by Maggie Joel
‘Yes, I can see how that would be hypocritical,’ Aurora replied after a moment’s thoughtful silence. ‘And what will you do instead?’
What would she do? Dinah did not know.
‘You shall marry, of course,’ said her mother, not waiting for a reply and ceasing, at least for the moment, her incessant rubbing. ‘Have you had a proposal, I wonder?’ and here she gave her daughter a quick, sharp, shrewd glance.
‘No, Mama.’
‘Oh.’ Another short silence ensued during which her mother appeared to feel that these words warranted some form of comfort for she added, coming over and seating herself near her daughter, ‘Never mind, dear. Plenty of proposals will come your way. More—in my experience—than one really wants, so that one is required to rebuff, which is never a very pleasant event for either party. And if many are not forthcoming then certainly one or two shall be and really, one is all that is required, is it not? I mean to say, one can only accept one proposal. More than one proposal is simply … superfluous.’
Dinah picked restlessly at the balls of wool in her mother’s workbox. The conversation had turned in a direction she did not like. And now she had lied. Each lie, she noticed, became marginally easier than the one before.
‘I wonder if Cousin Roger has set sail yet for the Transvaal,’ she said to quell her own thoughts; but why say that, of all things? ‘Perhaps he is already at sea?’
‘I couldn’t say, dear,’ replied her mother. ‘No doubt your Uncle Travers and your Aunt Meredith will keep us abreast of events. Communication is so much swifter than it was in my youth. When your Uncle Austin was so gravely injured in the Crimea, it was upwards of three months before my poor mama heard a thing about it. Now, people can sail to the Cape in two or three weeks and the telegraph means we will hear of a death in a matter of days. Of hours,’ and she gave a little sigh then selected one of the balls of wool and resumed her winding, not with any sense of purpose but rather to occupy her hands, which seemed inclined to move of their own volition aimlessly and without end.
Dinah thought about her mother’s words and it seemed to her no great marvel that a person could find out in a matter of days, of hours, that someone far away had died. They were still dead. She shivered with sudden cold and realised she could no longer feel the fingers around which her mother was winding the wool.
The clock in the hallway began to chime the hour just as the front doorbell rang. A moment later Mrs Logan appeared with the silver tray on which two cards were laid.
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Jarmyn, putting down the skein of wool. She glanced at the cards. ‘It is your cousin and your aunt,’ she said, nodding to Mrs Logan to bring the callers in and for an extraordinary moment Dinah thought she must mean Roger but it was Rhoda, of course, who followed Aunt Meredith into the room.
‘Aurora. How lovely you’re looking,’ her aunt announced, greeting her sister-in-law with a kiss. Both mother and daughter wore gowns of brocaded silk, Rhoda’s in a brilliant shade of crimson and Aunt Meredith’s in a more muted pale grey with Aunt Meredith carrying a reticule and a parasol made of the same fabric. They both sported cashmere shawls in deference to the chilly December wind. Dinah had once or twice made the mistake of believing her aunt a little foolish—she had, after all, married Uncle Travers—but a look here and a word uttered there had persuaded her otherwise so that she now wondered if Meredith, had she been born a boy, would not have turned out every bit as determined and forthright as her father who was a director of a railway. It was a question that could never be answered as Meredith’s life was the same round of calls and shops and dinner parties and dress fittings and charitable committees as it was every other lady in her acquaintance.
‘And how is Lucas?’ said Meredith, arranging herself on one of the upright chairs and indicating to Rhoda that she should take the other.
‘Lucas?’ repeated Aurora looking up, and for a moment her restless hands were stilled and a bewildered expression crossed her face as though she could not be expected to answer such a question, though surely it was a natural enough inquiry from her sister-in-law. ‘He is not here,’ she replied and she reached over to ring for the maid. Her mother’s reply had not answered her question but perhaps it did not matter for Meredith had leant forward with an urgency that suggested her inquiry was but a pleasantry and this visit was something more than merely social.
