And who could blame her? Mabel thought. The hors d’oeuvres were as shriveled as Howard’s expression; the roast beef had dried out and was cold; and the Yorkshire puddings—which Mrs. Jessop prided herself on—were like old plaster, or so Noonie commented, somewhat gleefully.
The other result of the long delay to dinner was that everyone had had far too much champagne. For Blundy had taken it upon himself to go round and round the drawing room with the linen-wrapped bottle, topping up the ladies’ glasses as though it were a drinking competition at the Olympics, Mabel thought now, woozily. She had tried to catch his eye, tried so many times to offer him a sign, saying, No more, please. Thank you! And it wasn’t the young Mabel was concerned about; it was her mother, who, more loquacious than ever, had found it difficult to maneuver herself through each doorway: a problem, Mabel realized, if one is walking sideways.
Now her mother found every utterance hilarious and was still clutching a glass. Mabel tried to catch Howard’s eye, tried to signal to him, nodding in the direction of Noonie. But Howard simply stared blankly back at her. And Daisy, the culprit and cause of the delay, appeared unusually subdued and pensive. Mabel heard Iris say, “Penny for your thoughts?” and saw Daisy smile back at Iris and shake her head.
Later, as Howard and Dosia helped Noonie up the stairs, Miles finally appeared in the hallway.
“Well . . . you see, I knew Daisy was back,” he began, sheepish under Lily’s scrutiny, “because I bumped into Stephen Jessop . . . and we somehow ended up at the Coach and Horses.”
“Stephen?” Daisy repeated.
“Yes, Stephen,” said Miles, nodding once too often for Mabel’s liking. “And as the feller’s going off to New Zealand . . .”
“Who’s going to New Zealand?” asked Howard, descending the stairs.
“New Zealand?” repeated Mabel.
“Who’s going to New Zealand?” said Howard again.
“I’ve always rather fancied going to New Zealand,” said Dosia.
But Miles was now whispering to Lily, who stood with her arms folded, her head turned away.
“Right. Well, I rather think Miles should have something to eat,” said Mabel. “I presume you haven’t dined, Miles?”
He shook his head. “I’m terribly sorry about all of this, Mabel.”
Howard turned toward the drawing room, shaking his head, muttering to himself about no one telling him anything anymore, and Mabel led her son-in-law off toward the kitchen, reminding herself wearily, silently, that the provision of meals was one of the primary roles of a mother, even a mother-in-law.
In the drawing room, Iris played Paul Whiteman on the gramophone, and she and Margot Vincent seemed like new best friends, Daisy thought as she sat down. The two women sat together beneath the oriel window, smiling at each other, moving their heads and hands in some private blissful rhapsody to Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do.” Lily had disappeared upstairs to her room, sulking about Miles, and Dosia had gone to talk with her.
After so much disruption, the struggle to get everyone together, Mabel had insisted that the men take their port in the drawing room. They sat at the far end of the room in a smoky huddle round the card table with their glasses and cigars. Daisy sat with her back to them, their cigar smoke, like the music, drifting over her as she thought of Stephen’s words, which were from time to time—whenever the music quieted and ebbed away—interrupted by politics.
“Self-government!” her father bellowed. “Mr. Baldwin should pay heed to Winston,” he added loudly, not anticipating a cessation in the loud crackle of Mr. Whiteman’s orchestra.
“I’m afraid your empire has had its day, old chap,” said Reggie, and Daisy detected the trace of a smile in his voice. “You simply can’t halt progress—nor should we . . .”
When Dosia reappeared, she sat down next to Daisy on the sofa. “Everything all right with you?” she asked, patting Daisy’s hand.
Daisy smiled and nodded. Of anyone, of everyone, she’d have liked to talk to Dosia, to tell her what had happened with Stephen and ask her advice. But it was impossible to do so then and there, and she’d have had to shout it all out above the din anyway, which would certainly not be the thing to do.
