sister said nothing of her fears and let the sound of the orchestra fill her mind, relaxing as she sat back on her little chair and watched the dancers.

  Ste, presently in favour with Sarah, stood up and made her a bow and they danced off together, laughing a good deal when Charles James looked sullen.

  “Will you step out with me?” Louisa said to him kindly, for she was that, and generous and good-hearted into the bargain.

  “My pleasure, my Lady,” her nephew answered gallantly, and in a moment they were all on their feet, Clotworthy Upton, nicknamed Tatty, taking Caroline by the hand.