“Good God, Frances! You are just like your father,” he said in exasperation, turning down the corners of his mouth in distaste.
“Imagine Lucille living with her!” Frances raised her voice in accusation. “Do you think she could stand it?”
He paused for a second. When he spoke, it was with a certain detachment, his voice freezing up at the edges. “I have been very careful to make sure that my daughters are provided for should anything happen to me. And I must remind you, though I struggle to see how you have forgotten, that neither Mrs. Arrow nor Dr. Matthews is any relation of mine. But, since you ask the question, I hope I have brought my girls up with grace and humility enough to accept what life throws at them. The last few weeks have been difficult for you, Frances, and of course I sympathize, but I would also encourage you to accept that life cannot always be easy.”
Either he hadn’t quite understood the position she was in or he had chosen not to engage with it. She felt misunderstood. In his distrust of others he had drawn a circle around his family, and it was clear to her now that she had been excluded. With nothing left to lose, she approached that part of her which was most appalled. “And what about your loyalty towards my mother?”
“Your mother thought your father’s family was good enough for her, and I’m sure if she were here today she would think they were quite good enough for her daughter. Your lack of resolve does her a disservice.”
He sighed and stood up, signaling the end of the meeting. “I think you know your father left behind some considerable expenses. I wouldn’t want you to think we haven’t been generous. But this isn’t an issue of cost. I won’t say I approve of your frankness, but since you have been honest I will give you honesty in return. My wife and I have discussed your situation at length. We are not sure it is in your nature to play second fiddle, as it were, to anyone. You should ask yourself whether you would really be happy living here under the umbrella of your cousins. I am inclined to think you would not.”
Frances didn’t tell him that she would do everything in her power to please her cousins if it would save her from living as a servant in her aunt’s house. She saw that he wouldn’t change his mind, and her pride had been wounded enough. “Please write to Dr. Matthews and tell him I can’t accept his offer.”
“If that is your decision.”
She nodded. How could it be otherwise? She couldn’t marry a man for whom she felt no affection, a man who was prepared to use her sudden fall in fortune as an opportunity to coerce her into marriage. She turned to go, and her uncle said, as if piqued that she was leaving so soon, and in a sudden remembrance of magnanimous generosity prompted not so much by Frances’s situation as by paternal pride, “You must come and see the family before you leave London. They are very generous, my girls, and I know they will have all sorts of things they will want you to take with you to Manchester.” She glanced back once as she walked out of the door, and saw her uncle deadheading a geranium bush that was beginning to droop, his attention already diverted to the safe running of his household.
• • •
IT WAS LATE in the afternoon by the time she got home. Her aunt stood in the doorway of the morning room clutching her youngest child. She was a stout woman with wiry red hair streaked with gray, and a red rash that crept down her nose and across her cheeks when she was upset. Frances could see herself dimly reflected in the older woman’s features, and wondered whether this was what age had in store for her.
“What on earth took you so long?” her aunt asked, casting a neat, sharp slap across her cheek. Before Frances could react, the woman had thrust the child forward. She had no choice but to take the placid weight of him in her arms. His face was white and shiny like a porcelain jug, and a thin mucus streamed from his nose. When he made a grasp for her mouth with a wet hand, she smelt the creases in his fingers, damp and sour like soft cheese.
“Poor Jimmy! What he needs, Frances, is a nurse who can keep the time. Honestly, you behave as if I weren’t doing you a favor, taking you with me. Heaven knows it’s only out of the goodness of my own heart. It’s not as if you know the first thing about bringing up children. Just look at you!” she cried as Frances struggled to keep hold of the wriggling boy. “You’re no stronger than a child. You’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life.”
Frances bent down and placed the boy on the floor and, ignoring her aunt’s protests, walked quickly upstairs to her bedroom. She locked the door, barely registering the howl which had started up downstairs. For the first time since her father’s death she felt something stronger than grief take hold of her.
Her father had taken her once to her aunt’s house; a small terraced cottage in a street so long you couldn’t see to the ends of it. There were so many people crammed inside its four rooms, wailing and crying and climbing up her skirts, that Frances thought her head might explode with the noise. It was winter and the windows dripped with condensation. The walls were covered with a cheap imitation wallpaper which the gas lamp had turned from orange to black, and the rug was matted with damp. The maid had red eyes that streamed as if weeping were a fact of life. Frances had stepped out to the privy in the backyard. Its door had frozen shut and she had to kick at it to loosen the hinges. Cockroaches nestled their wriggling bodies between thin cracks in the wood. She had stood there, hands pressed together, renouncing this place as a kind of personal hell.
Now her father was dead, his protection was gone, and she was being sent back to where he had come from. Unlike him, she didn’t think she would ever escape. It wasn’t unusual for a household to keep an overworked relation, who sweated for her keep and had no family of her own, until she was too old to be of any use. She couldn’t rely on her aunt’s children to keep her in her old age. They wouldn’t remember their obligation to her father. More than likely, she would be cast out to the workhouse. If she didn’t find a way to escape going to Manchester, she would spend the rest of her life regretting it.
