She remembered this room well. Once or twice as a child, when her father was away on business, she had been sent to stay with her cousins. She had longed to be alone, but she was rarely left to her own devices. Lucille and Victoria fingered her as if she were a rare specimen to be dissected, untying her ribbons so they could tease out her cloud of red hair and pulling off her gloves to look at her freckled hands. When they grew bored, Frances wandered through the house turning over objects, opening drawers, and examining the backs of cupboards in the hope of discovering something that had belonged to her mother. Lady Hamilton disliked Frances poking through the rooms of her house. She caught her once and snatched up her hand, scolding, “Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle.” Then, twisting the skin on the inside of Frances’s wrist into a sharp pinch, she said, “I won’t have you turning everything over like a shopkeeper looking for profit.” The insult, Frances realized later, was that she was just like her father.
A thread of fresh air pressed through the seams of the window into the leathery damp of the room. There was the smell of wet grass, but when she cupped a hand to the pane all she could see was blackness and, blacker still, the dense shapes that must be trees. She pulled away from the window, and the outline of her face emerged, distorted into a milky apparition. White skin glowing in a swath of hair, her eyes black hollows punctured by circles of light. She ran her tongue across her lips, but their full curve was lost in the murkiness of the reflection. A glimmer of light from the lamp caught the edges of her narrow chin and high cheekbones. Her father had called her a pixie as a child, cradling her face in the palm of one broad hand. His fingers had smelt of warm skin and tobacco. He said she was too small and delicate to be all real. She had grown tall since then, but she had kept the fine bones and sharp angles.
There were times when her face didn’t seem to belong to her and she felt as if she were eyeing a stranger in the mirror. She couldn’t identify herself beneath its brash colors, and she resented the way it drew attention. It was too obviously Irish. People treated her differently because of it. She watched them taking in the coils of russet hair and green eyes. Girls became prickly and standoffish, boys kept a fascinated distance, and her mother’s family, for whom she was too obviously the daughter of an Irish pauper, visibly recoiled. It would be nice, for once, to blend in.
Lucille’s question nagged at her. Was her father invested in the railway? How serious could it be? She had glimpsed him at home this evening caught in a moment of distracted stillness, and it had seemed to Frances that he must have aged without her noticing. He gripped the back of a chair, pushing himself upright out of the stoop that pulled his shoulders into a gentle curve. His hair had crept back from his forehead, and his cheeks looked gaunt. When he saw her looking at him, his face transformed, mobility erasing the cleanness of the image that had presented itself to her. He smiled at her and winked, and in the effort of that expression she had felt a pang of concern and something that felt awkwardly like guilt.
She shivered. The fire had burnt down in the grate, and the logs, crumbling into ash, showed small corners of dull flame. Only two lamps had been lit in the room, one on a card table. Its varnished surface revealed a thin edge of the green felt that lined its underside. Two small, hard chairs were thrust away from the table, and a chessboard showed a game won by attrition. The second lamp stood on a large mahogany desk which sat between the windows on the far wall. The leather inlay glowed a dull taupe. There was nothing else on the desk except a small globe. She spun it carelessly and on a sudden impulse put her finger on the spinning ball. She felt it thrum under her fingers, slowing down under pressure.
“A dangerous game, tempting fate.”
Frances swung round. A slender man was standing in the doorway, framed by light. He came a little way into the room, and she saw it was Edwin Matthews. He was the last person she wanted to see. She didn’t want to talk about her father’s illness, and she didn’t want an Irish cousins’ reunion. If she was being honest, his presence at the ball slightly embarrassed her, and she realized she didn’t entirely disagree with Lucille. She didn’t say anything, hoping he might leave. He would assume, finding her here, that she hadn’t been enjoying herself, and this would give him some advantage over her, though she couldn’t exactly say why.
Despite all these things, as he walked towards her she felt a subtle pleasure in being found. He looked at her with pale, gray eyes and made a sweeping motion towards the door. “Their conversation doesn’t interest you?”
His face lacked any of the mobile excitement and flushed enthusiasm which had marked the faces of the other guests. He looked uncomfortable in his tail suit, like a bird in borrowed plumage, yet confident, as if he hoped to extract something from the situation.
“All anyone can talk about this evening is the collapse of railway stock.”
“I thought your father was an investor?”
This came as a small shock, that he knew when she hadn’t. “What if he is? My father is a careful man.”
The doctor tapped a cigarette against the back of a silver cigarette case. “Do you mind?”
She nodded her assent, and watched him lift a match from a small glass globe that stood on the mantelpiece. He struck it firmly against its ribbed edge, dipping his head to bring the cigarette to the blue flame. Despite herself, she was curious. Would a doctor from the colonies really be presumptuous enough to flirt with her? She didn’t imagine he had found himself here by mistake. He didn’t look like the kind of man who did things carelessly or arrived at places by chance. For a moment his features were hidden by a cloud of smoke. When it cleared, he motioned to the chessboard. “Do you care for a game?”
She hesitated. It could be compromising if someone walked in and found them alone together, but in the end curiosity got the better of her. She wanted him to reveal himself, so she agreed to play.
