This time, thanks to Rodney, there was a taxicab waiting for me at the station. It followed the usual route, the one I had walked seven years before—carrying a ton of romance and dressed for the wrong season. And I smiled and shook my head as I remembered. Then the stone facade came into view—solid and unchanged. But it could not be the same, I knew, and as we turned into the driveway, trepidation took hold.
“Sad business,” said my driver, shaking his head as I paid him. “Just have to hope someone buys the old place and it doesn’t go to wrack and ruin like the rest of them.”
As the vehicle drove away, I took a look around me. The gardens bore testament to the cuts in staff Rodney had mentioned. Even at the end of the war, when I had last seen them, the grounds had been better tended . . . Or had they? I wondered. Had I been so preoccupied with what was happening inside that I had simply not noticed what was happening outside?
There was no sign of Rodney, but I pulled on the doorbell before I stepped into the lobby and opened the inner door.
The hallway was all of a muddle—with gardening tools laid out on the small velvet sofa from Ottoline’s dressing room, and random items from the kitchen spread over the mahogany table next to His Lordship’s hats and canes. There were trays of silver cutlery, boxes of miscellaneous china and crockery, some of it wrapped in newspaper and a few pieces displayed on the top, presumably to show what each box contained. I moved on, peering through doorways at more chaos and muddlement. Things from bedrooms were placed willy-nilly in sitting rooms, and hatboxes, trunks and other items of luggage lay about the passageways as though another inmate had just arrived into the madness. Like an old lady who had forgotten her age, the season, occasion or country, I found each part of the house incongruous and all wrong. Only Lord Hector’s study felt calm, felt sane. Like him, I thought, placing my hand upon one of the empty shelves. All that remained were his desk and chair, and the lingering faint scent of cigars.
I walked back to the hallway, and my voice echoed as I called out as I climbed the stairs. I waited a moment before turning the glass handle and opening the door.
Gardenia.
Sunlight flooded in through the tall windows—now stripped of their voluminous curtains. The bed, too, had been stripped, and the bedside tables, with their paraphernalia I was used to seeing—the books, the pills, the glass decanter and tumbler, the photographs of Billy and Hugo—were gone. The dressing table had been moved away from the window and for some reason placed at the other side of the room, deserted of the Minton china bowls that had each evening contained rings, earrings and straps of pearls, and of the silver-topped perfume bottles—and brushes and combs I had once used on my lady’s hair. The closets in the dressing room were empty, the marble bathroom cleared. Ottoline had been packed away into cardboard boxes and crates, cataloged, numbered and tagged. To be sold to the highest bidder. Nothing less.
I opened a window, leaned out of it, my arms resting on the peeling paint, my mouth already hungry for that familiar salty air. And as my gaze hovered and then found the woods in the distance—carpeted in bluebells—I recalled the night I had gone there with a shovel, in the depths of winter, in the depths of war, a lifetime ago. Then I raised my eyes from that budding green to the great big blue, and two skylarks, singing in flight.
I wiped away tears as Rodney approached. He held me in his arms. He said, “Yes, it’s all very sad, isn’t it?”
“It’s coming back . . . seeing it again, like this . . . without her, without them. And the state of the house,” I said, gathering myself and stepping back from him. “Everything all over the place.”
“I know, I know, but that’s how it’s done. That’s the way the auctioneers wish it to be, and it’s all in their hands now, you see.” He glanced down and placed his palms flat on the windowsill, then raised his eyes and stared out across the gardens. “Such a tranquil spot, isn’t it?” he said. “Hard to fathom . . . Hard to believe they’ve all gone.”
I moved alongside Rodney and looked out again. He had been there for almost three decades. This was his home. That was his view on the world. He had nothing and no one, and I knew how that felt.
“I’m very grateful to you for coming back.”
I moved my hand, placed it over his. “I would have been here earlier had I known.”
“Taxi was there—and everything?”
“Yes.”