The music picked up again, and over it, through it, muddled in with love and New Zealand, was Howard: “Astounded! . . . willful destruction . . . communism . . . end of us.” Someone laughed: Reggie, Daisy thought. And she heard Ben saying something about people predicting the empire’s end for as long as he could remember but he couldn’t see it happening in his lifetime, and Reggie used the word certain and said whether any of them liked it or not it would happen. Then Iris and Margot began to sing: “Blue days, all of them gone, nothing but blues skies from now on . . .”
At the other side of the house, a tight-lipped Mrs. Jessop slammed a Crown Derby plate down on the pine table.
“Just a few slices, please,” said Mabel, meekly.
The large knife in Mrs. Jessop’s hand seemed to move through the air toward the lump of cold meat in a decidedly haphazard fashion, to Mabel’s mind—producing terror. Miles looked on vacuously from the table.
“We’re all frightfully sorry about this, Mrs. Jessop,” Mabel said. “I know it’s terribly late to be . . . And after dinner was . . .”
Mrs. Jessop stopped and turned to the clock on the wall, knife in hand. She said nothing, simply stood staring at it for a few seconds, then turned and began slicing the meat.
“Well, if everything’s quite under control . . . ,” Mabel said, without finishing the sentence and without waiting for any answer, and she left the kitchen.
She walked back along the passageway and sat down on the bench in the shadows by the unlit tree. She could hear Margot singing, “Blue days, all of them gone, nothing but blue skies from now on . . .” Sadness swept through Mabel. She felt her head begin to shake, felt a tear escape and roll down her cheek.
It was a while later when Daisy heard the men emerge from the billiard room and Ben ask her father if all the women had retired and Howard say, “Well, yes, of course,” and quite sharply, as though it were an impertinence to be asked such a question. Now the house was unusually silent, the room empty but for the two of them, and she, locked in a trance, a sort of stupor, was lost in Stephen’s words.
Stephen Jessop loved her. He loved her. The universe had taken something away—her romantic, idealized notion of her father—and then given something back. Unexpectedly, she had crossed a threshold, she thought, grappling with reason for a moment: She had left her childhood and moved to a new plane, which required a new understanding. One in which from the ashes of disappointment rose hope, freedom, new vistas and the possibility of independence. To run away with Stephen, to travel to the other side of the world with him, was surely the stuff of romantic fiction. And yet it was real. It was possible. And before this day she had not known. Because Stephen’s love was different from her mother’s, father’s and siblings’, and different, too, from the measured affection Ben Gifford called love.
This love knew no boundaries or borders; this love planned and moved forward, crossed oceans and went back in time. This love remembered. This love—too intimate to be affection—was as luminescent as the embers glowing in front of her and as unfathomable as the shapes within the dimly lit room.
When, eventually, Valentine spoke, his voice was soft and mellow, more than a whisper but not quite whole. He said, “This is my favorite time of day.” It was not a question, invited no reply. And so they continued their silence for a little while longer, until he rose to his feet, walked over and offered Daisy a cigarette. He sat down, nearer to her now, and staring upward he said, “You know, I don’t blame you for disliking my mother or me.”
She felt newly magnanimous, cocooned in love. “I don’t dislike you—or your mother,” she said.
“But I wouldn’t blame you—if you did.”
“It’s . . . a difficult situation, but part of life, I suppose. And you and I are innocent, not party to . . .” She couldn’t think of the words at that moment and left the sentence.
“I understand you and Benedict Gifford are sort of engaged,” he said after a while.
Daisy smiled again. “No, we’re not sort of engaged . . . or engaged.”
There were footsteps in the hallway and Blundy appeared in the doorway. “Ah, I do apologize. I thought everyone had retired for the night, miss.”
“Not quite, not yet, Mr. Blundell,” Daisy replied.
The man nodded and closed the door.
“You’re quite different from other girls of your class.”
