‘That was different.’
‘Why? Because Becky’s a servant’s daughter?’
He looked confused. ‘Because I’m a boy, and boys – we can do things that girls can’t.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said drily, ‘I know all about that.’
He threw her a startled look. Then he blurted out, ‘But I have kissed a girl, you know.’
She snorted. ‘When?’
‘At school. I mean – in Town. And once she let me put my hand down her blouse—’
‘She let you, or you did it anyway?’
He looked appalled. ‘Oh, I say. I’m not a cad.’
‘Not yet, perhaps.’
He swallowed, and she watched his Adam’s apple going up and down like a table-tennis ball. In the dim green shade he looked extraordinarily young. She could see the sweat slicking his forehead; the down on his upper lip where he was trying to grow a moustache. If he hadn’t been a Traherne, she might have pitied him.
Awkwardly he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers. When she didn’t push him away, he put the tip of his tongue hesitantly into her mouth. It wasn’t unpleasant and he wasn’t at all rough; merely clammy and over-eager. She thought, he’s doing this because he knows he can. Because I’m a female.
It is in the blood.
Emboldened still further by her non-response, he took hold of her by the waist and pressed his body against hers. He was pushing her back against the roses – which fortunately lacked thorns – and making odd little moaning noises in his throat. She fought the urge to laugh.
‘Gorgeous, gorgeous,’ he mumbled as he slid his sweaty face down her neck. One hand came up and touched a button on her frock.
She let him. Why not? What did it matter?
But he was so clumsy that she had to help him undo the buttons. ‘Gorgeous,’ he moaned as he pressed his face against her breast. ‘Gorgeous, gorgeous.’
No I’m not, she thought irritably. She watched an aphid from the roses alight on his head and start clambering over the curly black hair.
The aphid had almost reached his ear, and Lyndon’s other hand was working its way up under her frock towards her thigh, when she glanced over his shoulder and saw a man enter the pergola. Shock burst inside her.
It was her father.
Chapter Six
‘I need to know why,’ said Papa.
He looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept.
Well, neither had she.
It was the morning after. They stood side by side on the riverbank: close but not touching. Belle watched the steam rise from the great tattered leaves of the philodendron, and wished she was far away, where nobody could find her.
At Parnassus under the pergola, he hadn’t said a word. He’d simply gone very still, and looked at her – a penetrating, adult look she’d never seen before – then turned on his heel and walked back the way he had come.
She hadn’t run after him. What could she have said? Instead she’d stayed with poor shattered Lyndon, who’d sunk to his knees and burst into tears.
Now her father threw his cigar in the river and turned to face her. ‘Why?’ he said again.
Again she did not respond.
‘My God, Belle, you’re only thirteen years old. What made you behave like that?’
She crossed her arms tight across her chest and thought, please let this be over soon. Please, please, please.
‘Do you think – do you imagine that you’re in love with him?’
She flinched. ‘With Lyndon? Of course not.’
‘Then are you merely – attracted to him?’
‘No!’
‘Then why?’
‘. . . I don’t know.’
He took a few steps away from her along the path, then turned back again. ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened to you?’
The old dread rose in her chest. Where’s Belle? What have you done with my daughter? She pushed it back down.
What could she tell him? The truth? That she’d been with a sixty-six-year-old grandfather – a man thirteen years older than himself? If he was this upset about Lyndon kissing her, then how would he feel about what Mr Traherne had done in Bamboo Walk?
No, the truth was impossible. It was a wall between them. And in a strange way, that made her angry with him. Because now she would have to lie to him for the rest of her life.
With the heel of her boot she hacked at the rotten earth. ‘Have you told Mamma?’ she said in a low voice.
‘No. And I don’t intend to. It would kill her.’
No it wouldn’t, she thought angrily. People say these things but they don’t really mean them. Why can’t you say what you mean? Even you, Papa? Even you?
He rubbed a hand over his face.
Such a depth of sadness and pain. And she was the one who had done this to him: the person she loved most in the world. She couldn’t look at him any more.
