Carver's Quest

by Rennison, Nick

  ‘Was it awfully improper to suggest meeting you here?’ Emily asked after a moment’s pause.

  ‘A little unconventional, perhaps.’

  ‘I am quite certain that I have done any number of things that were awfully improper in the weeks since I arrived in town. There are so many more rules in London than there are in Salonika. But I grow very weary of them.’

  She heaved a great sigh as if to indicate the extent of her weariness.

  ‘Am I not to enjoy the freedom that men take for granted, Mr Carver? Can a respectable young lady not walk where she wishes without attracting sullen stares or unwanted conversation?’

  Adam was unsure what to say. The truth was that an unaccompanied lady in the streets of London was only too likely to attract exactly the kind of attention Emily described. Or worse.

  ‘And yet I trust that I have not been too forward. Too…’ She paused to search for the word. ‘Too unmaidenly.’

  ‘I am certain you are incapable of appearing unmaidenly, Miss Maitland.’

  ‘I shall have to do as you have done, Mr Carver,’ Emily said, laughing. ‘Write a book about my travels! The adventures of a naive young girl from Salonika in the wilds of London!’

  ‘And of what have your London adventures consisted?’ Apart from visiting gentlemen unannounced, Adam thought to himself.

  ‘Very little, if truth be told.’ Emily looked cast down at the thought of all the adventures she had been missing.

  ‘There must be something to fill the pages of this book you will write.’

  ‘Well, we have been to the theatre on several occasions. We went to the Queen’s last night. Lady Audley’s Secret.’ She used the tip of her parasol to trace some pattern in the gravel around her chair. ‘Such a dismal drama. Nothing but murder, bigamy and madness. We were greatly disappointed by it. Although the ladies’ hats were much to be admired.’

  ‘I am sorry that your visit to the theatre was not a success.’

  ‘Oh, you should not be.’ Emily laughed. ‘No play can be considered a complete failure if one comes away from it with a new idea for a bonnet.’

  ‘I have to confess that I have never gone to a play and studied the hats of my neighbours with any great attention.’

  ‘You certainly should do, Mr Carver.’ Emily sounded as if she was recommending a moral duty that was not to be lightly shirked. ‘Hats are fearfully revealing. I think that you can judge much about a person’s character from the shape of his or her hat. Take the hat belonging to the gentleman in the blue jacket who is standing by the little gateway onto the dancing platform. The black coachman’s hat.’

  Adam turned his head very slightly so that he could see the person Emily meant.

  ‘And what does that hat tell you about its wearer?’

  ‘That the gentleman in question is not a gentleman at all. That he is not to be trusted.’ Emily was firm in her conviction.

  ‘And does my own headgear reveal anything about my character?’ Adam asked. The young woman put her head on one side and pretended to consider the question.

  ‘That you are a gentleman and that you are to be trusted, I would say.’

  Adam smiled. He tipped the headgear in question, a low-crowned grey top hat, in Emily’s direction.

  ‘Thank you kindly, miss,’ he said, ironically. ‘And is there anything which you would care to entrust to such a trustworthy gentleman?’

  ‘There is certainly a secret which I should entrust to somebody,’ the young woman said, looking at him with disconcerting directness. ‘But I am not yet certain that the gentleman in question is that somebody.’

  ‘Is there anything the gentleman in question could or should do to assist you in reaching the certainty you seek?’

  ‘Not at present. There is nothing to be done.’ She looked away towards the dancing platform. Adam was left to contemplate her profile and struggle to think of more to say. Emily showed no signs that she would be the one to renew the conversation.

  ‘How long will you and your mother remain in town?’ he asked after half a minute’s silence, which had seemed to him like half an hour.

  ‘Who can tell? Perhaps a week. Perhaps a month. I suppose we shall be gone before the end of August. Surely everybody has left by then?’

  Adam thought the streets of London would probably be no less crowded at the end of August than they were in the middle of June. Besides, he wondered whether Emily and her mother were quite so conversant with the higher echelons of society as her remark seemed intended to suggest.

  ‘You will return to Salonika, perhaps? I am sure that Salonika offers society to entertain your mother and yourself,’ Adam said. On the basis of his own experience of the city, he was unsure of any such thing but thought it politest to claim otherwise.

  ‘Society!’ Emily said, with great scorn. ‘Nothing but a set of old frumps and foozles, I can assure you. Nobody talks about a thing but the price of this and the price of that and when the next ship from Constantinople is due. I have been like to scream with boredom the entire time we have lived there.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that, Miss Maitland. So there is little to draw you back to Salonika.’

  ‘Not a thing. My mother is considering the possibility of travelling to Switzerland. She thinks a month amongst the glaciers would be of inestimable advantage to the health of us both.’

  ‘And do you agree with her?’

  ‘A daughter should probably always agree with her mother. But I am inclined to believe that we will thrive well enough without the benefit of mountain air and Alpine walks.’

  Since they had first begun to talk, Adam had noticed that Emily’s feet had been restlessly tapping beneath the table. Now she began to wave her arm in time to the music drifting over from the bandstand.

  ‘We must dance before we leave, Mr Carver.’

  Adam was startled. He had not thought that they were leaving. He still had no notion about ‘the affairs of consequence to us both’ of which Emily had written in her letter. He had assumed that he had been summoned to Cremorne Gardens to hear more of them. Now, after little more than idle chatter about hats, the theatre and the Alps, together with an enigmatic remark about a secret that should be told, the young woman was talking of dancing. And of leaving. In his surprise, he scarcely noticed that she had been so forward as to suggest taking to the dance floor herself.

  ‘I am no dancer,’ he said. ‘My left foot rarely seems to know what my right foot is doing.’

  ‘This is a galop,’ Emily replied. ‘And the galop is no dance. At least, not one worthy of the name. Little more than a dash down the room, a swift turn, and then a dash back. Even so poor a dancer as you claim to be can take the floor for a galop.’

  ‘There is no “down the room and back” at Cremorne, Miss Maitland. As you can see, the dancing area forms a circle round the orchestra.’

  ‘Then we shall go round and round,’ she said firmly, standing and holding out her hand.

  With the young woman already on her feet, Adam could not be so churlish as to refuse. He pushed back his chair and stood himself. The two of them moved through the gathering crowds to the circle of the dance floor. It was not a galop that was now playing as they made their way through one of the gaps in the low fence that surrounded it. The orchestra, doubtless sweating from their exertions in the raised box above the dancers, had turned to a slower measure. Adam took the young woman into his arms and the pair of them began to swirl decorously across the circle. He was acutely aware of the pressure of her body in his arms. Should his hand be there, he asked himself, as they swept past two flagging couples, perhaps themselves exhausted by the galop? Should he move it higher? Lower? No, definitely not lower. He wondered how closely he could hold her without causing offence. It was not a dilemma that he had faced before. With the girls that he and Cosmo picked up in the dance halls in town, and indeed occasionally at Cremorne, it was not a question that arose. Provided he paid for their drinks and their supper, he could hold them
just as tightly as he wished. With the young ladies he had partnered on the rarer occasions he had attended what might be called a society ball, the etiquette was also clear. The young woman was to be held with lightest of touches, like a porcelain figurine in the delicate hands of a connoisseur. But where did Emily fit into the social equation? She was undoubtedly a lady. Everything about her appearance proclaimed that fact. And yet what lady would have come unannounced and unaccompanied to Doughty Street? What lady would have chosen to meet him in the early evening at Cremorne Gardens? More questions raced through Adam’s mind but Emily herself answered many of them by moving closer into his tentative embrace.

  ‘You have deceived me, Mr Carver,’ she said with a smile. ‘You dance very well. Your left foot knows exactly what your right foot is doing.’

  ‘No, it is partnering you that has worked a miracle, Miss Maitland. I assure you that I am usually as clumsy as a carthorse when I dance.’

