Gentlemen and Players

by Frances Vernon

  ‘I did not know your father kept a mistress, Thomas. I did not think him capable of it.’ At first her voice was low and slurred, but at the end she shouted.

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘But Augusta is drunk, Thomas,’ murmured Sarah. ‘You oughtn’t really to object, as she’s newly widowed. It is hard to be a widow.’

  ‘Sarah,’ said Edwin.

  ‘Now, children, have you finished?’ said Susan to all the young, and then she glanced at Charlotte.

  ‘Oh, Grandmother, I would never have guessed Mrs Baldock was Grandfather’s mistress,’ said Charlotte. ‘Not in a million years.’

  ‘You’re a hussy and you ought to be whipped,’ said Augusta.

  ‘Charlotte, leave the table at once!’ said Octavius. Susan recovered as soon as he spoke and rose from the table.

  ‘Charlotte,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I am glad my daughter is clever,’ said Sarah, with her mouth full. ‘Please leave her alone, Mr Potter. And Susan.’

  Sophia was giggling and her husband kicked her, under the table. ‘All the children can go now,’ said Thomas breathlessly. Charlotte had already walked from the room.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Laurence.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Edwin. The adults watched them slowly leave the room. There was no other scene at luncheon, although conversation continued. Neither Thomas nor Flora spoke.

  ‘I must say, the young of today amaze me,’ said Susan. ‘The things they get hold of to read, advanced novels and so on, how, I have no idea. When the Oscar Wilde trial was going on, you know, naturally we hid the newspapers. But, of course, the servants take the “News of The World”, and the next thing I knew Margaret used the most shameful pages to make up the spare-room fire and Charlotte, of course, found it.’

  Flora knew that Thomas was going to be very angry, and that she was going to be sick. As Susan talked, everyone was sobered and started to chat again lightly. The mourning luncheon went on through the puddings until coffee was served, and Flora did not excuse herself because she thought that, if she too caused comment, then Thomas would have to listen to the women of his family making an intimate, quarrelsome, crazy scene.

  Flora drank some coffee to settle her stomach. Then she vomited into her saucer.

  ‘Flora!’ Thomas shouted. ‘Why the devil didn’t you say you were feeling ill and go and lie down? Oh, good God, what’s wrong?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, Thomas,’ said Susan. ‘I’ll take her upstairs. Edwin, perhaps a little later you could come and see if there is anything wrong?’

  ‘I’m just fine,’ whispered Flora. ‘I’m so sorry, Thomas.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Flo. Go with Susan – darling.’

  Edwin and Susan took her upstairs and, when the door closed, Thomas sat down again. Everyone, even Sarah, told him that there was nothing wrong with his wife beyond a touch of the sun, although Flora had been fully covered with a hat and a veil and gloves; but he did not want to listen and once Flora’s place had been cleared he left Octavius to sit with the women, finishing their coffee. Augusta told the footman not to clear the rest of the table until tea-time, or thereabouts, and the four of them sat over the dirty plates. Sarah picked at the food and neither of the other two spoke very much. Octavius thought that as they had remained in the dining room instead of leaving it as usual, they did not wish to be without him. Octavius had never been alone in a room with three women who were not quite family.

  He remembered that Nicholas Pagett had been a fond and patient husband, and also a calm father who did not interfere but could be consulted in an emergency, and he comforted the women, talking to them all. He improved Sophia’s mood, by treating her with slow gallantry and calling her Mrs Sacheverell, when she did not in the least want to flirt with him. She noticed that as he talked to her his voice rose and fell jerkily, and he ran a finger round inside his collar. As she gave her laconic replies, Sophia lolled. Octavius thought she really had become quite a handsome woman.

  Although she was upright and very tidy, Sarah, on the other hand, made him think of a caterpillar – as Susan had once said with pity – white and gorging and dim. He could not remember her as a young woman, but believed that she had been plain and sickly and silent. Augusta too had suddenly faded, ever since bringing up the issue of Nicholas’s mistress, but Octavius thought that in her youth she must have been sensual, Spanish-looking and fierce, a very desirable woman. His wife had always said that Nicholas had married her for something other than Lynmore.

