I was nodding, trying not to look too eager.
‘But you must promise not to tell anyone,’ Cara went on. ‘Oh Lord, listen to me! I’ve always hated that, haven’t you? I promise not to tell anyone, and then tell you not to tell anyone, and you’ll extract the same promise from whoever you tell . . .’ She sounded almost hysterical.
Just then we were forced to abandon the conversation to negotiate a birch sapling which had fallen most inconveniently across the path. It was slim enough for us to step over, but we had to concentrate on keeping our skirts clear of the up-thrusting branches and so I had a little time to think. My questions, none of which I could possibly have asked her out loud, were: first, why in heaven’s name with marriage to Alec Osborne weeks away was she planning to sell the diamonds she was surely to wear at her wedding; second, what could she possibly need the money for; third and most important, why on earth had she told her mother about it? Had it been me, I should have bribed the jeweller with everything I owned, and then simply slipped the things back into the bank and kept my head down.
Over the tree at last, we patted ourselves down and regarded one another.
‘You poor dear,’ I said at last. And I meant it. Mrs Duffy was not someone I should care to cross, unconnected and unbeholden as I was. I could hardly imagine Cara revealing to her mother not only that she had been planning to offload the famous collection for cash – and how did she manage to get them out of the bank, anyway? – but that the family treasure was Woolworth’s best.
Cara was shaking her head and spoke in a very calm voice.
‘Please forget I said anything at all. It’s just that I’m so very confused and I don’t know who to turn to –’ She broke off, shook her head again, then repeated even more firmly: ‘Please just forget I spoke. It’s probably nothing.’
We were just emerging from the wood then, and we could see across a stretch of parkland the coloured frocks of the ladies on the croquet lawn, and a short procession of dark-suited footmen carrying tea trays across to a ring of chairs where Alec Osborne and Daisy were seated, with Silas in turned-down waders looking like Dick Whittington standing between them. My heart sank. Tea outside in summer one must learn to put up with, but this early in the spring one ought really to be able to count on a crackling fire and an armchair; Daisy has gone terribly hearty and Scotch in some ways over the years. Still, I could see a footman on his way with a pile of rugs and at least the tea would be hot. Cara, beside me, laughed suddenly.
‘Silly old me with my wedding nerves,’ she said, unconvincingly.
‘More than likely,’ I said, unconvinced.
‘Although to be honest I don’t care how awful the wedding is, as long as it actually happens and isn’t called off.’ She had lost me again. Why should the wedding be called off? Were the diamonds her dowry and Alec unlikely to take her without them? But then why should she sell them? To get rid of him? If so, it had not worked, for he didn’t look like jilting her. What was going on? I forced myself to pay attention to what she was saying.
‘I don’t say that I shall lock myself in a tower and pine to death if it all falls through, but I am very keen to be good and married, and no going back.’
I looked at the distant figure of Alec Osborne, lying back in his lawn chair, laughing at something Daisy was saying, and wondered at Cara’s easy admission of her indifference. I could quite see that she would want to be off despite it, though, since things must be unbearably frosty between her and her parents. They ought to have been grateful really; she might so easily not have told them. At the very least it had been brave of her to come clean.
‘You mustn’t berate yourself, Cara dear,’ I said, wondering if I was yet old enough to pull off this kind of wise condescension, and fearing that I was. ‘You are a good girl, you know, to tell your mother. You mustn’t fret about it. And whatever spot you have got yourself in, everything will be different after you are married.’
‘What?’ said Cara, turning towards me and blinking, clearly having drifted off and making me wonder if maybe her feelings for Alec were less impeccably modern than she had implied. ‘Oh yes, I’m a good little girl,’ she said. ‘I always have been, you know. I do exactly as I’m told every time and it brings me nothing but joy.’ I grimaced, pained to hear such world-weariness in one so young.
Mrs Duffy and Clemence came out as we arrived at the tea table and in the fuss of arranging chairs, cushions and parasols, a few whispered words were exchanged.