Five
Frances smoothed down her mourning dress, sucked the ink stain from her finger, and read the letter again. Dr. Matthews. There is something I should like to discuss with you. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to send it. Could she ever feel anything except dislike for a man whose proposal had been born from pure opportunism? If he hadn’t asked to marry her, then her uncle might well have taken her in. But his letter had ruined every chance of that. He had made it too easy for her uncle to be rid of her, and it was quite possible that he had known it would be the case.
Sunlight streamed through the window. It was too hot for September, and the heavy weave of her dress was making her sweat. It was more wool than silk, and its seams chafed against her skin. She ran a finger around the cuffs, easing the material away from her wrists. What would he make of her change of mind?
The writing desk, worn and polished, was almost entirely covered with letters of condolence. It faced the window and she looked out onto the garden. The grass, usually carefully trimmed, had overgrown its borders. It would need cutting, but not by Kerrick. Another heap of envelopes had arrived this morning. Not the letters she might have expected, from the politicians and businessmen who had fêted her father when he was successful and deserted him when his money ran out. These were people she had never heard of, governors and trustees of charities and ordinary men and women who wanted to acknowledge her father’s benefaction. She hadn’t known about his work for charity, and it was a consolation that there were people who loved him for it, who hadn’t abandoned him as soon as his fortunes had turned. She might have had a chance to meet some of these men if convention had allowed her to be at the funeral, but instead she had been forced to spend the day at home with Mrs. Arrow.
Frances dropped the letter onto the desk and rested her head in her hands. All morning she had listened to the milling of feet through the corridors of the house. Gradually, the noise had subsided, and now all she could hear was the occasional ripple of applause when something went under the hammer for a
good price. Most of the furniture would be gone by tomorrow—only the morning room and her bedroom had been spared—and her aunt had already left for Manchester. It was a blessing to have her out of the house. She couldn’t have borne her running commentary on the event.
There was a knock on the door.
“Tea, Miss?”
“Yes, Kerrick. Thank you. How many is that now?”
Kerrick’s forehead crumpled into an expression of deep disgust. “Over one hundred since this morning.” He stood not quite straight in the doorway, his shoulders bunched together with age.
“And the sale?”
“It seems good, Miss. Your father had no shortage of beautiful things. But there’s an awful lot of gentlemen happy just to gawk.”
The contents of the house, and the house itself, wouldn’t bring in enough to cover her father’s losses. There would be nothing left over for her. “Heavily and unwisely invested” was the verdict delivered by her uncle when he had emerged from a protracted meeting with her father’s lawyer. When she asked to know more, he polished his nose with his thumb and forefinger and delicately avoided the word “bankruptcy.”
The newspapers told her more. Her father, it turned out, had been borrowing money against his company to invest in the Northern Pacific Railway, which was building a line across a vast, untracked stretch of land up near Canada. Six weeks ago, the railway company had filed for bankruptcy, defeated by the remoteness and scale of the terrain. There was a map in the paper. They had meant to extend the line almost across the breadth of America, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. Frances understood why the idea of a railway across the wilderness might have appealed to her father. When she was a child, he had loved to show her his collection of maps. He would unfurl them on his desk and point out uncharted territories in Canada or Africa. His face would become animated as he described their remoteness, and she had the sense, as she listened to him, that he felt trapped in London, hemmed in by the conventions of Society.
Now his debts had to be paid, the lawyer’s fees and the staff wages. Her uncle had stepped in to help, and she was grateful but also unnerved by his efficiency. The funeral, his arrangements for the staff, and the sale of the house had all been accomplished in a little over a month. Kerrick had been with them for fourteen years, and in just a few days he would be gone. There was almost nothing left of her father’s life. Irvine & Hitchcock, his furniture business, one of the largest in England, had been sold off for less than the value of its stock. And now the auction, as if in opening up the house to Society he could satisfy its appetite for scandal. Even Frances was to be tidied away, and once she was gone her mother’s family could get on with the business of forgetting.
If she sent the letter then she would have to accept Edwin’s offer. She was intrigued by Africa. It could offer her a fresh start. And she could get used to a less affluent life, going without the things she was used to. The problem was that she didn’t think she would ever come to like him. He was too serious. Always analyzing everything until he had squeezed all the joy out of it. When she was with him she felt he expected something from her, a kind of moral rectitude to match his own. And she couldn’t imagine letting him touch her. Worse than that, she distrusted him. He had appealed to her uncle, unashamedly using her father’s death to strengthen his claim, even when she had made it quite clear the last time they had spoken that she wouldn’t consider his proposal. It was ambition. He wanted her not because he cared about her, but because she would be a mark of his success.
She remembered him as a boy, dazzled by this house with its broad garden and white Kensington façade, by their hushed rooms and walls lined with books. Unable to have these things for himself, his ambition had crystallized into marrying the girl who had grown up with them. He really didn’t know her at all, and it was these parallel motives of worship and control which unnerved her. It was possible he equated these feelings to love, but to her it looked like little more than grasping self-interest.