  In a pause in conversation he sighed, glancing from one woman to another, including Sarah in his scan, although he had scarcely met her. He turned this time to the sombre widow. ‘Tell me, Mrs Pagett,’ he began again, very gently, ‘has it been decided to have the very simple epitaph which you chose?’

  ‘Yes, Thomas has agreed.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Sophia.

  ‘Just: Nicholas Matthew Pagett, Gentleman of this Parish, born etc., etc., died etc., etc., R.I.P.’

  ‘Father would have called that Popish,’ said Sarah. ‘R.I.P., that is.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ The company sighed.

  At half-past two, when Octavius was talking to Sophia, Augusta crumpled up her napkin, set it aside, and rose from the table. Presently Sophia also left the dining room, but did not join her stepmother. After a few minutes Octavius left Sarah with the food, and she carried on eating up scraps, concentrating on what she was doing, quite alone – like her stepmother, who was making a catalogue of furniture she intended to take with her to Five Ash Cottage, a small Queen Anne house a mile away from the Hall, and her sister, who was reading An Unsocial Socialist and entertaining Augusta’s labrador. They were waiting for dinner, and bed, and return to London.

  *

  Flora allowed Edwin to examine her properly and he told her that she was two months pregnant and would have to take the greatest care of herself. Susan and Edwin talked briskly and regretfully about Flora’s ignorance, and about the likelihood of her miscarrying. Susan stayed a while with Flora persuading her to eat a few rusks, and drink some beef tea, and, when Flora no longer felt ill, talking to her, very gently. She had learned already that Flora had not really wanted to marry Thomas, although she had been on the verge of being in love with him. She had thought that she wanted to marry a middle-aged man, who was not in love with her and did not idealise her but would always be kind, and she had wanted more time to think. Susan had assured Flora that although, before his father’s death, Thomas had intended her to be a political hostess while he was a politician, he did not idealise her, but had really married her for qualities which she did possess: her uncertainty, her lack of worldly knowledge, and her beauty.

  Susan could not decide whether to think Flora mature, because she knew her own needs so well, or childish, because she wanted a man who would be almost a father, not a lover.

  Although she was feeling better Flora did not want to talk that day, even about Nicholas. Susan comforted her, and made her comfortable in bed. Flora knew well that she could, at any time, turn to Susan. When her sister-in-law was gone she was quite alone, in a strange family and a house which, although she and Thomas had spent several weeks there in the last year, was strange now that she was mistress of it – what her mother called, Mrs Pagett of Lynmore. Flora curled up and turned her face to the pillow, and cried again.

  Susan went downstairs and found Thomas in the library, standing in front of the fireplace with his hands behind his back, looking straight ahead. ‘Flora is going to have a baby, Thomas,’ she said.

  He stared at her. ‘She never told me.’

  ‘She didn’t know. She knew nothing about all that side of life until Edwin and I talked to her yesterday. I feel I ought to tell you, Thomas, that it’s unlikely she will keep this baby. No, she hasn’t miscarried, but it seems she may well do so.’

  ‘Is that what Sacheverell says?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor Flo,’ he muttered. ‘Has he t
old her?’

  ‘Oh, heavens, no. Just that she must take the greatest care of herself.’

  He paused. ‘She’s never seemed sickly.’

  ‘She dreads being thought an invalid,’ said Susan, and he looked puzzled. ‘She knows how you hate any form of illness. She has a mortal dread of displeasing you in any way, Thomas.’

  ‘Are you saying that my wife is frightened of me, Susan?’

  ‘Just a trifle, sometimes. Remember what she’s like. She worships you, that’s the cause of the trouble,’ added Susan, and then sighed. He said nothing and she watched him walk over to the window. ‘You love her, don’t you, Thomas?’ said Susan.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. Susan was impressed.

