The Glass House

by Beatrice Colin

“I’m sure it’s quite safe,” replied Cicely. “Besides, I could do with some fresh air.”

  And with a nod to the assembly, Cicely Pick walked out of the drawing room and was gone.

  For a moment everyone was silent. Would someone suggest they go after her? Or instruct a coachman to pick her up? As one, they all looked to Lorimer for instruction. He was sucking on a cigarette.

  “Are you going to play another, or what?” he said.

  9

  The moon was almost full and the light that fell between the black tangle of trees was bright as zinc. Cicely walked fast, but she was wearing silk slippers with heels that had been made for dancing, not for outdoors. The driveway was paved up to the gatepost; then the road was unsurfaced, two thin ruts made by carriage wheels and a strip of mud churned up by carthorses’ hooves in the middle. She had to escape, to get out of Lorimer’s house, but maybe she shouldn’t have insisted on going on foot. Too strong-willed, George would have said. But that wasn’t true at all on this occasion. Her will was weak; that was the problem.

  The wind blew in gusts around the headland, plastering her dress to her body and riffling through the trees as if looking for something lost. A few drops of rain fell. Her feet lost their feeling first, her fingers, even in gloves, followed soon after. She tied her evening wrap as tightly around her shoulders as she could, but she still shivered.

  It had occurred to her during dinner—the idea that Lorimer could sponsor her husband’s expedition, that he could be George’s patron, that this would solve everything. Now, however, the champagne was wearing off and with it the sense that she had made some horrendous mistake, some terrible error of judgment.

  In the sky above she heard the flap of a bird—an owl, she guessed, hunting for prey. It called out, a single cry, before it headed away up the valley. In India the jungle was denser, noisier, thick with cries of fear and alarm. At dusk and during the night, the big cats came out to hunt: leopards, who might drop on you from a branch, or tigers, who were almost impossible to see in the undergrowth. But she knew what to listen for, the barking of the deer and the cry of monkeys warning one another of a tiger’s prowl. Here she had no clue; she couldn’t read this country as she could her own, she couldn’t decipher the cries of the birds and the direction of the wind. The landscape spoke a language she didn’t understand.

  At home she had seen a tiger once, sitting on the opposite side of a river, its jaws red with the blood of a sambar.

  “It’s all right,” their guide had whispered. “She already has her supper. Shall I?”

  He raised his gun. And as they watched, the tigress went back to rip herself another hunk of fresh deer meat. Out of the shadows came two cubs.

  “Leave them be,” George had told him.

  She had loved him then, for the way he had spared the family. And yet she saw a different parallel now: He had let it be because the tiger was female, the sex that killed and cared for and sacrificed their own lives for their offspring, while the male went off to follow his own path, thinking only of himself.

  A noise came from somewhere nearby, the snap and rustle of broken branches and a flurry of leaves. She narrowed her eyes but could make out nothing. Was it animal or human? Should she call out? No, she must be quiet, invisible, and so she made herself imagine that she was a drop of black ink on a blacker page; she was part of the night, swallowed whole, dissolved. She tried to follow the road but twice she found herself stepping into the ditch at the edge and stumbling. She had to walk more slowly, cautiously, her arms stretched in front like a blind person’s. Surely she should be almost back at Balmarra by now? It was impossible to tell exactly where the streams and rivers were; they seemed to be everywhere, the roar and tumble of water both ahead and behind, making her lose her sense of direction, unable to judge distance or speed.

  It wasn’t just out here. She seemed to have completely lost her bearings. It would be different if Lorimer were old and ugly and fat. But he was not. She pictured his face, the curve of his mouth, the line of his wrist.

  Cicely heard the approach of a horse and cart long before she saw it. It came around a corner with a clatter of hooves and the snap of leather, a storm lantern held by the driver and lighting up the road.

  “Goodness me!” he said when he saw her. “I’ve been out looking for you for the last half hour. If you’re wanting to get back to Balmarra, then you’re on the wrong road. This one’s the back road to Dunoon.”

