by CL Skelton
Naomi Bruce ignored her and walked about her elaborate room, her hands clasped theatrically before her and, smiling, repeated, ‘How splendid. The perfect solution.’
Arnold Galloway smiled a little pompously, certain that he had put the silly woman back on her proper level of respectful admiration for his cleverness.
‘Why,’ Naomi continued, ‘if she’s really fortunate, and very well behaved,’ she added as a careful aside, ‘she might even end up in the very house that you forbid her to visit this weekend. She might be so lucky as to be nanny there, or governess to the children of her young man’s future wife. I’m sure she’ll be so happy.’
Rebecca collapsed in tears and Arnold Galloway stood open-mouthed. He doubted the sanity of this strange, beautiful woman. ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ he said at last.
Naomi lowered her folded hands, looked once at Arnold Galloway, and then crossed to a magnificent green velvet, wing-backed chair. It enveloped her when she sat in it, as if she were the heart of a strange green flower. She looked first at Rebecca sobbing over the wet fur of the kitten and then for a long thoughtful time at Arnold Galloway. ‘No,’ she said gently, ‘I am sorry. I have been rather unkind. Forgive me, but I have rather a touchy temper on some subjects.’
‘Madam, I …’
‘You did not mean to offend. No. I doubt you’ve ever meant to offend. But nineteen years ago you did an extraordinary, adventurous act of kindness. I am sure it frightened you at the time. And now the result of that kindness is weeping on my settee, and I am being very harsh with you, as if it were all your fault. You’ve done something kind and now you’re punished for it and it’s all terribly unfair. It is. It’s just as unfair as being punished for having done nothing wrong at all but be born.’
She slipped past his attempt to intervene and said, ‘Actually, I can comfort you with the fact that it is not at all uncommon. People often do seem to be punished for kind acts,’ she shrugged distantly. Arnold Galloway saw her as remote and foreign, eastern even. ‘Perhaps it is God’s will,’ she said without expression. Then she moved forward from the depths of the chair, so the sunlight from the tall windows touched her face, making it animated and more friendly.
‘Never mind,’ she said, with a bright smile. ‘What’s done is done. You’ve done a fair job on her. She’s pretty and pleasant when she isn’t sobbing or throwing herself in a river. I can’t expect you to understand what a woman might expect from life. Women do expect things, Mr Galloway, whether or not you want them to. But don’t worry. She’s not your problem any more.’
‘I am afraid, madam, she very much is.’
Naomi shook her head brightly, as if perhaps the kitten’s future were being settled. ‘No. She’s mine.’
‘Madam, I …’
‘Do not understand. I will be plain. I will take her, now, Mr Galloway. She is mine now. She will live with me.’
‘Mrs Bruce?’ Rebecca said, surprise, bafflement, pleasure and a slight concern mixing in her voice.
‘You?’
Mr Galloway’s voice must have reflected some of his shock, because Naomi, always a little touchy, said primly, ‘Oh, don’t be concerned. I am really totally respectable in my own way. All the best people call here; people who would not call on you. I am sorry, Mr Galloway, but it is true.’
Arnold Galloway would have liked to walk out in a huff, but a huff would have necessitated taking Rebecca as well. So instead he fussed, he worried, he accepted sherry, and he agreed. He had done his Christian charity, as much as he could stand, and now he bowed out willingly to await his reward in heaven.
Rebecca visited him dutifully every week thereafter with pots of Gentleman’s Relish and dark Oxford marmalade, and she and Naomi Bruce were virtually inseparable from that day.
By the end of six months, Rebecca Galloway was almost unrecognisable. Not to look at, no; Naomi was too wise to make any transformations there. Rebecca had the face and figure to be the epitome of London’s beauties, with the proper styling and enough money. And Naomi did have access to both. But that was not her intention with Rebecca. For what she intended, the girl was best just as she was, sweet-faced, unadorned, schoolgirlishly mischievous and devastatingly youthful. It was the perfect combination. Her mind, however, was another matter.
Rebecca had grown up in that most shielded and hypocritical of all societies, the Edwardian middle class. While the poor were dumped unprotected into the full torrent of life and the very rich and exclusive allowed to dabble toes in any interesting, aberrant backwaters they fancied, as long as they were exclusive enough about it, the middle class carried on its back the whole ark of the conventional covenant.