  Facing the window, he snapped, ‘Why the devil did my mother insist on the wretched child attending the funeral? If she hadn’t gone out into the full sun, none of this would have happened. As though it weren’t usual for women and children not to go to funerals!’

  ‘I agree, you might have put your foot down with regard to Flora.’

  Thomas said nothing. All the Pagett women had wanted to attend Nicholas’s funeral, not to wait up at the Hall, mourning, while he was buried by Thomas and their husbands. Thomas had not tried to dissuade any of them, except Flora.

  ‘Oh, Thomas, I know how unpleasant it all is for you, I promise,’ said Susan.

  ‘What?’ said Thomas clearly, and unnerved her for the first time in his life.

  ‘Everything,’ said Susan. ‘Our all being here – our wanting to attend the funeral – Augusta’s being so unexpectedly overwrought – your inheriting – having to change your way of life – oh, goodness, I do understand.’

  ‘I’m glad you do,’ said Thomas, turning round to face her as she mentioned his inheriting, and patting her shoulder shyly. ‘It’s damned queer, you know, all this being my responsibility so much sooner than I thought it would be. I know he was gouty, and he had that broken hip, but he could have lived for years.’

  ‘It was a stroke,’ said Susan.

  ‘Better than a lingering death,’ said Thomas.

  ‘I think you’ll manage splendidly,’ said Susan a moment later. ‘Truly I do, Thomas. You may be glad of Augusta’s help at first. With the estate, I mean.’

  ‘I expect she’ll show me the way about, but after that …’

  ‘Yes, I know, dear. But you mustn’t let her interfere. I wonder, Thomas, you didn’t expect her to remove to Harrogate or Cheltenham, or somewhere, did you?’

  ‘Oh, good heavens, Susan, I do know my mother. And Five Ash Cottage is part of her marriage settlement,’ he added. ‘It’s hers.’

  ‘I see. But you wouldn’t require her to leave the district if it weren’t, would you?’ she smiled.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Susan.’

  ‘No, Thomas.’ She looked meek and mild but he did not laugh apologetically. ‘You mustn’t be so angry with her for referring to Mrs Baldock like that,’ she continued. ‘She really is very upset, she was very fond of our father in her way.’

  ‘Oh, I know that. But why Sophie had to giggle in that way – like a child – and Sarah – no sense of – of …’

  ‘Decency? Decorum? Propriety? No,’ said Susan seriously, ‘I don’t think it was that.’

  ‘This business is bad enough as it is.’ He thought about his wife.

  ‘Thomas,’ said Susan, ‘did you know our father had a mistress?’

  ‘Good God! Of course not!’

  ‘I thought, as you were both men …’ she apologised. ‘No – he would have thought it coarse, vulgar, to be indiscreet.’

  ‘I don’t know about …’

  ‘Well, never mind,’ said Susan to herself. She sat back in her chair, where she had been perching, laid her feet on a tapestry footstool, and gazed at the dark grey, empty grate. This library with the untouched books had been a sitting room for Nicholas, who had had a separate study, and it had sometimes been used by Augusta as well, but never by the girls when young. Now Thomas’s papers were spread over the pedestal desk in the window, and it would be his private study. Susan was not thinking of the sadness of this change at the moment, though she had remarked on such things earlier in the day. The bronze clock on the mantelpiece thumped on.

  ‘There’s Gwendoline,’ said Thomas at the window. ‘She’s got her frock dirty, you must want to go and tick her off!’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Susan.

  ‘Are you tired? You look awfully sleepy.’

  ‘No, I’m not sleepy,’ she said, opening one eye, which twinkled, and was beady. She got up and brushed herself off vigorously, as though she had been sitting down out of doors. ‘I was just thinking of Father’s little romance, as a matter of fact – big romance, I suppose one should say,’ she continued as he regarded her, frowning and stiff. ‘Just imagine him slipping off to Congleton like that, to see Mrs Baldock. She must have been good to him.’