Dinah looked past her aunt and tried to catch Rhoda’s eye. They were the same age, she and her cousin, separated by just two months, and as very small children she and Roger and Rhoda had climbed trees and fished for newts in the pond. In more recent times the two of them had attended dance and music classes together, which had suited Rhoda much better than the tree climbing and the newt fishing. Today, oddly, Rhoda sat in mute consternation.
There was something, she had not been mistaken. Her aunt passed a nervous hand over her eyes. ‘Aurora, I must speak to you about a most urgent matter.’ She spoke in a low voice and, seated beside her, Rhoda’s cheeks coloured and she cast her eyes downwards. ‘Something rather dreadful has occurred: Travers has forbidden Roger to sail with his regiment.’
This was, somehow, the last thing Dinah had expected and she heard herself gasp and her hands flew to her mouth. But no one noticed. No one even looked at her. Her mother, who not a quarter of an hour earlier had reacted with a fit of inexplicable temper when winding the wool, received this news of family calamity with an unruffled calm.
‘This is unsettling news, Meredith. But surely it is a little late for Travers to forbid anything of the sort? At this stage Roger failing to sail would, I am reasonably confident, amount to a dereliction of duty.’
‘So I explained to him yet he would not listen! He is adamant Roger shall not sail.’ Meredith moved restlessly in her seat, seeming unable for a moment to speak then her voice dropped almost to a hush: ‘He claims it is an affront to God.’
‘How so?’
‘The Ten Commandments! Thou shalt not kill.’
Aurora dismissed the Ten Commandments with a wave of her hand. ‘But surely Travers cannot be so literal? These sorts of things are …’ she cast about for the a suitable word ‘… a guide, merely. A suggestion. He cannot think them a foundation on which to build one’s life?’
There was a startled silence.
‘Naturally that is what he believes, Aurora. How can he not? He is a clergyman. How can any of us not?’ Meredith turned to Dinah and gave a little laugh. ‘Dinah, did you realise your dear mama had become a heathen?’
But Aurora rejected her sister-in-law’s suggestion with another wave of her hand: ‘I am no more a heathen than you are, Meredith. I merely express the opinion that I prefer to use the Bible as a guide rather than a literal truth.’
Dinah felt the presence of Mr Darwin and his book loom heavily over them. Her father possessed a copy of the book in his study, which he judiciously removed from view whenever Uncle Travers or other members of the clergy visited lest he cause offence. Dinah was reasonably certain her mother had not read the book and took no interest in the study or the origin of species. She was also reasonably certain her mother was not a heathen, in which case why had she said this? She found it unsettling.
‘But Aunt Meredith, what will my uncle do?’ she asked, anxious to forestall further theological debate. ‘About Cousin Roger, I mean? He cannot truly mean to forbid him, can he?’
‘He can and he does!’
‘But in practical terms, what does it mean?’ said Aurora, taking the wool from Dinah’s hands and placing it in her workbox.
‘A rift. He will be disinherited. Travers has declared he may never enter the house again. That his name never more be spoken!’
‘Oh!’ Dinah felt tears prick her eyes and she was dismayed.
‘How like Travers,’ observed her mother as she reached over a second time to ring for the maid. ‘Where is that girl? Dinah, go and see—’
But before she could get up, Hermione announced her arrival with an awkward
curtsy.
‘You rang—’
‘I did. Twice. We are in need of refreshment, Annie. Ask Mrs Logan to bring the sherry.’
The girl curtsied and left.
‘Who is that?’ said Aunt Meredith in a low voice, once the door had closed. ‘It is not your usual Annie, surely?’
‘No. She left.’
‘They both left,’ added Dinah.
‘Is this one also called Annie?’
‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ replied Mrs Jarmyn.
‘Her name is Hermione,’ supplied Dinah.
‘Hermione!’ repeated Aunt Meredith. ‘Whatever next?’
‘But Cousin Roger?’ Dinah prompted, anxious to learn what had transpired between her uncle and her cousin.