He picked up an ashtray and placed it on the card table. There was a cigar ground down in the bottom of it. She could smell the rich, sweet tobacco. He pulled out a chair for her, and as she sat his knuckles brushed against the back of her dress. He began setting out the pieces. She remembered his tendency towards silence. “Is it true,” she asked, prompting him into conversation, “that if all the diamonds at the Cape were sold at once, a diamond wouldn’t be worth more than a pebble?”
“Perhaps,” he said, straightening up the pawns so that their rectangular bases ran parallel with the squares. “If they could all be sold at once. But most of them are still in the ground.” He glanced up at her. “To be honest, I am more concerned with the people who mine the diamonds than the stones themselves.”
“The magnates?”
“And the natives who work for them.”
“Are they very savage?” she asked with a dramatic flourish.
He glanced at her but didn’t answer, and irritated by his disapproval, she turned her attention to the board. The chess pieces were intricate imitations of the Battle of Waterloo, the upper torsos of the soldiers flattened into ivory, blue uniforms against red. He took up a pawn and put his arms behind his back, then brought them forward in front of him for her to choose. His hands were white and hairless, and when Frances touched one lightly it turned and unfolded like a flower, revealing long fingers with the ivory piece resting on a creased palm.
Frances didn’t concentrate on the game. Instead she watched the doctor play. There was a contained satisfaction in his body, an accuracy of expression in the way he moved his pieces around the board that frustrated her. She was ashamed to find herself wanting him to acknowledge her position, and she regretted agreeing to play. Occasionally there was a swell of noise as the door to the ballroom was opened, and they heard low voices and the steady footsteps of men going out into the night to smoke.
When the opening moves had been played out, Frances deliberately moved her bishop so that he could take her, but he avoided her and instead slid his knight neatly around it. She countered quickly, opening up her board, exposing herself ove
r a series of moves, but still he wouldn’t take her, not even when her queen was open to his bishop. She became more reckless, but still he held back. Finally he executed a perfect checkmate, removing just one of her pawns from the board in order to bring his queen into attack. When it was over he leant back in his chair and studied her.
“I don’t interest you, Miss Irvine?”
He was looking straight at her, and she met his gaze. “Quite the opposite. You convincingly proved yourself the better player.” She felt a small satisfaction in refusing to engage. She stood up to go, but he motioned for her to sit.
“I have to return to the Cape before the end of the year.” He was looking steadily at her, eyes calm, but a blue vein pulsed across the surface of his forehead.
Voices and rapid steps came down the corridor. They paused outside the library door and then moved on. “The Cape, Miss Irvine, would interest you.” He moistened his lips. “I hope, in time, that I could interest you.” For a brief moment the music had stopped, and all Frances could hear was the slow ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
“Interest me in what, exactly?”
“In marriage. I am asking for your hand in marriage.”
Frances blinked back at him in surprise. She had expected an artful declaration of passion, perhaps, but no more than that.
“There’s a chance I’ll make some money.” He leant forward, his eyes flickering over her face. “Others have done it . . . if I can establish myself in certain circles . . .” He paused, lowering his voice. “You could help me. Introduce me to the right people.”
“Introduce you to the right people?” she asked in disbelief. “What do you think my father would say if he were here now? Don’t you think you are rather taking advantage of his charity?”
“Are you happy living in London?”
The question threw her, and it took her a moment to say, “I can assure you my happiness is no concern of yours.”
She drew back her chair and stood up. It was possible she had encouraged him, certainly she had played his game, but now that he had delivered his lines, she realized their situation was completely inappropriate.
He stood up and walked with her over to the door. “If you change your mind . . .”
He was too confident, and she suddenly disliked him. “You play a good game of chess, Dr. Matthews, but I’m quite sure it will have been our last.”
She left him standing by the door and walked quickly out of the room.
Four
Frances waited for her uncle in the drawing room on the first floor of his Mayfair villa. Lucille and Victoria hadn’t appeared, and though manners dictated they should greet her if they were at home, she suspected, from the occasional squeals of girlish laughter and thrum of feet upstairs, that they had simply decided not to come down. She was nervous and would rather be standing, but had instead chosen to position herself in the corner of a deep, rust-brown velvet sofa. She didn’t want to seem confrontational, a criticism that her uncle might have applied to her father, and which she supposed could be extended to herself. Her father had been dead two weeks, and her uncle had called her here, she hoped, to offer her a place in his household.
The drawing room was an impressive space, with high, corniced ceilings and an excess of dark, claw-footed furniture. Varnished mahogany tables with curving, white marble tops and gilt lamps stopped up every gap in the sea of velvet. Her aunt collected De Morgan vases, and the luster-glazed, ocher-red images of dogs chasing a variety of beasts gleamed from the corners of the room. The easy grandeur of this house had enthralled her as a child. It had been in the family for over sixty years, and Frances wasn’t sure whether it was this fact, or the convincing size of her uncle’s family, which lent it an air of invulnerability. How flimsy the trappings of her father’s life had proved in the wake of his death. There was none of the stability that Frances saw here. More than half a century after the family had moved in, this house seemed as resistant as ever to calamity.
