by Kate Morton
Perhaps it would be different when Emmeline moved permanently to number seventeen, she told herself. For it had been decided after Pa’s death that Hannah would serve as guardian of sorts for Emmeline. It was just as well they keep an eye on her, Teddy said, after the unfortunate business with the film-maker. The more Hannah thought about it, the more she looked forward to the prospect. She would have an ally in the house. Someone who understood her. They would sit up late together, talking and laughing, sharing secrets the way they had when they were younger.
When Emmeline arrived in London, however, she had other ideas. London had always agreed with Emmeline and she threw herself further into the social life she adored. She attended costume balls every night-‘White Parties’, ‘Circus Parties’, ‘Under the Sea Parties’-Hannah could never keep count. Emmeline took part in elaborate treasure hunts that involved the pilfering of prizes, from beggars’ cups to policemen’s hats. She drank too much and smoked too much, and considered the night a failure if she couldn’t find a shot of herself in the society pages the next day.
Hannah found Emmeline one afternoon entertaining a group of friends in the morning room. They had shifted the furniture to the edges of the walls and Deborah’s expensive Berlin rug lay by the fire in a haphazard roll. A girl in flimsy lime chiffon, whom Hannah had never met, sat on the rolled rug smoking lazily, dropping ash, watching as Emmeline tried to teach a baby-faced young man with two left feet to dance the shimmy-shake.
‘No, no,’ Emmeline said, laughing. ‘You shift on the count of three, Harry darling. Not two. Here, take my hands and I’ll show you.’ She restarted the gramophone. ‘Ready?’
Hannah picked her way around the room’s rim. She was so distracted by the casualness with which Emmeline and her friends had colonised the room (her room, after all) that she had quite forgotten what it was she came for. She made pretence of digging around in the writing bureau as Harry collapsed on the sofa, saying, ‘Enough. You’re going to kill me, Em.’
Emmeline fell next to him, threw her arm around his shoulders. ‘Have it your way, Harry, but you can hardly expect me to dance with you at Clarissa’s party if you don’t know the steps. The shimmy-shake is all the rage and I’m going to dance it all night.’
‘And all morning,’ said the girl in the lime chiffon.
All morning was right, thought Hannah. More and more, Emmeline’s late nights were becoming early mornings. Not content with dancing the night away at the Berkley, she and her friends had taken to continuing the party at someone’s house. Even the servants were beginning to talk. The new housemaid had been cleaning the entrance hall when Emmeline swept in at six the other morning. Emmeline was just lucky neither Teddy nor Deborah knew. That Hannah made sure they didn’t.
‘Jane says Clarissa’s serious this time,’ said lime chiffon.
‘Think she’ll actually go through with it?’ said Harry.
‘We’ll see tonight,’ said Emmeline. ‘Clarissa’s been threatening to bob her hair for months.’ She laughed. ‘More fool her if she does: with that bone structure she’ll look like a German drill sergeant.’
‘Are you taking gin?’ said Harry.
Emmeline shrugged. ‘Or wine. Hardly matters. Clarissa intends to throw it all into the bath so people can dip their cups.’
A bottle party, thought Hannah. She’d heard of those. Teddy liked to read her reports from the newspaper when they were at the breakfast table. He’d lower the paper to attract her attention, shake his head with weary disapproval and say, ‘Listen to this. Another of those parties. Mayfair, this time.’ Then he’d read the article, word by word, taking great pleasure, it seemed to Hannah, in describing the uninvited guests, the indecent decorations, the raids by police. Why couldn’t young people behave as they had when they were young, he’d say? Have balls with supper, servants pouring wine, dance cards.
Hannah was so horrified by Teddy’s insinuation that she herself was no longer young that although she thought Emmeline’s behaviour a little like dancing on the graves of the dead, she never said as much to her.
And she made particular care to ensure Teddy didn’t know Emmeline attended such parties. Much less help to organise them. Hannah became very good at inventing excuses for Emmeline’s nocturnal activities.