‘Roger is to sail this very evening,’ said Aunt Meredith. ‘From Portsmouth. There is to be a great send-off and we were to have travelled down, Roger expected us to be there. But last night—the last night before he sails—Travers made his announcement and Roger said did his father care more for God than he did for the Empire? And of course Travers was very much shocked and said that, should Roger sail, he would never speak to him again and would consider him dead and no longer his only son. Roger, suffice to say, left the house in a rage. And Travers went to the church to pray and he did not return all last night.’
‘How dreadful!’ cried Dinah and she looked to her cousin for reassurance, though what reassurance Rhoda could provide she did not know and indeed her cousin returned her look, pale and a little frightened, and offered no comfort.
‘Quite so,’ agreed her aunt. ‘I was to go to Portsmouth—indeed, I had purchased a new hat on the strength of it—and now I confess I do not know what to do. We are at sixes and sevens.’
She looked at her sister-in-law who had remained silent since Hermione had departed.
‘And does Travers care more for God than for the Empire?’ Mrs Jarmyn inquired now.
Aunt Meredith opened then closed her mouth, clearly nonplussed by the question. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I believe so. At least, I have never heard him express it in quite those terms. We have never had to make such a distinction before.’ She frowned. ‘Can it really be, Aurora, that one must choose between the two? It has always seemed so simple before. God and Empire were always on the same side, were they not?’
‘Is God British, then?’ said Mrs Jarmyn. She had picked up the skein of wool again and now placed her pince-nez on the tip of her nose.
Aunt Meredith regarded her sister-in-law in some surprise. ‘What a ridiculous thing to ask, Aurora!’ she replied with a little laugh.
‘How can you laugh?’ burst out Rhoda. It was the first time she had spoken and her words silenced the room.
Dinah sat perfectly still staring straight ahead. There was nothing she could say to her cousin, no look she might exchange. The memory of the afternoon she and Roger had spent together in the garden swirled about her, enclosing her and separating her from her cousin and her mother and her aunt as surely as if they sat atop two different mountains and no bridge connected them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BILL JARMYN STOOD ON THE platform at Paddington Station beside the quietly steaming train and lit a cigarette. He had travelled up from Oxford that morning, sending his luggage on ahead. He had a solitary portmanteau at his feet, which was just as well as there appeared to be no porters to be had in London. Once he had got the cigarette alight he picked up the portmanteau himself, tossed his ticket at the man on the ticket barrier and set about hailing a hansom.
London’s climate seemed milder than Oxford’s, he observed, a consequence no doubt of all the people. Even on a Saturday morning the place was teeming. He had not noticed when he lived here. Now, after the graceful domes and spires and the learned laneways and quads of Oxford, London seemed vulgar. Gauche.
Bill had been in Oxford for a single term but it felt like a lifetime.
The cab dropped him in Cadogan Mews. He paid the man and stood before the house, looking up, and aware of a range of emotions that were, for the most part, unsettling.
He had been away at school taking his final exams in May, returning home briefly, in the first week of June for his sister’s funeral, then he had departed again, on a pre-arranged tour of Italian antiquities with the family of a school friend. There had been talk of the trip being cancelled but in the end it had seemed best if he go. On returning to the house in the autumn he had found his family subdued. Withdrawn. Father had taken him down to Oxford on the train, had seen him settled in his rooms, and departed. Hardly a word had been exchanged between them aside from the formalities of the trip. It had not been the commencement of his time at Oxford that he had envisaged.
Now it was December and the Jarmyns’ front door sported a discreet wreath of holly and ivy in acknowledgement of the season but with deference to the second period of mourning in which they now found themselves. Bill pushed the door open and stood in the hallway for a moment, listening.
‘Hullo there. Mrs Logan? Anyone?’
The house was silent.
A girl appeared at the top of the stairs, emerging from the drawing room with a tray in her hand. Her left arm was heavily bandaged. She paused and stared at Bill expressionlessly.
‘Hullo. Who are you?’ Bill asked.
The girl continued to stare.
‘Where are Annie and Agnes?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ replied the girl. ‘Should I get someone?’
‘Only if you want to. Here, you can take my bag up to my room. It’s on the second floor. Second door on the left,’ he added, as he had an idea she wouldn’t know and would not think to inquire. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ said the girl a second time, viewing the portmanteau and the tray of tea things still in her hands and clearly having difficulty reconciling the two items.
