Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  The guest list was just as the king liked it: a lively mix of courtiers, politicians, businessmen, society beauties and wags. An exotic diplomat or two was usually desirable, especially at winter house parties, when shooting was the main event and Johnny Foreigner – who, anyway, couldn’t be trusted with a gun – would often agree to sit at home and entertain the ladies. The closest this latest Netherwood ensemble had to exotic was the American ambassador, though from what Teddy Hoyland had gleaned when they met, the chap was probably rather more down to earth than most of the other guests. Still, being so little known, Joseph Choate was considered the wild card: could he, for example, play cricket? This question was the cause of some consternation to the earl and he put it now to Henrietta, as they sat together on a bench overlooking the main lawn. This was hardly the thing to be doing with the arrival of the first guests imminent, but they had found each other in the garden, both with the same idea of stealing a few moments of quiet before the frenzy. Neither of them relished the prospect of the next four days: being wildly amusing could be such a bore.

  ‘Thea says he plays baseball,’ said Henrietta. ‘I think they all do at the embassy.’

  She gazed across the lawn to where Daniel MacLeod and a small posse of under-gardeners were fine-tuning the white border so that only the freshest blooms remained on their stems. It still seemed most odd to see him here in Netherwood, thought Henrietta: he was so very much part of their London staff.

  ‘Baseball?’ said Lord Hoyland. ‘What on earth?’

  ‘Not sure, but it involves a bat and a ball, like cricket.’

  ‘Well then, I expect he’ll pick up the gist. What about tennis? Do they have that in America?’

  Henrietta snorted with laughter. ‘Daddy, you’re quite ridiculous. Of course they do. Thea’s a dab hand, actually. She ran me all round the court last time we played.’

  ‘You two sound awfully chummy.’

  ‘Mmm, I’ve seen her in London a couple of times since we first met. I like her a lot. Too bright by half for Toby.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ said the earl, looking over his shoulder, genuinely anxious. ‘Your mother’s at breaking point as it is.’

  Dorothea Stirling, bright, witty, vivacious and one hundred per cent American, had caught the eye of Tobias to the extent that he fancied himself in love. His announcement that he intended to marry the girl – an honour of which Thea was still entirely ignorant – had been treated with contemptuous disbelief by the countess. It wasn’t that she disliked Americans per se: they were an amiable breed and enlivened many a London soirée. But Thea Stirling was not and could never be marriage material for her son. She didn’t care how many charming American women had married English aristocrats; on this the countess was unequivocal. The earl, on the other hand, admired the girl enormously. Simply the fact that she had struck out from home on an ocean liner to spread her wings in England was impressive in his view. Thea was Connecticut-born though she lived in New York, and she had come to London to stay for a few months with Joseph and Caroline Choate, who were friends of her parents. She had told Teddy when they met that she had the offer of a place at Cornell University, but she hadn’t decided yet whether or not to accept. Lord Netherwood had been rather bowled over by her sparky independence.

  ‘Has Toby seen her again? In London, I mean,’ the earl said now to Henrietta. He was speaking low, as if Clarissa might be listening from inside one of the vast stone urns that flanked the bench they sat on. The Choates and Miss Stirling were due to arrive with the rest of the house party later this afternoon; Clarissa’s early objections to their inclusion had been vociferous, but then the king had expressed an interest in seeing them again, and that was that.

  ‘Once, that’s all. We went down together, remember? End of July? Mama was too busy here to notice much what Toby was up to. We went dancing, which is mostly what Thea likes to do when her head isn’t stuck in a book. She’s a darling. Tobes was most unlike himself. He could hardly think of a thing to say. He just gazed at her, looking a perfect fool.’

  ‘I wish your mother wasn’t so set against her. A girl like that could be just what Tobias needs.’

  ‘Yes, well, I shouldn’t have to remind you that Toby has a knack of getting his own way. Anyway, don’t worry – Mama has to be on her best behaviour like the rest of us. And she might relent when she sees that everyone else loves Thea. Which they will. Oops, there we go – I believe I can hear a motor.’

