Daisy smiled. She and Valentine had exchanged a polite “Good morning” and “Happy Christmas” with each other at breakfast, but no more than that.
“I’m in the doghouse,” said Miles, as the three of them set off down the driveway. “I’ll be treading on eggshells all bloody day . . . and that’s just how my damned head feels.”
Valentine laughed. “Forget about the dog’s house; it’s a hair from the animal that you need.”
Daisy linked her arm through her brother-in-law’s. “How was Stephen—when you saw him last night?” she asked.
“Same state as me . . . or worse.”
“Did he seem . . . upset, unhappy?”
Miles shook his head. “He was quiet. But he’s always quiet, isn’t he?” he asked, turning to her.
“And what did he say to you about going to New Zealand?” she asked.
“I can’t remember . . . just that that’s where he thinks his future lies. Seems to think he’ll be better off there than here.”
But as they headed through the gateway, onto the wet road, Miles said, “Ah yes, it’s all to do with some girl or other.”
“Isn’t it always?” said Valentine.
The three had almost reached the church by the time Reggie’s car passed by, with Mabel in the front and Noonie, Dosia and Lily seated in the back. It was closely followed by Howard’s, with Stephen at the wheel, Howard up front, and Margot, Iris and Ben in the back.
“Poor Gifford,” said Miles, shaking his head as the car disappeared round the corner. “Must be bloody awful being told what to do the whole time . . . to be owned by Howard.”
“We all are to some extent, Miles,” said Daisy. “Or have you forgotten that he paid for your house?”
Church was filled with more than the usual fur stoles and homburg and trilby hats, and more than the usual pious faces. The Forbes family and their guests filled two pews reserved for them at the front. And though Daisy sang or mouthed the words to some of the carols, and said each amen on cue, she was distracted. It had ever been thus. Going to church had always made her think on herself, and some of her best and most vivid dreams had happened under the damp and stained plaster of that lofty ceiling.
She was aware of the person likely as not sitting at the back of the church and had turned, looking over the sea of hats and plumes, to find him. But she had not seen him. Staring ahead, facing the altar, she pictured the slanting hand once more, wishing she could recall all of the words, the exact words. She imagined Stephen, sitting at his table, writing them . . . But had he been drunk then, too? The hand had been very slanting . . . Doubt whispered in her ear, replacing the word love with lust. It was a word she knew went with drunk. She closed her eyes: She would have to think all of this through, would need to write everything down and ponder some more.
Through most of the service Daisy studied Valentine Vincent, in the pew immediately in front of her. She noted the way he remained bolt upright when the rest of them knelt in prayer, the fact that he was the only one not to go up to take Holy Communion; the way he tilted his head to one side so that the dark hair resting on the collar of his camel-hair overcoat rose to reveal the pale skin on the back of his neck; the way he followed the service, carefully turning flimsy pages, and, from time to time, the sound of his voice as he joined in with the singing . . . The only man who had kissed her.
But why had Stephen not kissed her? He’d been about to, she thought; when they’d stood together in his tiny lobby and he’d pulled her to him, hadn’t he been about to kiss her then? But there had been so many moments when they’d been only a whisper away. And she could remember them all, going right back to the time he’d sucked the wasp sting from her wrist: standing in the greenhouse, his eyes locked with her own tearful ones, his mouth pressed to her skin. When she’d told him a few days later that she had been stung again—and this time on the other wrist, he’d examined her arm closely, running his fingers over and around her flesh, and then looked up at her and smiled. There was no sting, he said.
That was the problem with Stephen, Daisy thought, lifting her eyes back to the stained ceiling: He was simply too honest; too good.
Sitting toward the back of the church, Mrs. Jessop looked down and ran a gloved hand over her new navy blue coat. “Pure wool with cashmere,” she’d said to Nancy earlier that morning, twirling about the kitchen. It had been her Christmas present to herself, bought at Elphicks department store in Farnham with some of her savings and all of her Christmas money from Mr. and Mrs. Forbes.