‘What have you been asking Cara?’ Lena demanded. ‘Much better for you to come to me.’
I was startled. Was it quite settled in her mind then that I had undertaken to do her bidding? I supposed it was.
‘Why, nothing,’ I said, my startled look backing my words nicely. ‘We were chatting about dresses and flowers, actually. But I do need to speak to you, certainly. Certainly I do.’
‘Come when we are home again,’ she hissed. ‘Come for luncheon next week.’
A few more of the men began to drift back from the river as tea got under way, and there was much protestation from the ladies, who affected to be outraged by the mud and fish scales clinging to their husbands’ clothes and shrieked at the trout tails peeping from basket lids. Daisy, as I might have predicted, was stony-faced; she has always loathed the sight of women flirting in public with their own husbands. Alec and Cara were no help, chatting quietly to each other and ignoring everyone else; Mrs Duffy and Clemence were as thick as ever, sitting close together with identical expressions of pursed disapproval on their mouths, and I’m ashamed to admit I was very poor value too, for I sat utterly silent, brooding.
What was the hold Lena believed she had over the Esslemonts, for it could not be the lame tale she had concocted about the theft? Why on earth did Cara want to sell the jewels? And how could she? Were they not her father’s? And were not all the signs that they were intended for her sister in the end? I was heartily sick of the things already and the trouble they caused. Was there any chance that they would simply turn up again? If not, how would one set about trying to track them down? In the favourite parlour game of my childhood – what was it called? – there was a set of enamel tiles to be passed around, what, who, why, where, when and how, and it did make things a great deal easier to –
Suddenly there it was. When. The little wisp I had been swiping at was in my grasp at last. It was simply this: if the pastes were good enough to fool everyone but an expert and if what Cara had said about the jeweller’s discretion were true, then how could her mother possibly know that the jewels had not already been stolen, by the time of the Armistice Anniversary Ball? Had Mrs Duffy had a valuation done on them just then? One that she trusted? If not, it seemed to me, the switch might have been made at any time at all. It might have been years ago. I wondered if this simple point had occurred to no one but me. What a coup if it had not.
I must pump the Duffys for more details. I might even hint at a softening of Silas’s resolve to worm my way deeper into Lena’s favour. So long as nobody signed anything, surely it was worth a sprat to catch a mackerel; ladies could not, I was sure, be accused of entering into gentlemen’s agreements. I should have to conduct the entire thing with my fingers crossed behind my back, of course. In fact, should I perhaps check with Daisy first that she approved of my spinning a line to reel them in on? No, I would fix my bait and land this all by myself.
‘Are you all right, Dandy?’ asked Alec Osborne. I had been staring in his direction, not looking at him exactly, but he and Cara had fallen silent and were both watching me.
‘You look as though you’d seen Banquo’s ghost,’ said Cara, and Alec shouted with laughter.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Lady Macbeth. What dread deed are you plotting?’ I gaped, which of course only made it seem worse, and Daisy had to hurry to my aid.
‘Or are you trying to remember if you’ve left the bath taps running?’ she said, raising a good laugh from the banking ladies.
‘I was j
ust concentrating hard on something,’ I said, then to make sure I had thrown them off I added, ‘Fishing, actually. Bait, cast, catch. There’s a great deal more to it than at first it seems.’
Clever, clever Dandy. Making my little plans and dropping my little hints. At that point, you see, I still thought it was a game. And my intuitions? I had never had any before, and so had never learned to respect them as others do. I ignored the distant, sickening drumbeat and, full of pride at how I had winkled out my little pile of facts, for the first time in my life I tried to play a cunning hand. If only I hadn’t, if only I had bumbled and blurted as usual, I could have prevented it all. And so although I know they are right when they tell me that evil and madness cannot be contained, I blame myself and I always will.