The pattern of green and maroon stained glass on the windows facing her cast a gloomy light over the room, keeping out the brightness of the August day outside. There was no fire burning in the grate and the lamps hadn’t been lit. Her uncle admired what he called quality, but he had a distaste for excess, another criticism which had been extended to her father, who had loved cigars and long nights at his club with a passion that suggested he hadn’t believed in a correlation between indulgence and longevity.
After a few minutes, she stood up impatiently, her black crepe skirts rustling, and walked to the far side of the room, where a piano stood to the right of a wide bay window. She leant an elbow on the mahogany and looked into the Wardian case that stood embedded in the bay. It was a large ornate structure made of glass and lead with a rock garden at the bottom barely visible beneath a riot of ferns. They grew too closely together, palms pressed against the glass as though appealing for escape. The case had steamed up with a clammy heat. She bent closer and smelt the sweet rot of damp vegetation. A few lime-green shoots were unrolling themselves in the bottom corners, sprouting dense buds that looked like a collection of soft, furry snails. The glass case offered protection—the ferns wouldn’t last a minute exposed to the pollution of London air—but it would also, eventually, suffocate them.
“You share my daughters’ fascination?” Frances turned and saw her uncle walk a little way into the room. “They are quite passionate about natural history.” Frances didn’t contradict him, though she seemed to remember her cousins had long ago abandoned their interest in the natural world; a passing obsession that had lasted long enough to convince him of their diligence.
“Uncle, thank you for finding the time to see me.”
He was dressed in his customary black suit and was frowning slightly, like a man under threat, not a little afraid of what the world might be mustering to throw at him. He was someone, she thought, who might be cowardly in all things except in the protection of his family. This single passion precluded close relationships with outsiders, and Frances, who had never had reason until now to test his feelings towards her, was unsure whether she would be considered one of those to be protected.
He waved her to a corner of the brown sofa and sat down in a chair opposite. “How is Mrs. Arrow keeping?”
“Quite well, thank you.” He had leapt straight to the heart of her problem, but she wanted to avoid having to spell out her fears. Her father’s sister—Mrs. Arrow—had arrived two weeks ago from Manchester. She took a shrill pleasure in denouncing her brother’s fall into penury, and demanded a gratitude from Frances which exhausted her. Every conversation began with a veiled criticism. “When we get to Manchester, I shan’t want you. . . .” She had five children, three of whom needed a nurse, and she had agreed to take Frances with her to Manchester on the understanding that she fulfill that role.
“Good. Now, I have received a letter that pertains to you.” He unfolded a piece of paper from his waistcoat. “From a Dr. Matthews.”
Frances felt the muscles in her face freeze up.
“He asks for your hand in marriage.” Her uncle smiled at her. “What do you think of that?”
“I think nothing of it.” She tried to keep her voice level, conscious that too much emotion unsettled him. “I can’t marry Dr. Matthews.”
“I understand it might not have been what you were expecting, Frances, but on reflection it is a good match. And he has written a convincing letter. He talks about his friendship with your father, and your father’s charity towards him as a child. He is a qualified physician with a practice in Kimberley, and while he has little money right now, he is young and there is every chance he will do well in the colonies.”
“Please, Uncle. You don’t understand.”
“Frances.” His voice was cautionary, tipped with steel.
“I barely know him.”
“He tells me he saw you not long ago, in this house? You played chess together? That sounds almost like a courtship.”
/> “I don’t like him.” Frances took a deep breath, trying to suppress the panic which was welling up inside her. She needed to appeal to her uncle on a practical level. “You can’t imagine what he is like. He is all ambition. From the moment he came down from Manchester to stay with us he has wanted to sidle his way into our family.”
Her uncle looked unmoved. He put his palms together, placed the tips of his fingers under his chin, and spoke in a measured, even tone. “I have spoken to him myself. Ah—you are surprised? Yes, I asked him to call on me here. You see, despite what you may think, I have taken your future very much to heart. He spoke warmly of you, and I was reassured that he is a good man with appreciable prospects. Your father exposed you to a great deal of privilege and your life will—undoubtedly—have to change, but he will see that you are well looked after.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then you will live with your aunt in Manchester.”
“You know very well I can’t!” Desperation crept into her voice. “I’ll have to work for my aunt for the rest of my life.”
Her uncle looked at his hands and said nothing.
“She is so different!” Frances stood up, biting her lip.
“Not so different from you, Frances,” her uncle said carefully. “She is, after all, your father’s sister.”
Frances caught sight of herself in the gold-crested mirror over the fireplace. She regretted standing up. Her uncle would take it as a sign of bad breeding. Beneath the eagle with his wings unfurling, the dark, convex glass threw a distorted impression back at her. Sparks of red hair swirled away from her in dense curls, and the narrow, angular lines of her face warped so that her mouth twisted with bitterness. Her Irish blood was too visible for her uncle’s liking, reminding him of everything her mother had given away, and she wondered whether he would be happy never to see her again. “So—you won’t have me?”
The Fever Tree Page 3