Her husband had smiled and said, “Very nice,” in the usual way. But she knew she’d given herself something better than nice. She had given herself something promised to her years before, when she’d stood outside a shop window on Oxford Street, with Michael.
“I’ll treat you to a new coat this winter,” he’d said. “Which one do you fancy?”
She hadn’t been sure. They were all so expensive.
“What about that navy blue one?” he’d said, pointing. “Pure wool with cashmere, it says.”
She’d laughed, told him he could buy something like that for her after they were married, after they’d saved up enough for a deposit on that cottage and were settled.
He’d pulled her to him, and in broad daylight—on that sun-drenched busy street—he’d kissed her.
“You’re having it,” he’d said, smiling back at her. “You’re having pure wool with cashmere. I’m not having my wife go about cold and shivering next winter.”
Pure wool with cashmere, Mrs. Jessop thought, raising her eyes, smiling up at the brown stained ceiling.
Mabel had waited inside the church doorway for Howard, had held on to his arm as they walked down the aisle, each of them smiling and nodding at acquaintances and neighbors. Now Howard sat pressed up against her side. The pew was a little crowded, but each time she shuffled to make space for him, he seemed to move along too.
During the vicar’s sermon, Mabel remembered her excursion of the previous day. She thought of her son outside in the churchyard, beneath the snow and frozen earth, and she closed her eyes: Dear angels, keep my boy warm, wrap him in your love and glorious light and keep him safe for me . . . always and forever. Amen.
If he’d lived, Mabel thought, opening her eyes, my life would be different. And she tried for a moment to picture a ten-year-old Theo, dark haired like his father, still in short trousers, all gangly legs and missing teeth. She would never have let Howard send him away to school; she’d have kept him with her, had him sitting there alongside her now, holding his hand, smiling back at him as he shuffled and whispered through the service. A boy, she thought, still just a boy.
When Howard placed his hand upon Mabel’s, resting in her lap, she almost jumped. But she waited a minute before pulling them away. How could he know? How could he ever know or understand?
Mabel stared at the gray velvet cloche hat in the pew in front of her. She heard the vicar say something about the sanctity of marriage and heard Howard sigh. She watched dust motes dancing in a shaft of luminous light and saw the years ahead unfurling like a long carpet; saw herself alone at Eden Hall, silver hair bent over a tapestry, wrinkled hands fiddling shakily with threads, and she and Howard returning to that church, week after week, year after year, as Theo slept on, ignored, forgotten, unspoken.
“No.”
Howard leaned toward her. “Hmm?”
She shook her head, fixed her gaze on the large floral arrangement at the foot of the pulpit. Could she do it? Could she really leave Eden Hall? There was her mother to consider, and Daisy. Though Daisy was less of a concern: She could go and live in London with Iris. An image of Daisy staggering out of some nightclub doorway flashed in Mabel’s mind, and she shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment. But if I don’t do it now, I never will, she thought. I have to do it. It’s not as though I’m asking for a divorce . . .
And as though hearing her thoughts, the vicar’s voice boomed the word divorce, and Mabel jumped again.
Less than an hour later, when everyone was back at the house, standing in the sunlit drawing room with a glass of sherry, Stephen and the vicar helped Howard through the front door. Margot, in her gray velvet and silver fox stole, followed, carrying Howard’s gloves, hat and cane. He had slipped by the war memorial outside the churchyard gate.
“Bloody stupid!” Howard said, limping, grimacing and shaking his head. “Bloody stupid.”
Mabel directed the men to the drawing room, where they helped Howard to the large sofa. “Shall I send for Dr. Milton?” she asked.
Howard shook his head. “No, there’s no need. I’ll sit with it up for a while . . . I’m quite sure it’ll be fine in an hour or so,” he said, looking back at her beseechingly.
As people stood about offering sympathy by way of explanations—“So easily done”; “Could have happened to any one of us”—Nancy appeared with a bucket filled with snow and ice, and Mabel ushered the vicar, now holding a glass of sherry too, and her guests back into the hallway, closing the door and saying, “I think we’ll let Howard have some privacy.” She was in many ways still a Victorian and had no desire to see naked feet—particularly Howard’s naked feet—in her drawing room before luncheon.