Chapter Four
Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I heard that the Duffys would be at their Edinburgh house until the wedding and not in London, where I had been looking forward to following them buoyed along on Daisy’s expenses. I wondered again if there could be money troubles greater than the depressing pinch we were all pretending not to feel. Severe money troubles after all might go some small way towards explaining Lena’s behaviour to Daisy and Silas but Mr Duffy, so far as anyone knew, was still comfortable enough. He had a great deal of his property in Canada of all places; and it was well-tended property, that I did know, because I remembered that he and his young wife had been obliged to go there and look after it for what must have been a few rather bleak years in their early marriage when forests in Canada were all the rage.
Hugh had tried to persuade his father to buy some of his own. I just remembered this, since he had not quite given up by the time of our wedding although his efforts were beginning to move from urgency towards a sulky despair as the march of the cross-Canada railway made the venture more and more alluring even as the price crept ever upwards out of his reach. In the first year of married life I had heard the words ‘Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad’ repeatedly until I was ready to scream and I could almost feel sorry for Lena Duffy when I thought about her ordeal and could believe that this period of exile was when she began to turn sour. Perhaps, though, one’s mental image of Canada is unfair; perhaps she did not actually live in a log cabin with teams of Chinamen clanging their mallets against the tracks right outside. On the other hand, sometimes cliches get to be cliches by being true, as is the case with the heather, whisky and tartan view of Scotland; these can be found, at least in Perthshire, in unfortunate abundance.
Even if Canada was civilized, however, all the evidence pointed towards a distinct lack of social whirl for Lena went a bride and returned a matron, her two girls born in quick succession out there, and one imagines (coarsely) that it was not only the desire for an heir which hastened their arrival since after the Duffys’ return home no heir, nor anyone else for that matter, had ever appeared.
I now understood from Hugh that the war had ‘done for’ the Canadian railway and the forests along with it, in a way I did not pretend to understand, that even the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad itself had had to call in the receivers, and that the Canadian Government was now running the show. Of course, Hugh took some bitter pleasure in that, reaching back twenty years and trying to recast his failures as foresight. Miles of Ontario pine trees were not Mr Duffy’s only nor even his chief concern, and so whatever the reason for poor Cara’s trousseau to be coming from worthy George Street (which had to be depressing) I could not believe it to be a matter of economy.
Still, a trip to Edinburgh although galaxies less fun was more easily managed without raising Hugh’s eyebrows than a trip to London would have been and, I supposed, I could combine it with some dreary Edinburgh shopping of my own. So I caught the train from Perth on Friday morning, telling Drysdale to meet me again off the 6.15, and two hours later I was turning into Drummond Place. I supposed the Duffys kept this townhouse to be handy for the port of Leith and yet more of the pies in which Mr Duffy had a finger, and while most of our set laughed at their stodginess, I was struck that day with an unaccountable feeling of envy. I should loathe to be here when I might be in London, of course, but so long as it was never used that way by an unscrupulous husband, I saw how a house in Edinburgh might make a welcome dent in the long months of country life up in Perthshire. And Drummond Place itself was rather fetching in that austere way that Edinburgh has, in parts, when the sun shines.
‘The ladies are away, madam,’ I was told by the equally austere butler who admitted me to the entrance hall. Now, ‘away’ in English, as we all know, suggests a trip far from home but for Scots, who can talk of going away to the shops or even away to their beds, it is always worth some careful checking.
‘Might I wait, then? Are they gone for long?’
‘The ladies are away to the cottage, madam,’ he explained, speaking rather more slowly to me, as though now unsure of my brainpower. ‘The master is at home however, if you care to wait.’
I began shaking my head before he was finished. I could not imagine grilling Mr Duffy for clues and to serve him up the confection of half-truths that was to be my report from Daisy was unthinkable.
‘I shall write to them, then,’ I said. ‘About the wedding. A letter to the cottage will be fine. I only wanted to ask them about bridesmaids’ – um – anyway.’ I did not know the address of the cottage, of course, but thinking I could get it from somewhere, I shrank from asking this terrifying individual to produce a card for me. He was already looking at me suspiciously, although that might have been my guilty conscience, or might have been caused by my peculiarness in offering him so much information (far from normal behaviour). I could feel a blush begin to engulf me and sticking my nose in the air I turned to sweep out.