But that night, when she climbed the stairs to Teddy’s study, armed with an ingenious half-truth about Emmeline’s dedication to her friend Lady Clarissa, he was not alone. As she neared his closed door, Hannah heard voices. Teddy’s and Deborah’s. She was about to turn, to come back later, when she heard her father’s name. She held her breath and crept toward the door.
‘You have to feel sorry for him, though,’ said Teddy. ‘Whatever you think of the man. Dying of stroke, at his age. Not even fifty.’
‘Stroke? Drink more like.’ This was Deborah. Hannah’s lips tightened as she continued. ‘Oh yes. He’d been doing his best to drown his liver for some time. Lord Gifford told me one of the servants found him when she took his breakfast: propped against the pillows, empty bottle of whisky on the mattress beside him. Place stank like a brewery.’
Lies, thought Hannah, her breaths grown hot.
‘That so?’ said Teddy.
‘So says Lord Gifford. Oh, the servants were doing their best to cover the fact, but Lord Gifford reminded them it was his job to protect the family’s reputation and that he needed the facts to do so.’
Hannah heard glass scraping against glass and then the burbling of sherry being poured.
‘He was still in his clothes,’ said Deborah in an eager whisper, ‘and his room was a mess. Papers everywhere.’ She laughed. ‘You’ll love this, what do you think was lying in his lap?’
‘His will?’
‘A photograph,’ said Deborah. ‘An old formal photograph from late last century. Family and servants.’ The last was said meaningfully, Hannah thought, though she couldn’t understand why. She knew the type of photograph to which Deborah referred. Grandmother had insisted on one each year. Was it so strange that in his last hours Pa would seek solace in the faces of the people he’d loved?
‘Lord Gifford had quite a time finding Frederick’s will,’ Deborah was saying.
‘He found it, though,’ said Teddy quickly. ‘There were no surprises?’
‘It was as we discussed,’ said Deborah. ‘He was true to his word in that.’
‘Excellent,’ said Teddy.
‘Going to sell the place?’ said Deborah.
There was a pause and the squeak of leather as Teddy rearranged himself in his desk chair. ‘I don’t think I will,’ he said. ‘I’ve always fancied a place in the country.’
‘You could seek nomination for the seat of Saffron,’ said Deborah. ‘Country people do love their lord of the manor.’
There was a pause and Hannah held her breath, listening for footsteps. ‘By God, Dobby, you’re a genius! I’ll call Lord Gifford immediately,’ said Teddy breathlessly, and the telephone cradle rattled. ‘See if he’ll have a word with the others on my behalf.’
Hannah pulled away then. She had heard enough.
She didn’t speak to Teddy that night. In any event, Emmeline was home by the comparatively early hour of two. Hannah was still awake in bed when Emmeline stumbled along the hall. She rolled over and closed her eyes tight, tried not to think any more about what Deborah had said, about Pa and the way he had died. His desperate unhappiness. His loneliness. The darkness that had claimed him. And she refused to think of the letters of contrition she’d never quite managed to finish.
And in the isolation of the bedroom Deborah had decorated for her, with Teddy’s contented snores drifting from the room beyond, noises of night-time London muffled by her window, she fell into dreams of black water, abandoned ships and lonely foghorns floating back to empty shores.
II
Robbie came back. He gave no explanation for his absence, simply sat down in Teddy’s armchair as if no time had passed and presented Hannah with his first volume of poetry.
She was about to tell him she already owned a copy when he drew another book from his coat pocket. Small, with a green cover.
‘For you,’ he said, handing it to her.
Hannah’s heart skipped when she saw its title. It was James Joyce’s Ulysses, and it was banned everywhere.
‘But where did you-?’
‘A friend in Paris.’
Hannah ran her fingertips over the word Ulysses. It was about a married couple, she knew, and their moribund physical relationship. She had read-rather Teddy had read her-extracts from the newspaper. He’d called them filth and she had nodded agreement. In truth, she’d found them strangely affecting. She could imagine what Teddy would have said if she’d told him so. He’d have thought her ill, recommended she see a doctor. And perhaps she was.
Yet, though thrilled to have opportunity to read the novel, she wasn’t certain how she felt about Robbie bringing it for her. Did he think she was the type of woman for whom such topics were ordinary fare? Worse: was he making a joke? Did he think her a prude? She was about to ask him when he said, very simply and very gently,
‘I’m sorry about your father.’
