Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  There was an awkward silence, then Amos stood.

  ‘Best be off,’ he said. His face was rigid with the effort of not speaking his mind.

  ‘No, Amos. There’s crumble,’ Eve said. It sounded silly, put like that, but she hated this growing animosity between the two men.

  He made an effort and smiled at her. ‘Couldn’t manage another morsel,’ he said, and moved away from the table. He was seething; they could all see it.

  Eve looked at Silas, who smiled at her.

  ‘That was delicious, Evie,’ he said. ‘As always.’ He looked perfectly relaxed; it was his speciality, to always appear entirely unruffled. In professional matters, it had often served him well. Anna thought it a deplorable trait. She stood too, and walked to Amos’s side.

  ‘I’ll go part way with you,’ she said. ‘I need some fresh air.’

  She said this pointedly, as if the air at the kitchen table wasn’t fresh, as if it oppressed her to stay put, then together they left the room. A silence descended in the kitchen. Eve looked dismayed, staring after them with helpless anxiety, and Daniel took her hand and squeezed it. He would take no one’s side in this but his wife’s, and in any case, both Amos and Silas had a point. They were grown men, when all was said and done; they must find a way of rubbing along together, in spite of their differences. He took a cigarette packet from his shirt pocket and offered one to Silas, who shook his head.

  ‘You know me,’ he said. ‘Cigar man.’ Daniel shrugged and lit up. The familiar smell of a burning Woodbine filled the air. Eve stood and began to clear the table. Silas suppressed a yawn.

  ‘I have absolutely no inclination to travel to Bristol after that wonderful meal,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’ll stay another night.’

  ‘T’money you waste at that inn,’ Eve said.

  She carried a stack of dirty plates to the sink. It was Seth and Eliza’s job, but they’d made themselves scarce and it was less effort to do it herself than to round them up. She turned and looked at her brother.

  ‘You know you could stay ’ere, don’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Too chilly for my liking.’ They both knew what he meant.

  ‘They’re good people, Anna and Amos,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said.

  ‘Then can you try to be friends?’

  ‘Certainly, when that fellow changes his tune.’

  ‘Well, that won’t happen,’ Daniel said. ‘So perhaps you two could agree to disagree, and keep your differences of opinion to yourselves. Or at least, keep them out of this house.’

  He spoke mildly enough, but with considerable authority. Silas acknowledged the reproof with a curt nod of his head, without actually conceding any ground. He rather enjoyed goading Amos Sykes and had no intention of desisting; the man was, after all, so very easy to provoke – these soapbox orators usually were. Anyway, he thought, it was high time that someone took him on. He strutted around the pit yards like God’s gift to the working man, especially since the old earl kicked the bucket.

  ‘So,’ he said pleasantly, ‘apple crumble?’

  ‘Plum,’ said Eve.

  ‘Even better. And all the more for us now.’

  Daniel flashed him a warning look.

  ‘What?’ said Silas, and to hear him you would have sworn that he meant no harm at all.

  Chapter 43

  ‘Truly, this is a ridiculous country.’

  Thea paced the room, back and forth. Henrietta watched her, like a spectator at a tennis match.

  ‘I mean, you’re all so … so rigid. So stuck in your ways. So obsessed with the pecking order and so terribly, zealously vigilant about the detail.’

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ said Henrietta, anxious to placate but at the same time slightly needled. ‘But there’s usually a good reason for the things we do.’

  ‘Oh, poppycock. It’s all pomposity, a conspiracy to trap the uninitiated. If you don’t know the rules, you can’t join the club. Well, I don’t think I want to be a member, thanks all the same.’

  ‘Oh, now Thea—’

  ‘And you’re a turncoat. I don’t expect to be reprimanded by you of all people. Especially in front of an audience.’ Her dander was up, good and proper. She looked so adorable, thought Henrietta, flushed with annoyance like this: quite irresistible.

  ‘All I said was it’s not quite the thing to leap up and grab whoever you most like the look of.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’ Thea stopped pacing and stood, hands on hips, facing Henry. ‘What’s the point of being a countess if I can’t do as I please?’

