A Song Twice Over

by Brenda Jagger

  Nor could she reconcile herself to Almsmead. A handsome house, of course, so beautifully set at the bend of Colonel Covington-Pym’s river, containing everything – her father kept on telling her bluntly – to make any woman happy. Her mother’s house, built to ease her mother’s fears of dirt and noise and riotous assembly in the city streets and into which her mother now welcomed her as rapturously as if she had not seen her these ten years.

  ‘Oh my darling – what joy … I knew, as soon as I opened my eyes, that something wonderful was going to happen today.’

  ‘Good Lord, mother, I have only come from Frizingley you know, not from Arabia Deserta.’

  But, although John-William’s brows drew warningly together at Gemma’s tone, Amabel did not notice it.

  ‘I am sure I have no idea where that might be,’ she answered sweetly, quaintly, more of a little birthday-party girl than ever in her ribbons and curls.‘I am simply determined that you shall not go back again. We shall keep you here – Tristan and I – you may be certain. Shall we not, Tristan?’

  ‘Rather,’ he said cheerfully, reliably. ‘I should jolly well hope so.’ Although, as a matter of fact, he was going off to Leicestershire that afternoon to look at a horse with Felix Lark and a pack of minor Covington-Pyms, and he did rather hope that Gemma wouldn’t want him to cancel. Unlike her – God bless her! – if she did.

  ‘I shall stay to lunch and see you off,’ she said when, rather hesitantly – not wanting to upset her for the world – he reminded her; swiftly, pleasantly setting his mind at rest before giving her attention to her mother’s luncheon guests.

  Or were they indeed her mother’s guests? Or Linnet’s? Ebullient Mr Moon and his two faded, fidgety children, a pair of tame little sparrows to their father’s prancing, curly-headed peacock – all three with their eyes forever straying to Linnet – and a serious, middle-aged man, the doctor from Far Flatley, who was looking at Linnet too.

  Two grown men and a puny, unhappy boy competing for her attention, which she gave like handfuls of tiny diamonds, just enough to dazzle and then make them long for more when the sparkle was scattered so daintily, so artfully, elsewhere. Her whole, diamond-sharp mind on her task of being the only woman – anywhere she happened to find herself – to be noticed and wanted. Her dear Aunt Amabel watching her with fond amazement.

  ‘Miss Linnet – do give me your opinion – I cannot rest until I know what you think …’

  ‘Miss Linnet – may I show you – ask you – tell you …?’ And what they were really saying was ‘Linnet, look at me – at me.’

  ‘Are we to eat today?’ enquired John-William Dallam sourly. ‘Or next Tuesday.’

  The dining-room at Almsmead was high and enormous and disturbingly unreal to Gemma as she took her place at the table, a screen of thin glass, it seemed having arisen between herself and these others – her family, her husband, their chosen friends – who now appeared, sickeningly if not perhaps suddenly, to be members of one species, she of another.

  So had it always been. Now she was ready to acknowledge it, to see herself fully and finally as the cuckoo in this swansdown nest, who had never belonged here and yet had never had any choice but to remain.

  She saw it clearly now. She saw, too, that her mother – bound as securely by her father’s love as a Chinese emperor might bind the feet of his concubine – had receded more than ever into childhood, her growth irrevocably stunted. (What had Daniel said? ‘He keeps her a child so that she cannot challenge him’? Not entirely, although the result had been the same.) She saw, somehow too plainly, how little it took to make Tristan content. A hearty luncheon. A trip to Leicestershire. The certainty of a good horse and a good meal tomorrow and most days thereafter. The company of like-minded men, ‘good fellows’, ‘jolly decent chaps’and – she did not doubt it – chance-met, easily forgotten encounters with ‘obliging’women.

  She saw that Linnet would very likely fail to find contentment anywhere.

  She saw, most of all, that her father was tired, short-winded and short-tempered. Unwell.

  The meal over, they took a stroll, father and daughter together, over Almsmead meadows to the quiet, shallow river, neither of them being much inclined to listen to the schemes of Mr Adolphus Moon for parties and picnics and ‘rustic entertainments’for which – although the presence of his wife forbade him to offer the hospitality of his own home and gardens – he was most enthusiastically willing to pay.