“I’m not entirely sure what you mean by my class. My father’s in trade—as his father was before him. We’re hardly aristocracy. We’re paint makers, traders who’ve done well; that’s all. And isn’t England filled with traders and market-stall holders?”
Val didn’t look at her, but he smiled. And the not looking and the smile intrigued her.
“What about you? I know nothing . . . other than you write . . . and that your mother is an actress and happens to be my father’s mistress.”
She saw him wince, then close his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she rose to her feet and walked over to the table, where the snow globe sat next to the large glass-domed taxidermy diorama.
“I was looking at that earlier . . . it’s rather beautiful,” he said.
“The birds?”
“No, the globe.”
“I used to think that, too. I used to think it was magical.”
“And now you don’t?” he asked, moving toward her.
“No, I don’t . . . I don’t trust it.”
She picked it up, gently shook it. And as she watched the tiny snowflakes fall upon the tiny Eden Hall, she felt his breath on the side of her face as he asked, “And why do you no longer trust it?”
“Because it’s an illusion.”
As she placed the globe back down on the table she felt something graze her cheek and turned. He didn’t flinch, didn’t speak. He didn’t smile and neither did she. Her heart did not pound; the earth did not give way. And when he placed his mouth over hers, she closed her eyes and imagined Stephen.
The landlord rang the bell again: “Last orders, per-leeze!”
Stephen raised his head and glanced around the pub. There were still a few: the couple sitting beneath glinting horse brasses in the snug by the fire, holding hands; and others up at the bar. He smiled at the old bearded chap seated near him, then looked back at the girl, her elbows propped on the wooden counter in front of him: a strawberry blond blur, all eyes and red lips.
“I’ll be finishing soon,” she said. “So don’t you go rushing off anywhere.”
She stood up, ran her hands over her waist, her hips. “There’s plenty of sloe gin and baccy at my house,” she said, moving away, winking at him.
He tried to smile. He’d forgotten her name.
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t intend to do that,” Val said, stepping away from Daisy. “Forgive me.”
They walked through to the hallway and stood in awkward silence at the foot of the stairs. He bowed his head, “Good night, Daisy,” he said, and he waited as she went up first.
But there was no way she was going to be able to sleep. She felt the same as she did after she’d had that revolting tarlike coffee the last time she’d been in London and she and her mother had met Iris: her heart beating quickly, her mind veering off in every direction.
Inside her room, Daisy paced in circles. She’d been kissed. She’d been kissed at last, but not by the one she had wanted to kiss her. The one she wanted to kiss her said he loved her but seemed reluctant to kiss her. The one she didn’t want to kiss said he might love her and that he wanted to marry her. And the one she had kissed considered it a mistake.
Moving in circles, round and round, Daisy’s thoughts returned to one person: his face, his look of despondence when she’d realized the time and jumped up. She had never said, I love you . . . I love you, too.
She stopped, closed her eyes: She had not given him anything. She’d simply said, “I’m sorry, I have to go.” That was all.
She glanced at the clock by her bed, then picked up her coat.
“It’s Tabitha,” she said again.
She had linked her arm through Stephen’s, and all he felt was its weight.
“Just look at them stars,” she said, halting abruptly on the snow-covered road and lowering the beam of her torch. “There’ll be no more snow tonight.”
Stephen was no longer sure of exactly where they were, or of where they were headed, and at that moment he didn’t care.
“I’ve always quite fancied you, you know,” Tabitha began again as they gingerly moved on. “Yes, I quite like the silent types, me . . . Still waters run deep, my mother says . . . It’s a film, you know? . . . Came out in the war, I think . . . Some of those old ones are ever so good . . . I love the pictures, me . . . The Regal get good films now, you know . . . Yes, all the new ones . . . Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and that other funny one, the one who falls over all the time,” she said, beginning to giggle at the mere thought of the nameless man. “We could go there, you and me . . . Saturday matinee . . . I love the Saturday matinees, me . . . They have Mrs. Peabody on the piano then; she’s ever so good . . .”