“How did it happen?” she asked Margot.
“I’m not sure . . . but I imagine it was his weak ankle.”
“Oh yes,” said Mabel, “his weak ankle. You’ll have to watch that.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mrs. Forbes had been to the kitchen. There was no alternative. Christmas lunch would have to be delayed, she’d said, in order that Mr. Forbes’s ankle could be dealt with and the swelling given time to subside. “I know, I know,” she’d said as Mrs. Jessop dropped a wooden spoon onto the bench and raised her hands in the air.
“It’s most unfortunate and I can’t apologize to you enough, Mrs. Jessop, but these things happen. And I absolutely insist that you all dine first. The family can wait.”
It didn’t seem right to Mrs. Jessop: Never in all her years had the servants eaten their Christmas dinner before the family. But as she said to Nancy, who was she to cast spersions.
When Mrs. Jessop finally untied and removed her apron, she waved it about her hot, flushed face and then sat down next to Nancy. Mr. Blundell said grace: “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.” Then he raised his glass, “To the cook,” he said. “To Mrs. Jessop.”
“Well, tuck in, everyone, and a happy Christmas to us all,” she said, trying to smile.
There were eight of them seated at the table, including their guest, Mr. Blundell’s friend, Mr. Brown—the butler from Beacon House, whose family had gone to a place called Saint Morrits for the duration. He was an odd combination: a sweaty little man, sulky in the face and a bit of a show-off, too, Mrs. Jessop thought, which seemed wrong for someone in his position—even if his family were in the Alps. He seemed only to want to talk about that place, which the family had taken him to, once—and to imagine and then announce what the family were likely to be doing at any given moment. Each time he’d gone silent, whenever Mrs. Jessop had asked him—because he’d been hovering about the kitchen for that long, watching her—if he was quite all right, he had simply shrugged his shoulders. Not once had he asked if he could help, even when Hilda—more slack-jawed than ever—dropped the jug of bread sauce on the stone floor. It wasn’t her fault, Hilda said; she had been distracted. And it was a fair comment.
“Glue-vine?” Hilda had repeated, on her hands and knees, mopping up the spilled sauce.
“Yes, it’s a local drink,” said Mr. Brown.
It sounded quite disgusting to Mrs. Jessop.
The man had then said how magnificent the shallies were “when seen twinkling across the mountainside at night.” Mrs. Jessop presumed they were some sort of nocturnal animal with eyes like a cat or a fox: A wild shalley perhaps? And Hilda must’ve thought the same.
“So you don’t see them during the day?” Hilda asked.
Mr. Brown had laughed. “Why, yes, of course,” he’d said. “Many of them are huge, as big as this house.”
The man was clearly a fantasist, Mrs. Jessop thought, either that or on some queer medication. Then, more sympathetically, she wondered if Mr. Brown was in fact a war veteran like her husband.
The table, the long one from the kitchen, had been moved back into the servants’ hall—where it used to be when there’d been more of them and they had taken their meals there and not in the kitchen. Nancy and Hilda had decorated the room with paper streamers and tinsel and bits of holly. And everyone looked ever so smart in their civvies, Mrs. Jessop thought: Smart as carrots, they were. And the table, with a proper linen cloth on it, very nice. Yes, ever so nice, she thought with a sigh, finally picking up her knife and fork.
Mrs. Jessop liked Christmas Day. She liked being there at the big house, cooking. Well, it was the best day of the year for any cook, and she’d rather be cooking there than in her own pokey kitchen. And his lordship was always very generous at Christmas, always made sure they got a few bob extra in their packet—as well as the wine, which she now sipped; then she nodded across the table to her husband.
Poor Old Jessop, she thought, watching him. But he enjoyed his food. And, like her, he enjoyed the occasional tipple. He enjoyed the simple things now, and had done so for many a year.
He’d only just been appointed head gardener when she first came to Eden Hall. They’d married the following year. He’d been older than she’d anticipated a husband to be, and quieter and less passionate—a good deal less passionate. But by that time she’d known all about the repercussions of passion, and settled on him for his kindness and honesty and reliability. And, after all, she’d been no spring chicken herself.
