A Dark and Distant Shore (109 page)

She was grateful for an opportunity to change the subject, because although she had no feeling for Perry Randall now, and doubted his for her, she had always disliked resurrecting the past. It was always a mistake to go back, to a door that had been closed, or a coffin screwed down.

‘Yes, in a way,’ she said, pursing her lips, and then unpursing them, because she knew it emphasized the lines. ‘I only have Kinveil for my lifetime – and, of course, only if I don’t remarry.’

She smiled charmingly, as if she knew he would understand that this hadn’t been a factor in her refusal of him, but only a minor element in a different equation.

If he hadn’t felt so tired, he could almost have laughed at her sublime faith in her ability to mislead him. ‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘What an inconsiderate provision.’

She gazed thoughtfully into the fire. ‘Magnus never succeeded in getting the better of me in life, but thought that death gave him the opportunity he had been looking for. The marriage provision doesn’t worry me greatly, as it happens.’

‘No.’

She looked at him sharply, but he went on, ‘You can’t have expected him to leave the place to you outright. What about his daughter – Juliana, isn’t it?’ Distantly, he remembered a pretty child with enormous blue eyes. There had been some kind of tragedy a few years ago, he couldn’t remember what. So much easier nowadays to remember the happenings of fifty years ago than of five.

‘He had a prejudice against managing women, I can’t think why.’ There was a gleam of wicked humour in her eyes, and he responded to it. ‘He was afraid Juley might turn into one, so he bequeathed Kinveil to her eldest son.’

‘Does she have one?’

‘No. She did – Shona
must
have told you! – but he died in India.’

‘I can’t imagine what Magnus was thinking of, allowing his daughter to go out there. Couldn’t you have stopped it?’

Vilia shrugged. ‘She thought she was in love. And really, it’s silly to talk of the place as if it’s a death-trap for Europeans. Clearly, it can’t be, otherwise there wouldn’t be an Indian empire, because all the empire-builders would have been killed off.’

‘So you made no attempt to stop her?’

‘Why should I?’

He was remembering now. The girl’s husband and child had died in India, but she had survived. And come back to marry Theo. He said, without expression, ‘So she’s married to Theo now, is she?’

‘Well, she was, but she’s left him. I’ve no idea why, but she’s simply disappeared into thin air.’

She didn’t seem troubled, which struck Perry as extremely odd. He remembered thinking he could detect her fine Italian hand in that piece of matchmaking, and had assumed she was hoping the pair of them would have children. ‘You’ve no idea why?’ he repeated drily.

She tossed her head. ‘Oh,
that
?
That was all nonsense, despite what you said. He has been a perfectly good husband to her.’

‘Did he tell you so?’

‘Of course not. It’s scarcely the kind of thing a son discusses with his mother. Anyway, Ian Barber is the heir, and a fine mess he will make of it, especially if he tries to run Glenbraddan and Kinveil in harness.’

‘Will he?’

‘I imagine so. Edward Blair is at his last gasp, and Glenbraddan will go to Isa, which means Ian. Did you know he had an accident a week ago, speaking at one of those rowdy Reform meetings? There was a riot, and he was hit on the temple. He lost the sight of his right eye, but he could very easily have been killed.’

Perry remembered the clever-stupid seventeen-year-old at Shona’s party. Ian was his grandson, but he always found it hard to think of him as such. It would hurt Vilia to think Kinveil was going to Ian. ‘He and Isa have a son now, haven’t they, after a string of daughters?’

‘Yes, and
so
annoying of them! Otherwise, if I had outlived Ian, which I fully intend to do – for I have made up my mind to go on to a hundred, and Ian has always struck me as one of those men who worries himself into an early grave – it would have gone to Jermyn’s new son, Neil. Or to Peregrine James’s son, when he deigns to marry. He is
sure
to have sons, dozens of them! He’s that kind of young man!’

Perry couldn’t help but laugh. That was the real Vilia speaking, the Vilia he loved, and he knew just what she meant even though he’d never set eyes on Peregrine James. Another of his grandsons! A rush of longing came over him, and he said, ‘Vilia, my dearest dear. Won’t you think again? Even if we only had a few good years together, wouldn’t it be worth something? What do a pile of rocks and a few acres mean, that you should be so concerned about their destiny? Does it really matter whether the Barber child rules over them, or someone of Cameron blood? You can’t measure happiness or fulfilment in those terms!’

