After Leonie had bought the house in Eastgate Street for her beloved foster parents, the heart had seemed to have gone out of them. Admittedly, Leonie noticed this only gradually. At first she had thought it to be her imagination, but then little by little she realized that the Lynches quite definitely no longer had the same feeling of energy about them. It was as if now that they knew they were quite safe from such day to day terrors as being thrown into the street, as if now the poorhouse no longer threatened, they felt uneasy. As if,
inexplicably, now that they knew they did not need to dread the rentman’s knock at the door, or face the idea of the pawnbroker’s shop, their reason for living had quite gone, and with it all their old energy and boisterousness.
‘But you’ve never owed money, never, not all the time I was growing up here. You never owed a penny piece.’
‘No, Leonie dear, that is true, but there was always the threat of it, and that was what gave us the energy to go on with things. Now we don’t have to go on with anything, and so we don’t. It’s quite taken Ned into a different world. He keeps talking to himself, and standing in the street. I wouldn’t know him for the man I used to live with. He was always so cheerful, always out and about and making the best of everything. Now he seems to have lost it all, all his old zest has quite gone.’
‘But all you have to do now you own your own house is to enjoy the freedom and put your feet up in front of the fire.’
‘There is a definite limit as to how many feet can be put up in front of fires, Leonie dear, really there is. And now we can afford to have coal any day of the week, the fire’s stopped being the treat that it was, don’t you see? And now my Ned owns his own house he has no friends, because no-one else in the street owns their own house, and no-one else in the street has no worries, so it has put them on the outs with him. No, I am afraid it is a quite definite unhappiness to us, owning the house. We were better off before, when we were not so well off, and had the fear on us. There is nothing quite like thinking that you might owe someone sixpence to lend the necessary tara-boom-deay to life, dear, really there isn’t.’
‘So what do you want me to do?’
Leonie looked miserably round the little, clean, freshly painted room and wondered at this new and strange kind of misfortune that she had brought upon her family. It seemed so strange, so out of the blue unhappy, to think that good fortune did not bring happiness.
‘We did talk of selling the place to someone else and using the money to go travelling, but my Ned hates sea travel, and foreigners, and nothing to be done to make him like it either, I am afraid, dear.’
There was a long silence, and as they supped at their tea and the canary in the cage beside the window sang, Leonie searched and searched in her mind for a solution to this unexpected turn of events, this soggy, grey sort of misery that she had unwittingly brought upon her beloved foster parents.
‘There is a place to which you could go. It does not involve sea travel, although it does involve change.’
‘And where would that be, dear?’
Aisleen Lynch’s gaze reflected a kind of bored hopelessness as Leonie leaned forward of a sudden, and showing a degree of cheerful encouragement that she did not feel squeezed her foster mother’s hands.
‘The place that could be a change but does not involve a sea journey is – the country.’
‘The country?’
‘Yes, the country.’
‘You mean where there are fields and trees, and that?’
‘Yes, and that. After all, Ned comes from the country, that is where he was born before his father had to come to town to find work, and that is where he used to talk of returning, when we were little.
‘Why, bless you, dear, he did, didn’t he? But I mean to say, the country?’
‘I have a friend, I went to stay with her at her country house if you remember – in Sussex, near to Ruddwick it is, and I know that she has great need of a lodge keeper and his wife, because she told me so at the time. The present people are not at all to her liking, being uppity and too good for the job and always wanting to close the gates if they don’t approve of the style of coach, and not approving of motor cars. More suited to the style of the old Queen. They are not the kind of lodge keepers she wants.
‘Lodge keeping?’
The way Aisleen said it made it sound like ‘lion keeping’.
‘She is Mrs Lawrence Leveen, and you will like her. Mrs Dodd’s friend Mrs Goodman is a friend of hers, and Mrs Dodd’s a friend of yours, so that is the best kind of person you could lodge keep for, the friend of your friend’s friend, wouldn’t you say?’
Aisleen Lynch’s cheeks became quite pink with a sudden excitement. She had been feeling out of sorts for weeks now. What with Ned not having to work any more, and everything the same, day after blooming day, gone were the excitements of wondering if he would stay at the pub too long and ruin his dinner, or how his day at the market had been. Without the need for paying rent, there really was no need for any of the usual excitements. Nowadays they had to look for something to do to fill their day. Before there had always been too much to do.
But it could be different if they moved to the country. There would be a job to do, and no-one to point the finger and whisper that they owned their own house, and were different from the rest of them.
And besides, a lodge keeper was a position of responsibility. It would keep Ned looking out of the window and herself busy doing the same, and they would not be house owners any more, they would have to mind their ways to keep in with this Mrs Leveen because she would own the lodge. The excitement would come back again, the feeling of racing against life in case you lost the roof over your head – all that would come back, and make her feel quite herself again, and Ned too.
‘Very well, dear, you ask your friend, and I’ll tell Ned to be ready to sell the house. That will cheer him up. Everyone in the pub will talk to him again. He will be able to hold his head up high and know that no-one can say that he is different from the rest of the street.’