  ‘Well you can, most of the time. And you do. But if there’s a duke in the drawing room you really mustn’t gambol through to luncheon on the arm of Jonty Allsop. You made poor old Abberley look a perfect fool.’

  Thea laughed, in spite of her irritation. ‘Well, that isn’t hard. Honestly, though, Henry. Who would you choose?’

  ‘You, of course. But since I can’t, I do what’s expected of me.’

  This sounded a little prim, a little pious, a little reproachful. Henrietta had followed Thea to her room – recklessly, she felt, abandoning their luncheon guests, doubtless causing awkwardness – because she couldn’t bear any bad feeling to exist between them: she had meant only to amuse with her remark, not to offend, and yet Thea’s expression had frozen with displeasure. She had refused to meet Henrietta’s eye throughout the meal and had leapt from her chair when the ladies rose, bounding upstairs instead of leading them to the drawing room. A very small part of Henrietta disapproved of such childish impetuosity: the rest of her longed to be back in favour with her beloved.

  She was perched on the very edge of Thea’s bed and now she leaned forwards and reached out her hands. Thea stepped towards her and took them, though she held her ground when Henrietta tugged.

  ‘Not that, Henry. Not now,’ she said. ‘I’m too cross.’

  Henrietta let go, immediately. She was so wary of making demands: so wary of pushing Thea away with the strength of her longing. She had realised in the course of the past few months that it was her lot to wait patiently for attention, and not to irritate the object of her infatuation by appearing to be, in fact, infatuated. This morning Henry had passed in the yard her father’s devoted black Labs, Min and Jess, whose fate was now to sit and wait in the hope of a kind word or a soft hand; their situation, Henry had thought, was not so very different from her own.

  ‘Your mother seeks to expose me constantly,’ Thea said. ‘She considers me gauche and ill-bred and she whispers about me to her cronies. You have no idea how it feels to be constantly judged and found lacking. And it’s not just Clarissa. All eyes are on me all the time. I feel like a butterfly pinned under a microscope. Specimen A, the Lesser-Spotted Stirling.’

  Henrietta laughed. ‘Oh darling, this isn’t like you at all. Usually, you don’t give two hoots.’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact. But I’m very adept at hiding it.’

  ‘Thea, you’re absolutely all the rage – if anyone watches you it’s to copy what you’re doing. Did you notice that scarf twisted through Mimi’s hair? She didn’t quite pull it off, admittedly, but she’s desperate to ape your style, and she’s not alone; you have a slavish following. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t utterly love you. Except for Mama. But as for her, well, she’s adjusting. It hasn’t been easy for her.’

  Thea rolled her eyes and turned her back on Henrietta. No, it hadn’t been easy for Clarissa and boy, didn’t everyone know it. She might as well have gone the whole hog and worn black crêpe at the wedding: mother of the groom, the very image of fathomless suffering. She had been a good deal less distressed, in fact, at Teddy’s funeral; then, when she might reasonably have been expected to grieve, she had drifted about on Toby’s arm, relentlessly, winsomely, tirelessly charming. Well, Thea had her number all right; her mother-in-law was an artful creature and her vulnerability wasn’t even skin deep.

  ‘Thea. Please don’t be angry.’ Henry�
��s voice was wheedling, and it grated. Thea turned on her, as she sometimes did.

  ‘Oh, just go! You’ll doubtless be needed in the drawing room.’

  Yes, thought Henrietta, I doubtless shall, and my presence here is clearly irksome. She stood to leave and risked a tentative smile, and – joy unbounded – Thea smiled back. Emboldened, Henrietta crossed the room. She took Thea’s face between her hands.

  ‘I’ll make your excuses, darling. You mustn’t come back down if you don’t want to. We can manage without you.’ She leaned in and kissed Thea on the mouth, gentle and swift, not lingering, then she let her hands drop and walked to the door, though it was the very opposite of what she wished to do. If Thea had called her back with the seductive voice she occasionally used; if she had let her clear green eyes drop from Henrietta’s face and roam slowly up and down her body – then all notions of duty and responsibility would have evaporated in the heat of a delicious pursuit of mutual pleasure. But not now: not today. Thea merely turned away in chilly silence, leaving Henrietta to return alone to the drawing room and attempt to explain to a wondering audience the extraordinary behaviour of their young hostess.

