“Agnes was always a very hard woman. As a girl she was self-centred and she remained so. She will only think of her own interests and no one else’s. Guy wanted to acknowledge Elizabeth and do the right thing by her.”
“Did she know he was her father?”
“Oh no.” Eliza vigorously shook her head. “She was told that her mother died at her birth; that the mother was Beth’s sister, and Beth and Ted adopted her and brought her up. Obviously Beth couldn’t pass her off as her own, having shown no signs of pregnancy. Seeing that Elizabeth was so tiny she has always thought of them as her natural parents. In fact Beth, knowing her from birth, has been more like a real mother to her.”
“Doesn’t that seem unfair? She is my half-sister, a Woodville. Really I find it hard to understand all these lies, Aunt Eliza.”
“Oh, I know you might think that what happened was wrong, Carson. Maybe you feel I should have given Elizabeth a home. But how could I have explained adopting a child? In those far-off days there was a different standard, a different code. I loved Elizabeth and kept a close eye on her. I don’t see as much of her as I did, but she was and is very dear to me, even though she is rather like her mother.”
“Oh, how so?” Carson was curious.
“You know ... She is always a bit discontented. Always wanting something better. Nothing quite good enough for her. Just like Agnes. Strange, isn’t it? Like mother like daughter ... you know the old saying.” Eliza got up and began restlessly to pace the room.” I don’t know what you are going to do about Agnes, Carson.” She threw a couple more logs on the fire and, as the flames shot up the chimney, rubbed her hands to warm them. It seemed suddenly cold in the room. “In many ways I think Julius may be right. Perhaps you should accept the inevitable. Sell Pelham’s Oak and stay in the army. Maybe that would be the best way, to make a fresh start? Cut the ties with the past and begin all over again.”
Carson leaned back, linking his hands around his knees.
“That’s not the only problem we have, Aunt Eliza. Father has left Elizabeth a legacy. She’s got to know about it.” He paused and gazed thoughtfully at his aunt. “And that means she has to learn about her parentage. It’s time this deceit was finished anyway. That poor woman has got to know the truth.”
“It will cause awful trouble.” Eliza, suddenly weary, shook her head. “I wish now I had never told you.”
Carson rose and went to stand by her side. He too stood looking into the fire. “You couldn’t help it, Aunt. You had to tell me. Father might have had his own reasons for his legacy. He might have wanted to tell Elizabeth about her origins, even from the grave.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Eliza looked over at him. “You have a very good head on your shoulders these days, Carson. You have matured so much. I agree, but I think that in my own way and in my own time I should be the person to tell Elizabeth. You must understand that the repercussions will be enormous on us and on her and her family. No one can possibly know what the consequences will be.”
Chapter Three
Agnes lay in bed, her breakfast tray in front of her, the morning papers scattered around her. But she had little appetite, either for food or for reading the papers. The aftermath of war was not quite what everyone expected. Sporadic unrest, even revolution, continued in parts of Europe and the Balkans and war still raged in Russia. Soldiers returned from the front with no jobs to go to and there were rumbles of unrest at home. An epidemic of influenza had ravaged Europe and killed hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, so that many who had survived the war did not live to enjoy peace.
Not that world affairs preoccupied Agnes Woodville very much, except insofar as they affected her or her wellbeing. She was not one to concern herself about what happened to other people. Her abiding interest was herself, and it always had been. Her whole life had been given to self-gratification, to the pursuit of her own ambitions, which had seemed to reach its triumphant apogee in her capture of the thirteenth baronet, Guy Woodville. When she finally got him, though, he was a pathetic shadow of the fine figure of a man he’d been when she’d first set her cap at him when they were both young.
There was also the undoubted shock that he had no money; but his title, his fine ancestral home and her own barefaced cheek in conning money out of the banks had ensured they had survived, just.