At which Aisleen gave a happy sigh of relief and smiled for the first time that month.
Following her visit to the little house in St John’s Wood Dorinda had found that the days seemed to drag drearily by. Mr L had paused only briefly between shooting weeks before he was off again to the Continent on business for the King.
And although they had made love and enjoyed themselves – perhaps because they had made love and enjoyed themselves – Dorinda now found herself in the awkward position of missing her husband, quite passionately, and with all her heart and soul, which was really not her. Her heart actually ached for him, and she could not eat. Not only that, she could not sleep, and had been forced, night after night, to take to reading books and such like, which again was really not her.
‘If only we could get on with the invitation list for the ball,’ she moaned every morning to Mrs Goodman. ‘That would take my mind off missing Mr L. But as it is, we have not been called upon by anyone of any consequence, just the kind of people who wish to entertain us, and those are never the people one wants to ask to a ball.’
‘Quite so, Mrs Leveen, but let us face it, there is hope, because Mrs Dodd heard from Madame Chloe who heard from that uppity Poiret, or was it Lucile, at any rate she heard that Lady Londonderry was speaking in praise of your beauty only the other day at one of her mornings, and that several people heard her too.’
‘She was speaking of me?’
Dorinda leaned forward excitedly, because they both knew that being spoken of was the first step to public approval. But seconds later her eyes narrowed as she saw that there could be a catch to this rumour.
‘Yes, but how did she speak of me, Mrs Goodman?’
‘Well, that is the best part, Mrs Leveen. She spoke of you as Mrs Lawrence Leveen. No doubt of it at all, that is how she spoke of you, not as – not in the other way at all.’
Dorinda sighed with relief. She could not count how often she had cursed
the soubriquet that had made her so famous overnight. Dorinda Blue had been known by the whole world. She had been truly famous. Yet here she was now, hoping against hope that somehow everyone would forget her fame, that no-one would remember the very reason why she came to the attention of everyone, including the King, namely her stunning blue eyes.
‘Oh, I doubt that I care any more, really, anyway.’
She gave Mrs Goodman a sudden rueful look.
‘After all, if one has blue eyes, and a pretty name, who minds that everyone knows you for them? Or anything else for that matter?’
Mrs Goodman nodded, but she did not believe her. In truth they both knew that her name had been linked to scandal and that without it she would not have been famous.
‘I think you do very well, whatever anyone calls you.’
Mrs Goodman’s affectionate look almost made up to Dorinda for the fact that they both knew that yet another morning had gone by without one of the big three hostesses making what was always known as a morning call even though it was often made in the afternoon.
And not only that, but Mr L was still not home.
Mrs Blessington was able to call on Mercy that particular morning, because John had left in his motor car to go to a meeting with his family lawyer in East Grinstead. The days following Mercy’s outburst had been grim indeed, with breakfast taken in silence, luncheon the same, and dinner – with the sole exception of when Mercy played the piano afterwards – in the same deathly vein.
The toll on Mercy might have been terrible had she not felt so determined. Indeed she had never felt more determined. She would not and could not be put down ever again, not by her husband, not by her stepmother, not by her father. She was and would be true to her new self.
‘You are not a suffragette, but you are, I think, as I am now, an advocate of the True Woman.’
Mercy was in agreement with this. She knew all about the True Woman movement that had come from America, although it had not touched the lives of any of her contemporaries – or if it had she had not noticed it – surrounded as they were by nurses and servants, and encouraged by Society to abandon their real vocation in life, that of motherhood and nurturing, education and home-making, in preference to the worthless social round.
‘The True Woman knows that the power of the earth, the power of the world is, in reality, all hers. She knows that her real vocation in life is the nourishment and continuity of life, that being a mother is the greatest vocation that a woman can aspire to. Being a mother is being a teacher, it is being an artist in the kitchen and the drawing room and – dare I say it’ – Mrs Blessington gave a rich laugh – ‘elsewhere too!’
Mercy loved to be with Mrs Blessington, and this despite the fact – or nowadays perhaps because of the fact – that she knew that John would not really approve of the friendship, seeing that Mrs Blessington was not a member of the County. Mercy, on the other hand, appreciated Mrs Blessington’s direct understanding of life and her kindness. Above all she treasured her sound common sense.
‘You must never ask Mr Brancaster to give up his hunting, because to do so will mean that you will find yourself married to a man who is not the man you married. You married Mr Brancaster for love, and you loved the man for what he was, and still is – it is now up to him not to give up anything, but to see what he can give to you. The ball is in his court. And if he chooses to leave it there, well, my dear, there is nothing much either of us can do, except pray for him, for you will certainly never change now that you have come to this new understanding of yourself. Once he has accepted this he will, I know, come to you. That is all there is to it, I am afraid. Mr Brancaster must learn to give – not give up.’