Her eyes turned to him, the water-nymph’s eyes that had drained his soul away fifty years ago. ‘Can’t I? Oh,
can’t I
?
Kinveil has mattered to me too much, for too long. All the awfulness, all the misery, all the betrayals. My father took Kinveil from me when I was seven years old. I’ve always wanted it back, and I
will
have it back, wholly and completely.’

Which mood? He had wondered. Which mood, now that she was no longer young, or middle-aged, but old. He had his answer, and he could feel the chill settling in his bones.

He rose to his feet, as he had done once before in this room, with Luke Telfer, when to continue the conversation had been beyond him. He said, as he had said then, ‘Forgive me, but I have had a tiring day, and I must make an early start in the morning.’

She was taken aback but not distressed. ‘So soon? I had expected you to stay longer.’

He swallowed with some difficulty, trying to prevent the exhaustion and defeat from showing on his face, and said, ‘Stay? No, I think not. You have given me my answer. Good-bye, Vilia. For the last time. Good-bye, my very dearest.’

Then he took her hand, and kissed it, and went. It was as much as he could do to reach his room before the tears blinded him.

All Paris was at Longchamp on June sixth, 1867, to see the grand review of the French army. Some people said there were to be sixty thousand soldiers assembled, but others, watching the furious last-minute brushing and polishing going on before the arrival of the sovereigns, put the number at only half that. It didn’t matter. There were a lot. And they looked magnificent – grenadiers in their tall bearskin shakos; riflemen in yellow-striped tunics; green-plumed chasseurs; turbaned, baggy-trousered zouaves in red and blue, with
vivandières
skipping pertly along beside them with brandy kegs slung from their shoulders.

The ceremonial cannon thundered out from high above the racecourse, and then the Emperor Napoleon III rode into sight, mounted on a magnificent black charger and surrounded by Spahis. On his right was the Czar of Russia and on his left King Wilhelm of Prussia. They had come to Paris not to see the army showing off, but to visit the Exposition Universelle; however,
noblesse
obliged, and if Louis-Napoleon wanted them to admire his troops, they were prepared to do the decent thing. Bismarck, in the King of Prussia’s train, was genuinely interested.

Led by Marshal Canrobert, hero of Africa and the Crimea, foot-soldiers and cavalry and artillery marched past the imperial stand, spotless, impeccably polished, and splendidly dashing, and the climax was a tremendous charge of ten thousand cavalry – lancers, hussars, cuirassiers, and Chasseurs d’Afrique – who swept across the field at full gallop to pull up, all standing, no more than fifteen feet away from the royal party. Saluting with drawn sabres, they cried out ‘
Vive l’Empereur!
’
and their homage was echoed in a great roar from every corner of the field.

‘Poof! It’s warm,’ Juliana said when it was all over. ‘Arsène, I must go back now. Do you intend to stay?’

The tall young man with the flowing brown hair turned to look down at her, his eyes glowing. ‘Is it not magnificent?
This
is France – the France of Malakoff, and Magenta, and Solferino, the greatest military power in Europe!’

‘Yes, Arsène. But I must go.’

He grasped her hand. ‘Why must you? It is such a beautiful day. Why don’t we go down to one of those little inns by the river, and have a glass of wine, and sit there and rest our souls?’

‘It sounds delightful, but I can’t. Monsieur would murder me.’

‘Why? Surely he can spare you to me for a little?’

She smiled. ‘Tonight, of all nights? It would be as much as my life is worth. It was only as a very special concession that I was given leave to come at all, and I shall have to stay late to make up for it.’

‘You would, anyway,’ he said gloomily. ‘You always do on such occasions.’

She smiled. ‘You make it sound as if it was by choice! But I can see you have no intention of accompanying me, so I shall go alone.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and then turned and began to struggle away through the throng.