Across the river the heliconia flamed in the harsh sunlight. That’s the true Eden, she thought. Cruelty and poison masquerading as a flower. She said, ‘I can’t stay here any more.’
‘Wh-at?’
She turned back to him. ‘I can’t. I can’t. I want to go away.’
‘Belle – what are you talking about?’
‘I want to go – to England. Yes, England. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You and Mamma are always telling me that it’ll soon be time for me to go to boarding school.’ She cast around for support. ‘What’s the name of that place where they have the school where Aunt Sophie went?’
‘Cheltenham.’
‘Yes. Cheltenham. I want to go to the school at Cheltenham.’
She’d only just thought of it, but now it seemed perfect. A faraway place where nobody knew who she was. Far away across the deep, green, salty, cleansing sea.
But a part of her longed for him to reject the idea out of hand – to say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Belle darling, Eden’s your home. No arguments. You’re staying here with us, and there’s an end of it.’
But he didn’t.
He said yes.
The carriage rattled at speed through the streets of Kingston, sending john crows flying up from the gutters and goats clattering away on tiny delicate hooves. Shoppers and tourists waved away clouds of dust and cast them disapproving looks for going too fast.
Mrs Sibella Clyne dismissed them with a regal toss of her golden head. As far as she was concerned, she was late for the steamer to Southampton, and that entitled her to go just as fast as she liked.
Belle, sitting opposite, stared at her numbly.
Mrs Clyne – a plump, still-pretty blonde with her father’s slightly protuberant blue eyes – was travelling back to England, and had agreed to chaperon her. Mrs Clyne, who lived in a fashionable town house in Berkeley Square, where Belle would be spending her holidays. Mrs Clyne, the younger daughter of Cornelius Traherne.
And Belle had actually thought that she’d be getting away from him.
She gazed out of the window and tried not to think about home. About Papa.
He’d accompanied her to Kingston to see her off, but had had business on the quayside and left the hotel early, saying that he would meet them by the gangplank ten minutes before the Atalanta was due to leave.
She’d already said her goodbyes at home – to Poppy and Old Braverly and Moses and the others; then to the twins and Aunt Sophie and Ben and Mamma. Mamma had been crying. Mamma never cried. ‘Why do you have to go? You don’t have to go, you can change your mind and stay here and forget all about this wretched, wretched school!’
That was when Lachlan had pressed his parting present into Belle’s hand. A finger-length sausage of river clay, sun-dried and painted yellow. He’d given it a pointy tail and a flat head with two shiny duppy-seed eyes. ‘Ellosnake,’ he’d told her severely. A yellowsnake. For luck.
She had it now in her pocket, wrapped in her handkerchief. She touched it with her finger and swallowed tears.
Beside her, the nursemai
d threw her a curious glance. Mrs Clyne’s toddler, Max, simply looked scared.
‘Such heat,’ said Mrs Clyne, fanning herself aggressively. ‘One always forgets how appalling Jamaica can be before the rains.’
Beside her, Max scanned the sky with a worried gaze, as if the deluge might come upon them at any moment.
Mrs Clyne flicked him an irritated glance, then returned to Belle. ‘I’m afraid you’ll find it rather cold at Cheltenham. I know I did.’
Belle was surprised. ‘Did you go to school there too?’
‘Heavens, yes. I was there with Sophie. Didn’t she tell you?’
Belle shook her head.
‘The food was too dreadful for words,’ said Mrs Clyne. ‘So utterly without flavour that one had to guess what kind of meat it was by the sauce that went with it. And all sorts of ridiculous rules. Don’t speak on the stairs. Don’t walk more than three in a row. I was always forgetting. And of course, I was a hopeless dunce. Not at all clever, like Sophie.’
‘Were you – were you homesick?’
‘Oh, dreadfully. At first.’ She paused, as if she’d said too much. ‘But I had Sophie. You’ll have Dodo. One gets over these things, you know. One gets over anything.’
Belle thought about that.