‘Mrs Gilver?’ came a soft voice from the stairs. Mr Duffy was there, halfway up with his finger keeping his place in a book. I cringed for an instant, then realizing that I was being ridiculous – my fear that everyone around me could divine my purpose was on a par with a child’s belief that it becomes invisible by shutting its eyes – I shook off my silliness and called up to him.
‘I was hoping to find your wife and girls. But I won’t dream of asking you to relay a message. Unless you have a hidden interest in voile which you rarely get the chance to indulge?’
‘Voile?’ he echoed, frowning.
‘I see not,’ I said. ‘It’s a kind of silk.’
‘Ah yes. The wedding,’ he said, and again his face smoothed into a smile as it had at dinner at Croys, a droop of relief followed by a weightless rising in his shoulders, as though he had put down two heavy bags and straightened again. ‘Not long now,’ he said. Very curious, this beaming happiness at the thought of losing his favourite daughter. Offloading Clemence would be a relief to any parent (although Lena seemed to like her well enough) but fathers are usually more gloomy to see the backs of their darlings and I was puzzled. I looked at him for a moment then, seeing the speculation of my own regard begin to draw a matching look from him, I made my goodbyes and fled.
I was only minutes away from Abercromby Place but, unable to face the desolation of the ladies’ lounge at the Caledonian Club, I resolved to slog back up the hill to the National Gallery, there to sit and think until I could get myself some luncheon and begin my afternoon’s shopping.
I had been in a huff (if I am honest) over missing London this year, but I was now beginning to see that I still had to get some clothes for summer. I would give a wide berth to horrid Forsyth’s, sitting there on the corner like a skeletal wedding cake, where I had spent far too many hours of my life kitting out boys for school, and would go instead to dear Jenner’s. I could not quite agree with its besotted architects that it looked just like the Bodleian Library but it had always seemed especially welcoming to ladies, what with the Caryatides and now with the new extension too, where an even larger dress department was to be found. My step quickened, until I remembered: shopping after lunch, thinking and Improving Art first.
On the way, I set mys
elf to come up with a list of innocent reasons why a bride, her mother and her sister might desert their obligations and remove to a country cottage three weeks before a wedding, but before I had entered anything on my list, I was distracted by the sound of someone saying my name.
Alec Osborne was standing ahead of me on the pavement, looking very different in grey town-suiting and rather wan despite the freckle. I stopped and was glad of the chance to catch my breath although I resisted the temptation to puff and put my hand to my ribs.
‘I’ve just come from where I suspect you’re going,’ I said, managing to make my breath last to the end of the speech with only a little rasping.
‘You’ve just seen Cara?’ he asked.
‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘They seem to have gone off to their cottage. Unaccountably,’ I added, for no reason I could have explained. Alec Osborne nodded and screwed up his face.
‘They’re still there?’ he said. ‘I assumed they’d have come home . . . I mean since something seems to have . . . She’s broken it off, you see.’ I blinked once before realizing what he meant.
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘I just spoke to her father and he certainly didn’t seem to think so.’ Alec Osborne fished a rather crumpled letter out of his breast pocket and made as though to unfold it.
‘I assumed she’d written from town,’ he said. ‘But I suppose they would have stayed away, wouldn’t they?’
I could do no more than stare at him uselessly. One would expect a jilted lover to look puzzled and upset but the way he was casting his eyes around and shifting from foot to foot spoke of something else besides.
‘Are you busy, just at this minute?’ he said. I shook my head. ‘I wonder then if you would be so kind –’ He broke off. The expression on my face must have revealed the lurch of dismay I felt at the prospect of holding his hand and there-there-ing maternally while he wept for his lost love. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘At least, I think you think something, and I do too.’
After the Armistice Ball Page 6