It was the year after their marriage that Stephen had arrived and, a few years later, the war. She hadn’t realized, none of them had, that it was the beginning of an end, or that it would go on for so long, or that afterward, even those who came back, who’d been spared, would be so . . . different.
Three years in the trenches had knocked it out of her husband. And it had taken her a while to realize that, to understand. Because he’d never spoken of it—of any of it—and even early on, when he first came back and had nightmares and night sweats—which still happened from time to time—and the shakes, tremors and headaches, well, it was enough for her to know that the things he didn’t speak of lived on, with him, and with them. In her mind, in her memory, the war was a thick, dark mist that had descended and engulfed them so that they’d all been lost. When they finally emerged, nothing was the same. There was before the war and after the war. That was all.
The Isaac Jessop who had gone off to war had never come back. But sometimes, when he smiled or stared back at her with those watery blue eyes—eyes forever damaged by mustard gas and fire and a vision of hell—she caught a glimpse and was reminded. But there were still those private moments, moments when she wished her husband could be more like one of the heroes in the True Romances that Nancy passed on to her to read: the ones who told their women what was what and where they were headed (usually to London, and in a fine carriage). She liked to read them in bed with her cocoa as her husband slept beside her, and then compare notes with Nancy over their elevenses: whether the hero had been right to shield his young ward from the truth about her errant mother, or errant father, or her spent or unspent inheritance, and whether they’d have lived happily ever after. She liked to continue the story, speculate on what would and could have happened after The End. She always imagined lots of kiddies and long and blissfully happy lives, but Nancy usually foresaw obstacles: the evil brother or cousin in the West Indies or one of the colonies—or the one killed in the war not being dead at all—returning to England to claim Something or Other Towers or whatever th
e place was called.
Mrs. Jessop wished her husband had a bit of an imagination, and she wished he still had opinions, too, because it got ever so lonely having opinions on your own. But he seemed to have left all of that over there. All that talk of what they’d do, the places they’d see, what would happen in their lives, had come to an abrupt halt in 1914. They had still not been to Brighton, and now she doubted they ever would.
But it is what it is and that’s that, she thought now, watching him in his yellow paper hat and three-piece suit, with his pa’s old watch chain hanging across his waistcoat.
In truth, it had been an emotional few days, what with it being Christmas and after so many late meals, and then seeing That Woman at the carols last night, and again at church this morning. And thinking of poor Madam and all she had had to put up with, and with That Woman and all her swank in Madam’s house and as bold as brass sitting at Madam’s table on Christmas Day, eating Madam’s turkey and goose, and pulling Madam’s crackers. Well, it was wrong, plain and simple wrong. And she felt guilty. She felt like a traitor, as though she had been inadvertently colluding with the enemy, or worse, she thought with a shudder, as though she were a German.
Thinking of all of this—That Woman, the Germans and the war—had quite put Mrs. Jessop off her food. For her, the meal was spoiled. She pushed her sprouts to the side of her plate, put down her knife and fork. And then, glancing about the table, she wondered if any of the others felt the same. It would never have happened in Mrs. Reed’s day, she thought, none of it. She would have done something. And she would never have allowed for any sulkiness or bragging in her kitchen, either.
She had been at Eden Hall for almost two years when Mrs. Reed, the former cook, who everyone knew was really Miss Reed, retired and went to live in lodgings situated between Birch Grove, the home for unmarried mothers, and the Golden Hind Tea Rooms. These three buildings were right beside the bus stop, which was very handy for Mrs. Reed, and also handy for the women with straining coat buttons and small suitcases that Mrs. Jessop had often seen on her day off from her usual table by the window at the Golden Hind. Months later, she had sometimes seen and recognized one or another of these women again, more streamlined but still clutching a small suitcase. And as she’d watched them at the bus stop she had pondered the tragedy of it all. To have to travel to foreign parts, wait to give birth, then give away a baby and catch a bus home.
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