  He held out his hand. For a moment she hesitated.

  “I’m Jim,” he explained. “Mr. Lorimer’s coachman.”

  “Really, there was no need—” she began.

  The wind blew the rest of her words away. She took his hand and he pulled her up to the seat beside him.

  Antonia and Malcolm weren’t home yet. Young Mr. Baillie came out of his cottage to greet them. He held the horses while she climbed down.

  “I’ll let Mr. Lorimer know,” said the coachman before he drove off.

  There wasn’t a single light on inside the main house. The fires would have been swept and set for the morning. Kitty would be fast asleep, her breath steady and sweet. But Cicely was cold, the coldest, perhaps, she’d ever been. The gardener seemed to notice her hesitation; perhaps he saw the stiffness in her limbs and the clench of her jaw.

  “My uncle has a fire going, Mrs. Pick,” he said. “Maybe you could come in and warm up for a minute or two?”

  She knew she should go straight to bed, slowly thaw, and try to forget the dinner and the long walk home in the wrong direction. And yet she knew too that she would lie awake for hours, trying to warm up, unable to stop her mind going round and round and over and over the same small snippets of conversations, the same face.

  In the front room of the gardener’s cottage was a range with a blazing coal fire, a bed recess, a small table, and a couple of armchairs. Old Mr. Baillie greeted her with a nod, then climbed the ladder to another bed, she guessed, in the attic. Baillie cleared stacks of books from the kitchen table and took the kettle off the range above the fire.

  “Tea?”

  “Please,” she replied, looking around.

  “Smaller than you’re used to, I suppose?” he said.

  “Not really.”

  The scale of the room was closer to the scale of the house she had grown up in, and unlike the cavernous rooms of Balmarra, it held the heat. In India, however, she would never have entered a servant’s quarters. The caste system did not allow it. She was regarded as “unclean” and anything that she touched would have to be thrown away. She was pretty sure that in Scotland women of a certain class didn’t drink tea with their gardeners. But what did she care? And who else would know unless someone told them? She doubted either young or old Mr. Baillie would gossip.

  She picked up a book at random from the kitchen table. It was a volume of botanical drawings. She flicked through its glossy color plates while the gardener swirled the tea around in the pot, then poured it into two cups.

  “How long has your uncle worked here?” she asked.

  “Over fifty years,” he replied. “The only job he has ever had.”

  “And what brought you here?”

  “My mother liked the place. We used to spend the summer holidays with the old man.”

  “And your father?” she said.

  “He was out of the country.”

  “Really? Where?”

  He didn’t appear to hear the question.

  “Please,” he said. “Sit down.”

  She took a seat at the table, and he handed her a cup of tea. Then he placed a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar beside a jam jar full of wildflowers. Maybe “out of the country” was a euphemism. She thought about Jane F intry, about bringing up a child alone. It couldn’t have been easy.

  The gardener sat down at the table.

  “Remember that envelope you gave me?” he asked. “The one with the flower and the seeds inside? I’ve searched all three volumes of Hooker’s Genera Plantarum and
couldn’t find it. I’m going to keep on looking.”

  Did he have her mixed up with Antonia? She had no idea what he was talking about. “Wonderful,” she replied vaguely.

  All the bravado she had felt before had gone. George’s admission of his infidelity was devastating, but did she have the courage to leave him? And if she so, what kind of life would she and Kitty have?

  The fire crackled in the grate. Jacob Baillie seemed to relax. He sat back and sipped his tea. He didn’t seem to expect conversation. After Antonia, the silence was a relief. Eventually the clock struck midnight. Cicely drained the cup.

  “I’d better be going,” she said, rising to her feet. “Thank you so much for the tea.”

  “Glad to be of service,” he said.

  “Good night, Mr. Baillie.”

  Cicely hoped the new owners would keep the Baillies on. She doubted anyone else would employ old Mr. Baillie, not at his age, but she would do what she could for both of them, offer references, recommendations. There was no action without a reaction, her mother used to say.