And before she could say anything about Ulysses, she realised she was crying.
No one thought much of Robbie’s visits. Not at first. Certainly there was no suggestion that anything improper was passing between him and Hannah. Hannah would’ve been the first to deny it if there had. It was known to everyone that Robbie had been a friend to her brother, had been with him at the end. If he seemed a little irregular, less than respectable, as she knew Boyle continued to maintain, it was easily enough put down to the mystery of war.
Robbie’s visits followed no pattern, his arrival was never planned, but Hannah started looking forward to them, waiting for them. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes Emmeline or Deborah was with her; it didn’t matter. For Hannah, Robbie became a lifeline. They spoke of books and travel. Far-fetched ideas and faraway places. He seemed to know so much about her already. It was almost like having David back. She found she longed for his company, became fidgety between times, bored with whatever else she’d been doing.
Perhaps if Hannah had been less preoccupied she would have noticed she was not the only one for whom Robbie’s visits had come to hold attraction. May have observed that Deborah was spending more time at home. But she did not.
It came as a complete surprise one morning, in the drawing room, when Deborah put aside her crossword puzzle and said, ‘I have a ball organised for next week, Mr Hunter, and wouldn’t you know it? I’ve been so busy organising I haven’t had time even to think about finding myself a partner.’ She smiled, all white teeth and red lips.
‘Doubt you’ll have trouble,’ said Robbie. ‘Must be heaps of fellows looking for a ride on society’s golden wave.’
‘Of course,’ said Deborah, mistaking Robbie’s irony. ‘All the same, it’s such late notice.’
‘Lord Woodall would be sure to take you,’ said Hannah.
‘Lord Woodall is abroad,’ Deborah said quickly. She smiled at Robbie. ‘And I couldn’t possibly go alone.’
‘Going stag is all the rage according to Emmeline,’ said Hannah.
Deborah appeared not to have heard. She batted her lids at Robbie. ‘Unless…’ She shook her head with a coyness that didn’t suit her. ‘No, of course not.’
Robbie said nothing.
Deborah pursed her lips. ‘Unless you’d accompany me, Mr Hunter?’
Hannah held her breath.
‘Me?’ Robbie said, laughing. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’ said Deborah, ‘We’d have a great old time.’
‘I’ve none of the social graces,’ said Robbie. ‘I’d be a fish out of water.’
‘I’m a very strong swimmer,’ said Deborah. ‘I’ll keep you afloat.’
‘All the same,’ said Robbie. ‘No.’
Not for the first time, Hannah’s breath caught in her throat. He had a lack of propriety quite unlike the affected vulgarity of Emmeline’s friends. His was genuine and, Hannah thought, quite stunning.
‘I urge you to reconsider,’ said Deborah, a note of determined anxiety screwing tight her voice, ‘everybody who’s anybody will be there.’
‘I don’t enjoy society,’ said Robbie plainly. He was bored now. ‘Too many people spending too much money to impress those too stupid to know it.’
Deborah opened her mouth, shut it again.
Hannah tried not to smile.
‘If you’re sure,’ said Deborah.
‘Quite sure,’ said Robbie cheerfully. ‘Thanks all the same.’
Deborah shook the newspaper onto her lap and gave the appearance of resuming her crossword. Robbie raised his eyebrows at Hannah then sucked his cheeks in like a fish. Hannah couldn’t help herself, she laughed.
Deborah looked up sharply and glanced between them. Hannah recognised the expression: Deborah had inherited it, along with her lust for conquest, from Simion. Her lips thinned around the bitter taste of defeat. ‘You’re a wordsmith, Mr Hunter,’ she said coldly. ‘What’s a seven letter word starting with ‘b’ that means an error in judgement?’
At dinner a few nights later, Deborah took revenge for Robbie’s blunder.
‘I noticed Mr Hunter was here again today,’ she said, spearing a pastry puff.
‘He brought a book he thought might interest me,’ Hannah said.