Mrs Clyne gave her an appraising look that was hard to read. ‘Your mamma,’ she said, ‘doesn’t want you to go.’
‘I know,’ said Belle.
‘She’s frightfully upset.’
Belle did not reply.
‘Don’t you care?’ asked Mrs Clyne.
‘Yes,’ said Belle.
Mrs Clyne sighed. Then she quoted softly under her breath, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’
‘I’m not thankless,’ said Belle.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Mrs Clyne. Then her face fractionally softened. ‘Oh, don’t mind me, dear. That’s just something my father used to say to me whenever I didn’t do exactly what he wanted.’
Belle did not reply. It had not escaped her notice that while Mrs Clyne had said that Mamma was upset, she hadn’t said anything about Papa. Did he think that she was thankless? Did he want her to go?
To avoid the traffic, the driver had taken a route down South Camp Road, and now the carriage turned right into Harbour Street. They were approaching the junction with Fleet Street, which Belle knew from the servants’ gossip was where the country girls ended up if their dreams of a respectable position in the city went wrong. It was where the Piccadilly women lived.
The carriage lurched to a halt to make way for a streetcar, stopping directly in front of the infamous street. Mrs Clyne ostentatiously looked the other way. Belle did not.
On the corner of the street, she saw a girl. She was pretty, with smooth, coffee-coloured skin and liquid dark eyes; and she was quite clearly looking for customers. Belle had never seen her before, and yet she felt a jolt of recognition.
She could be me, she thought.
She wondered if Mr Traherne visited Fleet Street when he was in Kingston on business. Perhaps he even visited this very girl.
Suddenly, Cheltenham Ladies’ College and tasteless school dinners seemed utterly unreal. How was she going to fit in? How was she going to avoid being found out?
The carriage lurched forward, and the girl on the corner was left behind.
Belle caught sight of herself in a shop’s plate-glass window: a transparent ghost overlaid by the busy faces of shoppers and passers-by. Where’s Belle? What have you done with my daughter?
Then suddenly they were at the quayside, and everything was happening at once. She was stepping down into the blinding sunlight amid a sea of white, brown and black faces and a chaos of noise. Fishermen in blue cotton dungarees and jippa-jappa hats splashed water over their catch and yelled their prices at the top of their lungs. Fat market women in brilliant print gowns jangled duppy-seed necklaces in the faces of frightened tourists. ‘Ripe pear!’ yelled the higglers with piled trays on their heads. ‘Cherry mango! Black jangla, fresh-caught this day!’
And suddenly Papa was sweeping her up in a bear hug and kissing her hard on the cheek, his moustache scratching her skin. ‘It’s not too late,’ he said in her ear, ‘you can still change your mind. We’ll go back to Eden together and forget about this.’
She hugged him tight and shook her head.
Slowly he set her down, and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Belle. There’s still time.’
She looked up into his light grey eyes, then quickly away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to go away.’
He sighed, and took his hands from her shoulders.
A porter lumbered towards them pushing a trolley piled high with trunks. Belle stepped back to get out of the way, and Papa disappeared behind the trolley. She felt a clutch of panic.
‘Belle, dear!’ called Mrs Clyne from the gangway. ‘Come along now, we really ought to be getting aboard!’
The porter trundled on with his trolley. Papa was still there. The relief was so great that her knees buckled.
‘Write,’ said Papa, his eyes glittering. ‘A long letter. Twice a week without fail.’
She nodded. ‘You too. And Mamma. And Aunt Sophie and Ben. And the twins – as soon as they learn how.’
He nodded. Frowning, he cleared his throat. ‘Well, then. You’d better be on your way. We don’t want them to leave without you, hm?’
‘Papa—’
‘Better be getting on now, Belle. No sense prolonging things. Look, Mrs Clyne is waving at you to join her. Off you go.’
‘Belle!’ called Mrs Clyne. ‘We really ought . . .’
Belle glanced over her shoulder to tell her she was coming, and when she turned back, Papa was walking away through the crowd.
‘Papa!’ she screamed.
But at that moment the Atalanta’s whistle went, and he didn’t hear her.
At any rate, he didn’t turn round.
Part Two
Chapter Seven
Loos, France, September 1915 – three years later
‘The question one has to ask oneself,’ whispered Adam Palairet’s brother officer as they waited to go over the top, ‘is whether one will fight or funk?’
Adam did not reply. To distract himself from that very question, he’d been struggling to concentrate on the scuffling of the rats in the darkness, and the sucking sounds as the men shifted nervously in the mud.
He thought, if I don’t reply, Cornwallis is bound to shut up . . .
Cornwallis didn’t. ‘I mean, one never actually knows until one’s tested, does one? I’ve heard of chaps who were simply raring to go, and then the next instant they were in an absolute blue funk, and—’
‘Shut up,’ hissed Adam. He jerked his head to indicate that the men were listening. The nearest, an eighteen-year-old bank clerk called Nathan, was clutching his rifle and looking sick.
Chastened, Cornwallis fell silent. With his large nose and anxious brown eyes, he reminded Adam of a red setter he’d had as a boy in Scotland.
That made him feel bad. Why shouldn’t Cornwallis talk if he wanted? After all, there was really nothing to choose between them. Both were recently gazetted second lieutenants fresh from the OTC; both were distinctly New Army: part of the ragtag of lawyers, office workers and colliers who’d come out to swell the ranks of the regulars after a hasty training at Aldershot. Both had only been at the Front for a matter of weeks – and had, by various quirks of chance, not yet seen any action. And both had brothers to live up to: brothers who were very much ‘proper soldiers’.
Only in my case, reflected Adam with the familiar dull ache, my brothers are all dead.
Ever since he’d received the last telegram – the one about Erskine – he’d thought of nothing but getting out to the Front. He needed to be where it had happened. He needed to honour Erskine and Gordon and Angus: to honour them by suffering as they had suffered.
And perhaps, too, he needed to carry on the tradition. For over two hundred
years there had been a Palairet in the Black Watch. Long after the family had relocated to lowland Galloway, their allegiance to the Highlanders had remained. There had been a Palairet at Charleston and Corunna; at Cawnpore, Tamai, and Magersfontein. Now it was Adam’s turn. His first ‘big show’, as Cornwallis would have put it: a night raid on the German lines, to start promptly at 3.25 a.m., with a barrage of supporting shellfire to blow up the enemy wire ahead of them. At least, that was the plan.
Adam glanced at his watch. 3.20 a.m.
Christ, he thought, I hope I don’t get the wind up in front of the men.
Cornwallis was right. The question was simple. Would one fight or funk?
This waiting was the worst. He kept running over details in his mind. Had anything been left undone? Were the signallers in place, and the stretcher-bearers and the chaplain? Did the guns have the right range?
The telephone rang. Everyone jumped out of their skins.
Further down the trench, he heard Captain Goodwin talking briefly and softly, then fall silent.
‘That’ll be Division,’ muttered Sergeant Watts, a couple of men to Adam’s right. ‘Wanting to know if everything’s in place.’
3.25 a.m.
The night exploded. The earsplitting crump of shells; lights flaring up ahead – greenish yellow, purple; the red and white of flares. Captain Goodwin gave the order to advance, and Adam’s heart lurched. He thought about wishing Cornwallis luck, but suddenly there was no more time, for they were starting to climb. As he struggled to reach the top, he heard the rasp of his breath and the blood pounding in his ears; the grunts of the private next to him, whose muddy kilt kept slapping his knees.
Then they were up and running across the churned-up waste of No-Man’s-Land, and all was weirdly calm. A warm, velvety night with bright moonlight and myriad stars. The crump and whine of shells flowering in the distance. Then, from the German trench that was their objective, a loud, hollow popping of rifles.
As he ran, Adam snapped off his revolver at where he guessed the enemy must be, but he knew he couldn’t possibly hit anyone. It was a hot night. Insects buzzed past his ears.
The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 88