  Henrietta was right. A covetable little red two-seat run-about was bowling down the avenue towards the great house, throwing up gusts of gravel dust as it came.

  ‘Wally Goldman,’ said the earl. ‘Look at that little beauty.’

  They stood and walked together up the wide steps to the carriageway at the front of the house, arriving there at the same time as Sir Wally, but in less of an uproar. He waved at them flamboyantly with a gloved hand, then shed his goggles and a voluminous linen duster before vaulting athletically out of the car.

  ‘What ho!’ he said. ‘First to arrive again? How shaming. Henry, darling, you look utterly ravishing. Teddy, my dear man, so do you.’

  The earl laughed. ‘And you are as full of bunkum as ever, but enough of this – introduce me to your motor: what is she?’

  ‘Ford. Model A. Newly minted, shipped her over last month.’ He nodded at the nearest footman, who stepped forwards eagerly to take the wheel. ‘Cracker, isn’t she? Ten horsepower, imagine that? Seven hundred and fifty dollars-worth of pure motoring poetry.’

  It was like Wally Goldman to mention the price. Bankers, thought the earl, could be depended upon to demonstrate the distinction between being of society and being merely in it.

  ‘Come indoors, Wally, and slake your thirst,’ he said and the three of them walked under the portico, through the heavy brass-studded front door and into the blessed cool of the marble entrance hall.

  By three o’clock the rear courtyard was full of every possible variety of vehicle, from Wally’s Ford Model A to the Duke and Duchess of Abberley’s ancient landau. The king had yet to arrive, which of course was exactly as planned: he would stroll, with the rest of his travelling entourage, into a houseful of waiting friends as if the gathering was spontaneous and all the more delightful for that. Until he appeared, something of a hiatus had descended: the guests sat in small groups talking quietly as if to conserve their energy for the antics ahead. The Choates and Thea Stirling had arrived without incident; when Parkinson entered the room and announced them, Lady Netherwood had behaved with such faultless good manners that even Tobias was lulled into a warm feeling of false security. In any case, she had no objection whatsoever to the ambassador and his wife: gracious, urbane, instantly likeable, they had been long enough in English society to fully understand the advanced etiquette required to see them through a country house party, even one with a king attached. Thea, on the other hand, was still a little unclear about the rules; she appeared gauche and rather loud by comparison with her chaperones and it occurred to the countess, as she submitted to a vigorous handshake and a ricochet of enthusiastic declarations from Thea, that her presence here may be no bad thing. Give her enough rope, thought Clarissa, and she might well hang herself. It was clear for all to see that here was no great beauty. It was only the second time that Clarissa had laid eyes on her, and in her mind the countess had created an enchantress, a siren. But this was a girl with a vulgar drawl, a weak chin, hair too short for a chignon and the silhouette of an adolescent boy. From what Clarissa could tell – without looking too closely – Thea wasn’t even wearing a corset. Certainly there was no waist to speak of, and no bosom; instead, she was straight up and down, and scrawny. As she smiled a gracious welcome, the countess felt it was merely a matter of time before Tobias lost interest and looked elsewhere, and her heart lightened at the thought.