  * * *

   Antonia slept badly. At her insistence they had been the last to leave Lorimer’s dinner, engaging him in conversation long after everyone else had left.

  “Do you think he really wanted to discuss politics at midnight?” Malcolm had asked her on the way home. “I mean, really, Antonia!”

  She sat and stared out at the dark, her mouth a straight line. There were two reasons. F irst, she was making sure that they didn’t overtake Cicely walking back along the road; they were giving her a head start. That was what her sister-in-law wanted, surely? To make her point. To make them look bad. But the night was colder, windier, more inhospitable than she had realized, and the journey home in the carriage made her feel guilty and then angry that she had been made to feel guilty and then guilty that she felt angry. It was all Cicely’s fault. Second, she wanted to apologize about the vase. She had been on the brink, but then someone had brought up the prime minister and the problems of Irish home rule, and the moment had passed.

  “And as for your brother’s wife,” Malcolm went on, “I have to admire her. Got out when the going was good.”

  “I thought it was quite rude. But then etiquette doesn’t seem to matter to her. I mean, as you said, they just turned up on the doorstep expecting to stay indefinitely?”

  Antonia sounded harsher than she intended.

  “But then again, they are family. Maybe it’s a marital issue?”

  “Marital?” repeated Malcolm as if the thought had never occurred to him. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”

  “My brother can’t be the easiest man to be married to,” said Antonia.

  When they had arrived back at Balmarra she was relieved to hear that Cicely had made it home safely. All was well that ended well, as Malcolm said more than once. During the night, however, Antonia lay awake, the sound of her own voice chafing in her head, the events of the previous evening churning like indigestion. If she didn’t throw the party, no one would ever invite them anywhere again. Their social pariah status would be confirmed now and forever more. And what about Lorimer’s vase? Could she ever live down the embarrassment? And finally she thought about Cicely. Maybe she had come to Balmarra for help and was too proud to ask. Her face burned at the thought of it. How could she have been so insensitive?

  The next morning she listened to Malcolm getting up and going to work. When he was gone, she rose and ate breakfast alone, then climbed up the stairs to the attic. It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. It was in the tea chest nearest the door, wrapped up in newspaper from the late 1880s. The vase was not exactly the same as Lorimer’s but similar. It had two gold handles, a lid with a gold pineapple-shaped knob, and a painted image of cherubs on one side. She lifted it up and found a mark on the base, two lines crossing twice to make a double cross, with the letter C in the middle. Was this a Sèvres? She would wrap it up and send the groom over with it later that day with an apology.

  Antonia wiped her palms on her skirts and took a final look around the attic. It would take some time to sort through it all, but it must be done. A door slammed on the floor below, and she jumped. The visitors were louder than a crowd of laborers. Later that day, however, she would ask Cicely what was going on and if she could be of assistance. In return Cicely could help her throw the party. The more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that it was not only desirable, it was essential. Such an event would put them on the social map; it would announce their intention to be recognized as members of the landed class. But it would not be the kind of party that people might expect, there would be no chamber orchestra, weak bowls of fruit punch, and postage-stamp-size sandwiches. Instead they would throw a party like nothing anyone had ever experienced in those parts before. It would be a big hurrah, a celebration with an Indian theme. Yes, Antonia told herself, a lavish party was just the ticket.

  10

  The morning was crisp and cold, the blue sky above streaked with white mackerel clouds. Although it was only August, the taste of autumn was already in the air. Across the water, the mountains looked as soft as felt, while the tangled garden that had seemed so sinister to Cicely the night before now rustled benignly in the breeze. Everything always looks better in the morning, her ayah used to tell her when nightmares had woken her, but this time, although the world looked transformed, her mood was still unchanged: She was an awful person, accepting her sister-in-law’s hospitality under false pretenses and exchanging looks with a man who was not her husband. She had to stop.