  For a long while Thea stood, just where she was, as if held there by the fibres of the carpet. She felt caged, hemmed in – ironic, in this vast house, but true. Soon they would be leaving Netherwood for Fulton House, and there, in the noise and the crush of the capital, she knew she would feel less constrained. But even while she anticipated a change of surroundings, her independent spirit resisted their reasons for decamping to London. They were going simply because everyone was going. They were going because it was May, the beginning of the Season, when the important families of England flocked like migrating birds to their London residences. And this was her life: predictability, the price of privilege.

  She moved to the long cheval mirror and looked at her reflection with a hard, appraising gaze. Thin, pale, a weakness at the chin – her father’s chin – but wide, mesmerising eyes – her mother’s eyes – and lips that curved naturally into a charming smile. Hair: nothing special but beautifully cut. Bosom: flat. Derrière: flat also. Stomach: concave. She smiled at herself, then frowned.

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘are a Moaning Minnie and you should snap right out of it.’

  She turned this way and that, admiring her silhouette in the oyster silk day dress, which swung with a fluid motion about her shins. This pleased her. Her lovely couture collection, growing ever larger, was a significant source of satisfaction and a not inconsiderable advantage of her new status. By the tiniest degree, her mood began to improve. In the mirror, the reflected Thea watched closely, as if awaiting instructions. All her life, her central and most dearly held tenet had been this: resist the predictable, the unexceptional, the inevitable. And yet here she was, apparently expected to make one of two choices: a solitary afternoon in her bedroom or a stultifying afternoon in the drawing room. She stood a moment longer, thinking, and then from outside, the sound of a motorcar filtered into her consciousness. Someone leaving already? Or an arrival, perhaps? A new guest might be just the ticket, stir things up a little, and with a further small lifting of the heart she moved across to the window and saw Tobias at the wheel of the Wolseley with Jonty Allsop and Dickie crammed in next to him. Instantly, Thea pushed up the sash window and yelled at them – ‘Hey! Where d’ya think you’re going?’ – and though her voice was almost certainly not audible above the engine, some sixth sense made Toby glance up at her window, whereupon he stopped the car at once and climbed out. ‘Thea, my dearest darling,’ he shouted, then: ‘Why aren’t you with the ladies?’ which made her feel cross all over again.

  ‘Never mind that,’ she said sharply. ‘Where are you going and why aren’t you taking me?’

  ‘To the fair. And we did look for you, but you were mysteriously absent from the party. I assumed you were otherwise engaged.’ She loved this about Toby; if ever she wasn’t where she should be, he hardly minded. It gave her the sense that within their marriage she was free. ‘My tropical bird,’ he had said to her once, before the wedding, when she was still to be convinced. ‘I would never try to cage you or clip your wings.’ It had inclined her towards marrying him, that promise, along – of course – with his sister’s passionate intensity. It had seemed to Thea like a perfect arrangement and now, looking down at her husband, she smiled.

  ‘Wait there,’ she called, and she darted away, appearing through the front door of the house not two minutes later. She had on a pea-green velvet jacket and a beret in the same fabric and colour, set at a jaunty angle. He folded his arms and watched her approach, a smile of satisfied ownership on his face. Thea Stirling – for this is how he thought of her still – was his. She reached his side and opened her mouth to reprimand him, but he stopped her with a kiss.

  ‘Gorgeous woman,’ he said then. ‘Simply gorgeous. You’ll come with us then, I hope?’

  ‘You make it sound as if it was your idea,’ she said. ‘You make it sound as if you weren’t about to slink off with your cronies, leaving me in the drawing room crossing verbal swords with your mother.’

  He held up his hands in defence, the image of innocence wronged.

  ‘You were nowhere to be found, my love. We searched high and low, didn’t we, chaps?’