  The two of them moved beneath the large sign that read ‘All the Nations of the World are Welcome to Cremorne’ and continued to circle the orchestra. At this time of the day, only a handful of couples were dancing. Other groups of men and women, and some solitary men, strolled around the perimeter fence, watching those who had taken to the floor. Adam felt proud to be seen with such a beautiful woman as Emily but his curiosity about her remained. He decided that directness was, perhaps, his best policy.

  ‘I am puzzled by the affairs of consequence to us both to which you referred in your letter, Miss Maitland. I am uncertain what affairs we can have in common.’

  ‘Oh, the dance floor is no place to talk of them!’ Emily moved even closer into his arms. Adam was only too aware of the warmth of her body pressed against his as they completed a first circuit of the orchestra and embarked upon another. However, he was determined to find out more about his mysterious partner.

  ‘I was delighted by your visit to my rooms in Doughty Street,’ he persisted, ‘on the day that Quint’s clumsiness with the plates seemed to frighten you away. But I was perplexed as to the reason for it.’

  He paused and strove to catch the young woman’s eye. She looked away from him, as if scanning the rows of spectators for a familiar face.

  ‘And for the call you made upon me the previous Friday,’ he added.

  Emily now turned her head and stared at him, almost sullenly. As if by mutual agreement, the two of them began to move even more slowly than the music demanded. After a moment they came to a complete halt. Another couple, surprised by their stopping, nearly collided with them, before laughing and reeling off at an angle.

  ‘My landlady, Mrs Gaffery, saw you come down the stairs,’ Adam said. ‘I do believe she has as many eyes as Argus Panoptes.’

  Emily continued to gaze at him. For a few seconds, he thought that she was about to speak. Instead, she leaned in towards him, her head uptilted and her lips slightly parted. Adam’s own head moved downwards. They began to kiss. To his surprise, the young man felt Emily’s tongue enter his mouth, gently probing. He responded. For what seemed to him like many minutes, they stood entwined on the dance floor. Then Emily broke free from his embrace and began to make her way swiftly towards one of the breaks in the perimeter fence. Rooted to the spot, the taste of her still within his mouth, he watched her go. She did not look back. He debated whether or not to follow her. By the time he decided that he should and must, she had disappeared from sight.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  At Sir Willoughby Oughtred’s house in Eaton Square, a pigeon-breasted and melancholic servant, whose face suggested profound disillusionment with the world and all it contained, took Adam’s card and disappeared. Left in an entrance hall tiled in squares of black and white marble, Adam felt like a chess piece awaiting the next move in a complicated game. The servant returned in a surprisingly short time and led him up to a first-floor drawing room. Sir Willoughby was already there, warming himself in front of the fireplace. Above his head, on either side of the hearth, were portraits of disgruntled-looking men in eighteenth-century costume. Adam assumed they were earlier baronets. The Oughtreds were an ancient family, so ancient that even the present-day members of it had lost track of its exact origins. They had not come over with the Conqueror. That, at least, was certain. In fact, when William the Bastard had crossed the Channel, he had found that the Oughtreds were already there. They had been waiting for him and, in alliance with King Harold, had attempted to bloody his nose. When this failed, one Oughtred had disappeared into the East Anglian fens with Hereward the Wake. Over the centuries, having made their peace with the Norman invaders, the Oughtreds had quietly prospered. They were granted land in Lincolnshire by Henry I. They fought on the side of this Henry and several of those that followed him in wars against ambitious noblemen. They were granted more land in Lincolnshire.

  By the time of Henry VIII, the Oughtreds already had more acres in the county than they really needed, but as stalwart supporters of the king they accepted thousands more which had once belonged to the monasteries. During the Civil War and the rule of Cromwell, their fervid royalism proved costly to them for the first time in several hundred years. Several Oughtreds were obliged to join Charles II in impecunious exile in the Netherlands but luckily this proved to be only a temporary downturn in their fortunes. In the two centuries since the Merry Monarch’s triumphant return to his throne, they had continued to sit comfortably in the upper ranks of English society. They had faced only minor setbacks. In the reign of George III, one Oughtred had sunk so low as to marry a brewer’s daughter. The social stigma had been unavoidable but the young woman in question had brought compensating gifts to the marriage and to the Oughtred fortunes. A quarter of a million pounds of them, in fact.

