Abigail

by Malcolm Macdonald

  Nora laughed. “He was like that with all his toys. Anyway, I’m sure John already knows every stone.”

  Abigail sat on John’s lap and began to tell him how superb the house had looked from across the valley. Caspar asked where all the children were—though the only children left in the family were his youngest sister and brother: Rosalind, who would be sixteen come March, and Sefton, now getting on for eight. Mather, now seventeen, and Hester, almost twenty, were of the grownups. (At least until the more formal, post-Christmas festivities began.)

  “In your nurseries, I hope,” his mother told him. “And having the time of their lives, I expect.”

  “By the way,” John said, “marvellous news. Young John may be coming. I had a telegram from the India Office just this morning.”

  Everyone was delighted at the news. Abigail glanced at Winifred; usually the word “telegram” brought on an attack of classical Greek and a lecture on the preferability of “telegrapheme.” But not today, it seemed.

  “I say, Winnie,” Caspar called to her. “Who’s this Laon person you’re bringing?”

  “Oh, a friend. A guardian of one of my girls, in fact. But a friend as well.”

  “Abbie says he’s a scribbler.”

  “I did not,” Abigail began, looking at Caroline in alarm.

  “He is a publisher,” Winifred said evenly, knowing how Caspar loved to provoke an overreaction. “He publishes My Lady’s Companion, The Drawing Room, At Home, and…I don’t know…several other ladies’ journals.”

  Caroline relaxed again. “He sounds most interesting,” she said.

  “Funny name though,” Caspar persisted. “Is he foreign?”

  “His father was. A Dutchman called Porzelijn. But Mr. Laon has anglicized it to Percy Laon.”

  Both Abigail and Caroline saw the sudden change in Caspar’s face; the name meant something to him. It meant something to Nora, too, for she immediately drew breath and looked at Caspar.

  “What did the father do?” Caspar asked. His tone was harsh. There was no suggestion that this was idle curiosity.

  Winifred was momentarily taken aback. “I have no idea,” she said. “Mr. Laon has had a violent quarrel with his father and has severed all connection with him. That’s why he changed his name.”

  “No idea?” Caspar pressed. “You really have no idea?”

  “Caspar!” Nora warned.

  Winifred, goaded, feeling all eyes upon her, said, “I believe I heard once that he was some kind of dealer in antiques.”

  Caspar drew breath, nodding and smiling savagely, as if that was exactly what he had expected to hear. “I must ask you,” he said, “to telegraph this person and put him off.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Winifred bridled. Her eyes filled with that awesome black intensity before which many a young girl had quailed. Even Caspar had to master an urge to retreat.

  “I think you heard me, Winnie,” he said. To anyone else he would have repeated his original words even more forcefully.

  “Caspar,” Nora said. “Be wise now.”

  He turned to her. “How can I have this man here, Mother?”

  Nora stood, looking at Caroline. “Be a dear,” she said, “and take us to another room where we may discuss this.”

  “I shall agree with Caspar,” Caroline warned, “whatever his decision.”

  “But you also have a very cool head. And I’m sure Caspar will welcome your advice.” She was already moving to the door; Winifred rose to join her. “Not just yet, popsie,” Nora told her. Caspar and Caroline had no choice but to follow her out of the door, leaving Winifred standing a little lost in the middle of the carpet.

  Abigail sprang from her father’s lap. “Come on,” she said, taking her sister by the arm. “Let’s see how they’ve unpacked.” She turned and shrugged an apology to her father.

  Winifred, whose instinct was to rush after the others and demand to be a party to any discussion involving her guest, let herself be led only so far in the opposite direction. Abigail, feeling her arm stiffen, said, “Poor Papa. He has no idea what is happening here. He resents being cut out, you know.”

  “He has no one but himself to blame,” Winifred said coldly. “If he hadn’t tried to rule all of us, and Mama, with such a heavy hand…Anyway”—her tone changed—“you talk as if you know.”

  “I do.”

  The butler, hearing them pass, stepped out into the passage. “Can I be of assistance, my ladies? There’s only the kitchens that way.”