  He looked back over his shoulder for support and Dickie, from the car, said: ‘Get a move on, old thing. Thea can have my lap.’ He slapped his thighs with both hands.

  ‘Must I?’ she said, but she was laughing, and she didn’t need to be asked twice.

  A potent mix of mingled aromas assaulted Anna as she waited at the foot of the Ferris wheel; trodden grass, engine oil, frying onions. These were the sort of smells that clung to your clothes and hair: that seeped into your pores and followed you home. And the noise! She’d have her hands over her ears if she hadn’t needed them to keep her purse safe in her pocket. Next to her, too close for comfort, an organ grinder wound out an unmelodic racket, competing for precedence with a constant cacophony of shrieking from the thrill-seekers; his monkey, sporting a tiny red fez and sultan’s robe, bared its teeth at her and chattered menacingly. She suffered silently, the official keeper of the loose change and occasional holder of the coats, waiting stoically in the crush for the ride to slow and stop. When the children – laughing from on high, tousled and red-cheeked – caught her eye and waved, she smiled and waved back at them with an attempt at jollity, but it was a poor effort, anyone could see that.

  ‘I don’t have stomach for it,’ she said, when they begged her to join them on the merry-go-round or the cakewalk, and it was true. Even watching made her queasy. Eve and Daniel and all the children had ridden the magnificent new steam yachts, great painted boats that swung in a wide, sweeping arc, back and forth through the air, and Anna had had to look away. Now she stood with her back to the Ferris wheel because to watch its motion – smooth and sedate though it was – made her dizzy.

  ‘You look as though you lost a dollar and found a dime.’

  Thea Hoyland stood before her in a covetable green beret, beaming.

  ‘You remember me, right? Thea Stirling. Thea Hoyland now, of course. Or am I Thea Netherwood? Never quite sure. We met weeks ago. This isn’t your idea of fun, huh?’

  Anna took the proffered hand, and shook it. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Opposite of fun.’ She looked so glum that Thea laughed.

  ‘You’re kind of bad for business, I should think. Hey, what do you say we take a stroll, away from the mayhem?’

  This was the new countess and all about them men were doffing their caps as they passed, but her manner was so completely informal that Anna saw nothing unusual in the invitation. However, she had Seth and Eliza’s jackets tucked under one arm, and she indicated these with a gloomy expression, as if they presented an insurmountable obstacle to any change of plan. Thea smiled and said: ‘We’ll wait for the Ferris wheel to stop, then. Gosh, he looks a malevolent little fellow.’

  She was talking about the mon
key, who had shifted his attentions from Anna now and had hunkered down on his little platform as if preparing to spring at Thea instead. She beat him to it, lunging towards him and pulling a face, imitating his own grimace. The monkey shrank back, alarmed, and Anna laughed.

  ‘Got to stand up to bullies,’ Thea said, then: ‘Look, here everyone comes.’ She nodded at the people spilling off the Ferris wheel and smiled at Anna. ‘You’re almost free.’

  ‘Are you alone here?’ Anna said, suddenly struck by the unsuitability of a lady, and a titled one at that, wandering unescorted around a fairground.

  ‘Only by choice. I left my husband in a nasty little beer tent drinking flat brown ale. I’m to meet him by the coconuts at four, but I haven’t yet decided if I will, or if I won’t. He must take his chances.’

  Thea grinned and Anna thought, what a powerful, irresistible thing was a ready, engaging smile. ‘Here we are, about time too,’ Thea was saying, bright and brisk. She took the jackets and thrust them at Daniel, then she looped an arm through Anna’s and pulled her away from the crowd. Eve and the children, joining him, followed his stupefied gaze as Anna, with a brief, apologetic backwards glance, headed away up the common with the Countess of Netherwood.

  Chapter 44

  ‘I’m so pleased to see you again,’ Thea said, the instant they were off. ‘I’ve thought a lot about you since we met.’

  ‘Have you?’ Anna sounded sceptical. Surely the new wife of the Earl of Netherwood would have more to think about than their chance meeting on the common?

  ‘I have. You were up a stepladder painting your front door.’

  ‘I was, yes. I painted whole house, in fact.’