  ‘You are glad he left her that money, I take it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She needs it – she will hardly find another protector at her age.’

  ‘I don’t think you should talk – like that.’

  ‘Not the proper style of the Rector’s wife, is it? I wonder if Augusta ever had a romantic interlude.’

  Rather to her surprise, Thomas choked on a laugh and said, ‘Good heavens, Susan, can one really imagine …’

  ‘Oh, she’s very handsome you know. At least, she certainly was before she grew so fat,’ said Susan. ‘I rather hope she had some – comfort at some time in her life.’

  ‘You do, do you?’ said Thomas. He was now grim. ‘I don’t see that she needed comfort, as you call it,’ he added! ‘She was happy enough with my father.’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact I do doubt that she ever had a love affair, and, as you say, she was tolerably happy with Father towards the end.’ Susan lost interest, and did not even point out that they had been talking about Augusta as though she were dead. ‘I had a love affair,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Susan!’ Looking at him, she thought there was pity in his face.

  ‘I didn’t commit adultery,’ she said in the same voice of shamed defiance, ‘I wasn’t like Sarah and Sophie.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so!’

  Susan looked doggedly at her reflection in the glass above the mantelpiece. Thomas had uncovered the mirror because he thought its black veil depressing. She was an apple-cheeked, dapper provincial lady – not five years ago she had been called that, but the man had said ‘little’, not ‘provincial’. She had been thinner then. Now she was forty. It occurred to her suddenly that Thomas was still so young that, like a child, he thought of her as an old woman. Turning away, she continued. ‘Please listen to me, Thomas,’ she said with confidence.

  ‘I can’t be your confidant, Susan,’ he replied. He spoke gently.

  She said, a moment later, ‘I wasn’t going to talk in the way you mean – I wasn’t going to confess – I wasn’t going to tell you I had a great, unrequited passion for the man. It wasn’t like that at all.’ The Rural Dean was plump, middle-aged, and practical. She smiled. ‘One can avoid what people call falling in love, Thomas. It’s just a question of self-discipline. We did. That’s what I wanted to say.’ She paused. ‘I don’t admire my sisters and your mother for their tantrums, you know, but I can understand other people, I do know what it’s like to imagine some man is the best, dearest person in the world.’ She sniffed.

  ‘Susan, you must not …’ Thomas pleaded, now recovering from his shock at the idea that his mother’s temper could be due to love of a man.

  ‘That’s all,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to tell you I had a romantic interlude. I suppose it was a silly thing to do.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Thomas.

  ‘I don’t regret having told you, Thomas.’ She had meant to have a long talk with him, about his mother and his wife and sisters and the children he would have, of whom she would be bound to see a good deal, living at the Rectory as
she did. ‘Well, one’s always rather worked up on a day like this, and what with Flora’s illness – good heavens, it’s nearly tea-time.’

  ‘I don’t think there will be any tea. The Sacheverells are catching the four-twenty and my mother wants to go and see them off.’

  ‘The Sacheverells leaving today?’ said Susan, wide-eyed. ‘Why, I wasn’t told – I assumed they’d be staying for dinner here.’

  ‘No,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Well,’ said Susan truthfully, ‘that’s a great disappointment.’ She left the room and Thomas sat down.

  Susan stepped outside. On the fourth terrace her daughters and their Sacheverell cousins were playing a ball game with cricket bats under Laurence’s supervision. She took little notice. Wandering down the steps, holding up her dress and holding on her hat, she thought that, had she told Octavius of her connection with Martin Caldicott, he would have reacted just as Thomas had. But she did not mind. She would never tell Octavius.

  Susan raised her head and noted the unruly game. She went down to the terrace where the children were shouting and she intended kindly to put a stop to the play.

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © Frances Vernon, 1984

  Preface © Michael Marten and Sheila Vernon, 2014

  The right of Frances Vernon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly