Deception

by Joan Aiken

  “Well, Kean will not be there much longer. He is going to New York,” Fenway remarked, and added, to Alvey’s great surprise, “I should think the New Yorkers will worship him. When I was in that city there was only the most paltry stuff to be seen on the stage.”

  “When were you there, Guy?” James asked.

  “Humph! It will be about five years ago—before that foolish war with the Americans. My father wished me to go over and study their ways of mining and transporting coal; I was among some devilish little mining towns in Pennsylvania, and then took a bolt to the city to get the taste of coal dust and sourdough bread out of my mouth.—Though Philadelphia was a pleasant town enough—brick houses and lilac trees; it quite put me in mind of Ramsgate or Deal.”

  Alvey found herself much tantalized; she longed to ask the Major about his experiences in America and opinions on that land—whether he had been farther north than New York, had visited any towns in Massachusetts; but feared to do so lest by some slip of the tongue she might betray more knowledge herself than she might be expected to possess. But his mention of her birthland aroused in her homesick feelings of which she had hardly been aware.

  James asked about the coal-mining. Alvey had already learned from his daughters that Sir Aydon, like Major Fenway’s father, owned land on which coal was worked; which fact, with his wife’s holdings, rather than his somewhat mismanaged estates, enabled him to dower his daughters with five thousand apiece.

  “I believe my father would be interested to hear this—” James was saying, when raised voices on the opposite side of the room caused him to look that way with a nervous frown.

  “—You live in the past, Aydon, it is not right, it is cowardly,” the old lady stated in her resonant, harsh voice. In her displeasure she appeared to have quite shaken off the confused, tremulous mood of earlier in the evening.

  Her son muttered something inaudible by way of reply, glancing at the young people.

  “Fiddlestick, Aydon! Every generation says so; but that is not true. You must not allow the past to become more important to you than the present, you are by no means old enough for such a habit. Why, man, look at me! Twenty-two years your senior, and I can still find diversion enough in what I see around me. It is wrong to make the past your only good; that is like allowing parts of yourself, your limbs, to become dried up, corrupt, gangrenous—”

  Beside her, Alvey felt James shiver.

  “You have to make something useful of the world around you, which means endowing it with a portion of yourself. If you neglect to do this, you are betraying your trust—”

  Alvey had never heard the old woman speak so vehemently; was it the absence of her daughter-in-law that so liberated and galvanized her? If I had a grandmother to speak like this to my father, to my mother, thought Alvey, would it have influenced their actions, would matters have fallen out differently? Do people ever influence the actions of others? I suspect the old lady is not making much impression on Sir Aydon.

  She noticed that Guy Fenway was listening with absorbed interest to the dialogue between Mrs Winship and her son.

  “Trust, trust!” grumbled Sir Aydon. “What trust? Did I ever ask for a parcel of chattering girls? Or a sulky, seedy lad who can’t even pull a fish out of a brook?”

  Alvey stood up. Delicacy, she felt, forbade that such a personal discussion should have auditors; she could not play the pianoforte like Meg and she was in no mood to start a counter-theme.

  “It has been a tiring, distressing day,” she said to James. “I shall go up and see if Parthie needs anything; and—and poor Mamma; then I shall retire—”

  James nodded without any particular interest. It was Guy Fenway’s eyes which followed her, Guy who seemed disappointed in her early retreat. Alvey curtsied to the old lady, who acknowledged this with an abstracted nod, and to Sir Aydon, who hardly seemed to observe her.

  “Ma’am, you dropped your paper.” Alvey picked up the crumpled sheet from the floor and handed it back to Mrs Winship. After visiting Parthie who was asleep (or sulking), and Lady Winship, also asleep, she hurried to her own refuge and, as usual, experienced an extraordinary lift of the heart the moment she stepped inside its sheltering door. To have a room of her very own! What a rare privilege. Even Lady Winship, Alvey reflected, was not so lucky; Sir Aydon might invade her territory, disturb her train of thought, at any moment he chose; she had no retreat, poor woman, but her garden. Her garden . . .

  Soberly, Alvey made her toilet. She jotted down a few notes, with a curious little pang recalling the old lady’s memorandum sheet. Upon it were written the same two words, over and over: “Make lists, make lists, make lists . . .” What a paradoxical creature old Grizel was, one moment so confused, the next so clear and forthright.

  Alvey blew out her candle. In the screening darkness—as it had done for several nights past—a face came to beguile her from sleep: not the familiar satirical countenance of Wicked Lord Love, but the face of James, haggard, unhappy, with its wide sensitive mouth and searching eyes.

  Alvey was engaged with the children and their lessons next morning when Guy Fenway found his way to the pele tower room.

  “So this is where the Goddess of Learning has her temple,” he remarked, inspecting the globes, the maps, the books, and the drawings of flowers and animals with which Alvey had allowed the children to enliven the walls.

  “How is La—my mother this morning?” Alvey asked him, knowing he had been to visit Lady Winship after breakfast.

  “Her temperature is down.”

  “Temperature?”

  “I have a thermometer for measuring degrees of fever.” He produced the instrument in its little leather case and displayed it to the interested children. “You have not seen one before? It was invented by a Dr Currie of Liverpool, some twenty years ago, but the use of them is not widespread as yet.”

  “Dr Cunningham, who looks after Mamma, does not have one,” said Tot. “All he does is feel your head with his hand.”

  “And if he is an experienced physician, his deductions are probably just as accurate as those of a medical beginner like myself,” said Guy cheerfully. “May I go up and look at the view from your roof? James has told me that it is very fine. But I do not wish to interrupt your studies.”

  Naturally the children were only too anxious to accompany him and impart information relating to features of the landscape visible from the tower: Hammerton Crag, 576 feet high, from which Scots raiders had thrown down various members of the Winship family to their death; Crampton Cleugh, down which other members of the Winship family had rushed in retaliation on the Scots, uttering their battle cry of “Yet, yet, yet!” and dispatching seventeen Scots in the ensuing battle; the little wood on the far side of the valley known as Michael Scott’s wood.

  “Who is Michael Scott?”

  “Oh, he is a wizard, a friend of the Evil One. He built the Roman wall, you know, sir.”

  “I had thought the Romans built it?”

  “Oh, well, you can believe what you choose, I suppose.”

  “I quite prefer your version,” Guy said. “I wish you could show me some of these places? Your brother is having his wooden leg fitted this morning—” Alvey flinched a little, but the children received this piece of information as calmly as it was imparted—“so he will not be able to take me about the policies; and tomorrow I must leave and go on my way to Edinburgh. What do you say, Miss Louisa? Might they have a half holiday—may I beg your indulgence?”

  “I am sure you can see that I would get little work out of them after that,” Alvey said smiling. “In point of fact I do not usually keep them in after the hour of noon. And I am sure that you will enliven the excursion with instructive and improving conversation.”

  “Will you not accompany us?” he asked in a disappointed tone, as the children ran off to find jackets and hats, for the weather grew daily colder.
/>
  “I? Oh no, I fear I have too many duties within doors. And the children will be much better guides.” Ignoring his look of protest she left him, for Duddy, the old lady’s maid, had come tapping at the pele room door, asking if Alvey could spare Mrs Winship a moment.

  “She’s no’ feeling so grand this morn, Miss Emmy; aa wish ye’d come and tek a luk at her.”

  Duddy’s attitude towards Alvey had modified during the last weeks from a dour distrust to a grudging respect; this request was quite the highest mark of esteem yet shown by her, and Alvey felt proportionately pleased, but also apprehensive; what kind of state could old Grizel be in to cause such disquiet in Duddy, who was generally equal to any crisis?

  “I will see you later, at dinner time,” she said absently to the Major. “Don’t let the children lead you into a bog. There are many, and quite dangerous—” as she followed Duddy down the winding stair.