Mrs Blessington gave Mercy much-needed heart. Having lost her own mother when she was young she thought she knew what sorrow and making the best was about, and she was quite prepared to face such things again. Not that she could be eternally sorrowful any more. She had to think of John Edward, and of his future. He would not want a drippy kind of woman for a mother. He would want her to be strong, so that he could learn to be strong, not so that he could fight wars, but so that he could face up to the realities of emotions, and how they affected people. That was where true strength was needed – in facing up to life.
After Mrs Blessington left her Mercy went in search of her son, and picking him up from his pram she held him against her, and his warmth and his need for her gave her comfort. After all, when all was said and done, in the true scheme of things, he was more important now than either John or herself. He was the future. It was for him, more than anyone, that his mother had to be strong.
And she was strong, until she saw the grim expression on John Brancaster’s face the following day, and realized that he was going to ‘summon’ her to the library, much as in the old days her brothers were ‘summoned’ to be beaten, or she was ‘summoned’ to be put in a back board or have the palms of her hands beaten with a riding whip. Immediately her stomach went up and down, and she felt that particular feeling which was so un-grown-up, but so real none the less, of her insides turning to water, and her mouth going dry. Yet she would be strong. After all, she have given birth to a son, she had a baby now. He needed her to be strong. She put a pin in her hand, and walking to the library, in answer to the summons, she stuck it resolutely into her thumb. Then, nodding to the footman to open the door for her, she swept into the library.
‘Mercy.’
John was not alone, and this was awful, because she had thought she would only have to face him. He was with someone who, from the fusty look to him, and the frowsty look to his face, Mercy knew at once must be the family lawyer.
‘Yes, John.’
‘I have been a little worried, to say the least, about the events of the past months, so one way and another I thought it best, given that we now have a son and heir – I have a son and heir – that I call in Gibbon and perhaps formalize matters between us. Nothing more, you understand, just a formality, to talk things through with our lawyer, so that we can reach some kind of understanding.’
The lawyer stepped forward at this.
‘Mrs Brancaster, I am Gibbon, from the family firm of Gibbon, Gibbon and – er – Gibbon. We have looked after the Brancaster affairs for many a long year, and before that too.’
‘Mr Gibbon.’
Mercy did not shake his hand. She did not want to shake his hand. And more than that, she could not shake his hand because she was busy sticking her pin into her thumb to give her the necessary courage not to show the fear that she was feeling inside. She had pinched her cheeks hard, too, knowing that the pallor of her face too often betrayed how she was feeling.
Gibbon must have been somewhat put out by her silent refusal to clasp his own outstretched, stubby-fingered hand.
‘As I say, we must reach an understanding before things go too far, and one or either of us makes a decision we might regret.’
Mercy nodded, but no more, for really there was very little she could say at this point to a man who thought fit to call in a family lawyer rather than speak directly to his own wife.
Gibbon here thought it was right for him to make plain his position.
‘Mrs Brancaster, my family have been privileged to look after the Brancaster family for over eighty years now, and I have, today, been asked––’
‘Mr Gibbon,’ Mercy interrupted, after turning momentarily to look at her husband, ‘you were very mistaken in coming here. Indeed, I am afraid you have very much wasted your morning.
Knowing what I do about my husband, and having been warned by my father, by letter, that he might well try to turn the events of the past months against me, I took the opportunity of visiting my own family lawyer in London.’
Gibbon glanced momentarily at his employer and then, because he too, like the lawyer, seemed momentarily stunned, finally said, ‘And what might you know about your husband Mrs Brancaster?’
My father gave me a letter in which he has made quite plain his own kno
wledge of his second wife’s adultery with Mr Brancaster. He knew of it for some years before our marriage, but had imagined that upon my marrying Mr Brancaster he would give up his mistress. Such was not the case, and because of this my father in fact sent a message to my husband. The worm has turned.’
There was a stunned silence.
‘So you see, John,’ Mercy said, at last removing the pin from her thumb, ‘had you talked to me, instead of calling in this – man, things might have been made easier for you, or at the very least less embarrassing. This might have been a matter, as it should be, between husband and wife, not for a lawyer.’
‘You should have spoken about this earlier, Mercy.’
‘Had you not called in this man I might have done, or had you, John, not – what is it called? – sent me to Coventry. I tried to explain to you that I had changed, remember, at dinner?’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Really, when I think of it, the message should be Two worms have turned, should it not?’
Gibbon cleared his throat, and then, at a nod from John Brancaster, he picked up his papers and seemed to shuffle them endlessly until at last he left the room, and John turned to look at Mercy.
‘You will regret this, Mercy. You will regret humiliating me in front of Gibbon.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, John. I think it is us, not me, who will regret what has happened.’
She stared at him for a few seconds, realizing that the expression on his face was once again that of the man in the Park, and of the man who had stood at the graveside of the young mannequin in Mortlake what seemed like years ago.
‘Do you know, John, when I first saw you, you looked just as you do now.’
‘How very uninteresting.’
‘Did you seduce that young mannequin who died? Is that why you were at her funeral? Is that why she died? Was she having your baby?’ she suddenly added, thinking out loud.
The Love Knot Page 34