“Good journey?”
“Yes, fine.”
He glanced at me. “You have a new look . . . Very glamorous, if I may say.”
I smiled. I’d never in my life thought of myself as glamorous.
I waited a moment, then said, “I’ve had an idea, something I want to discuss with you, but not now.”
“Sounds intriguing.”
“It’s a sort of proposition.”
“Not marriage, I hope.”
“No, Rodney, not marriage—at least, not yet.”
He laughed, and then he turned to me. “It’s good to see you again, Pearl. You have no idea how much I appreciate—”
“No,” I interrupted. “You don’t need to say. I’m here because I want to be here, because I wanted to be here with you.”
That evening, Rodney and I took our humble supper—a slice of pork pie, and new potatoes and salad from the garden—to the dining room, along with a bottle of wine from the cellar. “Well, why not?” said Rodney, striking a match and lighting a silver candelabra. Amidst boxes and crates, picnic hampers and fishing rods, and with the unnerving presence of a tailor’s dummy dressed in one of Ottoline’s gowns, we tried to steer our conversation, tried to recall the funnier incidents from our time together in service. But each one delivered us back to that room and a tragedy.
Eventually I said, “Why didn’t you write to me, Rodney?”
“I did. You were the first person I thought of, and I wrote to you. But then, when I remembered your sad departure from here, and how difficult Her Ladyship had been with you, it seemed wrong—unfair of me to even so much as inadvertently put pressure on you to come north . . . the expense of traveling all this way, and Lila, and your job . . . Well, I decided it would be selfish of me to burden you.”
“Were there many there—at the funeral?”
He shook his head.
“I imagined the church would be packed. They knew so many, were so well connected . . .”
“Used to be,” he said, “before the war. But it’s been a long time since we entertained. In fact, I can’t recall the last time we had any houseguests—or even so much as a dinner party.” He sighed. “And unfortunately, it didn’t go into the newspaper, not until after the event. You see, it was all so unexpected . . . and in the absence of any family, well, it simply slipped my mind. I suppose I was in shock.”
“But who organized it—the funeral? Who made all the arrangements?”
“Oh, I saw to most of that, and the Foreign Office dealt with the repatriation of the remains.”
The remains, I thought, and I closed my eyes for a second or two, and then I said, “And there were no family members—none at all?”
“There was a cousin of His Lordship’s—and a woman, Dorothy something or other. Distant relation of Her Ladyship’s, she told me. Though it sounded very distant to me. There was the family lawyer who traveled up from London with two gentlemen from the Foreign Office to attend, and representatives from various local charities His Lordship and Her Ladyship had been involved with and supported . . . But of course many of their friends reside in London and would have had no knowledge—until later, as I say. And, sadly, there weren’t many staff . . . Well, so many of you have moved on, moved away.” He paused for a moment. “I was very sorry to hear about Mr. Stedman—Captain Stedman. I know you and he were . . . were close.”
I tried to smile. I half wondered whether to cut through our polite pretense there and then. But it felt wrong
and disrespectful to speak to Rodney Watts—still wearing his tailcoat and striped trousers—about my illicit affair.
Rodney continued. “Of course, there are many still missing and unaccounted for, you know—not necessarily dead. Only last week—and not far from here—a young fellow turned up. Turned up out of the blue at his parents’ farm . . . Yes, just like that, and having been missing for over two years. Imagine.”
I knew from his letters that Rodney hung on to this ever-thinning thread of hope. I said, “Well, that’s wonderful, and I’ve heard such tales myself”—I lied. Then I asked, “The lawyer, the man you mentioned who came up from London for the funeral, do you know his name?”
“Godley. Theodore Godley. But he wasn’t just Lord Hector’s lawyer; he was a dear friend. They had known each other since their school days.”
“And what is he like—this Mr. Godley?” I asked with studied new nonchalance.
“Oh, uncommonly kind,” said Rodney. “Like His Lordship.”