  Today, the family was as ubiquitous in the life of the nation as it had ever been. Half a dozen Oughtreds or more were currently serving in the army and were kept busy dealing with potentially restless natives in the furthest-flung corners of the empire. At least three were in the Church and one held a bishopric. And Sir Willoughby Oughtred sat in the House of Commons, as he had done since the day after his twenty-first birthday many years before, helping in his own particular way to shape the laws that governed his fellow Englishmen.

  Some of this was known to Adam and passed through his mind as the sad servant ushered him into Sir Willoughby’s presence and withdrew. He looked at the Oughtred portraits and at the head of a stag which held pride of place above the hearth, its glass eyes visibly protruding as if it had met its death by strangulation rather than shooting. He tried not to feel intimidated by the weight of Oughtred history hanging in the air of the vast drawing room.

  The present baronet looked little less pop-eyed than the stag and just as dissatisfied with the world as his ancestors in the portraits. He had a glass in one hand and was puffing on a large cigar. Neither appeared to be giving him much pleasure. He took the cigar from his mouth to greet his visitor.

  ‘Come in, Carver. Bargate here will get you a drink. Whiskey and soda do?’

  Sir Willoughby spoke as if it would have to do because no other drink was on offer. Bargate, a man who looked no less doleful than his fellow servant but several decades older, emerged from the shadows in which he had been lurking. He set off towards the decanters. Bald and astonishingly wrinkled, his head jutting forward as he shambled across the room, he was like a 200-year-old tortoise, stripped of its shell and sent out into the world to serve drinks to its betters. The baronet returned the cigar to his mouth. A blast of smoke erupted from it and hung in clouds in the air. These clouds seemed, suddenly and miraculously, to gain motive power from somewhere and began to make their way towards Adam. In seconds his head was swathed in them and he was hard pressed not to break down in a coughing fit.

  ‘I knew your father, Carver,’ the baronet said. ‘Saw a lot of him when he was putting together that Lincolnshire Railway Company. But I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you. Came across your name in the papers, of course, when you r
eturned from European Turkey. Even had Bargate buy that book of yours. Never got round to reading it, mind. But we haven’t been introduced. Have we?’

  The MP sounded suddenly uncertain, as if aware that he met dozens of people in the course of an average day and that he couldn’t trust himself to remember every single one of them.

  ‘No, sir, we have not met.’ Adam fought his way out of the poisonous miasma of Sir Willoughby’s cigar smoke in order to reply. ‘Although we have acquaintances in common. And we are both, I believe, members of the Marco Polo.’

  ‘Ah, the Marco Polo. Were you at the Speke dinner?’ The MP did not bother to wait for an answer. ‘The food was foul, was it not? Lord knows who the chef is. Some filthy Frenchman, I suppose.’

  Sir Willoughby waved his hand towards the centre of the room where a round mahogany table stood, surrounded by half a dozen chairs.

  ‘Shall we take a seat?’

  Again without waiting for an answer, and looking far from confident that it would support him, Sir Willoughby walked across and lowered himself gingerly into one of the chairs. Adam pulled another out from the table. Bargate reappeared to hand him his drink.

  ‘How can I help you, my boy?’ The MP was clearly prepared to cast himself in the role of a benevolent father figure, ready at all times to dispense his wisdom to the younger generation.

  Adam hesitated. How much should he tell Sir Willoughby? He was aware that he might blunder unwittingly onto treacherous ground. Yet questions had to be asked. If the baronet found some of them offensive, there was little Adam could do about it.

  ‘Little to do with the Marco Polo, sir. Although it was at the Speke dinner that the story began.’

  Sir Willoughby looked politely puzzled. What story beginning at the Speke dinner could possibly have anything to do with me? his half-raised eyebrow seemed to say.

  ‘It was there that I met a gentleman named Samuel Creech.’

  In an instant, the baronet’s expression changed from puzzlement to curiosity. He looked long and hard at Adam and then turned to his servant.