‘Don’t bother, I’ll take it up myself.’ And he picked up his case and started up the stairs.
‘Oh Bill. There you are.’ His mother appeared at the top of the stairs, her eyes a little glassy as though she had just woken from a nap. ‘Hermione, take Master Bill’s case up to his room.’ ‘Hermione!’ said Bill, in some surprise, turning to look at the girl who was once more wrestling with the problem of the tea tray and the case. ‘Don’t bother, Mama, I can manage it on my own. Did my luggage arrive?’
‘I have no idea, dear. I expect so. Mrs Logan will know.’ His mother came down the stairs, meeting him halfway and submitting herself for a kiss. She pulled away after the briefest second. ‘Come, your father is away at present but Dinah and the boys are here. We’ll have afternoon tea in the drawing room. Hermione, tell Mrs Logan we shall have afternoon tea in the drawing room,’ and the maid stood in some confusion holding the tray of tea things which she had just that moment removed from the drawing room.
‘Lord! It’s like an icebox in here,’ said Bill.
‘My rooms are on the ground floor, facing the quad, which is good from the point of view of chaps dropping in and so on.
But very bad from the point of view of disturbances and chaps dropping in when you’re working or whom one doesn’t actually want to drop in. And then again I am facing the pond, which is a source of great entertainment most weekends as someone invariably ends up in there. Some of the fellows even make a wager out of it: you know, whose turn is it this week, that sort of thing.’
Bill reached for a crumpet and placed it on his plate. He crossed his legs and leant back in his chair, pleased to have escaped the home and gone up to Oxford but glad to be able to return at the end of term to find everything just as he had left it.
Not everything.
‘I hope you have been attending church, Bill?’ said Mrs Jarmyn.
‘Of course, Mama,’ he replied, irritated to be questioned about church-going when he was full of the tales of student life.
‘Why do people end up in the pond?’ asked Gus, frowning.
‘It’s tradition. You’ll find
out when you get there.’
Gus pondered this.
‘And your studies?’ asked his mother, doggedly sticking to her theme. ‘Are your studies going well?’
‘Yes, Mama. Well enough. I attend the required number of lectures and hand in the required number of papers. But university life is about much more than academic study. I have already been nominated for both the Templonians and the Unikorn Club and am a member of the Forum Society and have put my name down for the college boat club—’
‘Have you ended up in the pond?’ said Gus.
‘No. Happily I have managed to avoid that fate thus far.’
‘It sounds rather silly to me.’
And Dinah, sitting beside their mother on the sofa, looked down at her lap and smiled.
‘Well, no doubt it does. When you’re still residing at home with the womenfolk the life of the university student seems very mysterious and unknown.’
‘Cousin Roger is on his way to the Transvaal,’ said Jack. ‘He is to join his regiment, the 58th, and then they are to fight Kruger.’
‘Is he indeed? Well.’ Bill nodded and forgot what he had been about to say. ‘Why is it so devilishly cold in here?’
The only member of the family not present to mark Bill’s return from Oxford was his father. Mr Jarmyn had gone away to the North preparing for the accident inquiry but he returned in a cab that evening, direct from the station and bringing with him a blast of frozen London air and a coating of thick, clinging black dust. On being informed of Bill’s arrival he summoned his eldest son to his study for a pre-dinner whisky.
He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to you, Bill. We are glad to have you back.’
Bill smiled politely and raised his own glass, noticing that his father did not also raise his eyes to meet Bill’s but instead kept them on the empty fire grate. He looked tired, thought Bill, seeing lines on his father’s forehead and around his eyes that had not been there before, or that he had not noticed, and streaks of grey at both temples. He had lost none of his stature or bearing though. He bent towards the empty grate and a frown shadowed his face. This is how he will look as an old man, thought Bill with a sudden and unsettling premonition: stooping over the fire, a rug over his knees, querulous and dogmatic with no one to order about except Mama. He pushed the thought away. His father had not changed that much. It was simply that, being away, one noticed things upon one’s return.