Appearances were everything; decency was external, propriety must not merely be done, but ostentatiously be seen to be done. The British middle classes were the vast crinoline of society. They shielded all the intimate parts of its body behind a suffocating wall of starched fabric. Naomi set about opening Rebecca’s eyes and freeing her spirit.
She began with books, good, intelligent, unacceptable books. She went on to art, music, dance, the best but always with one foot beyond the bounds of ‘taste’. She introduced Rebecca to all her friends, particularly her artistic friends, her unmarried friends, her friends set up in little arcadian menages a trois (or quatre or cinq) in the Cornish countryside. Rebecca met her gentlemen friends who danced with the Parisian ballet and wore make-up in the street, and her lady friends who wore trousers and flew aeroplanes about the countryside. She met Aesthetes who had tossed more than their corsets over the wall of the fashionable garden in which Naomi freely moved. That was Naomi’s world and Rebecca became a part of it. She was initially terrified, soon fascinated, and eventually accepted it as a natural habitat. She became companion to Naomi, secretary, occasional hostess, adopted big sister to Robert. She became Naomi’s friend, and eventually, not only a beautiful young woman but an interesting one as well. It was, in six months, a startling transformation.
The sittings with Mr Leitner had begun rather by accident. An old friend of Naomi’s, he had been quite taken with the girl’s ironically spiritual beauty when her face was, rarely, in repose. Pre-Raphaelite in stylistic inclination, he found her his perfect subject. The length of their mutual acquaintance, plus Leitner’s advanced age and, above all, his Wildean leanings, removed any worries Naomi might have had. She knew the portraits might bring the girl money as well as notice, and might teach her grace. To Rebecca she said, ‘Your face is a gift as much as Mr Leitner’s hands. Use it before it fades. Money will buy you freedom; it’s more than any man will ever give you. Besides, you will have to keep your mouth shut for as long as ten minutes at a time, a difficult lesson, my dear, and very valuable.’
Rebecca’s shyness had vanished during the first sitting. That was important to Naomi. Women of the class to which she expected Rebecca to rise were accustomed to nudity in front of strangers, surrounded as they always were from birth to the grave by servants. Likewise the poor, of course, crammed in their crowded, multi-generational, mixed-sex flats. Coyness was a middle-class stigma, and Rebecca must be rid of it.
Mr Leitner portrayed her in all her charms as goddess and nymph and, more sedately, as Madonna and Magdalene, and she lost her bashful modesty. She became quite famous in a narrow aesthetic circle and there were other requests for her services, some from other artists and one from a gentleman of questionable theatrical connections, eager to see her on the stage. Most had been politely refused outright by Naomi, and one or two, carefully screened, had been allowed sittings in the converted nursery, secure in the feminine fortress that was Naomi’s home.
Naomi Bruce scorned all the conventions. But she firmly knew their power. There was not a breath of scandal anywhere about Rebecca Galloway, and there never would be. There was much interest, though, much of it from highly attractive gentlemen. But Naomi knew the value of her charge, and the reserve price was going to be high. If Rebecca married, Naomi Bruce would write the marriage cont
ract herself.
‘But why?’ Rebecca would ask in grateful astonishment. ‘You’re so kind. You go to such trouble, indeed, such expense. And I was a total stranger. You didn’t even know me.’
‘Oh, I knew you, my dear. I knew you. And it isn’t kindness, I’m much afraid.’
‘Oh, but it is. It is.’
‘No, dear. Not precisely,’ she would pat the shining-eyed young face and turn away, with just a trace of guilt upon her own. Revenge was not a word to use to one so young. But try as she did, she could find no other word for it. And now, by whatever name she chose to welcome it, the opportunity had arisen. The time to send Rebecca to Culbrech House had at last arrived.
‘Oh, do tell me what they’re really like,’ Rebecca begged, slipping into the jacket of her tailored blue linen travelling costume and turning for Mary, her personal maid, to whisk away any lint. Mary put down the clothes-brush and turned again to the laden dressing-table in Rebecca’s room.
‘The tortoiseshell combs, don’t you think?’ Rebecca said to Naomi, as Mary’s hand strayed over the selection.
‘Naturally,’ said Naomi, glancing at the combs. Then she said distantly, ‘The Maclarens? I’ve told you what they’re like.’ She added mildly, ‘Mary, you have packed Miss Galloway’s walking shoes, no doubt?’
Mary nodded, but Rebecca demanded, ‘Why?’ like a suspicious child.