Deborah glanced at Teddy, who was sitting at the head, dissecting his fish. ‘I just wonder whether Mr Hunter’s visits might be unsettling the staff.’
Hannah laid down her cutlery. ‘I can’t see why the staff would find Mr Hunter’s visits unsettling.’
‘No,’ said Deborah, drawing herself up. ‘I rather feared you wouldn’t. You’ve never really been one for taking responsibility where the household is concerned.’ She spoke slowly, enunciating each word. ‘Servants are like children, Hannah dear. They like a good routine, find it almost impossible to function without. It’s up to us, their betters, to provide them one.’ She leaned her head to the side. ‘Now, as you know, Mr Hunter’s visits are unpredictable. By his own admission, he doesn’t know the first thing about polite society. He doesn’t even telephone ahead so you can give notice. Mrs Tibbit gets herself into quite a flap trying to provide morning tea for two when she’s only been prepared for one. It’s really not fair. Don’t you agree, Teddy?’
‘What’s that?’ He looked up from his fish head.
‘I was just saying,’ Deborah said, ‘how regrettable it is that the staff has been unsettled lately.’
‘Staff unsettled?’ said Teddy. It was, of course, his pet fear, inherited from his father, that the servant class would one day revolt.
‘I’ll speak to Mr Hunter,’ said Hannah quickly. ‘Ask him to telephone ahead in future.’
Deborah appeared to consider this. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid it’s too little too late. I think perhaps it would be best if he were to cease visiting at all.’
‘Bit extreme, don’t you think, Dobby,’ Teddy said, and Hannah felt a wave of warm affection for him. ‘Mr Hunter’s always struck me as harmless enough. Bohemian, I’ll grant you, but harmless. If he calls ahead, surely the staff-’
‘There are other issues to consider,’ Deborah snapped. ‘We wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea, would we, Teddy?’
‘Wrong idea?’ Teddy said, frowning. He began to laugh. ‘Oh Dobby, you can’t mean that anyone would think Hannah and Mr Hunter… That my wife and a fellow like him…?’
Hannah closed her eyes lightly.
‘Of course I don’t,’ Deborah said sharply. ‘But people love to talk and talk isn’t good for business. Or politics.’
‘Politics?’ Teddy said.
‘The election, Tiddles,’ said Deborah. ‘How can people trust you to keep your electorate in check if they suspect you’re having trouble keeping your wife in check?’ She delivered herself a triumphant forkful of food, avoiding the sides of h
er lipsticked mouth.
Teddy looked troubled. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘And neither should you,’ Hannah said quietly. ‘Mr Hunter was my brother’s good friend. He visits so that we might speak of David.’
‘I know that, old girl,’ said Teddy with an apologetic smile. He shrugged helplessly. ‘All the same, Dobby has a point. You understand, don’t you? We can’t have people getting the wrong end of the stick.’
Deborah stuck to Hannah like glue after that. Having suffered Robbie’s rejection, she wanted to be sure he received the directive; more importantly, that he realised from whom it came. Thus the next time Robbie visited, he once again found Deborah on the drawing-room sofa with Hannah.
‘Good morning, Mr Hunter,’ Deborah said, smiling broadly while she plucked knots from the fur of her Maltese, Bunty. ‘How lovely to see you. I trust you’re well?’
Robbie nodded. ‘You?’
‘Oh, fighting fit,’ said Deborah.
Robbie smiled at Hannah. ‘What did you think?’
Hannah pressed her lips together. The proof copy of The Waste Land was sitting beside her. She handed it to him. ‘I loved it, Mr Hunter. It moved me immeasurably.’
He smiled. ‘I knew it would.’
Hannah glanced toward Deborah, who widened her eyes pointedly. ‘Mr Hunter,’ said Hannah, tightening her lips, ‘there’s something I need to discuss with you.’ She pointed to Teddy’s seat.
Robbie sat, looked at her with those dark eyes.
‘My husband,’ began Hannah, but she didn’t know how to finish. ‘My husband…’
She looked at Deborah, who cleared her throat and pretended absorption in Bunty’s silky head. Hannah watched a moment, transfixed by Deborah’s long, thin fingers, her pointed nails…