  Old Mrs Winship was very tremulous and confused. She lay in bed turning a couple of velvet patches over and over in her thin fingers. Evidently she had reverted to her mood of yesterday evening before the sudden vigorous hortatory address to her son after dinner.

  “Nothing more can be done about it now,” she said querulously to Alvey. “What is the use of recrimination? The deed was done, and was avenged.”

  “What deed, Grandmother?”

  “There is no sense in carrying matters further; and so I told Aydon. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—a body has only two eyes, after all . . .”

  “I do not perfectly follow you, ma’am—”

  “Oh, don’t be a fool, girl,” said the old lady crossly. “Has no one about me any sense at all? James—utterly set on his course—Aydon, refusing to value what he has—and as for Charlotte—Heaven only knows what can be done about her—”

  “Oh, ma’am, won’t you tell me what you would wish me to do?”

  The blazing, short-sighted eyes finally focussed on Alvey.

  “Oh yes—you,” she remarked feebly. “You, the grit in the oyster. It is because of you that all this has come about.”

  “No, no, grandmother. Me? What can you possibly mean?” queried Alvey, with a sudden hollow feeling of apprehension.

  “No matter, no matter. I have made my dispositions. They are not much. Oh, but you had best—in case—before I forget anything else—I lose so many articles these days—and what I don’t lose I overlook—Duddy, give it to her: you know what.”

  “The ring, ma’am?” Duddy, during this discourse, had stood with a grim face at the foot of the bed, her arms folded in her apron.

  “Of course the ring, what else, woman?”

  Duddy threw a look of doubt, of disagreement at Mrs Winship, but in obedience to her mistress’s vigorous, repeated nods, finally crossed to the fireplace and, to Alvey’s considerable surprise, rummaged in the wood-basket, under the pine logs in it, and came up with a little packet, wrapped in yet another velvet patch, and tied with thread.

  Alvey received it perplexedly.

  “What is this? Should I undo it?”

  The old woman nodded again, and she broke the thread. Inside the velvet wrapping she found a gold signet ring with a dark jade seal containing what she recognized as the Winship crest: a pinnace under sail.

  “But this—can it be—Lady Win—Mamma’s signet ring that was missing? I heard Sir Aydon speak of it—”

  “Just be sure she has it back. That is all. Don’t make a stir about it.”

  “I will take it to her directly.”

  “No talking—” said the old lady, and suddenly curled herself up, huddling down in the bed like a child worn out with effort.

  Duddy gave a slight, gloomy nod.

  “That’ll be a weight off her mind, ony road, Miss Emmy.”

  Alvey went, as she had promised, directly to Lady Winship’s chamber. What a contrast it presented, she thought, with its carpets and furnishings, to the old lady’s spare, austere retreat. And yet the younger woman probably ascribed as little value to those things as the older; very likely she would not have cared whether they were there or not. They were there because it was the custom, that was all.

  Dr Cunningham, the physician from Newcastle, had arrived, and was in low-voiced consultation with Sir Aydon, who looked, as so often, wretched and grey with indecision.

  “Her ladyship has been reduced low—very low—by these shocks. I would, my dear Sir Aydon, recommend bleeding and cupping, and perhaps a clyster.”

  “You do not think,” suggested Sir Aydon doubtfully, “that such treatments will reduce her even lower?”

  “My lady is of the stoutly built, high-complexioned habit of persons who can only benefit from such treatment,” replied the doctor patiently. Alvey conceived an instant dislike for him: he was a small, stout, black-haired personage, himself so high-complexioned as to suggest a heavy intake of alcohol. However he had an air of confidence which evidently impressed Sir Aydon.

  Alvey stole apart from the conference and approached the bed, where Lady Winship lay with a strange, dull look of suffering and passivity, similar to, and yet very different from, her customary vague and absent expression. Alvey pitied her deeply, bereft of her precious flower-garden, and now, it seemed, due to undergo such a rigorous programme of medical discipline.

  “Ma’am,” she murmured, “I have brought you back this—I was asked to give it to you—” and, gently lifting the left hand, which lay nearest to her, she slipped the signet ring on to the fourth finger. It went on very easily. Lady Winship raised the hand with a puzzled look and stared at the ring.