‘It’s Scotland, my dear.’
‘You rotten thing,’ Rebecca cried, indignant. ‘You never said a word about walking shoes before. You said there was to be a ball, and tea-parties and …’
‘And so there shall. But there will also be the August Bank Holiday picnic. It’s a Maclaren tradition, my dear. Maclaren traditions are very important, lest we forget. No doubt, it goes back five hundred years at the very least. And no doubt, as on the last four hundred and ninety-nine occasions, it will rain. The Maclarens are very persistent, though, when they set their minds on something. There’ll be no surrender. Though I do hear from Victoria that they’re having a quite remarkable summer.’
‘I hate picnics,’ Rebecca moaned. ‘Uncle Arnold always insisted I be taken on them. “Children love picnics, Nanny. Off you go, Becky. Have a luvely time.” Bee stings and a wet bum. Oh tosh.’
Naomi smiled, looking over Rebecca’s shoulder at the girl’s reflection in her dressing-table mirror. Yes. She would do very well. ‘There will be the ball,’ she comforted, ‘for good girls who don’t moan at the picnic. And dozens and dozens of handsome young officers. You’ll absolutely shine. If you don’t fall flat on your face in the reels.’
‘I’m a very good dancer,’ Rebecca replied peevishly. ‘Miss Morgan said I was the best in the class. Oh Naomi, you’re just evading me. Please, what are they really like? They can’t all be handsome young officers. Half of them must be women for a start. Oh, please play fair! I’m absolutely terrified.’
Naomi smiled at the reflected face in the mirror and turned her back and walked to the other side of the room. She settled herself on the edge of Rebecca’s bed and then drew her legs up, tucking her satin-slippered feet beneath her, sitting cross-legged, as supple as a child, with her turquoise silk like a pool around her. She thoughtfully stroked the white Persian cat that was curled there like a fluffy pillow and it unwound, stretching its claw-trimmed paws. ‘The Maclarens and Culbrech House,’ she said at last. ‘Well, let us say for a start that it’s all much improved.’
‘Oh, that’s promising,’ wailed Rebecca.
‘Oh, but it is. You can’t imagine what it was like when I knew it. To begin with, it’s not a proper house at all. It’s a fortress. God alone knows how old it is, but when it was built the major intention was keeping the savages outside away from the savages inside. The decor, as I first knew it, could be described as …’ Naomi leaned her head back, eyes closed ‘… I think perhaps, Early Macbeth. A great deal of weaponry everywhere. One always suspected that any dinner-party might end in clashing broadswords.’
‘How charming,’ Rebecca said, making a sour face as she pushed a wisp of curling auburn hair into a ringlet at her right ear. ‘No, Mary, not so high. It will only fall right over before we get to Euston.’ Mary patiently unbound the long shining braid and began rewinding it more snugly about her mistress’s head. ‘You’re making me ever so eager to go, you know,’ Rebecca added to Naomi.
‘Oh, never fear. It’s all vastly changed. Victoria saw to that.’
‘Lady Maclaren. Sir Ian’s wife?’
‘Yes,’ Naomi said, quite softly. ‘Really a very remarkable woman,’ she added as a quiet afterthought.
‘Is she pretty?’ Rebecca asked.
Naomi looked startled, and then laughed, turning away and looking out of the window. ‘Pretty? Oh, it is marvellous to be nineteen. Pretty. As if that were the beginning and the end. Of course she’s not pretty. She’s nearly fifty. She’s past pretty long ago. She’s elegant, graceful, all a lady needs.’
‘But surely you’re at least that old.’
‘Oh, older.’
‘And you’re beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ Naomi said with a small, surprised smile. ‘If you think so. Some people have thought so, some not. Still, I was never pretty.’
‘The gentlemen all think so,’ said Rebecca bluntly.
‘Oh, that. That is something else. No, dear, I was always different. That was all. Difference lasts, however, when prettiness is over, and it fascinates men because they are afraid of it. Particularly conventional men like the Maclarens.’
‘What about them then, the men?’
‘They’re all quite magnificent, be assured. The Maclarens always bred men well. Just as well, I suppose. One doesn’t make a Highland regiment with pretty women, does one?’
‘Aren’t any of the women pretty?’ Rebecca said, trying her navy, pale-blue-trimmed hat in front of the mirror. Her sympathy was combined with faint relish.