“Is he married, do you know? Does he have a family?”
“He’s a widower . . . but I believe he has one child. A daughter.”
My heart fluttered; I looked away from him.
He reached over and patted my hand. “I shouldn’t say anything, but I have a feeling you’ll be meeting Mr. Godley for yourself one day soon.”
And I smiled, because of course I already knew this.
Later, in my old yellow room—where Rodney had kindly made up the bed for me—I read through the sale catalog again and circled the lots I intended to bid for. Rodney’s advice about keeping something aside meant I still had a little of my savings left. But as I turned off the lamp, I remembered: I no longer needed to worry about money.
All that glitters is not gold, I thought as I sat in the drawing room on a chair from a guest bedroom. And I watched as I waited. The auctioneer rattled at a fast pace through the contents of the house, like a race through the lives of Ottoline and Hector Campbell: “And from His Lordship’s time at university . . . purchased on their honeymoon in Paris . . . on the occasion of the birth of their first son . . . from the turn of the century, I believe . . . bought at Christie’s of London shortly before the war . . .” On and on it went, punctuated by hands flying up and the slam of a hammer.
“Our next lot—number two-six-seven . . . A collection of scrapbooks and various memorabilia belonging to the late Lady Ottoline . . . Can I start the bidding at . . . sixpence?”
I held up my card.
“Sixpence to the lady at the front.”
Someone else held up a card.
“One shilling to the gentleman in the tweed jacket,” the auctioneer said, pointing his finger to the back of the room.
I held up my card again.
“One and six to the lady at the front.”
I turned to the man in the tweed jacket, saw him raise his card and immediately raised my own.
And so it went on: two shillings . . . two and six . . . three shillings . . . three and six . . . Then: “Going-going-gone.” Slam. “To the lady at the front.”
I waited awhile for my next lot number. The item was the gold gown I had worn for my twenty-fourth birthday, which, as I had seen in the catalog, was from Worth of Paris. Bidding was fast. A woman from London was buying up all of Ottoline’s gowns, and though her determination almost matched mine, I got it. Two pounds, I wrote, next to the circled lot number in the catalog.
Next, the photograph from Lord Hector’s desk, the one of Ottoline at eighteen, and taken around the time of her coming out. And again, my hand went up and down and up and down, until at last the auctioneer slammed down his hammer, and we smiled and nodded at each other once again.
The man in the tweed jacket—the one who had been after the scrapbooks—bought a portrait of Ottoline by a painter named Sargent, and I couldn’t help but wonder who the man was. But Rodney would no doubt know, and I’d ask him later, I decided. By teatime, we were racing through jewelry. I lost the ruby and diamond ring Ottoline had given me on the occasion of my “marriage” to Stanley to the woman in the brown coat. I wasn’t too upset. I’d decided to bid on it only because Ottoline had given it to me. But, and perhaps like Ottoline, I’d also decided bloodred rubies were not really me. I caught my stride in miscellanea and won a number of cardboard boxes filled with what the auctioneer termed general artifacts and bric-a-brac from the house.
That night, Rodney and I compared notes. We sat at the kitchen table and went through the entire catalog. He had bought a number of Lord Hector’s natural history books, one of his canes, a pair of binoculars, two prints, a silver coffeepot, two armchairs, a card table and a decanter and a half dozen wineglasses. And we talked about the other bidders, and the items we had lost out on.
“What about that fellow in the tweed?” I asked. “The one who bought the portrait of Ottoline. Who was he?”
Rodney thought for a moment. “Ah, I think you mean Cecil Armstrong . . .”
I shrugged.
And Rodney, who had never been one for gossip, stared at me. Then he said, “It was a difficult time, that . . .”
I closed my catalog. “Was he the father of Ottoline’s daughter?”