  ‘A masked ball, even. Why not?’ he had been saying as John-William had taken his daughter’s arm and led her outdoors. ‘With our dear Mrs Dallam as a Dresden shepherdess. Yes, yes, dear lady. Who better to portray the very heart and soul of porcelain than yourself? And I know of a most highly talented theatrical designer who could whip up the costumes in a trice. You may leave it all to me. And to Miss Linnet, of course, who shall be dressed as – yes – good gracious, I see it all too clear. Diana the Huntress, my dear – or Artemis as the Greeks called her. Beautiful and eternally chaste. Forever. Beyond the reach of mortal man. Alas. Alas.’

  ‘Damned posing fellow,’ grunted John-William as he stumped over the fields towards the water.

  ‘Mother seems to like him.’

  ‘Your mother likes anybody who takes the trouble to be civil to her. You know that.’

  She knew.

  ‘And it’s Miss Linnet who likes him – or likes what he brings here. The riff-raff he entertains from London and calls “my artistic friends”. The backstage gossip. The money. Always a few bottles – or a few dozen bottles – of some wine nobody but Miss Linnet has ever heard of in his carriage. Always French chocolates and hot-house flowers, which would be all very proper if the sweets didn’t come in silver filagree boxes and the flowers tied up with little gold chains that Miss Linnet is wearing now around her wrists – whether she’d care to admit it or not. Always something or other he just happens to have in his possession and wants to get rid of, so that anybody kind enough to take it off his hands would be doing him a service. Trifles, he calls them. Well – damned expensive trifles, in my opinion. I don’t like it, Gemma. And I don’t like all the whispering and giggling she does with Felix Lark, either, and that idle tribe of cousins and God knows what else he drags around with him, trampling all over my garden, talking their damned hunting jargon and drinking my claret. She even had that scoundrel Goldsborough, from the Fleece, breathing down her neck the other day. And whether he hunts and shoots with the Larks and the Covington-Pyms and is related to half the County – as Miss Linnet pointed out to me – or not, I don’t trust him. And that’s that. I don’t like it at all, Gemma. You’ll have to watch our Miss Linnet – one day.’

  She chose to ignore the implications of that.

  ‘I don’t suppose Mr Colclough would like it either, father. Let’s hope he doesn’t get to know.’

  John-William snorted his contempt.

  ‘Makes not a ha’porth of difference, lass, whether he gets to hear of it or not. Because she’ll never get him to the altar. And if his mother thought there was the least chance of it, then she’d put a stop to Linnet’s game just as fast as Lizzie Braithwaite did. But she knows her Uriah. He’ll go on saying his prayers another twenty years and then wed a fifteen-year-old with enough money in the bank to ease his conscience. And as for Miss Linnet she’d do well to lower her sights and settle for what she can get while she can get it. Because her looks won’t last forever. There’s the doctor, for instance. I keep asking him here, putting him in her way and hoping she’ll see reason. A widower with a couple of hundred a year and four young children to bring up. That’s the kind of husband she ought to be aiming for. Nice little practice in Far Flatley that she’s quick and clever enough to help him develop. And she’d be a dab hand, I reckon – if she set her mind to it – in getting his children educated and set up in life. With the thousand or two I might settle on her he’d be glad to have her. And good to her. She ought to think about that.’

  ‘She won’t,’ said
Gemma, feeling very certain. Suddenly quite distressed.

  ‘I know. Which is why you’ll have to watch her, lass. She’ll be here – like as not – in your mother’s house, twisting your mother around her little finger. Taking the place over, given half a chance, and your mother with it. When I’m gone, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, father.’ She saw no point in pretending that he might be immortal.

  ‘I reckon you’ll have to give up the manor and come and live here then, Gemma. Because going back to Frizingley would break your mother’s heart. And I can’t have that, lass. Can I?’

  No. She understood that he could not. Since it was he, after all, who had put the swaddling bands on Amabel’s nature, giving her those tiny lotus-feet of a Chinese concubine on which she could never stand alone. Child-wife, child-mother, who would accept each and every sacrifice easily, naturally, without understanding that a sacrifice had been made, like any babe in arms.