  “Thank you, Lucas,” Abigail said. “We shall travel up in the hydraulic lift.”

  “The master frowns on that, ma’am.”

  “We shan’t make a habit of it,” Abigail told him.

  “It emerges by the visiting menservants’ rooms, my lady.”

  “Then we certainly shan’t make a habit of it, Lucas,” Winifred said.

  When they were in the lift and the door was shut, she added, “That was naughty of us. Now—what d’you know about this? Why is Steamer behaving in this monstrous way?” She wished she could see Abigail’s face but it was pitch dark in there.

  They had not been in so many lifts that the sensation of rising vertically had ceased to thrill. Abigail giggled until her stomach settled.

  “You remember Mary Coen?” she asked. “That servant girl we had in…”

  “Of course I remember Mary Coen!”

  “Steamer was once in love with her.”

  They arrived at the second floor and pushed open the door, glad of the light again. Winifred, with a condescending smile, said, “For once you are wrong, Abbie dear. It was Boy who fell for Mary Coen.”

  Abigail grinned triumphantly. “That was before. First Boy, then Steamer.”

  “Steamer would never have let himself be smitten by a maidservant.”

  “Steamer would have married her,” Abigail said very firmly.

  Winifred’s eyes narrowed. “You read his diaries!”

  “Every chance I got,” Abigail said, without a trace of shame. “He deserved it. I used to tell him everything and he’d never tell me a thing. Anyway, he knew I did. He expected it. It was the only way he could…you’ll never understand.”

  They passed their bedroom door without going in, thus tacitly acknowledging that the whole journey here had been a mere ruse of Abigail’s.

  “What secrets could you have that would interest Steamer, anyway?” Winifred taunted. Inwardly she wondered what was happening to her—to cheek the butler like that, like a naughty girl, and then to argue with Abbie in this small-minded way.

  “I told him why Mama and Papa separated,” Abigail said. “The real reason.”

  She sounded very confident, and Winifred, not wanting to hand her further triumph, changed her attack. “It has nothing to do with Steamer’s present extraordinary behaviour.”

  They began to descend the young ladies’ stair. Halfway down Abigail paused, forcing Winifred to halt, too. “The man who kidnapped Mary Coen was an antique dealer by the name of Porzelijn.”

  “Kidnapped?” Winifred repeated. She wished Abbie did not sound so horribly certain. “Surely Mary Coen just absconded?”

  Abigail continued the descent of the stairs. She reached the bottom and looked along all three passages before she added: “You remember that summer we were on our way to Connemara and Steamer jumped off the ship in Liverpool?”

  “When he went to Paris? Four or five years ago? That was to do with business.”

  Abigail smiled. “His only business in Paris was to find Mary Coen, who had been taken there by this Ignaz Porzelijn.”

  Winifred held her sister’s sleeve. “This is too extraordinary altogether for you to invent. You aren’t inventing it, are you?”

  “Try to understand why Steamer behaved as he did. After all, he was only sixteen when he fell in love with Mar
y.”

  Winifred tried to imagine it. Mary Coen, one half of whose face had been burned to a pulp in childhood. True, she was the kindest, gentlest, sweetest of girls—but she was hideous. How could they? Both Boy and Steamer! She shuddered and Abigail felt the tremor. “I know it’s hard,” she said.

  They started along the wrought-iron bridge that led across the main hall to the armour gallery and main stair. Winifred was bewildered by her sudden switch of roles with Abigail. All her life she had been very much the elder sister—there was, after all, nearly six years between them; and now, in a few moments, Abbie seemed to have cancelled out the difference. “Try to understand,” she had said! As if to a child. And “I know it’s hard.” Those had always been her lines.

  The change did not altogether displease her. She had a particular reason for wanting Abigail to put the spoiled little girl (and, lately, the pious spoiled little girl) behind her; and Mr. Laon—or P.P. as she called him—was here to help.

  As they neared the armour gallery she looked down into the gloom of the hall and saw Caspar, watching them. When he knew she had spotted him he smiled and held up his arms.