  “My ring!” she murmured. “How very—how very singular.” A brighter look came into her face. “Thank you, Louisa,” she said faintly to Alvey. “I am very happy to have it back again. But that finger won’t do—it is too loose—that must have been how it came to slip off before.” She transferred the ring carefully to the middle finger. “Now it will be safe enough. I shall take care not to lose it again.”

  “Indeed you must, ma’am. I hope you will soon be better. We—we miss you downstairs.”

  The roaming, puzzled eyes met hers again. Lady Winship did not ask how Alvey had come by the ring; she did not ask any questions at all. She sighed deeply, moved her hands so that the bedclothes covered them, and then, with a faint frown, closed her eyes, as if she could find no useful purpose in keeping them open.

  Alvey went away to visit Parthie. What a houseful of invalids this place has become, she thought, and how queer that is, considering the abundant food, the healthy situation, the comfort and warmth. Is the old lady right, am I the grit in the oyster, was it my arrival that precipitated this change? But no, that was pure coincidence, the whole chain of events was set in motion long ago. What a mixed metaphor! How can you set a chain in motion? I must mind my language.

  Parthie was languid and irritable, bored in bed, yet not prepared to rise and resume her normal duties and activities. Her black eye had reached the orange-and-green stage; it was still strikingly visible.

  “Can I bring you books? Your work basket? Writing materials?” suggested Alvey.

  Parthie gave her a scowl of pure hostility.

  “I thank you, no! Books and writing materials may do well enough for some people, but I am not bookish. I find books a dead bore.”

  “Well, how would you like to amuse yourself? Playing cards, perhaps?”

  “Some of us, Sister Emmy, wish to do more than merely amuse ourselves. I am not a child, remember! I am a woman grown, just as capable of running a household as yourself.”

  “In that case,” said Alvey with acerbity, “I should think you might get up, instead of lying there playing at being ill,” and she left the room and went downstairs to order a nuncheon for the doctor, who, after having bled and cupped his patient, proposed to set out immediately on the first part of his journey back to Newcastle. Parthie at t
imes is remarkably like her sister Louisa, Alvey thought; I wonder where that priggish streak comes from. It is not particularly noticeable in either of the parents. And certainly not in old Mrs Winship.

  Major Fenway and the children returned from their excursion in high spirits. He does seem to have a way of winning people’s confidence, thought Alvey, remembering how warmly and spontaneously Isa had chattered away to him, and the evident devoted attachment that James bore to his friend. Nish and Tot appeared immensely the better for the outing; they were pink-cheeked and bright-eyed at dinner, and plainly had many things they would have liked to communicate, though they stayed silent in deference to Sir Aydon’s injunction. He remained gloomy and for the most part speechless. The old lady, greatly to Alvey’s surprise, had again taken the trouble to rise, dress, and come down for the meal; but she, too, preserved almost unbroken silence, and made no pretence of doing more than pick at her food while her eyes, behind their thick lenses, moved slowly from James to his father and back again.

  After the children had gone off to bed and the rest of the party had transferred to the drawing-room,—

  “At what hour in the morning do you propose to set forward, Major Fenway?” inquired Sir Aydon.

  Can’t wait to get him out of the house, Alvey thought. And makes no secret of it.

  “At about eight, sir, if not earlier,” replied his guest. “My horses are well rested, thanks to your excellent stable-man, and with good roads and fair weather I shall hope to reach Edinburgh by tomorrow evening.”

  James, who had turned very white, now cleared his throat with an effort, as if it had almost closed, and said, “Ahem. I intend to travel to Edinburgh with Guy tomorrow, Father.”

  “Eh? How? What freak is this? Edinburgh? Why the devil would you wish to go there? You are in no case to travel yet—only fitted with your leg today. No, no, no, my boy; put such an absurd notion out of your head. Home is the place for you, at present. Your best course by far is to remain quietly here until it is time to rejoin your regiment.”