  Her mother and Tristan she had always bargained for. Not Linnet.

  But what difference did it really make? Except to strengthen her growing conviction that when women of her sort hoped for freedom all they were really doing was waiting for others to die.

  It shocked her. And hurt her. She bowed her head and accepted it. So be it. It had always been so.

  ‘I’ll look after her, father.’

  ‘Good girl.’ He had expected no less. ‘Although you’ll have your work cut out, I’m telling you. Because when I’m gone your husband will be legally in charge of you – and of some of the brass I leave you.’

  ‘Oh yes, father. I know.’

  ‘I dare say you do. I’m no fool, my girl. I dare say you thought it over and came to the conclusion that you could keep him on a short rein. Well – and so you could if you had nobody but him to deal with. It doesn’t take much to keep him happy. I came to that conclusion myself, when I agreed to let you wed him. But she won’t let go of him, mark my words, once she finds out she’ll never be Mrs Colclough or Mrs Anything else that’s grand enough to suit her. She’ll be at him all the time to do things he’d never think of on his own. To assert his rights. To take control. And you’ll have to fight her tooth and nail, my lass, for control of him. And for your mother’s peace of mind. There’ll be no leaving him to his harmless amusements in the country – if that’s what you’d planned – because they won’t stay harmless, once she gets wind of her opportunities. She’ll have him down at the mill, every verse end, plaguing Ephraim Cook and my lawyers and bankers for my money. Your money. Well – they’ll give him a hard ride. I’ve seen to that. But what I can’t tie up in a legal document is Miss Linnet’s temper, and her spite, and all the ways she’ll very likely find to upset your mother. Nor the way she can queen it over your mother, at your mother’s expense. No, I can’t do that. And neither can you, from Frizingley. Not if you want to make certain that it’s your will that’s done. So that’s that, lass – once I’m gone.’

  He had no need to ask if he could rely on her. She had no need to promise what she had been bred and conditioned to perform. He squeezed her hand, those old man’s tears he so detested rising, as so often now, to his angry eyes. And he was angry, without knowing exactly why. If only she’d been a boy. If only Amabel had been a woman. He loved them both, in the only way he knew. The only way life had taught him. Had he done well?

  ‘So make the most of it, lass,’ he told her gruffly, not caring to investigate his true meaning. ‘While you can.’

  She drove back alone to Frizingley, having said her friendly, affectionate goodbyes to Tristan.

  ‘I hope the horse turns out to be a success.’

  ‘I don’t really need another horse, you know,’ he’d offered, perfectly ready to give it up should she think him extravagant. Wondering, just a little – as he sometimes did – what he was really doing to earn his keep.

  ‘My darling,’ Linnet had murmured, patting an airy ringlet, an airy flounce of her muslin dress. ‘Can one ever have too much – of anything?’

  ‘If you like it,’ Gemma told him flatly, ‘then buy it.’

  ‘I say.’ He was, to his sister’s evident amusement, rather embarrassed. ‘What a good sort you are, Gemma. Absolutely first-class.’

  She thought of him on the drive home, seeing no reason to alter her opinion that he was a ‘good sort’himself. A man who would prefer to do right, if it could be managed without causing too much fuss, than to do wrong. A man of charm and beauty whose body, as she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, had had no greater substance for her than a beam of sunlight on summer grass. A happy, shallow man who could never be deeply harmed.

  She could still smile at his easy, sunbeam shadow as she had always done. Yet no weight had ever oppressed her like the brilliant gloom of Almsmead, the slow pavane she would have to dance there of duty and devotion to the child her father would leave her. What had he said to her, the man who had so inspired her last night? And this morning? ‘I was not born to live in a cage and neither were you. I believe I was born to grow. And I must fight anything which stunts me or stifles me.’

  Yet how could she do that when what stifled her most were the ones she loved? At least – how could she fight for long?

  What had her father said to her, speaking from unacknowledged regions of his heart and his conscience?

  ‘Make the most of it, lass. While you can.’