  He came bounding up the stairs to meet them. “I’m sorry,” he told Winifred. “What may I say? I was wrong.”

  She hugged him. “No, Steamer. Not really.”

  He drew back in astonishment, looking first at Winifred, then at Abigail. “I see,” he said.

  “She told me.”

  “Told you what?” Caspar asked with tendentious innocence. “I’m sure there’s nothing to tell.”

  Smiling a see-what-I-mean smile at Winifred, Abigail took Caspar’s arm and began to steer him down and back to the morning room. “Nonetheless, Steamer dear,” she said smugly, “I told it beautifully.”

  ***

  P.P. Laon came before noon on Christmas Eve. To everyone’s surprise he proved to be quite young; somehow no one had thought a publisher could be a young man. But Laon was just twenty-six, almost a year younger than Winifred.

  Nora was disappointed. She had sensed an excitement in Winifred whenever the subject of Mr. Laon had come up; indeed, she had almost imagined that the girl was in love with him. And Nora, alone of all the family, still had hopes of Winifred’s marrying. But the moment she saw the two of them together she knew the idea, at least in this instance, was forlorn. Laon was altogether too pleasant, too easy, too friendly with Winifred; they were like old colleagues. And though Winifred had spoken of him in such bright-eyed tones, she now took her cue from him and behaved with the warm reserve of long-standing friends.

  After lunch the pair of them and Abigail went for a walk around the winter garden. The palms were small as yet, so the sense of being in a jungle was lacking; but the air was as scented as that of any jungle, heavy with the fragrance of freesias, eucalyptus, and myrtles. Here and there a new perfume—a lemon-scented verbena or an oriental hyacinth—would intrude. Merely to walk there was a kind of intoxication. Nor was colour lacking. From rich-leaved coleus and shrimp plants, through mallows and spurges, to great banks of roses, the two women needed their finest dresses and ribbons merely to be seen.

  “We live, surely, in the midst of a new rebirth,” Laon said. “A second Renaissance, more profound and more eternal than the first.”

  Winifred looked at him in amazement. “Last month it was a new age of barbarism. What has happened?”

  “What has happened is that I have seen Falconwood. It’s a pinnacle of this century’s achievement. Your servant girls—d’you realize this, I wonder—even your servant girls live in greater comfort than a monarch of Tudor days.”

  “How can you say that, Mr. Laon?” Abigail asked. “Surely the style of Henry the…”

  “Ah, style! I did not say style, but comfort, Lady Abigail. Can you picture what life must have been like in those draughty, dark, smoke-filled halls, amid people who rarely washed, much less had a bath, trying to eat meat whose putrefaction was masked by heavy spices? And yourself with a head full of bad teeth?”

  It was, to say the least, not a conventional line in conversation. Abigail was pleased. It certainly made a refreshing change from talk of the weather and the Season and Sport, which was the usual grist of young men’s conversation.

  “P.P.!” Winifred cried.

  His face fell. “Sorry,” he said. “Carried away. Hobbyhorse of mine…don’t like the Pre-Raphaelites.” He looked at Abigail. “Please accept…”

  Her broad smile halted his words. “I have never met anyone,” she said, “whose hobbyhorse was to dwell on the more repellent aspects of medieval society.” Suddenly she became earnest, as if the topic were quite vital to her. “Is it a new Movement?” she asked. “Does it publish a journal? May one join?”

  For a moment this breakneck change of mood left him nonplussed. He stopped and gazed at her. He had a leonine head with sleek black hair. His profile was spoiled by a heavy ridge of bone across his brow, but seen full face he was quite handsome; that same ridge shaded his eyes and gave them a darkly luminous quality that compelled attention.

  She betrayed herself with a flicker of a smile. He smiled too, with relief, and his eyes dwelled in hers a moment longer in full-scale revaluation.

  “Look,” Winifred said. “Hibiscus. Now, isn’t that a gorgeous pink?”

  They agreed it was.