  Dora brought tea, toast, and boiled eggs to the breakfast table. It was only eight thirty, but, she said, Antonia had already breakfasted. Cicely poured the tea. She would take Kitty a cup. In India, Kitty’s school uniform would have been pressed and mended, the brown paper that wrapped her exercise books replaced, her writing pencils sharpened, and the slate she used for homework wiped clean. During the trip they had grown closer—at least there was one positive outcome. Soon she would be packed up and dispatched to her Scottish school. Kitty would need a brand-new uniform, shoes, textbooks, and sports clothes plus a small trunk for personal belongings. The list the school had sent covered both sides of three pieces of paper. How could she possibly pay for it all?

  The breakfast room door opened and Antonia came in, dressed as usual in so many layers of cardigan that she looked like an Eskimo.

  “Good morning,” Antonia said. “Sleep well?”

  Cicely said she had, even though she had not slept well at all.

  “Is the tea hot?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I’m afraid there is only a little left,” Cicely replied.

  “I’ll ring for more.”

  For a moment they were both silent. Cicely took a sip of tea and placed the cup carefully back in its saucer. Antonia sat forward in her chair and lowered her voice.

  “I don’t know how to say this tactfully, but is everything all right between you and my brother?”

  Antonia was staring at her with real concern.

  “George and I are.…” Cicely began. A lump had risen to her throat, and she couldn’t continue. Were they really fine?

  “It’s just…,” she tried again, her gaze fixed on the teapot. “We miss him. It isn’t easy being apart for so long but—the truth is—”

  “Go on,” said Antonia.

  “The truth is that his current trip is expensive—more, much more, than we can possibly afford.”

  There, she had told her.

  “Why didn’t you say so before?” asked Antonia. She inhaled deeply then pushed her spectacles up her nose. “I can help you with that.”

  It’s only money, Cicely told herself. It doesn’t matter. And yet a yawning chasm had opened up inside her. How would Antonia feel once she discovered that Cicely borrowed money from her only to go on and claim the whole estate?

  “We’ll pay it back,” Cicely said. “With interest. And if you don’t mind, would you be
able to keep it just between ourselves?”

  “Malcolm will never know,” Antonia replied. “Leave it with me. And don’t be silly about the interest. I’m not a bank, you know.”

  At that moment Dora bustled in with a fresh pot, and the subject was dropped. More tea was poured, and Antonia started to talk about the awful brew they had been made to drink at school as well as the dreadful food that was served up for dinnertime. Cicely let the rest of her sister-in-law’s words wash over her. She was so like George sometimes. She looked nothing like her brother, but when she had an idea, a plan, her eyes widened, just a little, and caught the light—polished stone in sunshine, slate to his flint. Her offer of financial help was completely unexpected. Maybe she and Malcolm could afford to buy them out after all? Maybe they lived frugally but had a large amount stashed away? There was one thing, however, that worried her. Antonia hadn’t asked how much they required. But surely she would have some idea. She began to calculate—at least three hundred guineas for Kitty’s school, and George could keep going on seven hundred for a month or two. A thousand guineas was not a fortune, was it?

  “Let’s talk about lighter topics,” Antonia said. “I’m very excited about the party!”

  Antonia elaborated on the idea she had proposed the night before, an event that no one, she enthused, would ever forget. Invitations would go out to all the gentry on the Peninsula as far west as Kilfinan, plus clients from Malcolm’s firm, and ex-employees from the sugar refinery as well as the so-called Dunoon gin set.

  “I never did have a coming-out ball,” she continued. “Father didn’t believe in them. He called them cattle markets.”

  Although she had never met Edward Pick, Cicely had heard so many of his opinions and sayings that at this point that she felt she had. She had to agree with him on the cattle market idea. Cicely’s own coming-out had been for more than one hundred guests and featured a small orchestra, a banquet, and elephant rides. The young women had been instructed to line up on one side of the ballroom and the young men on the other. One by one the women were chosen, until only the plain ones or the older ones were left. It was nothing more than an exercise in humiliation, in herding. Since she had married George she rarely attended any social events unless she absolutely had to. It didn’t seem, however, to be the right time to mention this.