But what was to happen now that Guy was dead and that wretched Carson was buzzing around causing trouble? She was sure that in no time at all he would have people crawling round the house valuing it. There was no doubt that he intended to dispose of it as soon as he could, and where would she be then? Incarcerated in that rabbit warren of a place in Wenham, a small provincial town that she detested and where she would surely suffocate and die.
Agnes had dined with friends the night before at Quaglinos and then they’d gone on to the Cavendish where there was drinking, and the Savoy to dance, so that the sky had been streaked with the pink of dawn when she finally climbed into her bed. But her sleep had been fitful and now it was nearly noon. Even then the day ahead, though half over, still seemed to stretch tediously before her until she joined her friends in the evening for a trip to the theatre followed by cards or, maybe, dancing again at Chez Victor or Ciro’s.
It was the end of July and London was muggy. Normally by this time Agnes and her friends would have retreated to the cool of the countryside, but everyone had been in London for the victory parade headed by Lord Haig, and the celebrations that started then had continued without respite. But soon her friends would go away and she would have little alternative but to return to Pelham’s Oak, though it had even fewer charms for her now that Carson had suddenly resigned his commission and taken up residence there.
Every night was the same for Agnes – eating, dancing, drinking, late, very late to bed. Her friends had the same hedonistic principles as she had. Although none of them were young, and thus most of the men had avoided the war, they danced and partied as though there would be no tomorrow and indeed at one time, in the black days of 1916 and 1917 with the awful never-ending carnage of the war and news from the front, it had seemed there might not be. Fading belles and ageing roués now vied with young people for who could last the longest, who would go home with the milk float.
Agnes moved with a rather louche, hard drinking set on the furthest periphery of London society. Among the women, as well as a few widows, such as Agnes, there were a number of divorcees, still socially unacceptable and barred from the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. There were several very bored married women, and one or two of questionable reputation whose status was not known, with no apparent means of support.
The credentials of some of the men were even more dubious. There were younger sons of earls who had been banished to the colonies in their youth for some misdemeanour and had come home when their parents were dead, to die themselves in the old country. There were raffish business men who had made fortunes in the arms trade and generally profited from the war while remaining out of harm’s way themselves. There were retired military men; men who lived on their wits, and loafers who preyed on rich widows.
Agnes knew how to steer clear of them all while enjoying their company and how to take advantage of a man with money without compromising herself.
Some of them had been friends of Guy’s in his youth and the cachet of Lady Woodville was a valuable ‘open sesame’ when she had first come to London. In the early days of their marriage Guy had come with her, delighted to see his darling shine, marvelling at her qualities as a hostess, the brilliance of her social skills. There had been lavish parties and money seemed to gush as though it came from a deep well, and no one questioned the source.
Even after Guy became ill the entertaining continued without him, the bank offering continuous credit on the strength of the Woodville name.
Now it seemed the reckoning might be near.
Agnes, roused from her reverie by a shaft of afternoon sun stealing across her bedroom carpet, threw back the bedclothes and
summoned her maid, determined to banish unpleasant thoughts.
At three, bathed, refreshed and conscious of a new lease of life, Agnes sallied forth for a stroll in Hyde Park, a short distance away. These days she spent a lot of time on her toilet, especially on her face, to disguise the blemishes of age. Invariably she had a rendezvous with people she knew, also taking the air, and they would discuss plans for the evening’s entertainment either for that night or the future and sometimes, to kill a little more time, she would invite them back for tea at Chesterfield Street.
There had been a half promise made very late at night, or rather in the early hours of the morning, to meet her friend Dolly McGill, once a chorus girl and now the widow of a peer, to take a stroll round the Serpentine or sit and watch the riders in Rotten Row. It was a long time since Agnes had declined to venture into the park without her maid. There was now nothing wrong, she felt, for a woman of a certain age and social accomplishment to take a stroll in an open space within a stone’s throw of her home; but still it was nice to be meeting Dolly and she strolled briskly in the direction of their rendezvous – a gardener’s hut somewhere near the centre of the park.