Rodney nodded. And it was, I knew, as much as I’d ever get from him. His loyalty to Lord Hector and Ottoline was lifelong and unbreakable—even in death—and I respected Rodney all the more for it, and I hoped that Hector and Ottoline had known, and shown their appreciation.
Thus, tentatively, I began, “I know we shouldn’t speak about it, that it’s confidential, and not necessarily something you wish to discuss with me, but I just wondered . . . Well, I hope that they remembered you in their wills, that’s all.”
Rodney smiled. “His Lordship has been very generous . . . and indeed was before any bequest. You see, he knew I wished to retire to Scarborough. Have a place with a garden and a view of the sea. It was his gift to me.”
I had forgotten all about Rodney’s bungalow, and though I was delighted to learn that he had been provided for, my plan—the proposition I had mentioned to him—suddenly seemed pointless. Even so, I decided to run it past him: “Rodney, you know I mentioned that I’d had an idea . . .”
I didn’t cry when I left Birling—and Rodney. I knew I’d see him again. I didn’t cry until I was on the train, and not until after York. And I’m not sure what triggered my tears. But perhaps it was nothing more than the sky—that vast northern sky hanging over the Yorkshire Dales: a place Billy had spoken to me about and intended to visit; a place Ralph had been.
Staring out of the smeared window, I was once again overwhelmed by the notion of their absence in the world. And by the cruel shafts of light falling through curtains of rain onto already flooded fields.
Chapter Twenty-three
“But would you really—even if you thought he might be married?”
“Ha, I’m not proud. I’ll take the crumbs from the table,” said Amy.
She was being disingenuous, I thought, falling back on her usual humor. We were sitting on a bench in the park, watching Lila play with the new hoop Amy had bought her. It was Sunday, Leo was once again in Manchester and I’d been trying to broach the subject of sex outside of marriage. But Amy’s attitude was hard to fathom. Like other single women I knew, and not unlike me, she was possessed with a contradictory mix of old-fashioned values and new morality; one that upheld and craved the respectability of marriage and at the same time embraced notions of equality and new freedoms. It was a muddled modern world.
I said, “My friend—that one I told you about?—she had an affair with a married man, once, during the war.”
“Everyone did during the war, dear . . . By the way, what happened to her?” asked Amy. “Did she get herself sorted?”
“I believe so.”
“Are they going to get married?”
“I’m not sure.”<
br />
“She’s a fool to let it go on too long without a ring on her finger.”
“He goes away a lot,” I said absently, watching Lila.
“Aye aye, sounds like she’s fallen for another married one.”
I turned to her. “Really?”
“Well, what do you think? He’s getting his oats without any commitment and then buggering off. Does she know much about him—has she ever been to his place?”
I shook my head.
“There you go. Probably got a wife and family. Six kids, I’ll bet. And another girl shacked up somewhere.”
“She is a little suspicious, I think,” I said after a moment or two.
“I don’t blame her.”
“But he’s very nice—or so she tells me.”
“I bet he is,” said Amy. “They always are. And I know the type. They have one rule for themselves, another for the mistress and yet another for the wife. It’s all about control, you see. Oh yes, I can spot them a mile off . . . They’re always the quiet ones, well dressed, impeccable manners, seem like gentlemen and call themselves bachelors. They pretend to be old-fashioned, and if you talk to them about feminism, they call it newfangled jargon, and if you make any demands—to hell with you. They’re tricksters of the first order . . . She should have it out with him—or chuck the blighter. I would.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be on her own.”
“Or maybe she can’t imagine life without him,” said Amy, in an overly dramatic and affected voice and raising her hand to her brow.
“Oh no, it’s not like that. She’s not in love with him. At least, I don’t think she is.”
Amy swiveled round to face me. “For the sake of argument, and on a scale of one to ten, just how keen is she on this fellow?”
I looked around me and then back at her. “Five . . . maybe six.”
“It hardly sounds like grand passion—though I’m not sure that exists.”
“Oh, but it does,” I said quickly. “It does exist, Amy.”
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