On and on and on, Stephen thought. Tabitha was certainly not a silent type, and yet the incessant flow of her words was strangely comforting to him.
“So what do you say? Shall we?”
“Yes . . . why not,” he said.
As she gripped his arm tighter, he briefly wondered what he’d just agreed to, but it didn’t matter: He’d be gone from there soon enough. Probably never see the girl again. He felt a vague twinge of guilt. He said, “But I can’t make any promises, not at the moment.”
“Well,” she said, “I hadn’t expected any promises, Stephen Jessop . . . at least, not yet.”
The next thing Stephen knew he was on his back with a giggling Tabitha sprawled half on top of him. And he was laughing too. Laughing up at the night sky and the hopelessness of his situation: because right at that moment it was funny, all of it. That he had asked Daisy Forbes to consider running away with him to New Zealand, that he’d told her he loved her, that he’d thought—imagined—she’d agree: It was so funny that for a while Stephen could barely breathe. When he did finally stop laughing, he heard Tabitha say his name in a new voice. Then she took his hand and pulled it inside her coat, her blouse, and onto her breast.
The flesh was soft and warm, and a million stars shone overhead. “Daisy,” he whispered.
The door was unlocked, the light in the lobby still on, and Daisy moved quickly up the stairs.
“Stephen . . .”
She crossed over the sitting room, knocked and then opened another door. A wrought-iron bed with a knot of blankets, two impoverished pillows and a pair of discarded long johns lying upon it took up most of the room. A small chest of drawers leaned at an angle next to it, butting up against the low window. There was no wardrobe, no space for a wardrobe or for anything else, but pinned on the wall above the bed—slightly torn, frayed along its edges and creased from folds—was a map of the world, a third of it shaded pink.
She moved over to the chest. Scattered on its surface were a few pennies, a packet of cigarette papers and a pamphlet titled Discover New Zealand. She picked up the pamphlet, casting her eyes over the color picture on the front: a man and a woman walking arm in arm toward green mountains. Then she saw the piece of paper and her name, “Dear Daisy . . .”
The writing was slanted, difficult to read and dated two days before, the fateful day she’d learned of her father’s infidelity.
Dear Daisy,
I have lo
ved you for so long I can’t begin to remember. And I pretty much reckon that I know you better than most and that I love you more than anyone—because I love ALL of you, everything about you. The way you speak and say my name, the way you raise one side of your perfect mouth when you smile and then look downward. I love your dimple, the tiny mole on your cheek beneath your left eye, those tiny fine hairs that curl along your high brow and that one strand you pull at and wind round your finger. And your fingers, every one of them, and each thumb, and the way you blow your hair away from the side of your mouth before you speak, and the way you walk—with your shoulders sometimes hunched up around your ears, deep in thought. And the way you stare at things, even a dried-up leaf, examining it as though it’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I love that you come to me and ask me stuff, and then come back and ask me again. I love that you talk to yourself and the mad old clothes you wear, that old fur coat you wander about in, and all those hats, and your bare feet in summer, your bare feet in summer walking on grass . . . And the shape of you, sound of you, color of you
Her hands shook; her eyes burned. She put down the letter, placed the pamphlet over it. Then she turned, ran back through the room and down the narrow staircase.
Chapter Fourteen
It was an exquisite morning, Daisy thought as she waited for the others to assemble outside. The temperature had risen overnight and a white mist hung over the hill, splintered by thin yellow shafts from the pale sun. The air was filled with the susurration of melting snow, the drip-drip sound from branches and icicles.
“Miles can walk,” announced Lily, scowling as she emerged from the house with her husband trailing after her.
“Well, I’m certainly not walking in these shoes,” said Iris, following them both out, a dead fox hanging from her shoulder, and, for once, wearing a dress.
“I’ll walk with Miles,” Daisy offered quickly.
“I’d prefer to walk, too,” said Valentine.
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