The park was thronged this summer’s afternoon: lovers lying in the grass, families picnicking in the shade of the trees, children running about with balls and hoops pursued by the family dogs. There were loafers and idlers, couples arm in arm, single women with parasols to shade their eyes from the sun. A vendor was burning horse chestnuts over a brazier, and a flower seller offered posies to the young men, maybe freshly returned from the war, who were strolling with their sweethearts.
In the distance Agnes spied Dolly, who raised her hand in greeting and, as she hurried her steps, she could see that Dolly was with a little group of people, most of whom she recognised. After embracing Dolly, Agnes turned and greeted the others: Maud Featherstone whose husband had been a diplomat, Edith Shiff the wife of a retired Army general, and Matthew Parker who had never done very much in particular except hang around women who were married and therefore “safe”. Much younger than most of her regular set, in his forties rather than fifties or sixties, he was a particular friend of Edith’s, and frequently accompanied her on walks in the park or escorted her to parties or dances while her gloomy old husband remained at home staring into the fire and reminding himself, helped by copious quantities of port or brandy, of days long gone.
As Agnes greeted her friends, one man remained on the fringe looking on. He wore a light grey suit with pearl grey tie and an elegant gold watch and chain hung across his waistcoat. His well-polished black shoes were encased in spats and there was a carnation in his buttonhole. As Agnes turned towards him he removed his bowler hat with his left hand, which carried a cane and, bowing, shook her hand.
“Lady Woodville,” Dolly suddenly became aware that Agnes didn’t know the stranger, “may I present Sir Owen Wentworth? I suddenly realised that perhaps you hadn’t met.”
The stranger, Agnes’s hand still in his, bowed again. He had a full, waxed moustache and twinkly black eyes. He was slim and not very tall, only an inch or so taller than Agnes, and strands of black hair were combed with exaggerated care over a large bare patch on his domed head. The overall effect was of someone rather dapper, possibly, God forbid, in trade, with a fondness for nifty dressing and, judging by the twinkle with which he greeted Agnes, perhaps an eye for the ladies.
“Charmed, Lady Woodville.”
“How do you do, Sir Owen?”
“Sir Owen has not long been back from India,” Dolly bestowed on him an approving smile.
“The army?” Agnes enquired.
“Tea, Lady Woodville. A tea planter from Assam.”
“How very interesting.” Agnes gave him a detached smile and then, as if dismissing him from her mind, tucked her arm through Dolly’s and suggested a stroll round the Serpentine followed by tea back in Chesterfield Street, Sir Owen apparently forgotten and relegated to the back of the small procession that set off slowly through the park and half an hour or so later wended its way back again to where afternoon tea awaited them.
The Woodville town house was a substantial double-fronted, eighteenth century dwelling which formed part of a terrace in an exclusive part of Mayfair built for the wealthy land-owning classes in search of a London residence. The front door led directly on to the street, and black iron railings fenced off the basement area with a steep flight of steps to the servants’ quarters and the tradesmen’s entrance.
The drawing room was on the first floor and ran the length of the house. It was a very beautiful room only recently redecorated in cream and gold to Agnes’s exacting specifications. The cornices, quatrefoils and lozenges in the ceiling had been newly picked out with gold leaf, and a splendid central oval showed Diana the huntress, gilded bow and arrow at the ready, in hot pursuit of her prey.
On the walls hung portraits of Woodville ancestors painted by various famous artists, together with bucolic scenes in which Pelham’s Oak could be seen from various angles. The Adam mantelpiece was adorned with a magnificent Viennese ormolu clock that had been a wedding present to Guy’s parents, and figurines made from Meissen or Dresden china. The furniture was Chippendale or French eighteenth century – there were two magnificent, tapestry-covered Louis XV bergère armchairs – and rugs brought by an adventurous Woodville early in the nineteenth century from far off China and Persia adorned the highly polished parquet floor.