  The weather broke as the king stepped from the royal train. So swiftly and silently that no one had really noticed, the vivid blue sky had become crowded with
pewter clouds and three weeks’ worth of rain was released from the heavens. Flunkies rushed about him with umbrellas but Bertie dismissed them, finding the downpour a great joke, so all the party followed suit, squealing and roaring with laughter as soft, drenching raindrops fell onto their fine hats, coats and dresses. A fleet of three Daimlers – two of them newly purchased for the occasion – waited to convey them to Netherwood Hall and they all piled in, loud and rumbustious. Atkins, the earl’s chauffeur, was drenched too, as were the drivers of the two other motorcars: rain splashed as if from an open tap from the peaks of their caps and collected in deep puddles at their feet. This was their finest hour and the weather had made a mockery of it. They stood with what dignity they could muster while the king and Mrs Keppel, both of them hooting with merriment, settled into the first car with Caesar the fox terrier. The rest of the party went behind and the royal progress began – a short drive from the earl’s private railway station to the great house, but a difficult one through the new pools and eddies that blocked the way on the roads. This wasn’t a state visit – the king had made that clear – yet the route to the hall was lined with loyal subjects. The miners had the day off, the schools had closed for the afternoon; it wasn’t every day that a monarch passed within touching distance, and this small matter of a biblical downpour wasn’t going to drive them away from the spectacle. The king rewarded their stoicism and good humour by insisting that Atkins lower the roof; stopping the convoy, the chauffeur hauled back the canopy and the Daimler began immediately to fill with rain as effectively as a water butt, its pale cream leather seats darkening so rapidly in the torrent that Atkins wondered if they could possibly ever be restored. But never mind, because there was King Edward VII, somehow larger than life, beaming, waving and – if anything – wetter than the crowds that hailed him, and by his side the beautiful Alice Keppel, bold as you like and soaked to the skin in blue chiffon that clung to her contours like a bathing suit.

  Chapter 11

  Eve had been down to Netherwood Hall and come back again by the time Silas arrived home with the children. He had taken them to Victoria Street to watch the king drive by and they burst in to the kitchen, sodden, breathless, grinning at each other at some shared triumph or private joke. They dripped on her clean floor and she had to bite back a reprimand; the novelty of having her brother here had somehow altered the normal way of things, and rules that were once set in stone were flouted daily.

  ‘Mam!’ said Eliza. ‘We saw Mrs Keppel and ’er dress was soppin’.’

  ‘King!’ said Ellen, pushing to the front, muscling in on the conversation. She had progressed these days from simply mimicking others to volunteering her own contributions to conversation: her vocabulary was small still, but was growing by the day. She had no idea what a king was, of course, or which, of all the fine people she had seen, he might have been; but the crowds and the atmosphere and the thrill of the run home in the rain had all contributed to her sense of occasion.

  ‘You saw the king?’ Eve said to her youngest child. Ellen nodded gravely, eyes wide with the wonder of it.

  ‘Could hardly miss him, with that belly,’ said Silas and he shared a grown-up wink with Seth, paying him the compliment of this irreverent aside. Seth’s frostiness towards Silas had melted over the past few days under the onslaught of his uncle’s warm attention: his stories of world travel and derring-do were hard to resist. Seth had shifted from a position of chilly suspicion to cautious interest and finally to unbridled admiration in a few easy anecdotes. Also, Silas was the talk of the town – not least because his crate of bananas had been donated by Eve to the school and every child had run home with a share of the booty – and Seth had quickly realised that the cachet of owning such an uncle was immense. Time must not be wasted sulking while this glamorous stranger was among them. They sniggered together now, best of friends, and Seth said: ‘I ’ope you’ve made plenty o’ batter, mam. I reckon ’e looked ’ungry,’ and everyone laughed.

  ‘Less o’ your cheek,’ said Eve, and then, to Silas: ‘Enough from you an’ all,’ but she was smiling, so the party atmosphere among the excited children lingered on and the girls squealed and giggled at each other as they peeled off their wet stockings then ran barefoot upstairs to change, leaving wet prints on the linoleum. Seth hung about, reluctant to leave the company of his uncle, but Eve said: ‘Get on wi’ you, you’ll take a chill standin’ in those wet things,’ and the boy, temporarily compliant, did as he was bid.

  ‘You’re a good influence on ’im,’ Eve said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Silas said, and bowed.

  ‘Bad influence on Eliza, mind. She’s a right giddy kipper when you’re ’ere.’