‘Oh, not so pretty as you, don’t worry yourself. But you’ll not be utterly without competition. Emma Maclaren has become really quite a beauty of late. But she’s Tenny’s sister, so she’s no problem.’
‘Who is this Tenny?’ Rebecca demanded coyly. ‘It always comes back to him whenever the Maclarens are mentioned.’
‘And why should it not?’ Naomi replied at once. ‘Tenny is the heir. We wouldn’t play for second best, would we?’
‘Why, Mrs Bruce,’ Rebecca flounced, blushing, away from the dressing-table, leaving the distracted Mary trailing after her, hat ribbons yet in hand. Rebecca stopped at the window, looking out over the street far below. The motor car, with Abbott the driver, was parked below, and Abbott was busy loading Robert’s trunk within. ‘That’s quite dreadfully calculating, really. I mean, you’d think I …’
‘I’d think what everyone will think, my dear, a splendid match for the both of you. The only thing is that I, unlike everyone, actually say it.’ She turned her long, slender neck and looked rather harshly at Rebecca in the window, her dark, honest eyes full of adult mischief. Her mouth took a slightly sardonic twist, the smooth black brows raised. ‘However, if you’d really prefer second place, there’s always Tenny’s younger brother Albert. He’s a bit pudgy, but quite good-looking. Just about your age. He’s considered a bit of a lost cause by the family but I’ve always thought him the best of the lot, certainly the kindest, and the best future husband for any girl. Or he would be if they’d let him alone. But they won’t, not the Maclarens.’ Her voice hardened subtly, ‘No. They’ll hound him and drive him and break him like they did my brother Donald, no doubt. And poor Harry probably as well.’
Naomi’s voice grew distant, as it always did when her middle brother Donald was mentioned. Rebecca knew he had vanished in ugly circumstances in Africa during the Boer War, after his wife had been killed in Kimberley, and that Naomi blamed the Maclarens who were, Rebecca was also aware, her distant cousins. That it was a kinship of illegitimacy was discreet common knowledge; a fact that forbade Bruce claims on the Macl
aren estate, but had never prevented Maclaren claims on Bruce children.
‘Families with power in their histories do not relinquish power easily,’ Naomi explained. ‘Particularly not in Scotland. The Maclarens are rich, aristocratic and land-owning. And a military family as well. A hundred years ago they were near feudal lords, and two hundred years ago virtually independent kings in a virtually independent country. They can recall in three generations the Jacobites who fought the King for his throne. True, they no longer control the lives of their lessers. But they are utterly ruthless with the lives of their peers. Oh, it’s all very well for the adventurers like Tenny and Johnny Bruce. They’re the stuff the regiment is made of, and the regiment is everything to the Maclarens. Everything. It’s the others I pity,’ she said.
She studied the girl’s reflection in her mirror and added slowly, ‘Actually, I imagine Donald took the best course, just stepping out of everyone’s lives. Best for the children as well. They’ve brightened Mother’s life no end, particularly now that Willie is getting on. Anyhow Donald was in no state to look after them, after his wife was killed. And he did provide for them, one mustn’t forget. He did provide.’ She shrugged. ‘They’ve had a good enough home at Cluanie.’ She paused, thinking. ‘I dare say Harry might have been happier if he’d remained in South Africa. He hated leaving when Mother brought them home from Kimberley after Brenda was killed. He wept and wept. His first six months in Scotland he never left his room. Just sat, hunched up over the fire, with a rug about his shoulders, Mother said, just like a little old man. Bodachan, the servants called him. Poor little old man. Losing both his parents within a week didn’t help, naturally. And Scotland’s always been a misery for him, I think. The climate never suited his health, and all that hearty good nature up there mortified his whole being.’ She shuddered delicately. ‘Frankly, I understand completely.
‘Johnny Bruce, however,’ she said with a wry smile, ‘simply thrives on it. He’s a real Maclaren at heart, all adventure and daring. Poor Harry, it’s a lot, living with a younger brother like that. Harry’s rather like his father, I should think, rather read a book any time. And poor dear Albert Maclaren is only really happy by a warm fire with a good pot of tea. Sandhurst must be a misery for him. It’s very hard, you know, being like that in such a family. I suppose even a Maclaren litter must throw up the occasional runt, but they’ll never admit to it. The Maclarens simply don’t understand anyone who isn’t happy out in the drenching rain killing things.’