Agnes’s guests sat in a semi-circle sampling the wafer-thin sandwiches and delicious cakes baked by cook that very morning. They ate off plates and drank tea from cups made of the finest Spode bone china. They were waited on by a maid and a footman, a butler had admitted them at the door and the whole atmosphere was one of elegance and wealth. It seemed positively to ooze through the walls.
Sir Owen Wentworth, plate in hand, obviously feeling a little out of place, wandered round the room inspecting the portraits on the walls as the rest of the guests chatted to their hostess. Although she joined in the animated conversation Agnes watched Sir Owen out of a corner of her eye noting every scrutiny, every gesture as he peered at the portraits, the family photographs and the delicately wrought figurines on the mantelpiece and scattered on the side tables. It was clear that he was impressed, and he paused before a rather fine painting of Pelham’s Oak by Sir James Thornhill, the eminent Dorset-born artist whose mansion also happened to be not far from Pelham’s Oak.
This coincided with a lull in the conversation and, as Sir Owen turned enquiringly towards her, Agnes, excusing herself and putting down her plate, rose and joined him.
“Rather fine, don’t you think?”
“There are a number,” Sir Owen’s hand vaguely indicated the other paintings of Pelham’s Oak on the walls. “The country seat?”
“Pelham’s Oak,” Agnes nodded. “The Woodville home in Dorset.”
“It looks very handsome.” Sir Owen was obviously impressed.
“Do you know Dorset, Sir Owen?”
“Not at all I’m afraid.” Sir Owen ran a finger across his luxuriant pair of moustaches. “Spent most of me life in India.”
“And your family came from ... ?”
“Yorkshire.” Sir Owen repeated the gesture, his hand caressing his moustache, and Agnes noticed that his face was very faintly beaded with perspiration. But of course it was a very hot day.
In the background Dolly and Maud, smoke spiralling from their cigarettes, were discussing the latest fashions, the return to soft patterned summery materials – crêpe-de-chine, ninon, chiffon and art silk – after the rigours of war: the raising of the hemline to show silk stockings and daring high-heeled shoes. The wearing of large-brimmed hats and the jettisoning of the head-hugging toque. Altogether there was a liberation of fashion, welcome after centuries of long skirts even to an older generation such as they. From time to time Edith, who was the oldest person present, joined in. As usual Matthew listened, smiled from time to time and said nothing.
Meanwhile A
gnes conducted Sir Owen round the room giving him a running commentary on the portraits and pictures until she rested, perhaps deliberately, in front of a particular one.
“And this is my late husband Guy, thirteenth baronet, painted by John Singer Sargent.”
It was a particularly good portrait of Guy by the distinguished American artist who had settled in London in the 1880s. Youthful and handsome, it bore little resemblance to the decrepit remnant of humanity they had laid to rest only a few months before.
Was it really only a few months? Momentarily Agnes felt a stab of guilt at the thought of all the parties and dances at which she was a willing and enthusiastic participant. But what was the point in mooning about in widow’s weeds? Nothing would bring Guy back.
Sir Owen composed his features into a suitably solemn expression and murmured something inaudible.
“Are you married, Sir Owen?”
“Also a widower, alas, Lady Woodville. My wife died of a tropical disease. She was quite unsuited to the Indian climate.”
“And have you children?” She put her head enquiringly on one side.
Sir Owen shook his head. “I’m sorry to say Lady Wentworth and I were not so fortunate.”
“So, no heir to the title?”
Again he shook his head. Then, after a moment’s pause: “And you, Lady Woodville?” He looked at the picture on the wall a few yards away. “No heir to that magnificent house?”
“Oh yes, indeed. My stepson, Carson, is the heir. He has just left the army. Sir Carson Woodville, Colonel Sir Carson Woodville, twice decorated for gallantry in the field.”
“And how long since Sir Guy ...” Whatever Sir Owen was about to say was lost as there were sounds of movement behind them, voices raised and chairs carefully scraped back as the rest of the party prepared for departure.
“Oh, but you’re not going so soon ...” Agnes looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. To her surprise it was nearly six.
In This Quiet Earth (Part Three of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 5