  ‘Oh well, can’t have everything.’ He stretched out an arm to pick up a piece of parkin from a plate behind his sister and began to munch on it unselfconsciously. By every word and deed, he radiated ease and familiarity: extraordinary, considering how recently arrived he was. Eve, happy to have him, was nevertheless occasionally thrown by his casual manner. She had to draw back now from the impulse to slap the back of his hand, as if he was an impudent child. He wasn’t staying at Beaumont Lane – there was nowhere for him but the parlour floor, and anyway Silas preferred the privacy afforded by the rooms above the Hare and Hounds – but he let himself in and out of the house as if it was his. Eve encouraged this but Anna didn’t like it: he kept making her jump, walking in uninvited. Why couldn’t he at least knock? There was something to be said for standing on ceremony, in Anna’s book.

  ‘How come you’re back, anyway?’ Silas said now. ‘Don’t you have kingly puddings to make?’

  ‘I made t’batter already. It ’as to stand for a while.’

  Silas pulled a sceptical face. ‘And how can you be sure the wicked fat cook won’t sabotage it in your absence?’ Eve had sketched a verbal picture for him of Mrs Adams’s build and temperament; she found herself wanting to make him laugh, so had exaggerated the cook’s less attractive traits and now he imagined her a villain. ‘What if she adds a few drops of arsenic and you’re hauled off to the Tower?’

  Eve laughed. ‘She’s not that bad. Anyroad, she looked too busy to be messin’ about with my batter.’ She had too: tomato-red in the face and the wrong side of frantic. In the sultry heat the kitchens were like Turkish hammams and the usual pleasant hum of conversation had been replaced by a tense silence, broken occasionally by an ill-tempered outburst from the cook. Eve had considered offering to stay and help with other things, but she thought again when Mrs Adams flung a basin of spoiled hollandaise at the wall. It wasn’t characteristic of the cook, this irrational, hysterical behaviour, and it wasn’t going to help put a ten-course banquet on the table either. A small posse of kitchen maids, cowed into silence by the horror of the smashed bowl and the slick of pale yellow sauce sliding down the tiles, shrank back as one to let Eve pass when she left them all to it. She hoped that by the time she returned at half-past five, a semblance of order would have been restored.

  ‘Where’s Anna?’ Silas said. ‘Didn’t see her in the crowds.’

  ‘No, you won’t find Anna anywhere near King Edward. She doesn’t rate ’im.’

  Silas laughed, but he wasn’t really amused. Personally, he found Anna’s disapproval too liberally distributed; he had realised from her tight smile that he wasn’t always welcome at Beaumont Lane when Eve wasn’t there. It didn’t surprise him now to hear that the king was on her blacklist too.

  ‘She thinks ’e should ’ave brought t’queen, for a start. And she doesn’t like what she’s read about ’im. Y’know, t’way ’e carries on.’

  Silas shrugged. ‘He can do as he pleases.’

  ‘Aye well, and so can Anna. She’s with Amos, I think.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Comrade Sykes. Another one unlikely to cheer the king, I should imagine.’

  This casual derision played uneasily with Eve; Silas knew so little about any of them that to mock seemed hardly appropriate. But she let it pass, because he was smiling
and seemed to mean no harm and because his presence in her kitchen still seemed nothing short of miraculous. They looked at each other for a moment, seeing in each other’s faces the similarity to themselves. With his fine clothes and well-modulated voice he might have been called an imposter, except for this startling resemblance to his sister. They could have been twins, Eve and Silas, everyone said so, and once there’d been five of them, all with the same fine features and dark eyes: Eve, the oldest, then Silas, then the little ones, Clara, Michael and Thomas. Not much more than babies really, when they died, all of them under three years old. Looking at Silas now called them to mind: Clara would have been seventeen in November, Eve thought. She could see the little girl in her brother, though by the end Clara had been drawn and hollow-eyed with hunger and sickness. How good life had been to Silas, and to her: how bitterly cruel the fate of their siblings. The unfulfilled promise of those three little souls, the injustice to them of a life denied, weighed heavily on Eve now as she contemplated her own advantages, and those of her affluent, debonair brother.