In the
fiacre,
she suddenly felt weary. The baby was due in less than two months, but Madame, who had worked through her own pregnancies, had been very understanding about it. Not for the first time, Juliana began trying to calculate whether her small savings, added to what remained of the money she had brought with her to France, would be enough. Arsène earned almost nothing from his writing although he was convinced he would, one day, and she couldn’t go to Gaby, who had made it very clear that the Marcabruns lived at a level of debt that Juliana could scarcely envisage. But she thought she would be able to manage – just. Theo had been right about one thing; she did want a child. But she also wanted a worthwhile relationship with its father. She had hoped to find it with Arsène, the charming Bohemian student whose dedication to literature was tempered by the crude honesty of the
demi-monde.
Juliana, recognizing the vulgarity of that world, found it indescribably refreshing after the hypocrisy and self-delusion that had contaminated the whole of her six-year marriage to Theo. But she knew now that the life she shared with Arsène wouldn’t last, although she could not tell whether that was because of some weakness in him, or the emotional numbness that still possessed her, making it hard to give and almost impossible to receive.

They reached the rue de la Paix at last, and she descended before No. 7, the tall, iron-balconied building that housed the Maison Worth et Bobergh, to be greeted by Monsieur Carlsson, premier
commis,
with the information that Miss Mary and Miss Esther had been screaming for her this thirty minutes past. Juliana didn’t like Isidor Carlsson, or any of the other young men whose province was the selling of fabrics. With their curled hair, pearl tie-pins, turquoise rings, and tight-fitting coats, they all seemed to be trying to pretend they were diplomatic
attachés.
She said ‘Thank you’, and began, heavily, to climb the stairs. She couldn’t understand why Miss Mary and Miss Esther,
premières vendeuses,
should want her. Juliana’s province was the records department. Worth and Bobergh had customers throughout the civilized world, some of whom rarely visited Paris, and it was Juliana’s responsibility to keep an up-to-date record of every lady’s size, height, colouring, peculiarities, and tastes. It was of paramount importance to be sure that two Russian duchesses, ordering by letter, didn’t find themselves wearing the same gown at the same soirée in far-off St Petersburg.

Juliana’s path rarely crossed that of Monsieur Worth and his lady assistants. Racking her brains, she could think of no crisis that might have occurred in her domain during her few hours’ absence, and indeed none had. The crisis that had arisen was of the kind that involved the entire house.

As the Czar had been driving back with the emperor from Longchamp, someone – a Polish patriot, it was believed, but what did
that
matter? said Miss Esther, who knew her priorities – had leaped out of the crowd and fired a pistol at him. No, no, said Miss Esther, no one had been hurt, but just think of the problems of protocol! Should tonight’s great ball at the Tuileries be cancelled? And what of the dinner at the Russian embassy preceding it? In the end, it had been decided that everything should go ahead as planned, but the Empress Eugénie felt that the sumptuous gown Worth had made for the occasion was no longer appropriate. Something quieter, something tactfully sympathetic, would be more suitable, and Worth and Bobergh had just three-and-a-half hours in which to produce it. The empress never appeared in the same gown twice.

‘Monsieur is already at the palace,’ Miss Esther said. ‘But I can spare none of the
vendeuses
to assist him. We have all the other ladies to prepare for as well.’ Worth insisted that, on the evening of any great occasion, his customers all came to the rue de la Paix so that he or one of his senior assistants might take a last look and see that everything was as it should be. Sometimes he might make a minor adjustment, sometimes alter the accessories; what he produced was not a gown but a whole toilette. As a result, at ten o’clock on the evening of a fashionable ball, there was a whole queue of princesses, duchesses, and countesses in his salons, consuming Madeira and
pâté de foie gras
while they waited to pass his inspection.

‘
You
must go, therefore,’ Miss Esther said. ‘I have made a selection of fabrics for you to take, and you will also take four of the seamstresses, not the machine girls, but those who are nimble with their fingers. One of the salesmen will accompany you, in case Monsieur wishes to send back for anything.’

The empress’s chamberlains had been warned, and Miss Juliana and her girls were tossed like hot chestnuts from one blue-and-silver-cuffed hand to another, along the endless corridors of the Tuileries and up to the wardrobe room, housed immediately above the imperial dressing-room. Monsieur Worth, who had not wasted time changing into court dress, was reclining dreamily on a chaise longue, neat and spruce in his velvet-collared black coat, floppy tie, and gold-buttoned shirt, his drooping moustaches twitching a little, and his high brow furrowed in meditation as he contemplated the plain white gown already draped over a crinoline cage on one of the four lay figures, made to Her Imperial Majesty’s precise measurements, that permanently inhabited the wardrobe. Worth’s hallmark was perfection of cut and fit and finish, and there was no question of producing an entirely new gown in such a short time; alteration was necessary. But since Worth was Worth, that meant transformation.