Yet it had to be better than living with her aunt in Manchester. At least she would have her independence. She read the letter again and in a moment of quick decisiveness folded it and slipped it into an envelope, held it for a second more between her fingers, then dropped it onto the silver letter tray. Kerrick came in with the tea, set it out on the low table, picked up the letter, and was gone.
Frances turned back to the window. She blinked into the hot glare of light and caught sight of two figures standing on the lawn; ladies from the auction looking for something to report back to their friends. They peered through the windows, and when they saw her watching, one of them waved at her guiltily. Frances leant forward quickly and closed the shutters, boxing herself up in the dark.
• • •
IT HADN’T OCCURRED to her that he might not come. She waited all day in the morning room. The house was hot and silent. Groups of men arrived from time to time to remove furniture, and the quiet was broken by their thick, labored grunts and the scrape of wood on marble. When she was sure that he wouldn’t come, she went up to her bedroom to begin packing. But she felt defeated by disappointment. Piles of dresses, open drawers, hatboxes, and a muddle of shoes had turned her room into disarray. Two small suitcases gaped open by her bed. How could she possibly decide what to take with her? Her aunt had been very deliberate in her instructions. There wasn’t room in her house for a Society girl. She must keep her belongings to a minimum.
At five o’clock Lotta knocked at her door.
“Dr. Matthews to see you, Miss. He is waiting in the morning room.”
Frances found him standing with his back to her, cap in one hand, looking into the garden. She stood for a second watching him. He was perfectly still; a slight figure in a suit worn thin at the edges and cut too short for the fashion. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.
“Dr. Matthews. You are very kind to have come.”
He turned at the window. “Miss Irvine. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She nodded and motioned to one of the low chintz chairs pulled up on either side of the cold grate. They sat opposite each other, and he drew his hands into his lap and looked at her intently. His silence felt like scrutiny. She had forgotten his ability to disarm her. Gone was the shy, unsure boy of sixteen. He was no longer her guest, reliant on her father for charity. She needed something from him, and she suspected he knew what it was. The window had been pushed open, letting in a thin stream of cooler air and the gentle grind of traffic from the street.
“You must be enjoying seeing your family after so long away?”
“Yes, but I sail tomorrow from Southampton. That is, if the weather holds.”
She was surprised. “Back to South Africa? So soon?”
“My plans have changed.” He gave her a tight, compact smile. “And yourself? What will you do now?”
“My aunt has offered to have me. I am to take the train up to Manchester next week.” She talked to fill the silence. “Truthfully, I am a little scared. She has three children under the age of eight, and I am to be a nurse to all of them. That is until I can find myself a position or a husband.” She blushed, realizing her mistake. “My uncle manufactures soap. So at the very least I shall be clean.”
He smiled, as if waiting for something. She felt a flush rising up her neck. Then he looked away, stood up, ran his hands through his hair, and walked over to the window. His movements were quick and agile, and she realized his stillness was deceptive. After a few moments he came back and stood by her chair, looking down at her.
“Shall we have an honest conversation?” He paused, waiting for her approval before going on. “The Cape is a very different place to England. When I saw you last I had just arrived in London. My excitement to be home clouded my judgment. I had forgotten how Society works here, how rigid it can be. I had no reason to expect a different answer to the one you gave me.”
He crouched down beside her, picked up her hand, and held it lightly in his. His skin
was pale, almost translucent. Beads of sweat had broken out on his upper lip. “And yet, I was sick with disappointment. I would like to have you, Frances, as my wife.” He paused. “If circumstances have changed your mind, they have not changed mine. The decision is still yours to make.”
Frances was silent for a moment, conscious that everything depended on what she said next. In a whisper, embarrassed by the sudden intimacy her answer would throw up between them, she said, “I would like to go with you to South Africa.”
He pulled her gently towards him, whispering her name. When he kissed her, his lips were unexpectedly cold, and she drew her head sharply away from him, but he stayed crouched awkwardly in front of her, leaning his head into her shoulder and kissing her neck wetly. She hadn’t expected this. He groaned softly and she shivered, gazing over his shoulder towards the window. The sun had passed behind the trees, and she saw a fly, dizzy with heat, turning itself in circles against the pane. I have done the right thing, she told herself, as she felt his fingers press into the waist of her dress. I will forget England, and I will try to be happy.
Six
Frances closed the front door and stood for a few seconds in the hallway of the house. It was early October, a month after she had accepted Edwin’s proposal. Outside she could hear the driver’s grunts as he loaded her trunk onto the cab. The servants had all left for their new positions, and the rooms had settled into a quiet, dusty emptiness, their walls a pattern of dark squares from the pictures which had been taken down and sold. Lotta, who left this morning, had been the last to go, and for the first time since she could remember, Frances was utterly alone. She stood rooted to the spot, unable—now that the moment had come—to bring herself to leave. As long as she was here she could hold on to her father, but when she stepped through the front door she would be leaving behind everything she had ever known.
The Fever Tree Page 4