  She walked the quarter of mile to the school-house as she often did, finding Daniel alone, as she had known he would be at this late hour of the afternoon, correcting exercises in the empty classroom, his mood restless enough – fevered enough, it seemed to him – to pack up and leave; yet too intrigued, involved, moved – dear God – to make up his mind to do it.

  All day he had thought of Gemma Gage. All day. Her plight overtaking him so completely that at times he had stood inside the head, inside the skin, of a woman caged by her conscience. And he had not liked it. A woman of honesty and courage and worth. How could he go when she needed him? Yet that was captivity too. And if he had understood her need aright, how dare he even approach her, much less hope to fulfil it? For she was the last woman in the world he would run the risk of offending.

  Yet when she came into the chalky, chilly schoolroom and stood before him in the slow-gathering summer twilight her face was calm and gentle, older in its female wisdom than his own, the hands she held out to him firm and steady, although once he had taken hold of them he did not know what else to do.

  Should he kiss her again? It would be no hardship.

  ‘Daniel …?’ And the naked honesty in her face, her awareness of the enormity of the risk she ran, her full acceptance of it, seemed marvellous to him. Beautiful. Exciting, too.

  ‘Gemma?’ He wanted to kiss her now, wanted to know her and learn her and discover her. To unlock her and let the riches and the sorrows, all the hopes and joys and shades and textures of her nature come spilling out. Into his hands. But, smiling, she freed one hand and, with a light touch, held him back.

  ‘Daniel.’ Could he doubt the pleasure it gave her to speak his name. ‘Let me tell you that I have only a little time – to myself, I mean. Just a short while, I think, to be myself. My father is old and ill, you see. And I shall be needed – at home – quite soon. As women are. And when the need arises then I shall go. I think you will understand.’

  Yes. And far more. He knew now exactly what to do.

  ‘Gemma.’ He said it clearly, precisely, meaning every syllable. ‘Shall we make love together now. As friends, who care about each other?’

  The radiance in her face answered him, warming him beyond awkwardness to a point where making love to her seemed easy and natural. As if it had happened a dozen, joyful times before.

  ‘Yes, Daniel. As dear, close friends.’

  It was a radiant, loving promise. And he knew that whatever promises she ever made to him she would keep.

  Taking her to his bed – experiencing a moment’s anxiety that his sheets might not be quite fresh – he
saw the truth in her, the enduring strength, undressing her slowly, carefully, with deep reverence for everything in her that he so prized. A brave and desperate woman. A little brown cob of a girl lying trustingly beneath him. Sturdy. Serious. Sweet? He put his mouth to her shoulders, tasting the smooth, amber skin. Yes, sweet and very soft around the contours of her breasts, fragrant in the cleft between them and the place where they gave way to ribs and flanks, solidly, sweetly curved.

  Kissing her body he fell into a dream over it, feeling it move gently, confidingly beneath him, whispering to him, timidly as yet, that although not virgin, it had never been truly touched before. And that, above all, must be his concern, his aim, his deepest joy. Her pleasure. Its slow gathering from limbs his hands roused at first to hope and expectation, over which his mouth breathed and caressed and made promises into every crease of her flesh, into which his own body finally sank as an instrument of her fulfilment, seeking it out, coaxing it from her with every dreaming, gentle, dallying stroke. Arousing harmonies and playing upon them, drawing them out, until he knew her to be throbbing with his music, every note of her leaping to its first crescendo. And then he held her for a long time, kissing her cheeks and her ears with closed lips, cradling her and murmuring to her, lavishing a shower of tiny, tender caresses upon her to guard her from any hint of shame.

  ‘You’re a lovely woman, Gemma.’

  ‘Oh no.’ She put a hand to his lips, no shame in her anywhere that he could see. ‘You don’t have to say that, Daniel.’

  ‘I don’t have to say anything. You’re a lovely woman.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  And because she was not asking for compliments but stating her considered opinion he grew angry, on her behalf. And glad of it. Since he had now found something else to give her.

  ‘You’ll let me be the judge, I reckon. And I’m not talking about height and colour. What’s that? It fades. And one gets used to it in any case. I’m talking about you, Gemma. What you are. What you have inside you. And by those standards – real standards – you’re a lovely woman.’