  “You are antiromantic then, Mr. Laon?” Abigail asked.

  “I am highly in favour of romance, Lady Abigail.”

  “But not of the romantic movement?”

  “Nor of the classical movement, either,” Winifred added.

  “Nor,” Laon said, “of any backward-looking movement. The Pre-Raphaelites are an English disaster. Ruskin is a one-man blight. We grow desperate for a new voice.”

  Abigail laughed in delight. If she had feared any tedium this Christmas, Mr. Laon was the man to dispel it. “Well,” she said, as if it were a quotation, “‘That’s my humble opinion, doctor. What’s yours?’”

  Again Laon was puzzled. But he, too, caught up quickly with her humour and laughed, though not quite so wholeheartedly as before. “You have far too brilliant and mercurial a mind for me, Lady Abigail,” he said. “I feel quite pedestrian.”

  “I somehow doubt that, Mr. Laon,” Abigail said, feeling not the least rebuked. “I certainly detect no dullness.”

  Winifred looked at her young sister in amazement. Abigail, though aware of the implied flattery—and aware, too, that she was being more forthcoming, not to say downright forward, than she had ever been before with a man—was not altogether surprised. After all, during these last years she had passed many hours in her mother’s salon, talking with witty and learned men; the only difference now was that she was saying aloud the things she had earlier thought and suppressed. Indeed she would still be suppressing them if Laon hadn’t proved so engaging and unconventional.

  “Tell us about this ‘new voice,’” she prompted.

  “Oh, please don’t,” Winifred said. “Tell her instead about her book.”

  “Now?” Laon asked in astonishment. “You think it wise?”

  “My book? What book?”

  “The one you abandoned two years ago.”

  Abigail felt her heart hammering sharply in her throat. An unreasoning panic rose within her. “What does he know about my book?”

  Winifred smiled at Laon. “Shall we tell her?”

  Laon smiled at Abigail, desperate to calm her and win back her good humour. “After all, she is twenty-one.”

  “I destroyed it,” Abigail said. “It was wretched.”

  Winifred, now realizing that she had bungled this revelation badly, nevertheless kept up a brave smile. “And I—with the help of the maids—rescued it. Page by page.”

  Abigail began to shiver; it made her voice piping and querulous. “And showed them to him?” The last word was almost a shriek.
<
br />   She turned to run, but Laon, to her utter amazement, reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “Listen!” he said fiercely.

  It was so unpardonable that she was shocked into a false and momentary calm.

  “I have read your…”

  “Mr. Laon!” she said vehemently, looking at his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding the least sorry—indeed looking at his own hand as if it were quite beyond his control, “but in view of the importance of this occasion I have already decided to forgive myself entirely. And so”—again his dark eyes held her, filling her with a confidence that was almost hypnotic—“if you will only hear me out—will you!”

  She wanted to go on being angry; it was still a luxury she found it hard to deny herself. But the ghost of a smile about his lips prodded her the wrong way at just the wrong moment. Trying not to smile in response, she said, “I think it is your third finger that is causing me the greatest pain.” Her voice still carried a shiver.

  He opened his hand but left its palm deliberately on her arm, as if to say, “I may grab you again at any moment.” There was something electrifying in his touch.

  “I shall not run,” she said, wondering why she said it so calmly and what this odd rapport was that now seemed to exist between them. It alarmed her. “I thought you were going to strike me,” she said.

  “I?”

  “Yes, it is amazing how total strangers assume a godlike right to strike anyone they imagine to be hysterical.”

  “I detect the voice of experience,” he said, ignoring this frank attempt to put a distance between them. And to underline the point he grasped her arm again, but this time with a friendly strength. In that way he steered her along the paved walks of the winter garden with Winifred hurrying along beside them, and began talking in the most avuncular tone. “You’re quite right to despise your work. It’s full of faults. Parts of it are ridiculously childish. Every page is marred in some way. It’s a veritable primer of infelicitous writing and want of subtlety.”

  Abigail felt hollow, as if Laon had taken a knife too sharp to feel and had eviscerated her.